That’s probably what an awful lot of Ubisoft’s customers will be thinking right now, at least those who loaded up Silent Hunter over the last day or so hoping to enjoy some quality gaming time.
It turns out that Ubisoft’s incredibly stupid DRM scheme has completely shafted all their legitimate customers according to reports from Rock, Paper, Shotgun. The DRM servers that each customer has to be connected to, all the time, just to be able to play the game have been down for an entire day.
No gaming for you!
What’s even more precious is that the claims that Ubisoft made concerning the inability of pirates to crack the DRM code in a way that allows players to play while these servers were down seem to be false too, according to the Rampant Coyote. It turns out that those who pirated the game were able to play it when the servers hit the deck.
I’m going to admit something bad. No, not pirating games, I don’t believe in doing that. But I have enjoyed a bit of the old schadenfreude in reading these reports. This situation reinforces the whole concept that treating your customers like criminals is a bad thing, and that it will backfire. In this case it backfired sooner rather than later. And that’s absolutely wonderful because it reinforces this position. Will it affect sales of other Ubisoft games infected with this customer hating crap? I hope so, since that’s the only way these companies will stop pushing this nonsense on their customers.
I also noticed over the last week or so that a couple of bloggers made the assertion that there’s no difference between an always connected DRM and the need to be connected to play a MMORPG. I just want to spend a moment to say that assertion is not entirely true for the following reasons.
First of all, nearly every modern MMORPG is meticulously designed to cope with random disconnects in such a way as to prevent the loss of progress as much as possible. That’s not the case with this DRM. Disconnect or get line lag and expect to restart from the last checkpoint. Ubisoft’s DRM is designed to interrupt the game experience. MMORPGs are designed to prevent interruptions even in the case of individual server crashes.
Secondly, the fundamental expectation of playing a solo single player game is to be able to do it anywhere. Some people just don’t have good internet. They may not be able to play a MMORPG, they shouldn’t be able to play single player games either?
And as we’ve seen today, server downtime can affect legitimate customers. Should a single player game be unplayable if the publisher has a bad server day?
PS. Don’t pirate games. It’s wrong, and it’s part of the reason these companies are doing this.
If you have an nVidia based graphics card and have recently installed the 196.75 version of the drivers, make sure you roll back to an earlier version as soon as you can.
Engadget is reporting that nVidia have pulled this version of the driver from their site due to reports that it is causing a fan malfunction causing performance issues and in some cases graphics card heat death.
If you have recently installed this version of the driver, it’s a good idea to rollback to an earlier version. Despite the inconvenience, remember that graphics cards ain’t cheap. At the very least it’s probably worth your time (if you own a card based on the nVidia chipset) to check the driver version, especially if you’ve installed any new games lately. Or if you’ve updated your drivers recently.
If you’re like me and last updated when dinosaurs still roamed the Earth, you’re probably okay.
The big news item in the gaming world this weeks, aside from the various expansions and stats related to MMORPGS, is the completely dumbarse move by Ubisoft to add a form of DRM to Assassins Creed 2 that is so evil, it kicks you out of the game if you suffer even a momentary disconnection to your internet connection.
In other words, if you’ve ever suffered lag, ISP disconnects, interference to your wireless connection, or a cat suddenly choosing to sit on the router and unplugging it, then Ubisoft will stop you playing Assassins Creed 2. In fact, it the disconnection won’t even give you time to save your progress.
Given this, I won’t be buying AC2. I wasn’t too impressed with Assassins Creed 1 since it crashed my XBox 360 every five minutes or so it seemed. But even if AC1 ran flawlessly I wouldn’t be buying Assassins Creed 2. My internet connection often has little pauses that give a touch of lag in the MMORPGs I play. But AC2 will disconnect me.
The way I see it, companies like Ubisoft are now forcing players who have gone out an bought legitimate copies of games into acts of piracy.
If I buy Assassins Creed 2 and at the first kick out, I reckon I’d have two options, depending on how much I like the game.
