Is the Gaming Industry Moving Online Too Fast?

RyanDJ writes with his reaction to the Sony PSN outage, wondering if our rush to online services and digital distribution for games is a bit too enthusiastic. "I love technology, I just want it to slow down. I know I sound like an angry old 'get off my lawn' kind of guy right now, but until my 8-bit Nintendo dies from plastic corrosion and age, it will continue to play any game I find just as it was supposed to. Online dedicated games, one day, will lose servers. System crashes, such as the Sony problem, will cause interruptions. I feel if we don't slow down, stabilize the current technology and ensure its safety, find ways to guarantee that items bought are permanently owned even without a physical copy, we might see a company such as Nintendo saying that online isn't worth it!"

Comments

8-bit Nintendo is probably not the best example

[rolfwind]

I blew that thing so much trying to get it to work (often failing), I feel like a cheap whore now just thinking about it.

That was the only game system that failed on me.

Re:8-bit Nintendo is probably not the best example

[SpiralSpirit]

...all you had to do to get it working again was to take a cotton swab with high purity rubbing alcohol and clean the contacts of the games and the system. Mine still works.

Re:8-bit Nintendo is probably not the best example

[Anonymous Coward]

All you had to do was take care of your carts and not get crap inside of them. If it ever started doing the blinking thing, pop the cart up, pull it until the very edge of the cart is the furthest out it can be while still being able to be pressed down, then press it down. Worked every time.

Re:8-bit Nintendo is probably not the best example

[Anonymous Coward]

Blowing onto the contacts may appear to be a quick fix, but the moisture in your breath promotes corrosion, which only makes the situation worse. It's not helped by the horrendous, over-complicated cartridge mechanism used in the original 'toaster' NESes - many of them seem to hardly work at all... and the only defect is the (easy to replace) contacts in the system's cartridge slot.

Re:8-bit Nintendo is probably not the best example

[basotl]

76 pin connector. It was two bucks for me and made my console work like brand new. Extremely easy repair also.

Re:8-bit Nintendo is probably not the best example

[Anonymous Coward]

Whatever alcohol he used trying to fix his sounds like more fun...

Re:8-bit Nintendo is probably not the best example

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

All you had to do was take care of your carts and not get crap inside of them.

The 'crap that gets inside of them' accumulates from the oh-so-terrible act of putting the cartridges into the machine. What happened was copper rubbing on copper created a nasty black gunk that'd accumulate enough to interrupt the contacts. The cartridges and the system just needed to be cleaned. The NES's cartridge loading mechanism was far more susceptible to this than the other consoles... which is funny because the design they used was specifically intended to make it look more like a VCR than an Atari 2600.

Re:8-bit Nintendo is probably not the best example

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe so, but even more crap got inside the carts when people blew on them or didn't replace them back into the plastic sleeve. I don't remember ever needing to clean any of my NES carts for all of the years that I had them.

Re:8-bit Nintendo is probably not the best example

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

You may have been fortunate, but the plastic sleeve didn't prevent the copper corrosion that blocked the contacts. I used to sell used games for a living, we had no problems selling aging NES consoles simply because we educated customers about cleaning the carts.

Re:8-bit Nintendo is probably not the best example

[VortexCortex]

I blew that thing so much trying to get it to work (often failing), I feel like a cheap whore now just thinking about it.

That was the only game system that failed on me.

I've NEVER had to blow into any NES games that I play via my purely digital NES (emulator) -- And yes, I dump my own ROMs (did have to clean some of their contacts -- but never again!)

Re:8-bit Nintendo is probably not the best example

[adolf]

Indeed. Keeping the connectors clean is paramount. These days, I'm a huge fan of DeoxIT DN5 for recovering electrical contacts that have seen all types of abuse, including video games, but alcohol by itself works reasonably well for stuff that is merely filthy.

Back in the day Nintendo would send out cleaning kits if you called to complain about the system not working properly (or at least they did for us). The kit consisted of some swabs for the games, a widget that could be used to easily clean the slot, and a small bottle of particularly smelly alcohol. It worked OK, though the amount of black crud the system seemed to generate by itself was amazing.

Meanwhile, new cartridge connectors are still available for the NES for cheap, and replacing them is just a matter of some basic disassembly/reassembly work (no soldering required).

Re:8-bit Nintendo is probably not the best example

[Dogtanian]

The NES's cartridge loading mechanism was far more susceptible to this than the other consoles... which is funny because the design they used was specifically intended to make it look more like a VCR [my emphasis] than an Atari 2600.

That's not odd at all, quite the opposite. Given that- as you yourself say- the primary motivation for their design choice was cosmetic, it's hardly surprising that their gimmicky VCR-style mechanism was less reliable than the tried-and-tested traditional slot they intentionally rejected for appearance's sake.

(Yes, AFAIK there were legitimate commercial reasons that they wanted to distance themselves from the 2600. However, this doesn't change the fact that they made their design choice for cosmetic reasons, not those of reliability).

Re:8-bit Nintendo is probably not the best example

[Dogtanian]

I blew that thing so much trying to get it to work (often failing), I feel like a cheap whore now just thinking about it.

I wouldn't worry about it- it's not like you accepted money for it, so technically you're a slut, not a whore. :-)

Re:8-bit Nintendo is probably not the best example

[drinkypoo]

You can't clean the inside of a cardedge connector with a cotton swab. If anything that will introduce nonconductive cotton fibers into the connector.

The cheapest thing I know of which works is the edge of a PCB cut to size, but cleaning carts are bountiful.

Re:8-bit Nintendo is probably not the best example

[thetoadwarrior]

They gave you cases to keep the games in for a reason.

Re:8-bit Nintendo is probably not the best example

[thetoadwarrior]

True which is why you could rub down the contacts every so often. Blowing on the cart can only make it worse when you get spit all over the thing.

Re:8-bit Nintendo is probably not the best example

[tepples]

And yes, I dump my own ROMs (did have to clean some of their contacts -- but never again!)

What device do you recommend using to do this? There's CopyNES, but that's only for people who can solder.

Re:8-bit Nintendo is probably not the best example

[tepples]

Over roughly the second half of the Super NES's life, Nintendo stopped including the cases with the games.

Re:8-bit Nintendo is probably not the best example

[PwnzerDragoon]

People will tell you to clean it with rubbing alcohol, but that never worked for me. What happens is that the pins on the connector get bent back after a while. There's no need for a new connector either, your old one works great after you repair it. To fix it, all you have to do is remove the connector, use a flathead screwdriver to bend them back, and put it back on. I did that years ago, and my NES continues to work perfectly - I don't even have to press the cartridge down anymore.

Re:8-bit Nintendo is probably not the best example

[Omega Xi]

I think the Retrode is just what you're looking for =)

Re:8-bit Nintendo is probably not the best example

[Omega Xi]

I'm sorry, the Retrode doesn't have an adapter for NES carts. Feel kind of dumb for pointing it out now ^^;

Re:8-bit Nintendo is probably not the best example

[jasoncrowley]

Blowing on the cart often caused more harm than good. All you needed was a decent kneaded eraser to clean the contacts. Even then, more oft than not there was nothing wrong with the contacts of the cart, it was the contacts in the console itself that were not making a good connection. The fact that this myth is as pervasive today as it was 20 years ago is the interesting part.

Re:8-bit Nintendo is probably not the best example

[uninformedLuddite]

I blew that thing so much trying to get it to work (often failing)

Upgrade to a PC. You can get USB attachments that actually blow you.

Re:8-bit Nintendo is probably not the best example

[Anonymous Coward]

Game Genie, was basically the same thing, just don't enter codes if you didn't want to cheat, it did wonders getting stuff to work.

Re:8-bit Nintendo is probably not the best example

[thyrial]

I blew that thing so much trying to get it to work (often failing), I feel like a cheap whore now just thinking about it.

That was the only game system that failed on me.

To be honest the Atari VCS is a better example ;) Those things can take a nuclear strike and still let you play "Combat" Most N.E.S's involve multiple tries, precision cart entry,much blowing and to be honest PRAYER to actually load the cartridge without that lovely flashing Grey screen. (yeah, yeah.. 76 pin adaptor from ebay and a bit of surgery will buy you a few years.)

Uninformed Rant, or Sony Apologist?

[Adambomb]

Honestly, this is ridiculous. I don't know if the submitter is some sort of apologist or just really lacking in the history of online gaming but online gaming and online game distribution has been around for about 25 years now give or take, and thats just one example. This would be about EXACTLY as old as the revered plastic grey box in question, give or take a couple if you were living in japan or not.

Different networks and system have been more secure than others this whole time, and the real question is "Why would some companies risk security in the name lower maintenance costs given the number of terrible consequences these days". The PSN outage and data leak raises questions about Sony and their decision making processes, not about the state of digital distribution and online gaming in general.

Re:Uninformed Rant, or Sony Apologist?

[SpiralSpirit]

It's more than that, though. I didn't move to buying stuff online until I felt there was a company/service that would be secure and have a relatively promising future (so that they didn't go under next year). The service I did choose, Steam, also mentions that should they close for whatever reason, they will release a way to play steam games without needing the steam service. This is unlike EA's system, where you need to be online to play at all - causing problems with the games who use those DRM schemes. I have games on steam I bought almost 10 years ago that I can still download and play, and often still do play. That's the benefit of it. I've also backed up a complete installation with all the games I currently own to a spare hdd, in case something untoward happens. If I want to play in offline mode, I can. Not so with the latest crop of 'always online' drm. that's sort of what this guy is saying. That being said, haven't pirate groups already cracked many of these types of games? I imagine in the future, when the servers are long gone, cracked exe files will be the only way to play the games.

Re:Uninformed Rant, or Sony Apologist?

[Anonymous Coward]

Honestly, this is ridiculous. I don't know if the submitter is some sort of apologist or just really lacking in the history of online gaming but online gaming and online game distribution has been around for about 25 years now give or take, and thats just one example.

The submitter's point flew over your head. He is simply complaining about the proportion of games released today that will be partially or fully unplayable in the future when the online services are discontinued. An example of a game that will be fully playable forever is Super Mario Bros. An example of a game that will not be fully playable forever is Pokemon xxx, where certain portions of the game are unavailable unless unlocked by some online event that the game must download. Even better examples of games that will not be fully playable (or not playable at all) are an overwhelming proportion of PS3 games which are released without a single player mode (or with a half-baked single player mode) bulk of the gameplay relies on a centralized online server.

An example of an online game implemented correctly is something like Quake x, where I can actually host a server daemon and play the game in the future as it was intended.

Re:Uninformed Rant, or Sony Apologist?

[hellwig]

And yet, it took only 4 years for Microsoft to shut-down their MSN Music service. This should be the point of the article (in my opinion). However, the OP loses ground when he talks about companies like Nintendo deciding Online isn't worth it. I think consumers will decide Online isn't worth it, especially if Sony can just shut down the actual game servers when the next iteration of their console comes out. And no, it's not paranoia, remember, Microsoft shutdown all Multiplayer servers for the original X-Box.

