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PC Gaming Alliance's New President Talks DRM, System Requirements
arcticstoat writes "It's been nearly three years since the PC Gaming Alliance announced its formation at GDC 2008, promising to 'advance the PC as a worldwide gaming platform.' Since then, Activision-Blizzard has publicly left the alliance, Sony DADC – developer of the controversial SecuROM DRM software – has signed up and some people are wondering if the PCGA is really acting in the best interests of PC gamers. However, in December 2010 the alliance appointed a new president — Intel's Matt Ployhar — who's promising to make some changes. In this in-depth interview, Ployhar reveals that he wants to tempt Activision Blizzard back to the alliance, saying that 'Activision's Kotick and Blizzard's Morhaime may be more aligned with our future objectives than they may realize.' He also discusses Sony DADC's role in the alliance, and the group's stance on DRM, explaining that its research can 'really help to influence Sony DADC's and other members' awareness of key trends taking place in the PC gaming ecosystem. Given the trend of retail's diminishing presence, free-to-play, games moving towards authentication, game streaming and so on, it's really hard to divine where DRM solutions fit into this equation in the future.'"
Could this moron at the PC Gaming Alliance be even more vague? DRM and authentication for PC Games is a bad idea ... when they start talking about getting rid of it, then I'll listen.
No wonder Sony and Blizzard left them.
It may be friday, but evil never rests. Even on fridays evil videogame makers scheme to put DRM on my computer. By the way, my Nvidia gfx card just fried yesterday :(:(:(:(:(:(:(
I'd love to ask him if he'd be willing to mandate that all new Intel chips have hardware DRM instructions despite the fact that it'd cause more gamers to move towards AMD chips, simply to test how confident he really is in DRM. I'd be willing to bet money that the answer is no.
PC games are too hard to install.
Correction: Easy to install, but making them work with my graphics card or audio card..... that's the real challenge. It's nowhere near as easy as my Atari or Commodore or Amiga where I just slide the disk in the machine, and it works, because the hardware is standardized so the programmer targeted the video/audio processors directly.
Example: I bought Wing Commander 1 for the PC from amazon. It won't work on Seven. Won't work on XP. Won't work on 98. I even downloaded DOS 6 and it still won't work (sound but no picture). ----- So after a day of frustration, I went over to lemonamiga.com on Day #2 and quickly located the version for that machine. The graphics are only 704x240 instead of 480p VGA, but it least it works.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
and some people are wondering if the PCGA is really acting in the best interests of PC gamers.
What is there to wonder about? The bottom line is the bottom line, who gives a shit about the customer?
They probably have some plan for a universal DRM system that everyone is forced into using, possibly similar to Steam, but less consumer friendly.
While this would be annoying for most consumers, pirates are the only beneficiary of such a scheme, as they'll only have a single target to crack. Once they do we'll probably see a continual arms race between pirates and publishers, with gamers being locked out of software they've paid for in the crossfire. This has the potential to be a PR nightmare for the publishers and could even lead to legal problems in some jurisdictions.
sorry about that, dude.
time for some NetHack?
.. gathering for improvement of anti-piracy schemes? Sounds like the MAFIAA to me. "Advance the PC as a worldwide gaming platform"? It already is and always has been. They probably wanted to say "Advance the profitability of all the shitty games we develop, port and outsource on the PC, try to milk customers to death and try to find new ways to fuck pirates"
You are buying a game made in 1990 and trying to run it on software made in 2009, almost two decades of hardware and software changes, and you don't think there might be a problem? This would be like saying "I went and bought Battletoads but it won't work on my PS3, I can't even fit the cartridge in." That is the amount of changes you are talking, the SNES wasn't even out in North America when Wing Commander came out. You are trying to run NES era code on modern systems.
The answer, if you are actually looking for help and not just whining, is to emulate an older system. As another poster mentioned, DOSBox is what you need. DOS does not underlie modern Windows OSes and 64-bit Windows lacks the minimal NTVDM virtualization that 32-bit Windows had for it. However modern hardware is more than capable of emulating an old DOS system quite completely. DOSBox is software that does this very well. Thus if you want to run software a couple decades old, it is your answer.
