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Streaming and Cloud Computing Endanger Modding and Game Preservation (vice.com)
Services like Google's Stadia seem convenient, but they could completely change the past and future of video games, writes Rich Whitehouse, a video game preservationist and veteran programmer in the video game industry. From the story: For most of today's games, modding isn't an especially friendly process. There are some exceptions, but for the most part, people like me are digging into these games and reverse engineering data formats in order to create tools which allow users to mod the games. Once that data starts only existing on a server somewhere, we can no longer see it, and we can no longer change it. I expect some publishers/developers to respond to this by explicitly supporting modifications in their games, but ultimately, this will come with limitations and, most likely, censorship. As such, this represents an end of an era, where we're free to dig into these games and make whatever we want out of them. As someone who got their start in game development through modding, I think this sucks. It is also arguably not a healthy direction for the video game industry to head in. Dota 2, Counter-Strike, and other massively popular games that generate millions of dollars annually, all got their start as user-modifications of existing video games from big publishers. Will we still get the new Counter-Strike if users can't mod their games?
[...] The bigger problem here, as I see it, is analysis and preservation. There is so much more history to a video game than the playable end result conveys. When the data and code driving a game exists only on a remote server, we can't look at it, and we can't learn from it. Reverse engineering a game gives us tons of insight into its development, from lost and hidden features to actual development decisions. Indeed, even with optimizing compilers and well-defined dependency trees which help to cull unused data out of retail builds, many of the popular major releases of today have plenty waiting to be discovered and documented. We're already living in a world where the story of a game's development remains largely hidden from the public, and the bits that trickle out through presentations and conferences are well-filtered, and often omit important information merely because it might not be well-received, might make the developer look bad, etc. This ultimately offers up a deeply flawed, relatively sparse historical record.
[...] The bigger problem here, as I see it, is analysis and preservation. There is so much more history to a video game than the playable end result conveys. When the data and code driving a game exists only on a remote server, we can't look at it, and we can't learn from it. Reverse engineering a game gives us tons of insight into its development, from lost and hidden features to actual development decisions. Indeed, even with optimizing compilers and well-defined dependency trees which help to cull unused data out of retail builds, many of the popular major releases of today have plenty waiting to be discovered and documented. We're already living in a world where the story of a game's development remains largely hidden from the public, and the bits that trickle out through presentations and conferences are well-filtered, and often omit important information merely because it might not be well-received, might make the developer look bad, etc. This ultimately offers up a deeply flawed, relatively sparse historical record.
The same rant applies to every new game streaming service because they all face the same horrible problems and have the same ulterior motive:
Imagine if the old Ubisoft always-on DRM were an inherent, unremoveable aspect of the game system rather than just something tacked on to a few individual games after the fact, such that Ubisoft couldn't even begrudgingly neuter it in a patch. Well, a streamed game is even worse than that would be.
The game doesn't even run locally. All you get is streaming video/audio and all the lag you'd expect (including controller lag), which is a recipe for disaster in North America. And any interruption in the connection that lasts more than a few tenths of a second is going to behave like the equivalent of a "freeze" or "hang" that you'd NEVER tolerate in a properly local-hosted game. Not even the most twitchy DRM existing today has that problem.
Some people consider IPS monitors unsuitable for games requiring fast reflexes (i.e. FPSes) due to their double-digit response times. Internet latency is often worse and certainly more unpredictable than LCD monitor response time, and with streamed games it applies to audio and keyboard/controller/etc input too.
Then there are the bandwidth requirements.
Let's say you're lucky enough to have a 100mb/s connection. Why would you want to use it to transfer your game's video instead of, uh, a DVI cable, which is capable of 4 Gb/s? The people who developed DVI apparently understood that that 1920 x 1200 pixels w/ 24 bits/pixels @ 60Hz results in bandwidth well over 3 Gb/s. The people who developed streamed games seem very, very confused (at best).
Those of us who know anything about bandwidth and compression and (especially) latency can see the enormous technical obstacles facing a service like this, and startups like Onlive never did anything to explain how they intended to solve them. Instead, they did everything they could to lock out independent reviewers with NDAs and closed demonstrations. A friend of mine described it as the gaming equivalent of the perpetual motion scam, and IMO that's spot on (except that a streamed game service would still have the draconian DRM issues even if it worked perfectly).
Streamed games appear designed from the ground up to benefit the game publishers and fuck the customers, exactly what you'd expect from any DRM system.
P.S. Remember when Microsoft intended 24-hour XBox One check-ins, and gamers rejected that? How the fuck are mandatory check ins going to fly when measured in milliseconds?