Stop playing. I can be a little temperamental with games sometimes. It doesn’t take much to sour the experience. If Ubisoft kicked me out, I’d likely stop playing completely. I’d possibly then avoid Ubisoft games in the future.
Find a cracked version. If I really liked the game and wanted to keep playing with interuption I might be inclined to find a way to beat the DRM by downloading a cracked version of the game. (Although this sort of software is inheritantly risky. I’d probably just stop playing.)
The fact is that companies like Ubisoft are not preventing piracy by pulling crap like this on their customers. It’s not the pirates being affected. They’ll avoid the DRM in the first place and just download the game. No. It’s Ubisoft’s customers who suffer. It’s Ubisoft’s customers who will then go out and find a cracked version of the game. And it’s Ubisoft’s customers who have then discovered how much else is out there that can be downloaded free.
Congratulations Ubisoft. By screwing your customers you’ve increased the ranks of the people who will happily pirate your games.
You might have heard of a research project that Microsoft has been working on called Microsoft Surface. It’s essentially a touch screen that can recognise tagged objects. I get the impression that it was inspired by the vertical transparent user interfaces in that Tom Cruise movie, Minority Report. There’s a CrunchGear article about it here and the video embedded below.
Now how excellent would this be for all sorts of table top games. The guys in the video are playing DnD, but it could be used for any sort of board or table top game, from Chess to a game of Warhammer.
I could even see standard computer games translated to this sort of surface technology. Anyone for Warcraft 1, 2, or 3?
I keep reading how the recently announced Apple iPad is a step forward in computing.
Sorry. It’s not. It’s a step backwards.
What it does push forwards is the ubiqiuity of computing devices as consumer electronics. It provides a propriety platform for users to access what was once solely the domain of computing devices.
Smartphones, the iPhone is just one of this class, have been doing this for some time. Ordinary people have been able to access the web, email, entertainment and productivity applications for some time. The iPad does take this a little further along. This is a good thing.
But as for computing. The iPad is a giant step backwards.
Computing has taken some giant leaps since the 1970’s mostly due to hardware coming down sharply in prices along with the advent of open platform computing. (I’m not talking open source although that has had a major impact.) What that means is that for the most part, if I see an application I want to use I can download it or buy it and run it on my computer without any one elses permission. If I cannot find an application I need, I can write it or have someone else write it for me. Also without anyone elses permission.
That changes with Apple.
The iPad will use the same application store as the iPhone does, and everything there is controlled by a gatekeeper. Apple. If Apple doesn’t want me to run Firefox on the iPad I won’t be able to. And this will happen because they don’t like flash which means I’ll be prevented from playing a million browser based flash games by Apple. If the app I’ve bought gets unapproved by Apple, there’s a good chance I’ll lose access to it, no matter how much I depend on it. The gatekeeper is a nightclub bouncer.
Apple have always zealously prevented competitors from emulating their products. And they’ve managed to control their hardware. But there’s always been the software that they haven’t been able to control. Until now.
It doesn’t matter who it is, Apple or otherwise. Gatekeepers are bad for consumers. And that’s why the iPad is a giant step backwards in computing.
Evizaer at That’s a Terrible Idea has just written an article called Gameplay is not Grinding in which he explains that it’s not simply a set of repetitive actions in a game that constitutes a grind. Evizaer states that a grind is present when the mental process of play becomes separated from the game’s meaning.
It’s an interesting thought for me because when I was writing my Is It Time To Make Levelling Hard Again? article my primary concern was with the difficulty of keeping the grind out of a game while extending the time it took to get to the level cap. If we forget about non-levelling style games for the moment, it almost seems to be a set of mutually exclusive ideals to either minimise grinding or to extend the time to the cap.
But Evizaer might just have the answer.
If what we call grinding is simply a separation of a players mental process from the games meaning, then perhaps reuniting the two might minimise the grind while at the same time allowing a slower pace through the game. Let me explain a couple of things.
