ESA Pushes Broadband Adoption

A story at CongressDaily points out that the Entertainment Software Alliance (ESA) is busily lobbying for policies to spur broadband adoption across the country. "Opportunities to play games online and download games and game-related content from a range of legitimate download services help drive demand for broadband, the Entertainment Software Association said in a briefing paper sent to President Obama's transition team. 'We're the only form of entertainment online that's interactive — movies and music are linear.' Gallagher told CongressDaily. 'We're very pleased with the president's strong embracing of broadband deployment as a high value goal for our country.' The $6 billion-plus in broadband funds in Obama's economic stimulus package was a good start, he added. Gallagher's group also supports efforts to free up wireless spectrum as gaming moves from PCs and plasma screens to handheld devices."

Comments

no.

[ustolemyname]

'We're the only form of entertainment online that's interactive â" movies and music are linear.'

Reading slashdot is a form of entertainment, that's online, and interactive. But it's not a game. Right? Right???

Re:no.

[polle404]

But it's not a game. Right? Right???

well, I always enjoy a good game of 'whack the AC'

If you want faster adoption of broadband,

[Jane Q. Public]

then lower the goddamned cost, to something more like it is in the other industrialized nations.

Re:If you want faster adoption of broadband,

[IrquiM]

so, $100 a month for 30/30 would be ok?

Yeah we all know why they want it.

[Xest]

So they can push for more Steam style activation based games to kill the second hand market and ensure everyone has to buy new whilst milking money episodic content and other DLC which is flawed as demonstrated perfectly by SiN episodes - i.e. studio goes bust and you're left with having paid for half a game or even by Valve with the HL2 episodes whereby it took them far longer between episodes than they originally told everyone it would when they all bought the first episode.

The article here from yesterday or Monday or whenever is relevant- that of games with no endings and cliffhangers leaving you stuck waiting for the next game. DLC is like that, but a million times worse.

I'd like to believe the ESA was pushing for broadband so we can have more immersive and better online games, but I'm not convinced we don't have the bandwidth for that already (i.e. WoW) but I think the reality truly is that they're just out to try and screw and milk the customer more and more.

The push towards horrificially bad DRM, activation, episodic content and so on has pushed me away from PC gaming to console gaming, where there is still DLC and episodic content but at least for the most part the games you buy are complete games. Even here things are annoying though- look at Mercenairies 2, you have to connect to EA's servers to play coop even though the coop game is P2P and yet EA's servers regularly go down so you can't actually play coop sometimes, if they go down in the middle of your coop session it fucks you too. Presumably when EA can't be arsed to run the servers anymore as they eventually do with games the "Coop 2" sign on the back of the box becomes false advertising? Then of course there's the question of games that have to be activated - what happens if you want to install it once the activation servers have gone and there's no patch because once a company has file for bankruptcy they have bigger things to worry about than making sure people can still play their old games?

It's a shame because I really liked Spore, Dawn of War II, Mercenairies 2, SiN episodes, HL2 episodes, they were all pretty good but my god the DRM/Episodic idea spoils them completely.

Seriously, whatever happened to buying a game and just being able to play it without having to give away your soul like back in the Quake 1 days and prior where CDs were DRM free and the worst thing you might come across is a CD key type thing? Oh wait, they still exist, only, to get those superior quality, hassle free versions you have to break the law and pirate them.

Greater availability of broadband for the ESA's goals is sadly a bad thing for the consumer, even if it's a good thing in general. The only upside of it all is that at least there is an increasing market for self-publishing indie developers who don't have to suffer publishers imposing draconian DRM on their games and can pick up the customers that ESA member companies have fucked off.

Re:Yeah we all know why they want it.

[MichaelSmith]

In the next exciting episode you don't actually run the game on your system. Instead you watch it like TV on a thin client.

(and pay by the minute BTW).

Re:Yeah we all know why they want it.

[Sparton]

It's a shame because I really liked [snip] HL2 episodes, they were all pretty good but my god the [snip] Episodic idea spoils them completely.

Really? Are you just looking for a reason to bitch, and are using every excuse you could feasibly find, no matter how loosely related?

Re:Yeah we all know why they want it.

[Xest]

Nope not at all, the fact I have to wait years between sections of the storyline means I can't even remember what the hell happened last time by the time the next one comes out.

It's bad enough with games that have cliffhanger endings for sequels but at least the story for that particular game sticks together and follows well. With HL2 episodes you're getting even the main story chopped in to pieces.

Do you really believe the HL2 episodes wouldn't have been better if they'd just built them all in 3 years as a complete game and released it all at once so you get the full story in one sitting?

Re:Yeah we all know why they want it.

[Sparton]

Do you really believe the HL2 episodes wouldn't have been better if they'd just built them all in 3 years as a complete game and released it all at once so you get the full story in one sitting?

Actually, I do have a few reasons as to why it could be better to spread them out.

Firstly, there are people who like the idea of having the chance to play a bit of new HL more often than once every three years (or more).

Secondly, it's probably more economically feasible for Valve to have a somewhat constant influx of revenue by spreading the game out then doing the same AAA release-all-at-once-and-pray tactic that many companies are looking to not do.

And thirdly, it's similar to what Starcraft is doing: the individal chunks, when put together, are likely to be bigger than what you would normally see in one AAA title.