Sure, I have a lot invested in my Steam games, and I hope if Valve ever shuts down their servers I can at least backup my games and play in "offline mode", but we'll have to wait and see. However, as opposed to a console, my PC is still useful even if Steam does go down. If future consoles play online-only, when those servers DO go down, the consoles will be worthless, regardless of how hard you blow into them. Will the manufacturers price the consoles and games accordingly? Doubtful, not as long as there's profit to be made.

Re:Uninformed Rant, or Sony Apologist?

[Anonymous Coward]

Forever ... or so long as the physical media (and the machines that can read it) last.

Re:Uninformed Rant, or Sony Apologist?

[sqrt(2)]

I'd be careful with Steam. They make mistakes just like every company. I had my very first Steam account disabled (I wasn't cheating or hacking or doing anything wrong) and they flat out refused to even tell me why. I had used pre-paid debit cards to buy my games, and they demanded I give them my CC info I used to purchase them to prove it was really me trying to get my account reactivated. Since I didn't have the cards anymore and they were one time use I wasn't able to provide it to them. They wouldn't budge, and they repeated that since I couldn't prove I was the account holder they would not help me or even tell me why the account was suspended. I think it may have been related to using too many computers at once. I had three computers at the time that I wanted my games installed to, so I suspect this triggered some sort of fraud defense mechanism when they saw too many computers trying to use the same account.

The result was I lost 250+ dollars in games, and now I refuse to give Valve any more of my money, and I feel justified in torrenting all their games for free until I get back what they owe me.

Re:Uninformed Rant, or Sony Apologist?

[dolmen.fr]

Forever ... or so long as the physical media (and the machines that can read it) last.

With offline games you can:
- extract the physical media (may be hard, but do it while it still works)
- emulate the hardware
- play!
It's hard work but the emulator scene shows that it is doable to make games work like original and it's worth it.

With online games you have additionally to replace the centralized server infrastructure. And without access to the original code, it is impossible to make it work like the original.

Re:Uninformed Rant, or Sony Apologist?

[blahplusplus]

Agreed.

Just look at need for speed world. Not a bad game at all but and it's free to play but the whole point is when EA wants it gone it's their right to just shut it down. That on the whole is bad for gaming. Older PS2 games which had multiplayer shut down their multiplayer services, when you buy a game it should in theory never break and never become unavailable to you. This is the thing I hate about MMO's the most. MMO's mean revenue for game companies but it means no one gets to own the game and that sucks, especially if games keep putting online components in them which companies can simply disable or stop supporting.

Re:Uninformed Rant, or Sony Apologist?

[jd]

MUD-1 (which is still going strong on British Legends) is one of the oldest online games - if not THE oldest online game. (I'm ignoring games that were capable of multiplayer use, such as the BBC's Double Phantom, but which weren't online in any real sense.)

Having said that, I still play Oolite (the updated version of the 8-bit Elite - still the best space sim ever written) far more often than any online game because online games just aren't there yet.

Re:Uninformed Rant, or Sony Apologist?

[hairyfeet]

The funny part? You can get "Steam rips" all day long on P2P so frankly Steam and GOG (who doesn't have any activation at all) are the only two I really trust. BTW anybody wanting a cheap game The Witcher Director's Cut is gonna be on GOG on Tuesday for $5, so snatch it.

But this is one of those things where "If I can't pirate it I don't want it" because as long as I can get a pirate copy I don't have to worry about something happening that would bone me or allow me not to play. For a good example I bought Bioshock II on Amazon for like $10, but I play the hacked version. Why? Because the not hacked version requires GFWL which frankly sucks donkey nuts and the last time I tried using it I spent more time fighting with GFWL than I did playing the damned game.

I have plenty of games like the original NOLF that simply won't play on x64 thanks to shitty DRM (thanks SecuROM, may you rot in hell) but thanks to the pirates I can just extract the files off the disc and with a NoCD I'm good to go. Thanks to NoCDs cooked up by the pirates there are nearly NO games that I can't play on my new X64 system-*.

One of the reasons I got away from consoles is I got burnt by one of the early Playstations that would scratch discs and was basically told "tough shit it's out of warranty" but with the PC I decide what runs and thanks to the pirates any game I have that is no longer supported can still be hacked and played. Between Steam, GOG, and Amazon I have more gaming than I could possibly ever enjoy, cheap prices, and no online BS if I don't want it. Thanks pirate hackers argh!

*.-The ONLY game I've found where I can NOT run it at all is my classic MechWarrior 3, because apparently they used some old Win9x hacks and when run on a modern system you get this "bouncing tanks" bug where things bounce 100s of feet in the air making them impossible to shoot. But even games where the company went tits up like Vampire:Bloodlines I was able to play through the game once a fan made patch came out, on a console that would have been impossible. If a game can ONLY be used online? Frankly they can keep it, it isn't like there aren't literally 100s of games I haven't gotten to play yet.

Re:Uninformed Rant, or Sony Apologist?

[rhook]

Steam lets you install your games on as many computers as you want, the service will only allow you to logon with one system at a time though. It's all in the EULA.

Re:Uninformed Rant, or Sony Apologist?

[interkin3tic]

I feel justified in torrenting all their games for free until I get back what they owe me.

You do mean until you've downloaded $250 retail worth, by Valve, correct? Because while I disagree with the notion that two rights make a wrong, and suspect there's another side to that story, that way would at least be somewhat defensible.

If you're saying you'll download as many games as you want, OR from whichever company you feel like, until steam approaches you with a check saying "Hey guy, we're sorry, that was wrong what we did to you," then you're making flimsy excuses for scummy behavior.

Re:Uninformed Rant, or Sony Apologist?

[kiddygrinder]

i have a drawer full of pc games that don't work on my pc unless i install windows 95 or something. tbh i might as well throw them out, there's no way i'm ever playing them again.

Re:Uninformed Rant, or Sony Apologist?

[sqrt(2)]

$250 worth from Valve.

And there is another side to it, but Valve won't even bother to tell me.

Re:Uninformed Rant, or Sony Apologist?

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a good chance that at least some of them will work with wine.

Re:Uninformed Rant, or Sony Apologist?

[Anonymous Coward]

Its Sony's fault the PSN got hacked or whatever. Even noobs wouldn't store a password in plain text. Shame on you Sony for being oblivious to the basics of security!

Re:Uninformed Rant, or Sony Apologist?

[xMrFishx]

If they won't tell you why it's been locked at all, write a kind short email to Gabe and ask nicely. If you're lucky he'll poke the right person and give you a real answer, I'd hope. I understand he's quite proud of his service, so having bad custom is not helpful to the business.

Re:Uninformed Rant, or Sony Apologist?

[sqrt(2)]

That's what I did after the recalcitrant customer support person locked me into that Kafkaesque exchange about not being able to prove I was the account holder.

This was over 1000 days ago, my friends can see my account and it says it's been that long since I've logged in. Considering that I shouldn't have ever had my account disabled to begin with, I've done all I could be expected to do on my part. This was a mistake on the part of Valve, and they've lost a customer for life. Honestly, just an explanation would have been enough, but they wouldn't even talk to me after I said I couldn't give them the info they wanted, and then they closed the support ticket.

Re:Uninformed Rant, or Sony Apologist?

[VortexCortex]

Honestly, this is ridiculous. I don't know if the submitter is some sort of apologist or just really lacking in the history of online gaming but online gaming and online game distribution has been around for about 25 years now give or take, and thats just one example. This would be about EXACTLY as old as the revered plastic grey box in question, give or take a couple if you were living in japan or not.

Different networks and system have been more secure than others this whole time, and the real question is "Why would some companies risk security in the name lower maintenance costs given the number of terrible consequences these days". The PSN outage and data leak raises questions about Sony and their decision making processes, not about the state of digital distribution and online gaming in general.

No. You don't get it. When you play most XBL and PSN enabled games the "server" is one of the player's consoles! The only thing that PSN or XBL is needed for is to determine which players want to play with each-other ie for Matchmaking and score tracking only.

The matchmaking server determines NAT and optionally allows for STUN in order to traverse NAT, selecting a compatible "game server" amongst those players.

Now, let's say me and my 8 friends all have properly configured our NAT routers -- On a console, (and some PC games) There is no where to enter the IP(s) for the games to connect to each-other. It's not like the game server code on your disk/console stops working when they take down the matchmaking server (eg: Halo2's). It's not even like the PSN or XBL "connectivity" servers are gone (they may disable the matchmaking server for a game, but the STUN and other connectivity services are still working!)

Please think about this: I enter voice chat with a party of friends on XBL. I take out the current game and put in Halo2. In fact, all of my friends do too.... Now, here we all are STILL FUCKING TALKING TO EACH OTHER OVER XBL P2P VOICE CHAT, but our Halo2 games can't talk to each other! If just a few bytes of data were ALLOWED to tell our Halo2 games which IP (one of us) should be the server and which should be the client then WE COULD STILL PLAY ONLINE (custom unranked matches). But nooooo, MS disabled that feature -- Hey, Halo3 is out... we should use that to play, some of the DLC levels are spitting images of our favorites from Halo2! -- until they disable its server functionality (Halo Reach is out... some of its levels are spitting images of our past favorites...)

When actually playing most online games (besides MMOs) the connection operates via P2P -- client server model, but not a single centralized server -- one of the players is the server, that's why when some people rage quit then you see: "Selecting New Host" -- they were the host. So, it doesn't really cost the game companies anything for us to play together. Our XBL Party Chat connection system is fully capable of sending a second channel of data "Game=Halo2; IP=10.6.6.6; Port=5309" -- IT ALREADY TELLS ALL MY FRIENDS WHICH GAME I'M CURRENTLY PLAYING as visible in the "friends" menu item, and IT ALREADY TELLS THEM MY IP ADDRESS so that P2P chat works! It even lets me send "game invites" to my friends............ What The Fuck! I hate DRM!

The answer is that Game companies want their older games to die. End of artificial life expectancy is used to force you into the next iteration -- force you to upgrade. (NOTE: Windows XP will be EOL'ed in a little more than 1000 days just for this same purpose -- whereas my company pays coders to support their systems still running "officially unsupported" RHEL 2 and backport security fixes because it's still cheaper than migrating away from that system).

Additionally, I have 2 Xbox360s. One for guests. My teenage brother frequently spends the night, so I got another XBox (Which is lame because I can still only play on one due to DRM I have to s

Re:Uninformed Rant, or Sony Apologist?

[Waccoon]

The service I did choose, Steam, also mentions that should they close for whatever reason, they will release a way to play steam games without needing the steam service.

By "close", I assume they mean shutting down their primary source of income, a publishing network?

I think a more realistic assumption is that "close" means the company going under. If that happens, I don't think the decision of releasing the keys will be up to the developers, but up to the owners/stockholders, such as what will happen when assets are sold off.