So please, if you want to level criticism, keep it realistic. There are things about PC gaming to criticize. The lack of ability to run software made in 1990 natively on hardware made in 2010 is not one of them.
In fact, one can argue it is an advantage in that it can be done at all. As I noted with the Battletoads/PS3 comparison, in the console world you quickly lose the ability to run older software. If you are lucky, you get one generation of backwards compatibility. The modern consoles will run at least some of the last generation games, only for their own hardware and it isn't perfect in all cases, but you can play most Xbox games on the 360 and so on. However further back, sorry no go.
Well computers don't have that problem. You find that you can run nearly all 32-bit Windows software on current systems out of the box. For example Fallout, the original, still runs just fine on Windows 7 64-bit. Older than that won't run as is, but no problem, computers are flexible enough to emulate older (or current for that matter) versions of themselves. Break out DOSBox and you can play games written for the original 8086 and DOS 1.
It may take a bit of work (though services like GOG and Steam sell the games packaged with DOSBox and so on) but it can be done. You can, and I do, play games all the way back through the history of gaming on one computer, no special hardware needed. I can go from playing Bad Company 2 (released 2010, uses DirectX 11 and a quad core CPU) to playing Castles (released 1991, uses VGA and about a 386 max) in seconds, without a reboot or change or anything. I can span two decades (or more for that matter) of gaming in a heartbeat.
it's really hard to divine where DRM solutions fit into this equation in the future.
I'll help you on this one. Nowhere.
Ok, so I know they have retracted their objections to the world of starcraft mod but you have to ask if a company whose legal team is in attack mode really "gets" PC gaming. It's the mods, stupid!
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Starting now, the DRM will be baked into the silicon.
It's a simple concept to grasp. DRM makes your legally bought games harder to play, more prone to fail and can potentially cripple your whole system. Pirated games have none of this. The industry needs to reverse this trend, and by reversing it I don't mean increasing it with harsher DRM schemes that only punish legitimate customers.
Here's a one step path to success: Don't devalue your own games and drive people to console gaming. It is actually that simple. Allow me to tell you how this can be achived.
1. Create menus and controls that lend themselves to the way PC games can be played and are played.
It should be a no-brainer, but it is anything but that. With more and more games you don't even only "feel" like they're cheap knockoff console ports, they very obviously are. Menus that can't be sensibly navigated with a mouse because they're made for console controllers. Controls that are harebrained at best until you somehow jury-rig a game controller into your PC. That blows twice as hard if it's a game that asks for keyboard/mouse input like a FPS or RTS game.
2. Let me resell my game or at least make it cheaper than the console version.
I can resell console games. Which in turn allows me to shave about 30-50% off the price of a game because that's what a second hand sale will net me. If the PC game isn't at least 30-50% cheaper, why should I go for the PC version? Especially if the game handles as badly as the console version, because of 1).
3. Make sure it works!
Again, should be a no-brainer, but more and more games require me to jump through more and more hoops just to play. Why does it work for Steam, GOG and Impulse?
4. Don't devalue your games with pointless DRM.
Note the pointless. DRM, as much as anyone hates it, is probably a requirement to make sure at least the "playground copying" stops being a problem. Ok. We got used to having CDs in our drives, and the consoles are even on this field. The new "be online or don't play" crap certainly puts a dent into this and again favors the console as the gaming platform of choice, because it does not feature this problem. And it is nothing but a source of problems for the customer, he doesn't really have any benefit from it.
In short, if you want to promote PC gaming, don't cripple games 'til your customer rightfully thinks he's better off with a game console.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
DosBox sucks for games. I have "688 Attack Sub" that I would LOVE to play again and I've never got it to work. None of the online tricks worked, either.
*grumbling* No no one makes those sort of games anymore. It's all first person shooter or virtual world stuff.....
That's a good list, but it sounds to me like their focus is more on screwing the customer than reviving PC games.
Poorly implemented DRM, "patch after purchase", and "must be online to play alone" were the biggest hits to PC gaming. The only conversation they should be having is how to level the playing field for developers and customers alike when it comes to the PC's higher equipment costs and inconvenience compared to plug and play consoles. Not kicking off the year arguing for less connectivity and more root kit nonsense.
