Slashdot Mirror
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!"
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.
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.
Ice Cream has no bones.
After all, there's lots of profit in making sure your games remain playable for decades.
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.
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.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
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.
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.
What about giving back those features?
Starcraft II and Transformers WFC come to mind...
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
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.
Well goddammit, go rent a room and fuck it then... jeezus!
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
Buy your next Linux PC at eightvirtues.com
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!"
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
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.
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.
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.
-- http://www.criticalassets.com
"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.
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.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
"Why in my days..." (use your imagination to fill in the rest)
The 'too easy' thing is only true for people who confuse role playing games with 'isometric dungeons and dragons simulators'.
Not Meta-modding due to apathy.
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.
If I had a DeLorean... I would probably only drive it from time to time.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?
"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.
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)
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.
Not Meta-modding due to apathy.
...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.
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.
xkcd: Steal This Comic.
________
Entranced by anime since late summer 2001 and loving it ^_^
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".
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....
---- Booth was a patriot ----
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.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
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.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
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.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
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.
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".
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.
Twinstiq, game news
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
Ginga no Rekshiya Mata Each page.
It's a good thing you're not doing anything frivolous with your time as an adult like posting on Slashdot.
Bít, zabít, jen proto, ze su liska!
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.
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?
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.