No thanks, I'm not going to trust a company that says they will do the right thing if they "close", because whoever was in charge before won't be when the doors are shut.

I also don't trust any company that bundled a marketing system with one of their games, or else I can't use the game, or at least some of its promised features. My dad loved HL2, but I went without because there was no way I'd have a background process running on my machine 24/7 for no good reason.

Re:Uninformed Rant, or Sony Apologist?

[VortexCortex]

i have a drawer full of pc games that don't work on my pc unless i install windows 95 or something. tbh i might as well throw them out, there's no way i'm ever playing them again.

That's funny, I have several shelves of PC games from the MS-DOS era, and Win95+ that run fine on my Linux machine via DosBox and/or Wine. In fact, I have a VM images of Win3.1 all the way to Win7, and I expect all of the games that I can play in my (hardware supported, no overhead) virtualized environments for the foreseeable future.

You're throwing them out because you nolonger care to play them, not because it's impossible to play them -- You haven't even searched at all for the answer to your "problem".

Re:Uninformed Rant, or Sony Apologist?

[Seumas]

Steam lets you install your games on as many computers as you want, the service will only allow you to logon with one system at a time though. It's all in the EULA.

Sadly, that isn't true, anymore. I couldn't find what game it was that I saw this on, but a few days ago I was looking through the Steam store and under the "features" section of one of the games, it said that it used Secu-ROM and had a "four installation limit" (very Spore-like). It made no fucking sense, since the entire point of Steam is that I can install any of my 400+ games *anywhere* and *everywhere* for as long as I live and have access to the game . . . as long as I log into my account.

I really hope that is not going to be the new thing by publishers distributing through Steam, in the future.

Re:Uninformed Rant, or Sony Apologist?

[flowwolf]

I'm calling shenanigans. There is defiantly something other to this story here. Every exchange I've had with steam support has been very forthcoming. I've been using the service since day 1 and have received help with numerous problems. I'm also fairly certain that absolutely no steam customer service rep will ask you for your credit card information. Proof of purchase would've been the last 4 numbers of the card. The story seems a little far fetched, what with claims of demanding CC information and flat out refusing to tell you why it was disabled. They will always tell you why it was disabled. Perhaps it was this for breaking the code of conduct or any one of these other reasons

The strict enforcement of this conduct is one of the main reasons I game on steam rather than xbox live

Re:Uninformed Rant, or Sony Apologist?

[ShakaUVM]

>>Steam, also mentions that should they close for whatever reason, they will release a way to play steam games without needing the steam service. This is unlike EA's system, where you need to be online to play at all

Right. I agree with TFA to the point that recent developments in tying DRM to an online state have proven to be more trouble than its worth, and that no single player game should honestly demand an internet connection to function.

EA's network chokes and dies under heavy load, which means, for example, I got to play through the DA2 demo four times until their networks stayed up long enough in one stretch to register the completion of the demo (if the network dies at *any point* during the demo, it refuses to give you credit for the unlock in the full game).

Ubisoft is evil, goes without saying. I've refused to buy all of their games for the last several years for this reason alone.

Steam works pretty well - except when the internet connection suddenly goes down. If your internet suddenly cuts out (thanks, AT&T!), as it did during the DA1 release day, you can be in trouble with Steam. You see, Steam knows when there is an update to be downloaded, but it will wait until your next launch to actually conduct the update. If your internet connection suddenly dies and you try to launch the game again, it will enter an endless loop of trying to patch, and refusing to launch your game because it knows there's an update available. Steam's offline mode only works if you know in advance your internet connection is going to die, which isn't very helpful at all.

It has been this way since it first launched, and they're apparently in no rush to fix it.

Re:Uninformed Rant, or Sony Apologist?

[PhrstBrn]

Steam lets you install your games on as many computers as you want, the service will only allow you to logon with one system at a time though. It's all in the EULA.

While Steam itself doesn't impose these limits, some Steam games have additional DRM created by the publisher. There are definitely a few Steam games where there are installation limits due to the additional DRM on top of Steam.

Re:Uninformed Rant, or Sony Apologist?

[RobbieThe1st]

To true.
Heck, thanks to Dosbox and emulators like ScummVM, a number of these games can be played on your /phone/ too!
Legend of Kyrandia's a good example: Plays great on my N900, and looks better than on a PC due to the higher pixel density of the 260ppi screen.

Re:Uninformed Rant, or Sony Apologist?

[Anonymous Coward]

Whilst Steam is good in this manner (promising if they ever close they will release an offline patch), you must realize that Steam will never "close". If Steam went bankrupt tomorrow, they'd be brought out by someone else by the end of the day. Steam would keep running, but two weeks later a new T&C would come out omitting that wonderful clause. You'd have two choices, don't agree and stop playing, or agree and loose that benefit. Unless the existing T&C has a clause stating you don't have to agree to a new version, and if you don't Steam will let yup keep playing, your screwed.

Re:Uninformed Rant, or Sony Apologist?

[RalphSleigh]

For games with a single player component that stops working when the internet/sony is down it sucks, but for MMOs the whole point of game you 'own' is to play on their service. Compare it not to a single player game but more someone who buys say a mobile phone without a service. yes you own a nice shiny toy, but its pointless without the service that goes with it.

Re:Uninformed Rant, or Sony Apologist?

[filthpickle]

I don't really play console games...I was downright astounded when I was watching some friends play the original Halo and I saw the "finding new host" message. I asked them what were they paying MS for.

Ofc, XBL is much better nowadays.

Re:Uninformed Rant, or Sony Apologist?

[Nimrodel]

I could be wrong here, but I think the Secu-ROM is DRM added by whatever company made the game, and not something that's part of Steam itself.

Re:Uninformed Rant, or Sony Apologist?

[morari]

The service I did choose, Steam, also mentions that should they close for whatever reason, they will release a way to play steam games without needing the steam service.

Yeah, and you should totally believe them! I'm sure that they'll have time and resources to throw at that as they're going bankrupt or being bought out by a less benevolent company.

Re:Uninformed Rant, or Sony Apologist?

[Anonymous Coward]

So you'd rather they give info on your account to any idiot who calls with no way to prove their identity? What if your doctor, lawyer, or bank did the same?
 
You can make up excuses all you want, but it's your own fault for not keeping track of the information you used for the account. I mean, if they were one time use credit card numbers, exactly what reason did you have to not record them? OH NO, SOMEONE MIGHT STEAL AN ALREADY-USED SINGLE USE NUMBER!.
 
And you use this bullshit to justify piracy. Thanks friend, you're among those causing games to be released with DRM that renders them nigh unplayable.

Re:Uninformed Rant, or Sony Apologist?

[shadowfaxcrx]

IANAL but there may be provisions in law for just that. The contract with Steam is as a distribution service, not a game maker. The games you've already downloaded were under the previous "we'll give you the offline keys if we shut down" contract. A new contract that removes this clause would be a materially adverse change, and you wouldn't have to agree to it. That doesn't mean you have to give up the games you already bought, any more than you'd have to send back stuff you bought from Amazon if you didn't like a new policy they came up with. If the new Steam owners came in and told you you no longer had the right to play a game you legitimately paid for, I'd argue they'd be stealing.

Re:Uninformed Rant, or Sony Apologist?

[g_rampage]

Care to cite some examples of the overwhelming proportion of multi player only PS3 games? I know of some but they're far from an overwhelming number.

Re:Uninformed Rant, or Sony Apologist?

[Anonymous Coward]

To make multiplayer last companies need only to release a dedicated server, even best if its linux, so local communities can keep the online play themselves. This new trend of central controlled servers by the game companies which is dangerous for game buyers and its killing online game in the long run.

Re:Uninformed Rant, or Sony Apologist?

[feepness]

Regarding Steam, I had a problem with the DRM on one of the games they sell. It was a common problem reported in their forums, and I contacted them regarding a return within 12 hours of purchase.

I learned that it is not their policy to do returns for non-functioning software. And if you do a chargeback on your credit card they close your account... and you lose access to your entire library.

I found that if you push you can get your money back "this one-time". It took some effort in emails. This is fine... I just don't buy from Steam if there are alternatives.

Re:Uninformed Rant, or Sony Apologist?

[sqrt(2)]

All the downloaded copies are perfectly playable without the DRM :)

Re:Uninformed Rant, or Sony Apologist?

[Anonymous Coward]

It may have been around in various forms for a long time, but there is definitely something different about it today than only a few years ago. Look no further than the Starcraft II no-LAN discussions.

First, it should be noted the author is focusing on consoles. So let's disregard PC games for a moment. I believe the first online console was the Dreamcast, which is more like 13 years than 25. Second, the first generation of online consoles hardly seemed to use the feature. It wasn't until this last generation that online became standard. Look at the PS2, the original models required an adapter, and even that was ethernet only. Many home theater systems are not right by the router (which was usually in the home office), which means that until consoles got wifi the majority of console gamers probably did not use online features. Which puts the timeline in question closer to 6 years.

And what's happened in the last 6 years? We've jumped from most games being intended for groups in the same house with the full game on a disc to online being the only mode for multiplayer and you have to unlock features with a credit card.

Re:Uninformed Rant, or Sony Apologist?

[mgiuca]

Yes, the Nintendo example isn't a very good one because it's based on physical plastic that can deteriorate, and there's not much you can do about it. That's a physical limitation though, not an artificial one like the DRM servers. A better example is all of the PC games that were released between 1980 and whenever the hell all this DRM started getting serious (2005ish?). All of those games came on disks and CDs which have probably deteriorated, but I could have backed them up and certainly others did (and I consider it within my rights to download online copies of games that I purchased but my media has deteriorated). And they still (mostly) work on modern PCs, especially thanks to DOSBox. But the same can never happen to some of these DRM games.

A great example: I have just started playing King's Quest thanks to GOG.com, from 1984. This game is 27 years old, yet it still runs perfectly -- not the original disk, but a byte-perfect copy of the original disk. Do you think in 2038 (assuming all machines haven't gone crazy and think it's 1970) that I'll still be able to play StarCraft II or Portal 2? It seems like a long long time into the future, so far that we don't need to worry about it, but the fact that I'm still interested in playing a 27-year-old game maybe indicates that people then will want to play our games. Steam (for example) isn't going away any time soon. I'm not worried about soon, I'm worried about later.

I'm worried that 50 years from now, we'll look back on gaming history and there'll be a huge wealth of historical classics from 1980--2005, and then this huge gaping hole in history from 2005--?? where there are no games left, due to the overreaching copyright police.

Re:Uninformed Rant, or Sony Apologist?

[Simploid]

"You can get "Steam rips" all day long on P2P so frankly Steam and GOG (who doesn't have any activation at all) are the only two I really trust. "

In my experience, the games bought from Impulse are good as well. I have two games from them, and in both cases I was able to copy the games to my newer PC and the laptop without installing or even having the Impulse client. I'm not sure how their DRM works, but it seems to be lighter than steam. They generally don't have as many games in their library or as good a deals as steam though.
http://www.impulsedriven.com/

Re:Uninformed Rant, or Sony Apologist?

