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Bleak Future for Videogame Customers
jvm writes "A recent commentary on Curmudgeon Gamer speculates on the future of the videogame market. Among the predictions: no more rentals from video stores, no used games market, no lending games to friends, less upgradeable computers, pay-as-you-play software subscriptions, and other consumer-unfriendly changes. In all, less gaming value for your hard-earned dollar."
This isn't purely a gaming industy trend, but an overall trend in the software industry as a whole. Everything sold as retail software now comes with at least a CD key, if not an activiation system. Software publishers have always hated piracy, and always hated the idea of selling used software.
I don't see much of a difference between a play-for-play model, and the rental model... both leave you with nothing after your allotted time has expired. The Blockbusters of the world are the ones who are really shaking over the death of physical media, because they're not needed if everybody gets their rental content delivered online.
The divorce of software from physical media is a result of a shift in business models, but I don't think there's any more reason to cry over the loss of the console gaming cart than there is to cry over the death of the RIAA-backed music CD. We're just getting deeper and deeper into the information age, and if we want our high-speed networks to be any good, we've gotta have data availalbe on it...
I'm certainly happy to have an actual CD of DOOM II so I can work on Ruby-DOOM on whichever computer I'm closest to.
The Army reading list
There will always be a p2p forum for trading games and piracy and quit harassing people and providing restrictive 'features' to control what users can do... The only way companies will end this is to offer better alternatives. Something I do not see happening in the foreseeable future.
"And I also predict that in the future Valve will employ teams of jackbooted thugs to come to your door and shoot you in the face if they catch you using a CD crack..."
Okay, never mind the unthinking, chicken-little attitude of this article. Never mind the technological "predictions" that are often nothing short of ludicrous (a game that deletes the older levels as you play? What game company would do such a thing, and why?) Never mind the article's total ignorance of market forces, i.e. assuming that players will just put up with one staggering inconvenience after another and never migrate to an easier-to-use entertainment medium (isn't this why we have been hearing about the "death of the PC" for so long anyway)? This guy just needs to plain old proofread:
"Quake players didn't need to with for a no-CD hack and Half-life players didn't need to connect to a master server to play single-player games, but DooM III and Half-life 2 owners just might have to."
Apparently he's so curmudgeonly he's started speaking his own language.
Maybe I am just a naive Pollyanna, but if I saw any video game on the shelf that required a monthly subscription fee, no physical media, and gigabytes of downloading to play, I'd leave it there without a second thought. I'd like to think there are others out there who would say the same. (Note: I know there are MMORPGs out there that are already somewhat like this, but I don't play them.)
Look, the games still take up, what, 1-5 Gigs? Unless people are downloading _consistently_ at some 500k, you'll still ahve to go to the store and get the game on CD. Given the state of the broadband market in the US this pay-to-play crap is like 20 years away, and by then, the games will take up a few terrabytes anyway.
it's the people who decide things like this. If sufficient people stop purchasing games that restrict their ability to play them, then it's a simple business decision for the company to make - stop over-restricting the user.
If companies adopt the attitude that consumers en-mass are stupid (usually justifiable, to be fair to the companies) they might just get burnt on this one - gamers particularly and (to be fair to the great unwashed, this time) people in general are getting more au fait with the technology. Removing the ability to share games or play with friends may just result in non-protected-in-this-way games being more popular instead.
The games market is very very cut-throat. It's similar to the post-production market (where I work) except that the games companies are far more in control than the advertising agencies (our paymasters). If one company goes down the "wrong" alley, I reckon another might just jump to go down the "right" one, especially if they're currently not the market leader...
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
true , it seems unlikely now ... but 20 years from now (when high speed internet is as common as having phone service) , it'll be the norm. the article really is off track in that no real solution is presented (or even wanted ?)
"taking over the world , one lego at a time"
This is so much chicken little we are all doomed nonsense. Do you really think that the game companies are truly stupid enough to piss off their lifeblood? Granted they make some dumb calls, but I honestly do not think they are suicidaly stupid. Games a pain in the ass to own or play? Then just don't play it! They will die, and a service that meets the needs of gamers will surface. It all depends on what the gamers are willing to accept, end of story.
Remember Id? Came out of nowhere, provided something that the heavy hitters didn't. Now they are a heavy hitter. It's not rocket science. (Ok, mabye it is in Id's case).
Slashdot monitor for your Mozilla sidebar or Active Desktop.