In that if the game code/content changes and the game exists only on the publisher's servers, it's difficult (maybe even impossible) to discover/document that change. Like a revision to a book, only no one has a copy of the previous version to compare the current one to.
Yea, that philosophy of voting with your wallet... it doesn't work. It assumes consumers make informed decisions when the fact is, for any given market, the largest distribution of purchases are made by uninformed consumers. Make those happy and you can shift the market to any direction you want.
This isn't limited to the gaming industry, this is typical rent seeking strategy used in every market, technology or not. Consumers trade initial convenience and let reliance on that convenience creep over time until you're locked in and too committed.
These aren't shampoo bottles in a rack where there's healthy competition and the barrier to change is incredibly low. Vendor lockin is very real.
it's about charging you by the minute. I remember an interview with Activision's CEO where he was livid over how much time folks had spent playing Modern Warfare with only a single $60 purchase. He considered it theft.
Here's hoping the Indies and Gog don't go anywhere, though I've heard Gog is kinda hurting right now. That Witcher card game bombed and sales at the store have been slowing. They really need a hit with Cyberpunk 2077.
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The same rant applies to every new game streaming service because they all face the same horrible problems and have the same ulterior motive:
Fortunately, this doesn't apply to every new game. This is about "AAA" games, which are largely garbage anyway. "AAA" games are the boy bands, or Transformers movies, or light beer of the game industry. They sell well, are consumed mindlessly topass the time, and instantly forgotten when the next one comes along.
There are certainly still new single player, deep, moddable, games being made. I like the fact that I now get "cloud saves" in parallel to my local saves, so I can choose how I play across multiple machines. I like the fact that all my game purchases are downloads, not physical media I have to have shipped to me. None of this technology inherently makes games worse. Massive game corporations focused only on shareholder returns are what makes games worse.
tl;dr: old man fails to yell at cloud, welcomes kids on his yard.
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As long as most of the global computing power doesn't physically belong to corporations, the average internet isn't accessible everywhere and its speed isn't high enough, this won't happen to this extent. Also you'll still need some local client even this happens.
we can see cable tv like fee fights, forced bundleding come to online gaming as well as well ISP like Comcast trying to pull a new CSN Philly excursive like setup.
Do you want to say lose all EA games as your Streaming does not want pay the new rates?
Do you want to be forced to pay for mickey mouse adventures, Madden NFL, spongebob adventures as part of the basic package?
Have to pay for a mid tear or higher plan to be able to pay the add on fees to be able to play WOW?
Have to buy an mid tear or higher plan to be able to PPV / on off buy games from 3rd party's and that you can lose even after paying full price for the game if you stop paying for your basic plan?
Imagine being a kid right now. Some game releases in the next few years, via cloud only, that you play and absolutely love. It becomes part of your childhood. Fast forward 20+ years, and you start thinking about that game. You can't have it. It's gone. There is no digging it out of your mom's attic. It will just be completely gone. There may be videos of it, but those are just videos. You can never play it again, ever.
Cheating happens, but that's a small negative that is easily burried in a big pile of positive.
Mods are the reason games like DOOM and Quake took off. Each had hundreds of custom maps that increased playability beyond what one company could ever hope to make. Quake had dozens of popular mods, many of them total conversions, that entirely changed the gameplay. Team Fortress and Capture the Flag both spawned communities that quickly rivaled and eventually exceeded the base game's popularity.
Several of Valve's most popular titles -- Team Fortress, Counter-Strike, Day of Defeat, Dota -- started their lives as mods.
The battle royale games that are wildly popular right now have their roots in Day Z, which was a mod for ARMA.
It's not just good for maintaining communities, either. There's a reason Quake, Unreal, Half-Life, and Source engines were all licensed like crazy: people were making mods for them, knew how they worked in and out, and then when it came time to make money, the choice was easy. Modding made these companies a ton of money.
I'm much more worried about 3D card stagnation. A central super-center, while needing millions, might only need a fraction of what PC land consumes, leading to less profit and therefore slower development. This is the forefront of computer chip advancement, with old Pentium's great grandchildren able to be tucked into a tiny corner.
On the other hand, game services will update rapidly or be left behind on the latest games.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
One of the guy's point is that with streaming only games you are limiting what people can do with games. Mods and making tools for games is 100% the reason I became a programmer.
You can easily support mods with streamed games, by allowing users to upload content for their own accounts, or of course allowing community generated content to be distributed to all players (probably more practical).
The system will have to have some way to at least save some custom things like controller configuration related to your account, so they will have some storage space per user already, that could easily hold mods as well.
So if you want to see that kind of thing, make a game for the Google streaming platform that supports it (thereby pushing Google into supporting the concept).
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