[i kan reed]

The answer is multicasting(which TCP/IP doesn't support on it's own) and matchmaking. Even if you multi-cast the server messages, you still need a fixed Model for your game, which devs will write to run on the given hardware(Xbox). From an engineering standpoint, it makes sense to host on a player machine, even ignoring the cost benefit to Microsoft.

Re:Uninformed Rant, or Sony Apologist?

[hairyfeet]

Not bad but their prices kinda suck compared to Amazon. Frankly between Amazon and GOG (I only buy on Steam when they are having a crazy sale, like their HL2:Ep2 for $2 deal) I'm frankly up to my ass with games right now.

I even had to pick up a new 1Tb drive (BTW now that Hitachi and Samsung have sold out you might want to keep an eye out at Newegg and Tigerdirect, they've been having some crazy sales on Hitachi and Samsung drives. I got a Samsung 1Tb Ecodrive last week for $47 at Newegg with free shipping!) just to give me enough space to not have to delete games I hadn't gotten around to playing when I got new ones.

Frankly it has never been a better time to be a PC gamer, I've been building kick ass multimedia gaming PCs for customers for under $500 that play just about anything you can throw at them on their 1080p TVs, you can pick up HD48xx cards for like $60 if you shop around, AMD quads and HDDs are beyond cheap, and places like Amazon and GOG have so many killer games under $10 that in the case of Amazon I've often found it cheaper to throw in a killer game or two just to get the supersaver shipping. For PC gamers it really don't get much better than we've got it right now.

Re:Uninformed Rant, or Sony Apologist?

[overlordofmu]

Two wrongs do not make a right but, according to Aesop, "One bad turn derserves another."

The Fox and the Stork -> http://www.bartleby.com/17/1/19.html

Re:Uninformed Rant, or Sony Apologist?

[kiddygrinder]

i have searched, after an hour or so on the first couple i gave up, i'm sorry if that wasn't clear, it just isn't worth my time. Which visualization are you using that supports 3d acceleration btw?

Sounds practical

[Kenoli]

After all, there's lots of profit in making sure your games remain playable for decades.

Re:Sounds practical

[im_thatoneguy]

there's lots of profit in making sure your games remain playable for decades.

True, just look at the relative profits of World of Warcraft and Missile Command over their life spans.

No... wait--"true" isn't the word I was looking for.

There is certainly a value in 'the long tail'. But there is *FAR MORE* value in milking a property for all it's worth in the short term.

In 1989 Nintendo's Inflation Adjusted revenue was $4B.

Today Blizzard is making about $2B a year in revenue off of just WOW. About half of Nintendo at the height of the 80s. And that's a single game not an entire catalog of properties + more importantly: hardware sales.

If Blizzard shut down their servers today and if hypothetically $500M of that was profit. Then put it safe 1% bonds they would make more than $5m in profit. By comparison how much today do you imagine every last SNES cartridge in existence is making for Nintendo today? $50?

Re:Sounds practical

[LiquidLink57]

Whoosh? Whoosh.

Re:Sounds practical

[im_thatoneguy]

Whoosh. :(

It's so hard to tell the delusional from the sarcastic these days. Haha...

Re:Sounds practical

[jd]

I'll buy the "profit" argument. But picture a standalone game written in a highly modular fashion, such that any piece can be swapped out for an updated version. Much like the way the linux kernel is, in fact. You now have a game that can be updated forever, if you so wish. Sure, the original copies won't make much after a decade, but the game itself would still be being sold. And if you want to use WoW as an example, I sincerely doubt you'd get far running the very earliest release of the client, particularly if you disallowed any kind of updating. In other words, WoW already uses the rolling release approach and that is why they make as much as they do.

Re:Sounds practical

[rolfwind]

Whoosh!

Re:Sounds practical

[zAPPzAPP]

Huh?
If Nintendo took their profit and put it into bounds, they would earn money at the exact same rate. Money that comes from online games works the same as money from cartridges, once you "bound" it..

Re:Sounds practical

[halowolf]

Well you could of used Starcraft as an example. Blizz patched it for operating systems that didn't even exist when it was written. Say what you want about Starcraft II but blizzard does offer good game support for its legacy titles. Despite all its legal wrangles with people wanting to run their own servers :)

Re:Sounds practical

[Anonymous Coward]

There actually is. People will play your game and see your company logo for decades. They will come back to the game again and again. Never underestimate the power of nostalgia.
People will think that your gaming company is totally awesome and trustable (since future titles are more likely to stay a live for long than competitors). The emotional investment they make in a game will not just be lost.

For instance, I have a lot of respect for Blizzard for still allowing me to play Starcraft and Diablo II online. Them having this respect has definitely boosted the sales of Starcraft 2, and will help boost the sales of Diablo III

Re:Sounds practical

[VortexCortex]

After all, there's lots of profit in making sure your games remain playable for decades.

I'm sure you're trying to being sarcastic, but you failed at it.

Yes, there is profit in making sure your games remain playable for decades.

Why just last week I convinced 3 of my friends to purchase Doom, Doom2, Quake and Quake2. We can still play these games online via DosBox. There is no DRM in the games, ergo ID software is still making money on those games. The only thing they had to do to make them playable for decades: Not Impose Online DRM.

Now, ID also open sourced these games, but you must still have a copy of the original game assets (textures & levels) to use the open source game engines (now with improved cross platform higher res added features eg: FreeLook, in Doom / Heretic / Hexen).

There is a strong modding community that supports those games for free -- actually we pay ID for their original game assets (even though there are full replacements (total conversions) for many of the older games).

Thanks for Not Using DRM ID! I hope you make the same decision with RAGE! (Hint: Loyal customer BECAUSE I can still play the games 16 years later, and for the foreseeable future.)

Re:Sounds practical

[Dogtanian]

There actually is. People will play your game and see your company logo for decades. They will come back to the game again and again. Never underestimate the power of nostalgia.

This assumes that companies are looking 20+ years ahead, which is rarely the case. Heck, the people who run most publicly-traded American companies don't even look 5 years ahead.

And remember that people get nostalgic about Atari, but that whether such nostalgia benefits the present-day "Atari" is irrelevant since their only connection with the original "true" Atari Inc. (which has long since ceased to exist in any meaningful way) is that they (i.e. Infogrames) bought the rights to the name a decade or so back.

Re:Sounds practical

[Anonymous Coward]

Short term there is no profit. But would people still be talking about SMB if they couldnt pull out their old nintendo and play it?

It's a fair point.

[Bruce McBruce]

I tend to agree with this. There's quite a few problems with digital distribution that still need to be ironed out - not least of which is actual bandwidth consumption in non-US countries. Not everyone has an unlimited download connection, and with games getting larger and larger these days it does raise the concern that it'll cut into the ability to feasibly get it to potential consumers.

In Microsoft's case, their digital distribution of most games cost as much if not more than what it costs to buy the game in a store, with no potential for resale. They're pricing things all wrong, and it's a huge download. I can't say I know about what Sony and Steam are doing as far as that goes, but I am aware that there's been a few pretty large bungles as far as DRM has gone.

Until this kind of problem gets fixed, I'm all for keeping physical copies of my games.

Re:It's a fair point.

[Salvo]

The Conventional Conservative Corporate Gaming Industry is moving online too quickly, but smaller, more Progressive Companies exist Online almost exclusively. iD and Blizzard made their money, and retained their independence online, while Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo can't seem to make the move to online content without screwing up royally.

Meanwhile, the App Store, Android Market Place, Ovi Store and have blown away other Portable Gaming Device due to their exclusive, convenient online presence while the only DS/PSP games available online were from Torrents, which generated no revenue.

Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo fought against online distribution (just like the Record Industry Behemoth) for so long that when they realised it was a good idea, they dove straight in and crashed-and-burned. They tried to sell brick-and-mortar product online, instead of adapting their product to the new medium.

Re:It's a fair point.

[RagingMaxx]

I live in Australia, where we are only just starting to get "unlimited" broadband plans. I don't believe there's a very high uptake of these plans at the moment because they're relatively new, and to be fair the bandwidth allowances for quota plans are typically quite generous.

But in regards to the main point in your post, the bandwidth consumption issue, about half of the major Australian broadband providers host a Steam mirror for their subscribers. My ISP, Internode, has several regional Steam mirrors ensuring that I almost always get peak transfer on new games and updates, and it doesn't come out of my monthly quota. Other ISPs, typically cheaper ones, do not provide a quota free mirror, so my friends on TPG for example had to make damn well sure they had enough quota left over for Portal 2 on release day. This is a tradeoff between a cheap and a high quality service.

Perhaps where you live you don't get a choice between service providers, but maybe you and some of your gaming buddies could put together a petition to get your local ISP to set up their own quota free Steam mirror.

Personally, I like Steam's ease of use and great pricing. What I don't (always) like is forced updates, which every so often cause major bugs and can't be rolled back. It's a real shame when they roll out a Steam client update on Friday which borks your ability to play games, and it doesn't get fixed until several days later. That, in combination with a slightly buggy "Offline mode", would be my major complaints against Steam.

Re:It's a fair point.

[drzhivago]

I'm not really sure if you know what you're talking about. Xbox Live has been around in its current incarnation for 5 years. Not only can you digitally buy the smaller online games, but they even sell (some) 360 games that way now. That doesn't seem to be crashing and burning. I don't think Sony had any major problems before this current one, either.

Also, id as a major company? They make great tech, but as a game company they've been a nonfactor for a very long time.

It is incompetence with regard to IT security

[gweihir]

Nothing about "too fast" here. Having your databases with customer data not adequately protected is just plain old incompetence. Same as with RSA on SecureID. My guess is IT security (and possibly network maintenance) spending is decided by managers without a clue, and on the other side the "engineers" supposed to operate the network securely are also incompetent. With just one of both parties screwing up, you do not get into a mess like this.

Caveat: I am a IT security consultant, and, yes, it is not only as bad as you think, corporate IT security is usually worse. There are a few players that really get it and these often in addition pay people like us to make sure they did get it right. But those that do not get it usually only go for help if they are forced to by outside forces. It is quite clear to me in what class Sony falls. Not a surprise either, this had to happen to them sooner or later.

Yawn...

[Anonymous Coward]

Time to go play some Team Fortress 2...

New-Gen Reliability

[Lysander7]

The only issue I've had with the latest generation of gaming consoles is their longevity. Two 360's, a Wii, and now a PS3 have died within two years, whereas I can still play my N64, PS1, NES, and Gameboy. It's pathetic how much they sacrifice to maintain their profit margin.

Re:New-Gen Reliability

[NiceGeek]

I felt they were just cramming too much hardware in a limited space. The 360 and PS3 are essentially PCs but unlike a modern PC have to withstand much more abuse than the average desktop, and because of the need to make a consumer device small enough to fit in an entertainment center they just don't have the luxury of the same level of cooling.