"no more rentals from video stores, no used games market, no lending games to friends, less upgradeable computers, pay-as-you-play software subscriptions, and other consumer-unfriendly changes. In all, less gaming value for your hard-earned dollar".
This is ridiculous - for people who actually pay for software, they do so because they get an equivalent in _having fun_ while using the software or hardware, as the case may be.
People who "borrow" (yeah, right) games aren't _customers_ anyway, why would anyone care about them?
I own two legal copies of CS and I'll pay for the new one when it comes out, no matter what the media is. And I'm sure I'll have fun.
This means fewer people will buy these restrictive games, and motivated entrepreneurs will release games we do want to buy.
The anti-pirating schemes already in place have all but killed the gaming experience for me. Why is it I spent uncountable hours playing my older games online with friends, but anything I've bought in the last year needs to meet up on a server. You spend wasted time in a lobby watching people type in profanity and hate speech, then as your friends all try to start the game, something happens and it doesn't launch. Time's too short, I'll just won't play games with needless restrictions and I wish others wouldn't either.
is just as valuable as any other forum opinion. Why this guy was posted on /. is beyond me (slow weekend). He says that it is guarenteed we will have to pay for play, no rentals, no used games, and no physical media. That is his GUESS people.
After reading 1/2 of the article I realized it was as useful as reading someone's opinion on any message board. He drew up educated guesses and that was it.
Now of course every industry wants a subscription like service for their product. Yearly upgrades and that sort of thing can equal huge profits. But it doesn't work in a lot of industries. Everyone thought MMO games would be HUGE after EQ. I mean EQ is a cash cow. But besides SWG which survives on the star wars name alone, no other MMO game has come close to EQ in the US. For every success I see a dozen failed attempts.
So how this author thinks I will pay $10 a month for an average game is beyond me. Doom3 and HL2 could squeeze a few months out of me but the second I stop so do my payments. And 99% of games out there AREN'T Doom3 or HL2 quality. The subscription based model would actually hurt most companies because they would rather take the $50 and run. Besides Doom3 and Half-Life2 I can't think of one game I would pay for longer than 1 month. Planetside is a great example of a FPS game trying to charge per month and failing horribly (with a decent product). And they had a reason for the subscription, server costs, while other games will not.
This author doesn't have anything to back up his opinion so its just as valid as mine (do I get the front page if I buy a domain name and post this?). The most obvious conclusion in the next 5 years of gaming is 90%+ games still being bought, rented, etc and maybe 10% have a subscription for things like Xbox2 Live and MMO type games. I rent almost every console game instead of buying it because I know I won't play it longer than a week. So if they try to force a $50 + $10 a month tag down my throat it would fail horribly and they know it.
Only one problem with this scenario: I'm not buying, and neither will a lot of other gamers.
Yeah, if I'm going to put money into something every month, I'll just start modifying my car.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
1) Keyword:
It was like the ID code that some games use today, but instead of ID that tied itself a single copy, this method relied on keywords in the game documentation that you had to enter at the start of every game. The thinking was that if you had documentation, you must actually own the game.
Some of them were like: "Enter the last word in the third paragraph on pg 14 of the manual". Others relied on a password/countersign. Some relied on decoder wheels. Of course, these were all easily defeated by a magical invention known as a photocopier. Some hackers who were probably very bored or cheap acutally wrote hacks against these protection schemes.
2) Copy protection build into the medium.
Back then we used 5 1/4" disks. To build copy protection into the disks, game makers broke standards on the disks. Game makers did things like add extra tracks onto a disk that only the game could access. Add code that changed the how the disk drives read and wrote. Some games actually required a part to be attached to a port on your computer.
These were harder to counteract, but there were utilities that could bypass most of these protections. Again hackers at work.
Much of the new protection is predicated on the fact that there is no medium to hack. There will be some software stored on your computer but the important parts are on the server. But that leaves the communication to hack.
Well, hackers are bright people, and these new protections only give hackers a challenge. There's nothing more that hackers like than a challenge.
Another potential problem with this type of protection is that it almost requires broadband due to the high bandwidth. Currently multiplayer games only communicate data about the user and the game environment. But if it has to send code as well as data, there's a lot more bandwidth to be needed. While broadband is gaining popularity, there will be dialup only users for a long time.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
A lot of these schemes (such as activation) described in the article are nothing more than good ole' fashioned copy-protection. I think in the early 80's, software makers saw copy-protection as the holy-grail, and would go to great lengths to make there wares hard to copy-- even for backup purposes. For a while, I think many folks thought it was against the law to copy a make a copy of your own VCR tape.