Valve will be delighted

[romiz]

Online distribution, like Steam, is only feasible with large transfer pipes.

Clients do not want to wait to get their games, and when you have 10 GB of data to download (as it was the case for the Orange Box), it is only practical with a high-speed broadband connection.

Given all advantages of online distribution for game producers (prevents resale, lower distributor margin compared to physical sale, no need to manage inventory, etc.), it is easy to understand that they want a favorable environment for it.

Re:Valve will be delighted

[Jane Q. Public]

"Online distribution, like Steam, is only feasible with large transfer pipes."

You mean "tubes", don't you?

Re:Valve will be delighted

[A12m0v]

I thought they were trucks?

Re:Valve will be delighted

[Anonymous Coward]

it is only practical with a high-speed broadband connection.

How so?
Last I checked, Steam will happily precache things and decrypt when you purchase.
Even on a silly 56k connection (averaging 4.8KBps), 10 GB is less than a month.
On anything "low end" these days, we're talking less than two days (512Kbps downstream).

Me? I do 10GB in just over 17 minutes on a good day.
Bad days, I guess half an hour should do it.

Re:Valve will be delighted

[Anonymous Coward]

When i bought half-life 2, I had absolutely no idea what "Steam" was. (I had a pre-order and had it on launch day) I was on 56k at the time and it took a few days to download whatever it was using to activate. I'm on a blazing fast 256k "broadband" connection now and it still takes forever to do anything with steam, switching to TPB editions of all my games fixed that problem though.

Back to the issue though, I honestly don't care who pushes it, we NEED further broadband in the US, of the past 4 places I've lived, 2 have only had dialup or satelite (satelite is UNUSABLE, low speed, monthly cap under 1 gig, dialup actually faster most of the day anyways), my current place has sprint EVDO (512k is about as fast as it gets) and my one place had 1 megabit DSL. With the granted monopolies here someone with muscle needs to push, maybe we'll get lucky and they'll destroy each other in the process.

how?

[Quadraginta]

So, just out of curiousity, what government policies and rules are you nominating as those which keep the price artificially high?

Or are you just saying the taxpayers should subsidize your online habit?

Re:how?

[jgtg32a]

Government sanctioned monopolies

Re:how?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not aware of any way to get broadband without phone service in the UK (apart from cable modem). I suppose one of the LLU providers *could* unbundle the line and then provide a broadband-only service but I don't think any of the home broadband companies do. I can't see how it would save much money anyway, most of the costs are associated with the infrastructure, not the provision of the service.

Everything else you said sounds about right though, I get better service at much lower cost from my LLU broadband than I would from BT.

Cybersex

[iYk6]

And don't forget cybersex. That's online, entertaining and interactive (obligatory "what is sex? I am a Slashdot user blah blah blah"). Or hacking into remote computers for fun. Programming or blogging, when they are done for fun.

I suppose they could claim that any form of interactive entertainment is a game, which is true for some definitions of "game", but then their statement would just be redundant.

Broadband in space?

[the_arrow]

Oh, you don't mean the European Space Agency...

Re:Broadband in space?

[WardenSirpo]

I see what you did there

BroadBand For All

[TVS TELEVISIONS]

Whether playing games or working on a home based business having access to reliable and cost effective broadband is something I totally endorse. With the amount of pork barrel earmarks that have no practical purpose I'd even sign on to it labeled as an earmark for broadband even though I abhor pork barrel projects. It amazes me that so much money is thrown down the dumper of useless projects when the same money could be utilized in productive endeavors.

!(DLC = bad), see Guitar Hero

[jonaskoelker]

DLC is like [games with no ending], but a million times worse.

I disagree: it's not like that in all cases. See for instance Guitar Hero.

For those who don't know, (according to my understanding*) in GH you buy packs of three-or-so songs, each typically lasting between three and seven minutes. There's no continuity or connection between the track packs; they can all be played individually, in much they same way you can imagine making expansion holes (or mini-courses) for a golf game.

It's not episodic, the game itself is a complete game (I know, I have the wii version which doesn't have DLC, hence the * above). It works.

And there's so much replay value in GH3 that you don't need the DLC anyways: I've just completed TTFAF on expert, and I'm only half way on my Epic Guitar Quest (registered nerdmark).

Re:!(DLC = bad), see Guitar Hero

[Xest]

I know where you're coming from but even that I have an issue with.

Many of the tracks were available as part of other Guitar Hero games, many could have just as well been bundled with the game.

Sure if they included some of the newest songs out (which to be fair, they do sometimes) it'd be one thing but expecting you to buy again what you've already bought before or sometimes making you pay for 2 shit tracks to get the one good track you want and that sort of thing is a bit annoying. The tracks can also be quite expensive.

That said for the most part DLC for the likes of Guitar Hero still isn't too bad, it's more DLC that finishes off storylines or that should've been part of the original game, or map packs that are basically levels from an old version of the game put in the new version of the game to sell to you for more without even putting much effort in to update the textures or poly count for modern hardware sometimes.

So I mean yeah to be fair as a sweeping statement, not all DLC is crap, unfortunately, most of it is. It's effectively a way of getting you to pay more for what always used to be free or even part of the game in some cases.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Score chasing

[troll8901]

Posting comments in the most recent articles allow us to get +3 Insightful easily. For some, it has turned into a game.