Re:New-Gen Reliability

[Nethemas the Great]

Consider micro ATX and smaller form factors or a notebook for that matter. It's perfectly possible to have a reliable, powerful platform in a tiny form factor. The problem is simply in trying to build them too cheap with low grade components and underrated power supplies, and insufficient cooling. Modern consoles are typically sold cheaper than their cost to make, if they can minimize the loss they will.

Re:New-Gen Reliability

[Colourspace]

I have been very lucky really. Out of the 30-40ish consoles/portables I've ever owned (since Intellivision days to 3 DS's, PS3, 2 Xbox360's, Wii), the only real failure has been a Dreamcast that was DOA (RF Output) from Ebay. Even my PSP survived a soaking from a burst water bottle in my bag. N64 Pilotwings is a pain sometimes, but I just use some spray switch cleaner I have. Useful stuff that. I fucked a 48k Spectrum once trying to find a way of resetting it using a bent paper clip and the I/O expansion socket on the rear (instead of wearing out the socket by pulling the plug out each time) - I was very young - but I don't think that counts? Christ, I have been lucky haven't I?

Re:New-Gen Reliability

[Xtravar]

Think about it this way: those consoles had the best GPU in them when they were designed. The best GPU right now takes two PCI slots because its cooler is so huge. Your theory holds little water. I wouldn't call notebooks reliable or powerful.

Re:New-Gen Reliability

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

The only issue I've had with the latest generation of gaming consoles is their longevity. Two 360's, a Wii, and now a PS3 have died within two years, whereas I can still play my N64, PS1, NES, and Gameboy. It's pathetic how much they sacrifice to maintain their profit margin.

If you've had a Wii and a PS3 die in the last two years, you're likely doing something to promote their decay.

Re:New-Gen Reliability

[slackbheep]

I had my PS3s blue ray player die on me after being unused for six or seven months (after being used only a few times, period), and two friends have had their PS3s simply refuse to power on one day, however both these consoles saw heavy use. I've not heard of the Wii having issues, but both the 360 and PS3 have or atleast had major longevity issues. The 360 I red ringed had seen about fourty hours of use over several years, at best.

Re:New-Gen Reliability

[adolf]

I feel like I'm feeding the trolls...

those consoles had the best GPU in them when they were designed. The best GPU right now takes two PCI slots because its cooler is so huge.

The point was simple: If "the best GPU" is installed in a console, and it's cheaper to use less cooling instead of more cooling (which it is, to a practical limit), then that's what they'll do.

There's reasons why a 360 can often sound like a jet engine in normal use, and they really just boil down to MSFT being cheap. While designing and building quiet and effective semiconductor cooling systems is not exactly rocket surgery, it does entail a non-zero cost.

Which, you know, is a perfectly reasonable thing for them to be doing: If I were selling widgets at a loss, I'd try to save money wherever possible as well.

Meanwhile...I guess it depends on the notebook. My notebook, which I've used every day and carried with me for nearly 7 years, is the most reliable computer I've ever had. The GPU isn't quite as slick as that in, say, an Xbox, but the CPU is far faster, it's got a lot more RAM, and it runs both quietly and on batteries. (It was also rather expensive.)

Re:New-Gen Reliability

[Jeek Elemental]

pulled out my old vic-20 recently, it must be closing on 30 years. Perfect working order, even read the tapes.

Re:New-Gen Reliability

[Xtravar]

The GPU is mostly all that matters in games. Your laptop comparison is asinine. I've taken both consoles apart and believe me, the PS3's cooling is crazy non-standard and innovative. The 360 is the cheaper of the two (more like a PC); granted it fails more, but it still has custom fans and heatsinks. I wouldn't say either is skimping on the cooling; it's just the formfactor and the chip combined. The newer versions of both consoles are much cooler as technology has advanced.

Re:New-Gen Reliability

[gmhowell]

I'm not amazed at the Vic-20 working; I'm amazed that the tapes haven't gotten munged over the years.

No slowdown

[tomasd]

It is fiascos like this that drive the technology and stability, sony could have waited for 10 more years rolled out PSN or whatever and it would still break. IMHO there should be no slowing down; full speed ahead fuck the icebergs is my opinion. In addition platform that is ahead in utilizing online gaming, billing, distribution will win. It's not new technology to blame, but implementation which is influenced by internal politics.

Loss of private servers and LAN play

[Hamsterdan]

What about giving back those features?

Starcraft II and Transformers WFC come to mind...

Re:Loss of private servers and LAN play

[Hamsterdan]

Oh and yes, I love to have the physical media on hand too...

Yer about five years late

[lanner]

Former gaming industry guy here, who worked in the online (MMO) space for games (mostly PC).

It's incompetence. That's all. The gaming industry is full of excited youthful noobs who are willing to work 50-60-or-more hour workweeks in exchange for working "in a cool industry" and occasionally getting a free tee shirt or some other crap.

The "online" portion of most game shops is seen as sort of like support. In fact, I've seen several places (some of them failed) where the online management (sysadmins, networking guys, etc) was actually manged by the online support person -- the same person responsible for level-1 customer support goons.

Since it's not programming, not art, not design, and not the "core" part of making the game, it's just something necessary sucking money away from the people who really deserve it, so it gets minimal attention.

That's all.

Re:Yer about five years late

[gweihir]

I completely agree. My perspective is a bit different than yours (security consultant), but IT security is in a not very good state in other industries as well. I think your argument why it is possibly worse in the gaming industry is entirely convincing.

Re:Yer about five years late

[cultiv8]

Welcome to corporate system admin, please move on.

I love technology..I love technology

[countertrolling]

Well goddammit, go rent a room and fuck it then... jeezus!

Re:I love technology..I love technology

[RobDollar]

Are you drunk or are you an alien who doesn't understand the concept of a turn of phrase?

Re:I love technology..I love technology

[countertrolling]

He kept on repeating it over and over like a broken record.. broken record.. broken record..

Re:I love technology..I love technology

[Nethemas the Great]

There are plenty of geeks working on that right now...

how many places are all devs and little QA / tech

[Joe The Dragon]

how many places are all devs and little QA / tech guys?

Some of the mess with System crashes / poor security is from dev's have to do system admin work as well.

Some of it may just be the rushed 80+ hour work loads if are working that hard to meet the deadline how much tech work is being push to the side? how much security is being bypassed to get things done faster?

How many places have NO QA / other tech guys for testing?

How some of rushed work loads is from lack of staff?

Dedicated servers are a problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Get rid of this dedicated official server bullshit that we have to deal with, it gives me a headache when we all live within a block from each other in Australia but suddenly get shunted onto a US East server with 400+ pings. I understand why you would have to do it for something like an MMO, but a two or four player game? Ugh. Hamachi shouldn't be a requirement when you want to play games with brosefs without dealing with network shenanigans

Don't lay Sony's stupidity on the rest...

[Leslie43]

Don't lay Sony's stupidity on the rest of the industry.

Just because Sony was too stupid/in a rush/incompetent to encrypt everything like they should have, doesn't mean everyone is moving too fast.
It just means whoever decided not to waste time on encryption, should have their head sitting on a stake at Sony Software HQ as a warning to others.

Re:Don't lay Sony's stupidity on the rest...

[mgiuca]

The point is that we don't know how to tell the difference between the Sonys and the "rest of the industry". When Ubisoft's servers were having trouble last year, you could have said "Don't lay Ubisoft's stupidity on the rest of the industry. I use PSN and they don't have these sort of problems." And then Sony got hacked.

As consumers, we really don't know what goes on inside the black box of Sony PSN or Blizzard Battle.net or Valve Steam. And Sony isn't a small-time company either, so you can't just use the size of the company as an indicator.

The real problem is that the current approach to gaming is architecturally flawed. There is a centralised single point of failure which the customer has no control or choice over. Some centralised systems are necessary, but in the case of gaming (optional multiplayer matchmaking or MMOs aside) this is an entirely artificial single point of failure which is present only to protect the company from its customers. This is the entire industry's doing; all companies that employ centralised activation are guilty of doing it, not just the ones that have fucked up so far (Sony).

Too fast? Do you mean too slow?

[Anonymous Coward]

From what I remember (and I'm not quite a geezer) they used to release a new set of consoles every 2-3 years, and I've had my xbox 360 since high school (I'm a year out of college now (thats like, 6+ years), if anything the gaming industry is moving too slow, I know having a mature platform is great and all, but we've only seen one round of internet enabled consoles (well unless you count the 56k modem for the playstation, gamecube and the dreamcast, but I dont) now that a good majority of society actually has consoles I'd like to see some more persistant online world games, I know WOW is king right now, but I don't understand why there aren't a TON of mmo's floating around. And besides that, consoles need to stop playing around with gimicks and start getting somewhere with new tech, I'm ready for some seriously awesome stuff in the next console cycle, but I still haven't even heard about a new range of consoles coming out.

I think G4 was still Tech Tv when the xbox 360 came out, and X-Play was still Extended Play, and I still watched G4, it's like, times are a changin.

P.S. sorrry nintendo fanboys, I'm tired of playing the same games over and over with slighlly better graphics, I know zelda was fun (on the super nintendo) but it's time to get away from the formulaic 3 dungeon 3 dungeon boss and go for a legit story or something. It's the same with mario and most of the other nintendo games, they were good at one point, but stop trying to milk the franchises and actually do something innovative, the Wii was dumb not because it wasn't innovative, but because the motion control sucks, and it's not fun for gamers. It looks like microsoft (Halo, car games, GTA) and sony (Katamari Damacy) will have a pretty good hold on the gamer market in the future, and I want to seen nintendo do something decent, but on their track record it isnt looking good.

Re:Too fast? Do you mean too slow?

[Anonymous Coward]

2-3 Years. You are off a little bit.

They release things usually every 5 years.
(North America Releases)
NES: 1985
SNES:1991
N64: 1996
Game Cube: 2001
Wii: 2006

Playstation: 1995
PS2: 2000
PS3: 2006

Xbox: 2001
360: 2005

The Industry Interests != Your Interests

[nsolon]

TFA makes the flawed assumption that the gamer's individual interests align with the industry's. The industry has an interest in making you buy as many copies as they can and they have an interest in obsolescence.

Bad news.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I'm afraid that the poster is simultaneously correct, and totally missing the point.

Is it overwhelmingly the case that games are trending toward(and many are already there) a place where they will be somewhere between crippled and bricked when some ill-thought-out online integration or financially shaky company bites the bullet? Hell yeah. Are those same games increasingly likely to be locked down as hard as the publisher can lock them, ensuring that hacking together a 3rd party equivalent will be pretty tricky? Yup. In that sense, he is entirely correct.