However, many of these copy-protection schemes. USB dongles, codes that had to be typed in with each boot-up (remember SimCity?), or extra discs that had to be kept in a 2nd drive. Most of these schemes failed because mostly what they did was make it difficult for the owners (or licensees, whatever) of the software to use it. So instead of selling 100,000 copies and having 20,000 pirated, they'd sell 80,000 and have zero pirated versions. Seems hardly worth the bother, eh? This is most recently evidenced by the TurboTax fiasco of 2003.
Right now, this push is most evident in the world of digital music sales, which are grossly restricted compared to regular CDs. I think at one point a major label will decide it's pointless to sell copy-protected (I hate the term DRM) tunes when the pirates will never pay for them anyway and can get them from other services.
Will video-game rentals and re-sales go the way of the Dodo bird? It will start to look that way for a while, then a really good game will come out with any restrictions and sales will be tremendous, despite (because of?) the casual piracy that is sure to ensue. Publishers will then remember this: organized piracy=bad, casual piracy=both good & bad, copy-protection does nothing to stop the first and may in fact encourage it, while doing a great deal to hinder the latter. They'll then ask "what's the point again?" and will use the business model that works the best for their particular game instead of trying to restrict everything to the nth degree.
I don't share such bleak predictions for the future, even though I know they are within the realm of possibility. Why? Because that isn't how I want to play games, and that's what matters to the market in the end.
Anyone remember Divx as something other than an avi format? Or does anyone remember when the future of television was supposed to be pay-per-view after its success in the 80s?
The opportunities aren't being afforded by new advances in technology, they've been there for a while.
If companies want to stake their future on consumers playing the DRM game along with them that's fine - it's their dollar to lose or win. Corporate efforts to institute it across-the-board are mind-boggling, but I always have the option to buy something else - and the march towards centralized control, whether it's a slow and concerted push or a quick overhaul, will always create a niche market as a result. If the niche products are absorbed or converted, the niche remains. Ah, capitalism!
So I'm not concerned with companies banding together to push DRM - because all they're doing is shooting their monopolies in the foot, and giving potential competitors a (healthy, unshot) foot in the door - I'm concerned with cartels pulling strings in DC to make standards law.
If the conglomerates are willing to throw away market share in the mad shift towards total information control, why should we stop them? I eagerly await the demise of Sony & Microsoft-qua-game companies.
The way he goes on about CD keys, you'd think that they were the root of all gaming evils.
I don't read the site normally, so I have no idea how old the guy is, but surely he can't be so young as to not remember some of the hoops we had to jump through back in the old, 8 bit, tape-based days?
Hands up who remembers spending an hour or more fiddling with their tape deck to get Jet Set Willy to load? And then have to type in a particular colour code once it had loaded? Or the LensLok system that Elite used, where you held a very breakable plastic lens up to the screen to make a code readable? Some games even came with little hardware dongles.
He seems to think that it all started with Q3, when in reality, the computer games industry has been doing that sort of thing for about 20 years. Ubiquitous, high-speed net connections may well take it to the next level, but I can't see it being anywhere near as bad as he paints it. If that were true, it should've already been intolerable for a decade or so.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
With the proliferation of the video game market and the recent (last year and a half) realization by people that video games make a lot of money...
Every argument that the marketplace is going to stink goes directly against every economic theory out there. Greater competition and demand is a great thing. I am tired of people saying that a LUXURY ITEM like video games is having some EA games conspiracy or something like that. This is pure drivel.
When I was a child I payed sometimes $35 for a game on the original NES system. Now, I pay $50 for Call of Duty. Which do you think was a better benefit? Which was the bigger bargain? Which is the best deal? I think that argument alone is enough to debunk what people have been saying about the video game industry going to hell in a handbasket... and that we should all put on our crash helmets and prepare to be screwed.
This whole argument is bunk. Go spin some of those tinfoil conspiracies elsewhere... and stop crying because you can't rip off games anymore. When someone rips off the GPL, everyone is up in arms, but a game that is cracked? TOTALLY COOL, RIGHT?
Get a grip, whiners. Go live in a mud hut for a month if you need to get away from the screwjob of the video games because you think you payed too much for a copy of MADDEN 2004 or whatever.
Aside from the fact that consumers want a physical, tangible medium and don't want their games to stop working 5 years from now because John Madden wants more money, this articles writer is missing a major point, one completely beyond the control of the gaming industry.
ISP's.
