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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.
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.
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.
"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.
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.