However, he seems to be under the impression that this is some sort of honest mistake, a product of over-enthusiasm for cool gizmos among developers. Wouldn't that be nice. Beyond whatever bare minimum is required to sell the thing, longevity is a defect, not a virtue, from the perspective of the seller. After they get paid, you are a cost center, not a customer(Obviously, rank incompetence like having your walled garden go down during a major launch isn't in the seller's interest; but things like that are only a major deal because multiplayer functions are increasingly being forcibly centralized, rather than made a server offering that any player can run). People happily playing classic games are of no financial utility. I suspect that we will see much more of this, and it will not be by accident.

I agree

[Anonymous Coward]

I feel the same way about transistors.

How much slower?

[Anonymous Coward]

What the hell is this guy thinking, exactly? We've had "dedicated online games" for at least 14 or 15 years now. That's a long time by gaming, or even software terms in general. Can I assume he's posting purely from a console player's viewpoint and is somehow completely ignorant of the PC gaming landscape?

Digital distribution has been around for several years, and despite its youth incidents like this have been exceedingly rare.

As far as permanently owning copies? On the Wii and 360, the game is tied to the console, but it's there regardless of the status of the network (and IIRC, it's the same for the PS3). Direct2Drive and Good Old Games give you installers you can keep and reuse; I believe Impulse does as well, but activation is still required, rendering it moot. However, if Steam goes down and you reinstall your OS or upgrade your hardware, I'm pretty sure you're SOL. So sure, there's room for improvement there.

Not sure I get it?

[Anonymous Coward]

The OP wants the move to online games to slowdown and his argument for it is if we don't slow down the move "we might see a company such as Nintendo saying that online isn't worth it!"????

Umm, wouldn't a company like oh say Nintendo saying that online isn't worth it be the very slowing down of all games moving online that the OP pines for?

Is it just me or is this some really faulty logic.

online activation in SP games

[Anonymous Coward]

The real problem IMHO is more and more single player games needing either online activation, or in some cases even an ongoing connection for the entire time they are running.

There's no reason for that except lockdown and control. The problem is that **people buy these games**. If we would just stop supporting them, that shit would go away, but each and every time people rush out to buy it without giving the slightest consideration to what this is going to do to our future.

Re:online activation in SP games

[Dogtanian]

If we would just stop supporting them, that shit would go away, but each and every time people rush out to buy it without giving the slightest consideration to what this is going to do to our future.

Yeah, well the problem isn't merely that the great unwashed masses neither know nor care. It's that even on Slashdot, where people *are* aware of the issues and indeed complain about them endlessly, when push comes to shove, rather than stand up for what they believe in and forego the latest instalment of their favourite [whatever] or the latest tech goody made by Evil Corporation, the majority will cave in (*) and hand over their cash anyway.

(*) Though "cave in" suggests that there was ever any intention to boycott them in the first place, and a lot of people don't even commit themselves that far. Then again, it could be argued that at least they're being honest and upfront about their wishy-washiness.

a billion Chinamen can't be wrong

[Kevin Fishburne]

You said it man, "Nobody fucks with the Jesus". In any case, the bottom line is that the games industry is quickly getting FUBAR, in the literal sense, and our terribly intelligent population doesn't care if they can't play a single player hard-copy game when the network's offline until it goes offline, which is rare and won't be enough to cause a ground-up revolution. While I'd like to have some feel-good explanation for this, I think people may just be too damned stupid to look past their nose while our corporate gaming overlords laugh their way to the next generation of ass-pounding excuses for digital interactive entertainment. Build your gaming bomb shelters now, as that's all you'll have 'til the silicon in your Intellivision dies. Mine still works. There should be a new category of software (unless someone's already described it) called Tempware, which describes software that only works if some other shit completely outside of your control works with it.

Re:a billion Chinamen can't be wrong

[SuperTechnoNerd]

"There should be a new category of software (unless someone's already described it) called Tempware, which describes software that only works if some other shit completely outside of your control works with it."

This has been one of Microsoft's goals for years. It will be coming to a cloud near you..

items bought are permanently owned

[Chas]

find ways to guarantee that items bought are permanently owned even without a physical copy

That's just it! These companies don't WANT you to "permanently own" anything. This way they can sell it to you over and over again.

And, with the move to online distribution, they have grasped you at the base of your snarglies because when THEY decide it's time for you to upgrade, they simply shut down all the older stuff. Period.

And the lack of a physical copy simply gives them even more leverage.

"We have no record of you ever buying anything through us. Sorry! Maybe it was the PSN hack a few years back! Heheh! PAY UP!"

Re:items bought are permanently owned

[Anonymous Coward]

Newsflash: Same thing for physical media these days. Thanks to DRM all you buy in your store is a piece of cardboard, a shiny round thing saving you some download time and a license to play the game under the restriction of the EULA you haven't seen yet. Might as well get it online in the first place and save yourself the "buy in your store" part....

Buy without DRM

[lucian1900]

Just buy games without DRM, or at least the games you really care about. Also, donate to all open source emulator and server re-implementations you care about. It'll reduce the pool of games you can peruse, but not that much.

Tabletop Rant

[kitsunewarlock]

Another article with the word "Gaming"...another rant from a Tabletop Game Player/Amateur Designer.
The gaming world is straying too far from their roots. Meeting players/designers that openly mock tabletop gaming is becoming all too common. Video Games, especially RPGs (including MMOs, despite the lack of an RP element), take most of their core systems from Tabletop Games...from the 80s. With the exception of Dungeons & Dragons, which is just keeping itself classic for the sake of nostalgia, most tabletop RPGs have abandoned the "level" system ages ago. Few, if any, still use Hit Points. And Mana Points have gone the way of Vancian Casting. The next design company that takes from the modern non-Wizards of the Coast model of Tabletop Gaming without simply copying and pasting existing mediums is going to make a lot of money. Or is going to make Blizzard/Valve/etc... a lot of money when they take their stolen ideas and repackage it for the masses. Why a modern RPG still uses the level/class/HP/MP system is beyond me. Even life-bars are embarrassing at this point.

Re:Tabletop Rant

[Anonymous Coward]

Developers have been getting rid of level, class and HP for a while. This is widely despised as making modern games "too easy" compared to older, more complicated ones. [Ignoring JRPG which is a genre founded on its lack of change]

Oh, and the level, class and HP abstraction works fine BTW, it may be a pain in the ass to manage on paper but video games have a computer to do all boring the number crunching for you. Getting rid of it may make a tabletop game more fun, computer based gamers don't care since it was already fun. Your rant also sounds dangerously close to complaining about things you don't play anyway, so why does it matter? You already have your tabletop game to keep you amused.

Re:Tabletop Rant

[TeraCo]

The 'too easy' thing is only true for people who confuse role playing games with 'isometric dungeons and dragons simulators'.

Re:Tabletop Rant

[LesFerg]

I think I agree with you, tho this is probably why online gaming is the better option; in a single user game with any of the levels of complexity you mention, I think the end-user can quickly determine if there has been a lot of time and cleverness put into the AI side of things, and the ability of the NPC's to keep things interesting in the game can sometimes be what makes a game worth continuing to play (or at least, continuing to enjoy, as I have played some to the end just out of sheer bloody-mindedness).

In recent purchases that come to mind, portal 2 probably dissapointed, in terms of single player challenge, long-lasting playability and the thought of ever replaying the game for nostalgia. This is why, I think, the current trend is to sell a game as a basic intro to an environment or scenario, which then urges the player to join into an online interactive, where hopefully the real live (or partially drunk/asleep/stoned/whatever on a Friday night) players will provide the challenge to make the game popular.

I'm not sure I prefer it myself, but it must work for those who calculate sales and margins and such. Is any major game producer putting all that much time and effort, any more, into the long lasting epic single-player offline game? Even the concept of breaking the story development into episidic releases seems to have landed on the big red Go Straight To Fail square. How long have we waited for another episode in HL2?

p.s. Proof reading suggested almost a criticism of Valve. This is unintentional, Valve are my top favorites in software, all time, no more to say there.

Re:Tabletop Rant

[Anonymous Coward]

Skyrim is moving in that direction - they've done away with classes, levels are quick and mostly about bumping up abilities and adding perks. Most of the stats are going away for a model of "your character is the sum of the choices you've made." Which I'm sure is "dumbing it down" to some folks, but I like the idea. Spreadsheet RPGs have always bugged me.

  (Now if only Bethesda would do a Linux port. I think they're grudgingly doing a Mac port, but us Lunix dorks get jack shit. Hate to say it, but if I gotta warez me a copy of Windows 7 in order to play it, I'm probably going to warez a copy of Skyrim to go with it. And this is my most anticipated game of the past few years. Well, I suppose there's always Wine, if I have to.)

Re:Tabletop Rant

[Anonymous Coward]

No, they really are too easy. FPS, strategy, action, action-adventure.. games in the last years have been increasingly, embarrassingly simple and easy. Entertaining in many cases, but disappointingly easy, completed within 20 hours or made boring within that time.

Multiplayer fixes this, but is not always 'fun' or entertaining.

Re:Tabletop Rant

[TeraCo]

Length isn't a good measure of how 'good' an RPG is either. It's a measure of how much value for money you got perhaps.

But if I played a good 2 hour long RPG that cost me 5 bucks, I'd be delighted.

Re:Tabletop Rant

[Seumas]

Games are interactive movies, now. Players don't want them to be longer than about six hours (even if they paid $65 for it), because they "want to be able to finish it, even if they have a busy life" (because I guess playing an hour a day for three weeks instead of one week is just out of the question). Developers want everyone to see the entire game (why waste $100m making a game when only 50% of people see the last 50% of the content?). So, it becomes more about "make choice, watch cut scene, shoot some stuff, watch another cut scene" rather than an actual game. You end up with Dragon Age turning into Dragon Age 2 and RPGs turning into Mass Effect, turning into Mass Effect 2, and then Mass Effect 3 (which is supposed to be even more "refined" and simplified as far as the RPG elements than Mass Effect 2 was).

I can understand in certain contexts. I don't want to spend two weeks trying to get beyond one boss. I just don't have the time or patience for that, like I did when I was ten years old and had nothing else to do than try and fight the same fucking guy for thirty hours. On the other hand, It should require some effort, investment, and skill to reach the end of a game. It shouldn't be a certainty that I'll get through to the end simply because I play *long* enough to get there.

I can see a market for "experiences", as things like VR come to market over the next fifty years. But an "experience" should not itself replace a "game".

Re:Tabletop Rant

[Dogtanian]

Video Games, especially RPGs (including MMOs, despite the lack of an RP element), take most of their core systems from Tabletop Games...from the 80s.

Tabletop games are *not* the sole origin of "video games" in general. They were undoubtedly a major and undeniable influence on the industry- most significantly on the RPG and adventure-derived genres- but certainly not the only one, and have virtually no relevance to the more arcade-influenced games. For example, you might be able to trace a recent Need for Speed game's lineage to Night Driver, but I'm damned if I can see where Dungeons and Dragons might fit in there.