First, what I think Evizaer is getting at here is the concept of meta-gaming, or in MMORPG terms min-maxing. If all a player is interested in is getting to the end-game with the most powerful character possible, in order to be accepted into the end-game content (raids, PvP, or whatever.) Then that player will stop being interested in the meaning of the game and will start only doing the things that will help achieve this goal. Quests now stop being entertaining stories to play through and become a more efficient way to get experience. The relevance of a quest falls soley in to how it helps the player get to the end-game.
We see this in the World of Warcraft guides that recommend the fastest way to get to the level cap is to not do Instances because the XP per hour is less than grinding quests. The fastest way to the top is to forgo the less efficient content. I’ve been guilty of this myself when I’ve just dumped gray quests because the rewards, both XP and loot, are not worth the time.
The problem often is exacerbated by the quests themselves being highly repetitive. The kill X monsters quests are especially bad for this because they don’t offer a story, or really any meaning. These quests are really just an excuse for the eco-system in the area, or as filler content to help the player get out of an area. Developer 1: “Hey look, I’ve just filled this area with a bunch of skeletons.” Developer 2: “Hmm. I’d better write a quest then.”
Quests are presented solely as a way to advance, not as ends to themselves.
So where does that leave us?
Perhaps one of the solutions to the grind is to give the player a reason, aside from just increasing the character stats, to interact with the content. What if doing that quest doesn’t give you any experience but opens up a possibility to advance your character in another way? What if the reward offers the choice of a new skill, or perhaps even opens up a new area in the game? What if heading into that dungeon and finding a magic sword opens up a whole series of events that would allow you to enjoy a terrific story?
Would that be enough to reunite a games meaning with the player and eliminate the grind?
BTW, notice I said ‘interact’ there, not ‘kill.’ But that’s for another post.
One of the most critical aspects of any story, is that there be conflict. No book about a guy who has a normal, uneventful life would become a bestseller.
For some reason us humans seem to like conflict. We find it entertaining and it draws us in. We love drama and hurt feelings. Just look at how many drivers slow down to gawk at an accident scene.
I suspect however, that both Tobold and Syncaine are aware of the effects of controversy, and are simply playing to the crowd. Tobold especially over the last few months has been periodically posting about how he manages criticism on his blog, and he’s certainly right to set ground rules for comments on his blog. Tobold’s complaints about Syncaine, and the frequency of their occurence, seem to me to be more about getting visitors to his blog than about hurt feelings. Otherwise Tobold has got some really thin skin, perhaps too thin for a blogger.
But, as I said, controversy gets traffic, and both these bloggers have been around long enough to be aware of that.
You might have noticed that I haven’t posted all that much lately.
My contract concluded at the end of November last year, and a few weeks earlier I was thinking that I’d have a ton of time to make regular updates. I’d even made a bit of a resolution to myself to try and get a post out each day.
But as they say, the best laid plans of mice.
On the Friday, the week before the contract ended I recieved a call from a friend whom I’d worked with a few years prior and with whom I’d hadn’t seen for a couple of years. He, and a couple of partners, had formed a startup business about three years ago and had just come into some government grant money, and had found a new investor. He wanted to know what I had planned, which considering the contract was running out wasn’t very much at all. I was told that the funding was going to allow them to get some outside development help for the mundane tasks that needed doing on a day to day basis, and that this would free him to take the application to the next level.
I was asked if I wanted to work for them.
The catch was that they didn’t want to take on any full-time employees due to the on-going costs, insurance, taxes, superannuation, etc; that they’d face with a limited budget. This meant that I’d have to go beyond contracting and become a freelance software guy.
I thought about it for a couple of days and told my friend that I’d be in it, with the condition that I’d be free to take on other work. He was okay with that.
A few days later, I signed the papers to create my company.
So… I’m now a businessman with a Pty Ltd (kind of like a LLC I think.)
At the same time, after years of being past the all-my-friends-are-getting-married stage of life, two of them decided to tie the knot with their respective girlfriends. Five days apart. One in Sydney, the other here in Adelaide.
So on the first of January I took off with the other groomsman and drove to Sydney via Dubbo and the Western Plains Zoo to be best man on the 5th.
That done, we drove the long way down the coast to get back to Adelaide on the 9th (for a total distance of 4000 kilometers) and another wedding the next day. And of course, I started work on the Monday and have been pretty busy since.
