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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.
Which is about as relevant as gameboy 1 games not working on the DS.
Try something like Steam where buying and installing a game is something like four clicks (one to select the game, one to click install, one to confirm the payment information and one to start the game). They have quite a few "classic" games as well, updated to run on the latest version of Windows with sound and graphics.
Quality, performance, value; you get only two, and you don't always get to pick.
If you want it to be easy, tools like DOSBox will do that. I routinely pull out the old dos games and they work like a champ, but I expect to at least take a little effort because of the age. I bet it would work for WC1 too. I put MS Virtual PC on my wife's PC and now she can run many of her XP games that don't like Vista or 7 either, so there's yet another solution.
I had a similar problem. My twenty year old SNES cartridge just wouldn't work on my Wii no matter what I tried.
For your problem I would suggest:
http://www.dosbox.com/news.php?show_news=1
I personally use:
http://dfendreloaded.sourceforge.net/
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.
It's clear someone is targeting C64love.
Nothing in his post deserved a -2 modding.
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
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
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.
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.
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.
How are consoles different?
Consoles differ from PCs in two main ways:
Unfortunately for indie developers, these two are tied: if your game is in a same-screen multiplayer genre, you must either make it for the apparently negligible home theater PC market or somehow get a dedicated office and "industry experience" (which I take to mean a prior commercial title in a PC genre).
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.