Re:Tabletop Rant

[kitsunewarlock]

Well the "spreadsheet" approach works--assuming there's enough variables. My DnD characters are on spreadsheets. But the odds of me finding the same or even a similiar character in any random group are slim to none. That being said: 4th edition characters tend to be more copy-and-paste due to higher restrictions on multiclassing, less feat trees, more restrictive prestige class options and less races/templates for PCs.
But what Video Games have thus-so-far almost always failed to do is make your character what your doing at the time. They make your character=your character's options during an encounter/dungeon. Its like saying Batman is Batman because he's always crazy-prepared...but in truth your arsenal and skills are only a small percentage of your [i]character[/i]. Your character is your background, personality, etc... and not just "how well you faire/what you use against obstacles in life.
Of course, its hard to establish a character in games where everyone does the same routine quests. At one point I tried to emerge myself in WoW towards the lower levels...but seeing people in chats asking for help with a quest I completed levels ago just made me lose any interest. "Kill this guy at this castle? I already did that. Whats the point if he's just coming back to life?"
Of course customized quests with long term and game-changing effects would require a staff devoted to a handful of characters. "GMs" in MMOs, as they are so inappropriately called, are really just bug-managers and moderators. They no more add to the flavor, story or immersiveness of a game than anything else.
And, of course, single-player games are trying to tell their story (or stories) and will inevitibly force you into the same plots that have been completed ages before you get your hands on the game (unless your a developer or beta tester who plays before the game ships).
In the end, playing Electronic RPGs is no better than playing a DnD group that only uses modules with a DM who hates improv.

Not all company's do network infrastructure wrong

[perpenso]

Former gaming industry guy here ...

Same here.

... I've seen several places (some of them failed) where the online management (sysadmins, networking guys, etc) was actually manged by the online support person ...

Different here. I've seen outsiders from the Linux world brought in to establish and run the online infrastructure. Not guys who could set up a LAMP system from a standard distro, but guys who could put together barebones custom installations with only what the respective servers needed at run time - less opportunity for exploitation that way.

It's Online stuff

[Grindalf]

A profound post! It's ONLINE gaming – either playing online, downloading, or licence verification that breaks the job and steals your dough. Now look at licensing, that's wrong too! Top Marks BTW!

Re:It's Online stuff

[Grindalf]

Wouldn't it be nice to walk into a supermarket, buy a DVD and pop it into your machine and install it without being reliant on the internet, numbers, stupid DRM etc. What if that DVD / game was then YOUR PROPERTY.

Sony is an anomaly

[ohzero]

This breach is due to the transition from the capable staff at SOE to the new security retards at SNEI. In fact, Shannon Lietz and her entire group should be fired. It has nothing to do with the industries inability to adapt. If that were true, then massive platforms at companies like and google would fail regularly, but they don't. The server architectures and application deployments are practically the same. Bottom line - Sony is an exception, and they are an exceptional fuck up.

GoG to Your Rescue

[oakwine]

"find ways to guarantee that items bought are permanently owned even without a physical copy" Try GoG, www.gog.com. Buy game, no DRM. Put installer on CD if you want. GoG has no client that must run in background. Games on GoG a bit old, but probably a huge improvement on Nintendo. That being said, Steam, Impulse, D2D all work. Bunch of 'em out there.

Re:Not all company's do network infrastructure wro

[gweihir]

It can definitely be done right. But it needs somebody high up enough realizing how to do it right. Minimal installation with only what absolutely needs to be on there is a good start. Then you can add mandatory access control (e.g. SELinux) and application integrated or -aware IDS. The FOSS BSDs are also a good choice, and so was Solaris before Oracle bought Sun. And then you get a team to operate these systems that not only monitors security alerts closely, but also can do something about them fast if their system is affected.

Of course, people that can do that are rare and expensive, but if you care, you can get them.

Let me paraphase for RyanDJ

[betelgeuse68]

"Why in my days..." (use your imagination to fill in the rest)

Re:Let me paraphase for RyanDJ

[Seumas]

We didn't have fancy joysticks to play videogames with. We only had our cocks. And it was all single player. And you only had one television in the house, so you had to wank it in front of the black and white in the family room, while pop paid the bills and mom cooked dinner and big sis did her homework.

Re:Let me paraphase for RyanDJ

[Dogtanian]

We only had our cocks. And it was all single player.

Well, to be fair, I feel obliged to point out that cocks *are* actually designed for multiplayer use...

It's Not (Completely) Their Fault

[Shifty0x88]

I think it is that people expect online streaming/downloading/storage as a standard now, pushing companies to release (often half-@$$) products to make a quick buck and get your online business. It is US that must slow down and force companies to re-think whether they really need that product online or not.

Not "online gaming", DRM

[Animats]

Online gaming, as in a MMORPG, is fine. What's seriously objectionable are supposedly standalone games that insist on constantly checking in with a DRM server to work at all. They should forbidden the use of the term "buy" or "sell" in advertising, and should be required to advertise their products as rentals.

Nor should PC game installs require administrator privileges or installation of services. Game companies can't be trusted with those privileges given their track record.

On the other hand

[Anonymous Coward]

Do many of you play your old games? I have bought every Total War game up to Shogun 2. Once a new one came out I would rarely play the previous one. Same goes for the Battlefield series - I occasionally fire up BF2 but BC2 is my mainstay. Once BC3 comes out BF2 will go the way of BF1942.

As a bit of an aside, I detested Steam when it first came out. Used to rant at my computer while it didn't give me access to a game I had bought because it was updating steam. But I move a lot and change computers a lot. After not using Steam for a few years I was delighted to find that all my old games were still there, even though the boxes and CDs that I bought were long lost.

In the vendors' interest

[kasperd]

Online games make it harder to use illegitimate copies. That makes it very much in the vendors' interest. Yes, there is the risk that the vendor may decide to discontinue the service. If that concerns you, then don't buy the game. As long as there are enough people that will buy games like that, they will continue to be available. You have to find out for how long you are guaranteed to be able to play, and ask yourself if it is worth the price you will be paying.

Some might argue that if the vendor discontinue the service rendering the game you bought useless, they should be forced to pay back the original purchase price of the game. However, I have been told that some of these vendors don't even charge for the game, they just charge a monthly fee for access to the server. In that case you got what you paid for.

I think that if the vendor discontinue the service, the users who are still subscribing should be entitled to download a version of the server that they can use to play with their friends. But this is not important enough that I would think it warrants regulation. You should look at the contract at see if the vendor can cancel the service without providing another way to play the game, and if so, don't buy it.

Don't expect vendors to act in the interest of the customers. Expect them to act in their own interest. It's the customers' responsibility to make it the interest of the vendors interest to act in the interest of their customers. The way the customers can do this, is by choosing which vendor to buy from. Of course if a vendor has made a promise to the customers and don't live up to it, then that is a case for regulation and lawsuits.

No profit

[SuperTechnoNerd]

"find ways to guarantee that items bought are permanently owned even without a physical copy."

Well that's exactly what they don't want. It's more profitable to dismantle servers after a while and obsolete games so you buy new ones.
I think games are going to actually be more online dependent to support this business model. To the game maker it has many benefits:

Strong enforcement of DRM with constant patches, etc. ala Sony
Ability to add new content or tiers in which you must pay extra for.
To kill a game when they want your to buy something new.

With this new paradigm you will permanently own nothing.
It makes perfect sense.
Just another example of companies having control over things you purchase after the fact.

If I can't get it how I want it I won't buy it.

[solios]

See topic.

Sony behave like assholes and don't provide anything that makes their attitude towards their customers something worth tolerating.

For me, "entertainment" is a mix of value, convenience, and cost. If "convenience" isn't convenient, if enjoying the work is too much work, if I have to create yet a-fucking-NOTHER account to access your whatever, well... your loss. The library got here first, I can talk to the used bookstore clerk (or owner!), and your Big Media Mandate just means absolutely fuckall to me.

We've been unsteadily lurching towards a "tipping point" in which the content providers will have to strike a balance between the data they can mine and the eyeballs they can get. I know this, and I accept and endorse this by participating in it as little as possible (/. included)

Utterly misses the point

[Anonymous Coward]

Online gaming (as with ~ all gaming) is all about the money, Lebowski. Online-only gaming kills piracy dead, and just take a look at the woeful trickle of single-player, offline, non-crippled-out-of-the-box (fu very much, microtransactions!)... non 'independent' pc gaming out there to see what the developers think. Ad supported, free-to-play, tiered/microtransactioned mmos seem to be it, by and large.

Whadda pity that these games have lost any story mode (kudos to Starcraft 2, for being an m?mo designed with a single player story!). Well, ok, I've seen some attempts at single player questing, as well as storyline, in mmorpgs, even free ones. Look - I gave up on twitchy pvp back with Doom 2, so these freaks now with the wasd mexican jumping bean meth addicted... you get the idear). And then there's the grinding in traditional rpgs which only gets some exponential progression layered in for the mmo treatment... yeesh. Makes me wanna go fire up Stella, outta spite. Yar's Revenge I can wrap my brain around, even when INCREDIBLY high.

Signed,
Grumpy

PS
Can someone dig Al Lowe up for me, btw? Lefty's bar needs another lick of paint.

PPS
Al Lowe - not dead yet, according to Jimmy Wales!

The best gaming...

[Anonymous Coward]

...is offline, solo gaming.

I do not care about MMO community/ group-oriented content.

I do not care about stat/achievement whoring in a RTS/FPS game.

A good game is like a good book. You get it, you enjoy it, then you put it away.
It entertains, relaxes and educates. It is therapeutic, and remains a fond memory even after many years have passed.

Modern games put too much emphasis on graphics, DRM and online gaming.
Online play should be a bonus add-on, instead of the focal point of game development.
Gaming is simply an artistic and intellectual expression of the developers.
Everything else is secondary.

Re:The best gaming...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll drink to that!

Screw Sony

[chedda1]

The only reason sony's servers got shut down in the first place was because they got what was coming to them, karma. Its a bad idea to use that as an example of why the online gaming industry is moving too fast.

Futurama

[Anonymous Coward]

Or is is the Gaming Industry not Moving Online Too Fast enough?

Change

[Anonymous Coward]

I feel that the speed its moving at currently is fine.. it, just like war has in the past, will push us into developing better and more stable technology. People want things to slow down or are scared of change, I think this is what really forces our technology to not progress at a speed that is ideal.

Not really

[Anonymous Coward]

I had a SEGA Genesis console. It died, no way I could play all those games I used to play as a child with my friends.

Thinking about it, I don't care. I stayed with some "primitive" tribes(they are becoming extinct fast) in Africa and South America, there are rituals there in witch boys and girls become men and women. They accept responsibility as adults and never look back(they give away their toys, or burn, or bury it). They start a new live and feel liberated.

Today I have things in my life way more interesting and fulfilling that playing computer games.

Re:Not really

[Fancia]

It's a good thing you're not doing anything frivolous with your time as an adult like posting on Slashdot.