I'm a serious gamer, and have been for the past 25 years. I've played everything from text based adventures, MUDs with pseudo-ascii maps, and today's fast paced shooters. I've killed, conquered and explored from the bottom of the earth's crust to different galaxies past and future.
Yet somehow I've never heard of this PC Gaming Alliance which claims to be acting in my interest. They've never spoken to me or asked my opinion. Yet they say they represent me, the gamer.
Well you can keep your political organizations, for all they're worth. I have games to play.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I hope you have an old Cirrus Logic or Winbond tucked away in a drawer somewhere, after all, an hour without a computer might as well be a year!
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your customer base, whom sooner or later will be bitten by the DRM bug and (quite rightfully so) will say "Screw you guys!" and start playing non-DRM games
Every console game is DRM, whether disc or download. Some genres are underrepresented on PC due to the historic association of PCs with desks. So how will fans of those genres "say 'Screw you guys!' and start playing non-DRM games"?
I have actually stopped PC gaming completely.
Then what do you do when you want to play a game from a developer that the console makers have rejected?
steam DRM is not that bad and has up sides
like no need for CD's.
lets you have the game on more then 1 system
no install limits
Also
US broadband sucks for any thing that is on live like and caps make it suck even more.
exactly! biggest problem with pc gaming currently is that the games are built by the limitations of the console releases, so even things like levels are done so that they're possible to use in the console environment, even if on the pc you could now use a gigabyte more.
at it's infancy pc gaming kicked consoles to the curb because of the depth of gaming possible by hard discs and more memory.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Sony is still a believer in the Holy Grail of content providers: A DRM that consumers will embrace. Perhaps it's because they own so much content. It's also probably why they backed Mariah Carey's entry into film, "Glitter" with a three-film contract they had to back out of with $50m cash. They let their motivations guide their judgments, and they don't understand western culture.
Intel though, they should know better on several levels. Intel has enough smart people around to know that an acceptable DRM won't work for several reasons, of which here are a few:
Intel can't win here. They should not play this game. It makes them look bad. I have an idea why they try, and it doesn't reflect well on them as individuals, as a company, nor as a brand. In almost everything else they do I have a great deal of respect for Intel, but this stupid game gives me doubts.
Get with it folks: the goal isn't to prevent people who won't pay from getting the content. You can't do that no matter how hard you try. The goal is to get all the money you can from the people who will pay. That is a goal you can achieve by being an easy place to buy the content.
Content owners should get used to the idea that most people want to pay for what they get. They are decent people. They have pride. Sell them what they want. You're not going to sell stuff to the
Help stamp out iliturcy.
A Tseng Labs ET4000 would be much faster.
I'm not sure I would define DRM as divine, to be honest.
'For we walk by faith, not by sight.' II Corinthians 5:7
1. Create menus and controls that lend themselves to the way PC games can be played and are played.
So true, it's almost criminal the way they have blown this one. I bought Fallout New Vegas, and instantly installed a mod so more options could be on the screen at once. The default scheme was obviously made for 640x480. After a while it was clear the menus were meant to be navigated with a controller. Simple things like navigating the inventory wouldn't work correctly with arrow keys.
What saved me was that my Xbox broke and so I had 2 controllers I wanted to make use of for games like Assassin's creed and Batman which are just better with a controller. I got the usb adapter and picked up Fallout again. Like night and day. The only thing is that there is no button for quicksave, and while the Xbox controller is on, the keyboard has no effect on the game. I swear on Lucifer I will pirate the fuck out of Oblivion for charging me full price on this.
It won't ever work on a technical level because of the analog hole.
The article is about video games. Video games cannot be copied through analog reconversion. What you get by camcording the screen is a playthrough, not a game.
They can try and work around this by making it so Cindy has no control over her equipment, but then it fails the "acceptable" test. Cindy then can't play the home movies she took herself
Video game consoles already fail the "acceptable" test by not allowing homebrew, yet home users by and large don't care.