I don't mean people on dialup either (although they are still the vast majority of American internet users.) I mean bandwidth caps. So I'm Bob Comcast user, and oh look, its January 17, since I play Half-real Tournament 2016 a few hours a day, I've used up tons of bandwidth, since the server caches most of the games information.
End of the month rolls around, and I get a letter from Comcast saying to stop using so much bandwidth, so I cancel my game subscription. Half-Real Tournament 2016 developers don't get paid. Developers attack marketing guy who claimed subscriptions was a great idea. Marketing guy gets a clue.
You just need to look at this from a different angle. Think of it like paying for petrol for your car.
The difference is that modes of transport which require fuel, such as cars, offer obvious and undeniable advantages over the forms of transport which don't, such as the bicycle - speed, lack of effort, the ability to carry much more baggage...
What advantage does the subscription model offer over current software, which I pay for once (for about the price of two months' subscription, going by current proposals) and can then use however I like, including online play at no extra cost?
Car analogies are a bit silly, but how about this one - if someone tried to sell you a new type of car which had to have the oil replaced every day ("to protect you against problems caused by old oil, the car won't start till you replace it"), would you buy one of those?
Everyone here probably remembers Internet Appliances, right? You know, those loss-leader crippled computers that would provide basic web access via dialup and required a higher-than-average-cost (for Internet access) monthly fee. Yea, those did real well, didn't they?
The author of this article is making the same mistakes as the people that thought Internet appliances would take off. The author is looking at a small segment of the gaming market, out of context, and assuming it is the direction the entire gaming market is going to take.
Yes, for some games, a monthly fee is appropriate. As others have said, if the game has a continuing operating cost to the company that is producing it (new levels/quests/etc., server upkeep, paying people to moderate/admin the game, etc.) and ALSO offers the consumers value for their monthly fee, a subscription model is well justified.
Maybe some companies will try a subscription model for games that should instead be sold - there's no reason they can't try. If the past is any indication though, competition and people voting with their wallet will quickly send such ideas the way of Divx (the original Circuit City DVD competitor, not the MPEG4 codec) and the Netpliance I-Opener.
What I do think we'll see in the future is the same thing we're seeing now... If you want to pirate a game, fine - but the second you try to connect that game to the outside world, don't expect it to work. With a modded Xbox, for example, you can "backup" games to your heart's content - but you cannot play them on Xbox Live. This isn't an indication of game companies planning on something more devious in the future, they're just simply using the tools they have available now to cut down on piracy. Whether or not you're still able to make backups to play on your own system in the future will not be determined by gaming companies interest in subscription models, but by whether or not people buy into "Trusted Computing" aka Palladium.
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DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
No doubt this is a move to curb piracy, but as usual with these "clever" ways to fight it, there's always a way around it.
Those pirating console games are people who know how and where to get a mod chip installed and how/where to download/find the games. The people who copy console games aren't the average joe who will be fooled by this new system.
They are intelligent people who will look into the new ways of how to copy games. Look at GameCube.. Nintendo though it was fool proof, but if you know anything about the Phantasy Star Online exploit (although, a bit more advanced than modding/copying), then you'll know that the GC is just as exposed and vulerable as a modded PS2/XBox with game images constantly being uploaded to usenet.
I can't blame 'em for trying, I guess, but I really do wish they'd stop inconveniencing their customers to try and stop the inevitable.
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
Sorry, it just seems that the article makes the assertion that this "will" happen without mentioning "why" or "how." The market trends he describes would only apply to the PC market anyway, and no one rents PC games.
Furthermore, he makes assertions that are out-and-out wrong: Both EBGames and Gamestop sell used copies of Warcraft III, Half-Life, etc in their physical stores. The only place they don't sell these titles is online, mainly because the condition of used PC games varies so much: Console games are accepted in trade only if they have their packaging and documentation (usually). PC games are often accepted in just a jewel case. So while a store may have 12 used copies of Used PC Game of the Moment, 5 will just have the disc, 3 will have the documentation, 3 will just be in the box with no documentation, and 1 will be complete.
His whole argument is based around the idea that it will take just one bestselling game "like Half-Life 2" to be sold this way to make it the future. Well, Half-Life 2 isn't out yet, so it's not bestselling. Furthermore, if it's only available in a format where I don't own it when I buy it, I won't have it. At least, not legally.
Happiness is relative, Based upon the way we live.
You know what would really be awful?
If videogames became such a hassle and so expensive that people stopped buying them and started spending time with their families and engaging in physical activity.