No

[Anonymous Coward]

They're immortalized by online play. You can still load up Unreal (original) in stock format and open the server browser and see servers. Quake2 requires a little editing, but the same can also be achieved. Hell even Meridian 59 with a little editing again, servers & many people!

No shit, Sherlock...

[Anonymous Coward]

... do we actually need anybody to write an article to tell us all what we already know?

Obligatory

[Inf0phreak]

xkcd: Steal This Comic.

Ownership

[nurb432]

Is so 80's.. Its not just the gaming industry, everything is moving to a leased/cloud type of architecture to ensure a steady stream of cash.

Games, software, music, movies, phones, cars, homes....

Price advantage

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey if I can buy the a cheaper computer because the graphics can be handled on a server then I am happy. I hate the idea of buying a $3000+ computer every three years just to keep up with the best graphics. Especially when I see the rest of the computer industry going with $2000 computers and replacing it every 5 years. As long as I have a computer at work that I can run simulations then I would love to have a computer at home that will keep up with my gaming at a fraction of the price.

Troll.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sega was shutting down online servers long before Microsoft. ...Hell, they're still doing it. :p

Not a matter of "too fast"

[Junta]

I'ts a matter of "too much" and "too monolithic". "Too fast" implies there will come a time when everything is magically ok to do things like PSN because we'll have magic security that can't be messed up by humans. No matter what you do, the wrong people will always mess it up. It isn't like the technology today is so immature that Sony couldn't have done a better job securing it, they don't have any particularly complex needs security-wise than anyone else has for over a decade. At *least* hosting providers have to let people run as root on their little neck of the woods without access to other places which is a bit demanding, but Sony just has to let people do fairly simple stuff that doesn't require them to execute any arbitrary code on Sony servers at any privilege.

Of course I agree that things are moving online too much because it's had a rather bad impact on single-player games. So many games are only multi-player now, and many of the ones that are both have merely a token single-player campaign that is little more than training for the multi-player experience. Multi-player has its place, but you never can experience a good story or assume the role of someone *particularly* important because its always either quick pick-up matches or a persistent world that cannot change due to your particular progress as it would ruin the world for others. I also agree that online-only copies are dangerous. Even in a hypothetical world where security is perfect, you are still at the mercy of the companies viability and interest. At *least* this has demonstrated to a *lot* of people that they can still play their discs, but all of their PSN purchases are useless.

From the perspective of being too monolithic, each platform has approximately one major platform driving all of the online gaming experience nowadays. If XBL goes down, XBox is pretty well crippled, PSN obviously puts PS# out of commission, and if Steam went bad... a *whole* lot of Mac/PC gamers would be out of luck. Used to be that online games were told specifically who to connect to and server browsers were a fungible third-party application to frontend the process. If your current choice of server browser index server was out of commission, you used another one to get to the same game. I really don't like the trend where the ability to play a game is tied to the ongoing health of the company that produced and/or sold it to me.

Multiplayer

[tepples]

the service will only allow you to logon with one system at a time though.

Then how are people supposed to play multiplayer within a household? It's not like most PC games let players hook up two to four gamepads and an HDTV.

Besides, one user account used on too many computers within 12 months, even if only one computer at any given minute, might still be enough to trigger the abuse filter.

Re:Multiplayer

[g_rampage]

WIth multiple accounts/copies of the game. You'll get kicked out of a Steam session if you login somewhere else with the same account.

Re:Multiplayer

[tepples]

WIth multiple accounts/copies of the game.

Why do only PC games require this and not Wii games?

Re:Multiplayer

[g_rampage]

Because that's what Nintendo chose. It's also not only PC games. PS3 and 360 games often have online multiplayer only (no split screen).

Mobile phone without a service

[tepples]

someone who buys say a mobile phone without a service. yes you own a nice shiny toy, but its pointless without the service that goes with it.

A personal digital assistant, or PDA, is roughly the same thing as what we now call a smartphone without a cellular radio. They were fairly popular until a few years ago when 3G cellular data service became available. One typical PDA use case is to synchronize to the Internet when within range of a wireless access point with a known WEP/WPA/WPA2 key and then use applications offline with the synchronized data. Apple still makes "iPod touch" PDAs, and Archos makes the "Archos 43 Internet Tablet" that runs AOSP Android.

But the only way to buy an Android-powered PDA with Android Market, even if you don't plan to make calls, is to buy a phone. Unlike iPod touch and iPhone, Android-powered PDAs and Android-powered smartphones don't run the same distribution. Phones run OHA Android, which includes Android Market, while Archos products run AOSP Android, which does not and ordinarily includes AppsLib, an app store with a far smaller selection than Android Market. Some applications are available only through Android Market and not through AppsLib, Amazon, SlideME, or direct APK download, such as Chase Bank's check deposit application. People who need to run such an application need to buy "a mobile phone without a service".

Indicative of a cross-media trend?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if the issue here isn't even specific to games. It seems possible that the public's view towards ALL media is shifting away from a permanent-ownership model to a cheap-or-free-rental model.

For example, ten years ago I had several big old stacks of prized CDs... now, I don't even bother to back up my MP3 collection, because I assume I can grab pretty much anything I want online (legitimately or otherwise). And I can't even tell you the last time I bought a DVD.

I can even see a shift in my own attitudes towards an unchanged medium, paperback books. I used to have a huge collection of paperbacks... now, I tend to give them away after I'm done with them, except for a few super-favorites. I know if for any reason I want to reread, I can always go to a library or, worst case, pay $3 for it used somewhere.

People used to collect books and albums because they used to be somewhat precious commodities. Digital distribution and long-tail sales models have ended that scarcity, so I don't feel much pride in ownership of any media content anymore. I think I lot of people just think of things in different terms now: if I'm paying the price of a Starbucks mocha or an iMax movie ticket for a game that'll give me 10+ hours of entertainment, who cares what state it'll be in years from now?

Capcom for one...

[HalAtWork]

until my 8-bit Nintendo dies from plastic corrosion and age, it will continue to play any game I find just as it was supposed to

Capcom for one are releasing games on PSN that need to contact servers in order to be played. Either it's planned obsolescence, or a fucking ripoff. I think it's both. Another example is game DLC. I'll always have my game disc and be able to put it in any system and play it, but I can't really do that with any of my DLC. Sure, if Sony and MS servers are set up, I can transfer licenses, but I'm sure those will be shut down or deprecated just like Xbox Live Classic was.

subscription

[farble1670]

but until my 8-bit Nintendo dies from plastic corrosion and age, it will continue to play any game

and that benefits the developers of the console and game ... how?

financial, the subscription model is much more sound. within some small margin of error, they can estimate their earnings on a month by month basis.

Xbox and Wii beat most GMAs

[tepples]

The GPU isn't quite as slick as that in, say, an Xbox

Then it's probably an Intel GMA, or "Graphics My Ass" as AMD and NVIDIA fanboys call it. An original Xbox has a GPU nearly identical to GeForce 3, and according to a chart at Tom's Hardware Guide, most GMAs aren't even as powerful as that. The same chart implies that the Radeon 9000, whose fillrate is similar to that of the Wii's Hollywood GPU, is likewise more powerful than most GMAs.

Re:Xbox and Wii beat most GMAs

[adolf]

No need to guess -- you could've just asked.

It's an ATI X300 on a PCI Express bus, with 128mb of proper dedicated RAM. It also did overclock very well back when I still cared about mobile gaming. It's an R300 core, configured most similarly to a (much more common) Radeon 9550.

I could've ordered the same computer with GMA instead, but meh. That stuff was pretty horrible even for daily tasks and video at the time.

Anyway, the X300 runs games from that era quite well enough, usually even at the display's native 1920x1200 resolution, and also does well with Windows 7's bells and whistles (though it is, IIRC, literally the oldest chip to be officially supported by ATI's drivers on 7).

That said, the Xbox is considered (according to Wikipedia) to have something very similar to, specifically, a GeForce 4 Ti 4200. The comparisons I find from back then are at best vague -- but they generally put the 4200 ahead of either a 9550 or an X300.

This chart seems to indicate that the 4200 is likely to be about twice as good, whatever that means.

So, yeah. It's not quite as slick.

Installing applications without admin?

[tepples]

Nor should PC game installs require administrator privileges

Where should the game install itself if the user is not in a group that can write to /Program Files? Even Debian and its clones require elevation to administrator (using something like sudo) before installing an application. Or are you talking about installing to the user's profile? There's no "My Applications" folder in a Windows user's profile, unlike "My Documents", "My Pictures", etc. Or are you talking about running the game directly from the disc?

And if no publisher guarantees longevity

[tepples]

The way the customers can do this, is by choosing which vendor to buy from.

And it's likely to end up the case that no video game publisher will offer a reasonable guarantee on longevity for any of its online video games. Do you recommend that people learn to do without in mass numbers? If so, the publishers will probably blame piracy.

Re:And if no publisher guarantees longevity

[kasperd]

Do you recommend that people learn to do without in mass numbers?

No. I only recommend that people should find out beforehand what guarantee they get with there purchase and decide if it is worth the money they are going to pay for it. If they think it is not worth it, I recommend that they don't buy it instead of buying it and then mutter about it. If enough people care and stop buying games that could stop working just like that, then the vendors will notice.

If so, the publishers will probably blame piracy.

Since those particular games cannot be used without the server, and since the vendor know exactly how many people are using the server, they will know this isn't so. In other words, they would be wilfully lying when blaming privacy. I don't know if such blame games is going to help their income in any way. But I guess there would be at least one vendor with a clue who can figure out what the customers want and get some market shares.

All of this is of course based on the assumption that the original author's rant is representative for the users, and that they will actually use their power as consumers. My guess is, that it really isn't so. I think more likely the majority don't give a damn and just keep playing whatever is currently available.

Only pirates use private clone servers

[tepples]

In other words, they would be wilfully lying when blaming privacy.

Your Freudian slip made me think about something: "Only pirates use private clone servers." Hence the bnetd case.

I don't know if such blame games is going to help their income in any way.

It does if the whining convinces Congress (or foreign counterpart) to expand the scope of copyright or dedicate more tax dollars (or foreign counterpart) to its enforcement.

The subject is exactly why I don't like steam.

[Anonymous Coward]

or games that rely on server authentication.

Golden old games

[battling]

I love all these wonderful old games we played on our 8bits... or are they going to be reinvented like this one? http://urlmarquee.com/url-buggy.html Look at the urlbar, how did they do it?

Too Fast --it is necessary

[bbgsite]

Gaming industry online decelops too fast, I think it is one necessary, now there are more and more free web game on various sites and you just sign up one account and can play all the games on the site.

Fast Gaming

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. Technology moves to fast because the fat cats like it that way. Means more money!!! Its good when you like top released products and games etc. Just say, when you save up and have brought that game, for example you wanted for you favorite gaming console, there is a new console out on the market or now released online as a flash games across free online gaming sites.