Of course it wasn’t all weddings and business.
I decided to take it easy in December and just play some games.
I mentioned in my last post I spent a session in STO before Christmas, but for the most part I played Everquest 2, and took my Shadowknight from level 25 to level 60 (achieved late on December 31st.)
That was pretty good because that was the goal I’d set. I was secretly hoping to get to 70, but really didn’t think was realistic. (I have no idea how Stargrace, or anyone else for that matter, can get to 80 as quick as they do.) I’m now hoping to reach 70, or even 75 before the expansion is released.
I’m not sure if that’s achievable due to the amount of work I need to do for the business, there’s so much to learn! but I’ll give it a decent try.
And of course that leads me to the major point of this rambling stream of consciousness that I’m calling a post.
That crazy little thing called life (with ap0logies to Freddy) has thrown a great opportunity my way. But it’s not one without cost.
Running a business, when it’s more than just an attempt at a work at home job, means that there’s a lot of stuff to do. I’ve been a software developer for over 25 years now and it’s something I understand (and do) pretty well. A business on the other hand means paperwork, accounting, marketing and sales, and perhaps most importantly, managing my time in order to give each their due. I’m learning now how much I don’t understand, even though I thought I had a lot of it figured out previously.
The cost I expect that I may have to pay is a severe reduction in the amount of time I have to play games, and along with that the time I have to blog about them. While I’m not quitting the game blogger scene — I’ll be squeezing in the gaming and writing whenever I have a chance — I won’t be fitting stuff in around this activity, it will be the other way around. Gaming, unfortunately, will have to be scaled back a tad.
It’s kind of an expected activity for bloggers these days. At the end of each year, we make a bunch of predictions for the coming year and review the ones we made last year. But since I didn’t actually make any predictions last year, there’s only one thing to do.
Make some predictions for the coming year, 2010.
I did consider writing my predictions in some form of abstract poetry like our friend Nostradamus (pictured right.) After all, anything written in an abstract and obtuse manner can be interpreted as 100 percent correct after the fact. But really, where’s the fun in that? And writing poetry isn’t really my forte — There once was a man called Enis…
So time to put on my silly hat and on to the prophetically predicted prognostications.
Prediction 1: The release date for Star Trek Online will be pushed back from the initial February date at least once, possibly twice.
Reason(s): Not many modern MMORPGs or their expansions actually make the first release date. There’s always more to do, and beta testing often reveals serious problem that need to be corrected.
Probability: 90%
Prediction 2: Blizzard will release Cataclysm late in the year around November, or early 2011 in February.
Reason(s): Based on past experience, these are the dates that Blizzard releases their expansions.
Probability: 80%
Prediction 3: The Star Wars: The Old Republic release date (the rumoured October 2010 date) will be massaged in a similar fashion as the date for STO, but I expect that EA-Bioware will announce and push for a November 2010 release.
Reason(s): EA are going to want a successful MMORPG on the streets sooner, rather than later. Since the rumours (apparently coming from EA) so far indicate a late 2010 release for SWTOR, I’m expecting an announcement sometime around June. The rumoured October date may be announced, but I expect that will be pushed back to late November in time for Christmas stockings.
Probability: 50%
Prediction 4:Corollary to Predictions 2 and 3: Blizzard will wait until EA-Bioware announce the release date for SWTOR and then announce the Cataclysm release date to be around the same time.
Reason(s): This appears to be a standard policy at Blizzard. For the last few years, when a threat to World of Warcraft’s dominance appears, real or perceived, Blizzard times their expansions or major announcements in an attempt to steal their competitors thunder. Some of this might just be unfortunate timing, but it’s happened a number of times. SWTOR is a very high profile game with a good chance to become at least number two in the MMORPG space and give Blizzard a run for their money. I’d be very surprised if Blizzard doesn’t try and slow them down, and releasing Cataclysm (which is effectively a reboot of WoW) will throw a huge monkey in Bioware’s wrench.
However, if Bioware don’t release late 2010 or early 2011, Blizzard will be forced to release Cataclysm well before SWTOR and that won’t have as much of a negative effect.
Probability: Very High if Bioware intend to release SWTOR in 2010.
Prediction 5: The micro-transaction model will be applied to more existing games.
Reason(s): A bit of a no-brainer this one. In some ways 2009 was the year of micro-transactions for Western MMORPGs with Dungeons and Dragons Online proving that the model not only works, but can re-invigorate a game that was previously struggling on the subscription model. I expect that we’ll see the DDO model adopted more and more for other games that haven’t been as successful as the developers have hoped and there will be some MMORPGs announced in development by Western developers intended to be micro-transaction based.
Probability: 100%
Prediction 6: In 2010 the MMORPG communities will be rocked by IP type lawsuits with far reaching implications.
Reason(s): I pretty much hate making this prediction, but based on the increasing number of patent troll lawsuits in other technological arenas, there’s a good chance that there will be one or more lawsuits in the coming year that will be won by the trolls, and may result in either the termination of a game or the radical modification of game play to comply with the IP requirements. In fact there is already a case going on initiated by a company called Worlds.com that has serious implications for MMORPG companies.
As an aside to this, it’s also possible that there will be at least one lawsuit between two MMORPG companies. This could be between two of the big players (which is less likely) or between one of the big boys, possibly EA or Blizzard, and one of the smaller players in the market.
Probability: 70%
Now for some long-shot predictions.
Prediction 7: Turbine will announce that they are going to move Asheron’s Call to a free to play, micro-transaction model. This will cause fuss in the AC community, but Turbine will sweeten the pot by creating a new client for the game.
Reason(s): AC is still being supported by Turbine with new content each month, so they haven’t consigned it to a maintenance status. Coupled with the increased interest on the tenth anniversary, Turbine will see an opportunity to reinvigorate the AC franchise.
On the other hand they may just announce Asheron’s Call 3.
Probability: 10%
Prediction 8: Blizzard will announce the name and details of their new MMORPG.
Reason(s): It’s entirely possible that Blizzard will announce the details of the new game sometime in 2010 simply because there’s a lot of interest. I’m giving it a lower chance of happening because the game isn’t expected until 2014ish and Blizzard don’t tend to make early announcements. It may happen in the coming year or two, but there’s a better chance of an announcement in 2012.
Probability: 10%
Prediction 9: SOE will announce Everquest 3.
Reason(s): There was some buzz a while back about SOE working on Everquest 3. It was apparently mentioned in the last chapter of a book on MMORPGs by someone at SOE. Personally, I’m skeptical. I’m not sure SOE will want to risk damaging the EQ2 population and diminishing that game.
That said however, there would definitely be a contingent at SOE pushing for a new EQ, and there’s a possibility that SOE will act (or has acted) on that push. EQ2 is now five years old, and it would take three or four years to develop EQ3. If SOE have been working on EQ3 for more than a year, there’s a good chance it will be announced this year for release sometime in 2013.
Probability: 20%
Prediction 10: EA will announce the next Ultima Online MMORPG.
Reason(s): This is a real long shot mind you, but there have been a few attempts at getting a sequel to Ultima Online. Ironically, the original sequel UO2 was canned because someone thought it would negatively impact on UO. Now, after 12 years of UO, a sequel won’t be nearly so bad for the game. You can be guaranteed someone at EA has thought about it.
However, given EA’s recent sackings, and their consolidation of their interests, it’s highly unlikely that such an announcement will be made this year. But I did want to make one really really way out prediction.
Probability: 1%
So there you have it. My Christmas-time predictions for the next 12 months. Fortunately I’m not taking or placing bets on these ham and turkey induced prophecies as things rarely turn out the way anyone expects. About the only thing I can guarantee will happen is that the MMORPG industry will continue to change and mature. But whatever happens, it should be interesting to watch.
It’s kind of an expected activity for bloggers these days. At the end of each year, we make a bunch of predictions for the coming year and review the ones we made last year. But since I didn’t actually make any predictions last year, there’s only one thing to do.