There is now, and always will be, equipment available to play open content
Some video game genres, especially fighting games and the "party" games popular on Wii and other shared-screen multiplayer games, don't sell well on PCs due to the smaller size of a median desktop monitor.
Need to get out of Mom's basement more?
Why do you care about this stuff at all?
Seriously. Don't you have a mortgage to pay and kids to take outside or to soccer or baseball?
Of course having to download a new copy of the game for every PC you want to run it on would also alienate most of the PC gamers in the world.
PC gamers already accept having to buy a separate copy of the game for the PCs used by players 2 and 4. The last major PC game I can remember with "spawn installation" was the original Starcraft.
Create menus and controls that lend themselves to the way PC games can be played and are played.
I agree, but don't cut out console-style mode entirely on the PC version. Some people have home theater PCs and prefer gamepads.
until you somehow jury-rig a game controller into your PC.
Plugging a USB game controller into a PC is hardly "jury rigging". USB game controllers have been around since 1999, and Xbox 360 wired controllers work fine with PCs. The only "jury rigging" I can think of is on PCs with few or no front USB ports, where you have to plug a 4-port hub into the PC, but consoles have been using hubs since the NES Four Score.
steam DRM [...] lets you have the game on more then 1 system
In single player or multiplayer mode? If I have friends over at my place, and we want to play a video game together, do Steam games support "spawn installation" over a LAN?
US broadband sucks for any thing that is on live like and caps make it suck even more.
Which is a point against Steam because redownloading a game costs against your cap, which can be as low as 7500 MB per month in some parts of the United States.
No one's buying that you and C64love are not the same person
Next you'll be telling me that they're both Twitter sockpuppets.
Much faster?? To install, or to play games? My suggestion was an old aphorism from IT-Admin lore - when your NT4-Pentium II-NVidia TNT2-powered "server" kicks the bucket, and you still have to get some work done, you install whatever is in the top drawer and get down to brass tacks. It was a joke. I can't believe somebody actually offered a better-in-the-same-class "mine is faster" reply to my inane comment. YHBT, and I wasn't even trying. :P
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The fact that Wii graphics are EDTV, not HDTV, matters little. You don't need large pixel counts for same-screen multiplayer, but you do need a physically large monitor, DPI be damned. Existing desktop PCs tend not to have one of those, and many aren't even in the same room as a large monitor.
Consoles run at 1920x1080p
A lot of Xbox 360 games, such as Gears of War, Halo 3, Final Fantasy XIII, and both Call of Duty: Modern Warfare games, render in a resolution closer to 576p or 600p and upscale. A 576p render is not HDTV; it's the same size as PAL EDTV.
You want to make sure your product never gets used without permission. Its simple:
The best DRM is to make an arcade at your head quarters where your games are. However, the arcade system is only the front end for the server that has all the logic. Invite others to use your game while under the careful eye of your security. To be extra sure, do a full search of all users before they interact with the game, along with an extensive background check of the security guards (and the rest of your staff). This way you can not only make the game virtually unpiratable, but also make cheating near impossible.
Remove the "At your location", and just have the game servers send raw video feeds? What the gamer gains in convince in using your game, along with the reduced hardware you need, you lose in the ability to prevent bots from playing your game instead of people. Graphics are difficult but possible to steal, and music is somewhat easy. However, it would still require a lot of work to pirate.
Keep the server side AI, but let the client manage the game resources? The client can now steal the graphic and music resources easily. You also open yourself to bots that can cheat much more eailsy, and other client side hacks that may try and subvert the communication between the client and the server that would allow the client to cheat. Speed hacks are common at this point. Or even simple bugs in the communication can allow cheating (e.g. Runescape had a bug at one point that allows a modified client to initiate a trade of 0 of a non-stackable item to another player that turned into 1 of that item when the trade was complete).
Let the client have all the data, but only as it needs it, and you open up the possibility that the entire game can be pirated, although it may take a while for hackers to retrieve all the data from the servers, and recreate a fake server that provides it. However, at this point the client no longer suffers latency issues, and your servers don't need to work nearly as hard to provide the game.
While your at it, you can ship the entire game, but have serial number authentication. At this point, the game is trivial to pirate, but pirated copies may have some difficulty in updating the game client. Your servers need only to perform very simple work.
Next, you can just have a serial number without server side authenication. The user now can use your game without ever needing an internet connection, but can easily look up any serial number to give the game after pirating it.
Finally, DRM free, just ship the game without any protection, Easy to pirate, but still difficult to make major modifications.
Take it a step further and provide the source code with your game. Now the users can easily make mods for the game, extending life, for better or for worse. Only the terms of service can protect your game, and that only takes effect if you involve the legal system.
Were you old enough to play 4-player Goldeneye? It was awful.
We thought it was awesome at the time. Besides, not all video games are first-person shooters. For example, I don't see a benefit in providing a separate screen for each player in a fighting game.
Also, I'm an adult. Adults don't have the time or in the situation usually to invite friends over for video game sessions all the time.
Some adults babysit kids. I for one babysit my aunt's kids every other weekend while their parents go out and do things.
It also requires the purchase of a gaming PC to put next to the TV [...] unless you plan to surf the web on your TV all the time.
Or you could just move your existing PC and connect it to a HDTV.
But once you have "move[d] your existing PC and connect[ed] it to a HDTV", you'll have "to surf the web on your TV all the time." What am I missing?
you can buy a new "gaming" PC for about $700
A lot of people would rather buy a PLAYSTATION 3 console for half that.
$60 x 8 = 8 years XBox live to play multiplayer
Kids and their babysitters don't need Live for multiplayer. Or one could buy a PS3 instead.
Lest we forget that PC gives you free multiplayer forever.
Very few PC games allow spawn installations in the style of the original StarCraft, and $40 each for two copies is more expensive than $60 for one copy.
show up at the store only to find out they're sold out or don't have it
Call ahead and they'll hold a copy for an hour.
Gah, Fallout New Vegas... Got that recently because I love Fallout 3 and all the previous games, and I love other Bethesda games. Fallout 3 did not have DRM, it did not even have a DVD check except for initial install. You can install it, then run the securom removal tool. Brilliant. So I get Fallout New Vegas from Amazon with a xmas gift card. I'm not looking at the box carefully. So it shows up and it's gut STEAM on it! BASTARDS!
Half an hour to update steam (hadn't run it in over a year), install the game, then downloading an update! Another hour wasted! Then it doesn't work and I get steam to validate the files and it says one is bad but does not try to fix it; says it will download it but doesn't. So I uninstall and start over. 3 hours later I can start. Bethesda I was looking forward to your next Elder Scrolls game but it's off the table permanently now.
Or the case of Monkey Island 2 Special Edition remake with updated graphics. The original game has a "look it up in the manual" protection. Very handy, not intrusive, and rather humorous. The version in a LucasArts collection I have even bypasses it for you. The new version now? Digital download *only*; for PC it's either Steam or Direct2Drive, both with hardcore mandatory online activation, no archival or reselling. That's like making a choice between diarrhea or gingivitis. The low rez version without voices is probably better anyway.
Here's the key thing: Game publishers are not doing this to stop piracy, and some have even said so. They are doing this to stop game reselling and trading. That is, they do NOT want you do give away a game that you purchased. Not just to GameStop, they don't want you to give it to another family member or friend either. They're making it difficult to even put it in a box and play it again 3 PCs later. They want the world to treat games like movie rentals. And the kiddies say "fine with me, what sort of loser wants to play a year old game anyway lol".
Screw em. I don't need their games, or their movies. They're all graphics and special effects now anyway, no plot or game play anymore, or badly ported console games or bad remakes of good movies.
Fighting games don't split up the screen into 2 or 4 tiny boxes
Yet most of them still don't get ported to PC.
the first edition of SF4 (PCs aren't getting the Super edition due to low sales), and what else?
Fighting games actually are playable on the same screen for the PC. See SF IV.
Capcom released only the first edition (SF IV, not Super SF IV) for PC. It isn't releasing Super SF IV for PC because of low sales and because it believes that infringing copies of SF IV for PC unfairly competed with copies of SF IV for consoles.
Yes, Goldeneye 4 player split screen was awesome--in 1997. 14 years ago. In the past 5 years, not so much.
First-person shooters should stay on the PC. Other genres, not so much.
Please read what you just wrote again.
I wrote "Some adults babysit kids. I for one babysit my aunt's kids every other weekend while their parents go out and do things." As I understand what I wrote, I was describing a situation in which children are playing a video game and an adult has a good reason to play a video game in a modality that isn't hostile to children. What am I missing?
you'll have "to surf the web on your TV all the time." What am I missing?
What's wrong with that?
Perhaps I should recommend to other people that homework and Facebook should be done on a television and cite your comment. I don't think it will go over well because I'm under the impression that the public believes that the living room TV is for football, not Facebook.
Or see *what I just wrote* about if you don't want to move your existing PC.
Not everybody has $700 to throw around, especially when a Wii and a PS3 put together cost less than that.
Since when does babysitters represent the entire gaming population?
I agree with you that they do not. However, I disagree with the assertion that the industry should ignore the E and E10+ rated market entirely. Would you have wanted to be ignored when you were a kid?
if someone is playing modern consoles, they're most likely playing multiplayer at some point. Which requires XBL and hence $60/year.
You said "modern consoles" plural. Like online multiplayer on a PC or PS3, online multiplayer on a Wii doesn't require a subscription to Xbox Live. When two out of three current consoles have free online multiplayer, this is a deficiency of the Xbox 360, not of consoles in general.
Very few PC games allow spawn installations in the style of the original StarCraft, and $40 each for two copies is more expensive than $60 for one copy.
What does this have to do with PC gaming having free multiplayer forever?
Xbox 360 multiplayer that is not online is free forever. A PC game costs $40 per person for single-player or LAN gaming. An Xbox 360 game costs $60 per person for single-player or System Link (that is, LAN) gaming, or $60 per household. But because of the dearth of non-split single-screen multiplayer games on the PC platform, the per-household option often isn't available.
I wonder when they'll notice that they could make more money by making the games so that the same source also compiles for handheld consoles and we'll only get the cheap crappy games that fit into handhelds' memory and flash discs on PCs and consoles...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Good God, you really are an Aspie, aren't you?
Nope, but was. Good observation. And then around Red Hat 7 or so I finally managed to get a distribution with ALL FOUR of networking (bloody Linux hardware drivers!!!), Apache, PHP and MySQL working, and quickly applied the skills I'd been learning offline, with WAMP and distros with no networking drivers, online.
And now I am glad I can cut M$ out of the server room, and run servers for months without a restart. I was determined to do so on the client side, too, but video codecs and hardware hassles delayed me until after 7 came out, and M$ redeemed themselves on the client side.
Aero is beautiful, and that's that. Compiz is ugly by comparison, what with it's bouncing Mac-style "wait" cursor, and Microsoft's strong hardware racket business at least ensures my continued gaming fix. So, in summary, WAS an ASPie, prefer PHP. Can use both. :-)
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Here's the key thing: Game publishers are not doing this to stop piracy, and some have even said so. They are doing this to stop game reselling and trading.
Ah, the argument that the games industry is out to control us. Not that I am so naive as to believe that these *evil* corporations won't go that low, but what bugs me is, why don't they do the same with console titles? Why is it only PC games that they are trying to control this way? They make way more money out of the console market, yet it is the relatively puny PC market that they are trying to squeeze?
My guess is that it's safe to assume that all PCs are on the internet, even if it's only dial-up. But most consoles are not. Sure some people are online with consoles, but most are in the living room attached to the television I think.
My guess is that it's safe to assume that all PCs are on the internet, even if it's only dial-up. But most consoles are not. Sure some people are online with consoles, but most are in the living room attached to the television I think.
In the US at least, about 70% of consoles are connected to the internet, which makes the internet-connected console games market still much bigger than the PC market. http://www.ps3blog.net/2010/04/13/ps3-has-biggest-percentage-of-internet-connected-consoles-in-the-us/
One thing the consoles have that the PC's don't is a policeman (the console producers), who has to license a game before it can be released. Perhaps what is lacking in the PC space is such a policeman (although you can argue that this would have other undesirable consequences too, not least of which would be higher games prices).