The horror.
This pointless sarcasm was brought to you by the Committee that Offers to be Flamed Over and Over (COGFOO).
But seriously, I'm an older man, now, and when I think back on my fondest memories, they don't really include any of the time I spent playing videogames. I remember my joy at learning how to make my own photographs from scratch in a real, actual smelly darkroom, and I fondly remember going to outdoor music festivals and playing the guitar and singing around a campfire in the middle of the night, but for some reason I don't well recall how I felt about getting to the end of MYST, or Marathon, or StarCraft, or finally defeating Shang Tsung on the first SNES version of Mortal Kombat.
Videogames are lots of fun, but believe an old man when he tells you that you are not building a lifetime of happy memories by playing them, even when you're doing it with your friends. I don't want to bore anyone with my theories as to why, but they would include the repetition of it, and the lack of physical engagement. I propose that for every hour spent playing videogames, one spends two hours doing something else. Sleeping and working don't count.
You are in error. No-one is screaming. Thank you for your cooperation.
Some of you migh remember several years back when Ultima Online came out (which Roxored back then! I blew many hours on that game!) somne folks figured out how to create a open source server that you could connect to using the retail client. What was cool was folks could build out and set up their own world and let other folks connect to it. It was quite cool.
Karma means nothing to me, so suck it...
You just need to look at this from a different angle. Think of it like paying for petrol for your car.
Some things like hammers and screwdrivers, I like to purchase and keep them on the shelf, not rent them. Same thing with my car. I own it. It's paid for. However consumables that I might need I can purchase from any corner supplier, not just Texaco. Single vendor lock-in is a bad thing. A screwdriver that needs a subscription is a bad thing. Not all software needs to be online to be useful. Artificaily tying a subscription to screwdriver software is a bad thing.
Here is a great example of problems caused by a screwdrever needing to phone home. I put together a PC on my coffee table. I hadn't added a modem or lan card yet. To keep to drivers in check I don't stuff in all the hardware all at once. A keyboard and mouse are nice things to start with.
MS had just came out with the optical mouse. (quite a few years ago) I loaded it's driver. Not only did it insist of having a CD key for the driver, but it complained loudly about being unable to find my modem! This I don't need. I imediately gave away the mouse never to use a MS mouse again. Who knows what it would have reported silently to home if it found a lan net connection. There is no reason for a screwdriver (mouse driver) to phone home EVER!
My local LAN games shouldn't be any different. I buy them, I expect to play them with no hastles.
However if I stick in an AOL disk for use with an Online Service, I expect it to phone home and want an account for the online access. It's used to access someone else's provided content for a price.
A LAN game and Tax Preperation Software does not need this. Single vendor lock in is a bad thing. The software should be able to be purchased, not rented and I should be able to play a LAN game using a local server. There is no reason for a LAN game to phone home unless I choose to use the server provided by the manufacture to play someone in Guam. I should pay for service where service is supplied and I choose to use it. (subscription service) Lack of subscription should not break the local functioning of a program. EG a mouse driver or Word Processor that can't phone home shouldn't nag that I haven't registered or quit in 60 days.
Fighting piracy is one thing. Making the product less useful is also a bad business model. Competing is good. Trying to lock-in consumers is a bad business model. Consumers will find and buy the stuff that works with no hastles.
If MS didn't do product activation, do you think Open Office would havd gotten much serious attention?
The truth shall set you free!
First, computer gaming is on a trend AWAY from DRM. Long, long ago, diskette manufacturers screwed with the physical floppy to prevent copying. This caused more problems than the copy protection solved. Look-up solutions in game manuals ("Page 3, paragraph 2, word 4?") have also faded out as people became frustrated with keeping the manuals on hand. Recently, we're even seeing a move away from must-have-CD-in-drive copy protection.
Second, the computer game market is pretty elastic. If games become too expensive (as measured both in dollars and inconvenience), people will not buy them. They aren't like food (where you die of you don't have it), like MS Office (where you can't make money as effectively without it), or even like music (which we are culturally brainwashed to crave). If we don't have video games, we do something else.
Third, there are no central gaming companies secure enough in a monopoly to risk upsetting the market. If MS unilaterally started implementing fascist copy protection, people would turn to Nintendo or Sony. This is not a risk MS is willing to take.
In conclusion, I think it's baloney.
What's next? Some kid's blog that says the sky is falling?
I mean please, this is really sad. How about reporting real news for once and not this crap.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone