Jimquisition: SimShitty

[Treblaine]

See that's the thing about online DRM: with all its colossal failures, EA still has something to be happy about - the nullifying of piracy within the first few weeks.

But then there is no reason at all to not patch out the DRM as soon as rips appear on torrent sites.

DRM cannot serve any other anti-piracy purpose and the problem with piracy isn't in the first few weeks, it's from the long tail. The initial marketing splurge tends to draw people into stores and onto official websites. But as the weeks turn into months and years they find them on torrent sites more often.

If the publishers had more sense than pride, they'd put demos on torrent sites and artificially boost them to have highest seeds. It's still a demo but it's a compact file that downloads quickly, and the demo teases them by promising a chance to get the game legit with perks like transferable saves and maybe special achievements or in game treats like a personal thank-you from the devs for supporting the industry.

 

[Remus]

A thing just happened that I will henceforth call JIMCEPTION.
BWOOOOOONG
The idea of piracy has been planted. Now the idea could grow, spread to other, likeminded individuals.
I'm not saying that piracy is a good thing, but that just happened. I, as a gamer, would never resort to piracy, but as a gamer of limited means, have not contributed to EA's coffers in some time. No. My money will be going to 2k in about 2 weeks.

 

[jehk]

I will say that being offline should always be an option.

Why? Why can't there be games for people who can overcome these barriers? Why can't we have offline single player only games, online multiplayer only games, or games that do both?

 

[mfeff]

The biggest problem in this argument is that the free market generally continues to favour bullshit practices.

I was not around back then so I can't really say.

Sure you can. It's called history. There's enough data out there that you can reasonably draw a conclusion.

The thing is, people have been calling for a crash for over a decade, ever since someone drew some specious correlation between gaming in the pre-crash market and now, and they'll predict it for another 200 years if that's what it takes. Why? the same reason people predicted the end of the world in 2012. People love to be prognosticators.

Really liked this post, thought I would chime in and comment... having of watched the same video earlier this morning and coming away with the same conclusions.

Now, I haven't watched the whole video you embedded, but it already sort of comes off like Zeitgeist or Loose Change.

You didn't miss much.

While the creator is correct that ET didn't cause the crash alone, he's incorrect on multiple levels. The game itself was part of a handful of titles that did more damage through overspeculation than any consumer backlash could ever hope to do: Simply, the companies behind them thought they would sell better than they had any indicator of previously and gambled on what was then a much more expensive production process.

Very true, the notion comes back to inflationary business models. Borrowing money at X rate, and growing that invest at X+return, outpacing the debt. One of the biggest differences (having of been around during the bubble popping) was that like any market, there were competitive markets in place in which "video games" where emerging into. Specifically the toys and table top gaming. The PC market during this time frame was demonstrably not affected by the console issues suffered by Atari, Coleco, and some others. Coleco - COnnecticut LEather COmpany was clearly diversified. (Amiga) Commodore 64 was the place to be anyways if one was serious about the hobby. The PC remaining relatively stable or negligible during the 2-3 year dry patch. (Which as I recall... was about all it was).

Right off the top of my head there was a Dry Patch after Doom 3... probably think of some more.

Contrast this with the current gaming market. SimCity alone should tell you that they tend to plan for a minimalist sort of deal, underinvesting rather than overinsvesting. He brings up Pac-Man, granted to ***** about the programming. What he ignores is that the game actually sold quite well, and there was no consumer backlash. People ate the game up like people ate games up before. However, the game sold poorly in relation to number of copies manufactured, a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT THING that negates his thesis entirely.

It was this certainly. Played the beta/demo and having of seen it in action SimCity, is Sim's in a City neighborhood. It is it's own product that pulls at nostalgia more than it satisfies as a competent city builder. Reinstalling Sim City 4, for a cursory comparison (with the NAM) mod, reveals just how "feature lite" SimCity is. Reminds me a lot of this:

VS.

It's not a bad game, but as a comparison there really isn't one... they are not even close, totally different design focus and philosophy. The kinds of problems which SimCity has are very similar to those of Railroads... shortcut design which lead to systems colliding.

He then dishonestly treats the quality of gaming as though it plunged suddenly, when the truth is that was never the case.

Nope, that was never the case at all. 1984 had Gauntlet released for Atari 8 bit, which ostensibly IS the model in which all loot grinders follow. If anything what we see here is one of the examples of streamlining a more sophisticated product into the home market. For the video's argument to really stick the landing the major publishers would have to be releasing "Proteus" in the line up. Which they are clearly not.

Enough about that, though. I don't know when I'll finish the video. What I do know is that video games are big business now, and a big business that plays conservatively. Bad games tend to get put out because they will sell, as did SimCity. Even AVPCM was brought out in no small part due to the risk to the license if it didn't come out, and it was crap mostly because of issues of fraud from the looks of things. Hell, we see the same thing in movie franchises all the time, and nobody's serious about a film crash.

Looking at the Japanese system "to the rescue", again there really wasn't much in the way (and to this day not much in the way) of a PC market in Japan. Japan didn't really have an Atari bubble, simply by starting in an 8-bit era and having most of the leg work (that is the developer's copied US PC) out of the way.

The PS4 makes sense... in Japan, but Japan has little to no PC marketplace.

If the video wanted to make a case it is that their is an industry wide recession which is coupled to the double and triple dip recessions of world markets. We are in the crash... we are looking at it. I think he "realizes" that about mid way, and then attempts a slippery slope to suggest that EA and others will not climb out of the hole under the DLC and shovel-ware model.

Most the major players saw this coming miles away, which is one of the reasons there are "key" IP with DLC and shovel-ware models attached to them. It doubled as both a way to limit on disc content and sell a used copy owner material digitally, but additionally allowed for further investment into products that would of normally been abandoned for a sequel.

That said, it does not surprise me to see John Carmack looking into new peripherals as a direction for escaping the generic and stymied limitations of current systems. The vast majority of titles today are being developed using off the shelf engines and design.

The video also try's to make a case for "Valve" doing everything right which is extremely debatable, but ultimately reinforces the original situation... PC never went away coupled with many of Valve products riding on the CS or derivative engine which is a rebuild or re-imagining of the Quake engine, which is taught at the University level.

What "I" suspect is really happening is a sharing of patents/technology between Micro$lop and $ony for the purposes of API to utilize 6-8 core threading on the Sony system as well as the kinect architecture. In exchange Sony lets Microsoft have Blu-Ray. Basically these consoles will be little more than dressed up HTPCs branded by their perspective leash holders and marketed/trimmed in such a way as they will resemble "rental" units, like a cable box, or a leased car.

And why not? Count how many people one knows and then count how many "out of" those people who actually "own" their car... out right.

Video gaming as a hobby on the low end of the economic scale "needs" to be priced accordingly to keep the rising cost affordable and competitive with the middle and upper middle class "PC". It wouldn't surprise me if the newer systems have "rentals" built into them and all sorts of other parasitic "nominal cost" features.

Additionally there is simply no "replacement" for the hobby as it stands today.

There is little to no "toy" market which isn't already tied into games, there is no "car" market without including the vast majority of lien and lease mobiles, there are major pullbacks in most physical mediums and hobbies, most of which are price gated anyways, which is what drove the home consumer electronics in the first place.

If the hand held phones had to be out-n-out purchased, that market would be where tumble weeds gathered.

To wax nostalgic Origin (games) where known for being "upgrade" titles, that is one "upgraded" one's PC to play it... those days are all but gone, gone and forgotten.

It's not just the console manufacturers scratching their heads but Nvidia and AMD are also questioning the future.

There is simply little to no market for 1000 dollar video cards when there are no titles that come close to utilizing 1000 dollar video cards... such as the GTX Titan. (which will SLi, unfortunately SimCity does not support that feature). Nice! =D

I guess I end on the saying "prepare to be bored". It's not just video games, a lot of industries (entertainment proper is no exception) is in a gulf of saturation, and diminishing returns (parasitic infestation of small developers).

Leading to more reserved projects which are financially manageable. The way to move forward is to get into a lend-lease-debt model for the majority of consumer. It would not surprise me in the slightest to see the new consoles to have "direct lease" agreements at launch.

2c anyways... Nice post again BTW.

 

[Sir Shockwave]

Seeing this makes me very apprehensive for how Heart of the Swarm and more to the point Command & Conquer (the upcoming F2P version) are going to turn out. We refuse to get our hopes up for either of them given Company track records.

(Fortunately, Play.Com has delayed my copy of HOTS, so I may be able to cancel if things turn into another Diablo III X3)

Also, inb4 real sympathizers show up.

 

[Costia]

Spoiler

There is no 'free market' as long as copyright continues to exist.

Second that notion. In the age where ideas are shared ubiquitously across the world copyrights seem arcane at best. Not exclusively owning an idea will not cause an artist to starve. In fact it will protect them and allow them to always be able to use their idea without fear of a company telling them they do not own their own creations. Creative people do not have trouble finding work because they are valued for their creativity and not their intellectual property.

Sure they will be valued and praised and given great jobs, but unfortunately they wont get paid.
Please describe me how an artist is going to get paid if his creations are available for everyone for free. Where is the money to pay them will be coming from? Do you expect them to live on donations?
And why restrict this only to copyrights? Being an artist is a job like any other. Everyone should be doing their jobs for free and relying on the praise and social value they get from a job well done.

Yes they should rely on donations......what did you expect me to back down? People can broker resources when they realize the value of their product. There are plenty of people on crowd funding, you-tube, blip, and the internet in general that make a decent living off of donations. Because the reward motivation system for human creativity is at its peek when a person is working for the sake of being creative. Rewards actually diminish the overall product when profit becomes the objective. Capitalism works up to a point but it also needs to be reigned in or only the wealthy will have creative freedom.

Did you ever live off donations? It's really nice of you to suggest other's should live like that. I suggest you try it yourself and see how it goes.
Not only corporations are greedy. People are greedy too. If you can get something for free, most people won't donate. Just look at Wikipedia. Everyone appreciates him, everybody likes Wikipedia and values the effort. Still, 99.9% don't donate a cent. The guy needs to beg for money to keep that service up and running.
I think artists should get paid. They shouldn't need to beg for money to buy food and pay their rent.
Another thing is reliability. When artists are getting paid for a job, they get paid even if the product fails. Remember that making a game is not a one man opertaion. An artist might invest 3-5 years of his life to make assets for a game, and then get nothing from donations because the programmer or story writer screwed up or people simply didn't like the game.
And it seems you ignored the second part. why only artists?

 

[Costia]

Spoiler

There is no 'free market' as long as copyright continues to exist.

Second that notion. In the age where ideas are shared ubiquitously across the world copyrights seem arcane at best. Not exclusively owning an idea will not cause an artist to starve. In fact it will protect them and allow them to always be able to use their idea without fear of a company telling them they do not own their own creations. Creative people do not have trouble finding work because they are valued for their creativity and not their intellectual property.

Sure they will be valued and praised and given great jobs, but unfortunately they wont get paid.
Please describe me how an artist is going to get paid if his creations are available for everyone for free. Where is the money to pay them will be coming from? Do you expect them to live on donations?
And why restrict this only to copyrights? Being an artist is a job like any other. Everyone should be doing their jobs for free and relying on the praise and social value they get from a job well done.

1. Jobs of any kind are not actually connected to survival. That we humans have a fetish for this kind of thing, is our own problem a purely mental one at that.

2. The artist is in possession of a skill, the skill is valuable because not everyone has it. The productions requiring said skill were never the thing of value as far as the artist was concerned, his or her skill was.
An artist who thinks that his or her productions are the thing to monetize is simply doing it wrong. It is not the job of consumers of his or her productions (Commodities that are subject to mass production.) to shield him or her from this by kneecapping themselves.

I don't quite understand you.
The current model is:
Artist creates an asset.
Asset is used to make a product.
Consumer pays for product.
Producer gets money.
Producer pays artist for the application of his skill.

In this scenario consumer doesn't pay for the product. So although I agree that the artist's skill is valuable, i see no way the producer can pay the artist.

Could you describe your model?

 

[dubious_wolf]

So it's mostly EA that puts this shit together.... What are the options for class action suits?

 

[Yoshi Dragon]

You brought up diablo 3, it's a good example.
After a few days of server troubles it became stable and sold 12 million copies (source: http://diablo.somepage.com/news/1489-activision-blizzard-q4-2012-earnings-report)
I expect the same to happen here. After the rage-storm is over, people will buy it and enjoy it.

And saying that maxis\EA did this on purpose sounds ridiculous to me. Not only they are loosing money, but they are also hurting their brand, which is in trouble as it is. It's Maxis's first "MMO" title, and i don't think that blizzard was willing to share their secrets.
They screwed up. Badly. But saying that they don't care is an exaggeration.
I don't like always online DRM either, but I am not going to make stuff up to justify my opinion.

let me tell you a little story about a game called torchlight 2
when it first game out everybody in the world who had prebought it was downloading it all pretty much at the second they could. almost noone could use multiplayer because the servers were jammed and crashed. the company that released it got up early got on their forums said sorry our bad we're fixing it and fixed it within 24 to 48 hours.

if a small company like that can do it then larger companies can do it too. sure downloads i can excuse when everone in the world is trying to download your game at the same time noones gonna get the file very fast. but always online servers... welll you should know a little something about the demand thats gonna be placed on your servers and have as many as needed to carry the capacity from day 1. there is no excuse for not doing that.

 

[Kyyshrrk]

While I agree the video is accurate, I still firmly believe that in this case the game is only good to a cursory inspection. If someone were to point out that there are key problems with the engine, having everyone else complaining about the DRM would works very well to drown them out. Having service issues works well to complicate any in-depth testing of possible faults.

I see that Simcity is fun. I see that it looks great. I also see little things poking up that shouldn't be and the only satisfactory answer is that it looks like problems were left in to be later "fixed" by DLC.

Is it really that hard to imagine that EA/Maxis may have been well aware of likelihood of shit-storm and instead chose to cause it and look like an idiot as opposed to putting out a game with broken core functionality?

 

[PainInTheAssInternet]

I will say that being offline should always be an option.

Why? Why can't there be games for people who can overcome these barriers? Why can't we have offline single player only games, online multiplayer only games, or games that do both?

Multiplayer exists and it's not going anywhere, so the barriers have been beaten. But even for those games, say COD, it is entirely reliant on those two factors. They are the death-nail in the longevity of the game. For example, I play Sim City 4. That would be impossible if it was mandated to be online all the time. Not enough people play it to justify the server costs and EA would have shut it down anyways so we would be forced to buy their new product. In fact, that's another barrier.

Another thing I haven't heard anyone talk about in terms of online play is the cost. Even those with connection may run into a wall. If they are on for hours at a time for every game, it adds up in bills. What if you don't want to pay for internet in the first place or cannot have access to it? A friend of mine has a doctor for a father, who uses up all the internet. She can't use it because her father says so. EA is saying that she can go suck it because she doesn't have internet.

So thus far, there are 5 barriers I can think of

1. Reliable, active servers
2. Player interest
3. Corporate interests
4. Cost
5. Internet connectivity

 

[Catrixa]

...I have a feeling that EA isn't afraid of us--they just don't care. This may lead to their downfall, but in the mean time, they're getting sales, and that's what matters. Yeah, it's short-term gains with potential long-term consequences, but I think EA is still testing the waters for the absolute minimum amount of customer service for maximum profit. At some point, it'll break, but if EA is lucky, some other company will have earned our ire by then. Since gamers tend to only be pissed off at one company at a time, EA still has a chance to scoot by unscathed. That, and how much does our angry yelling actually affect game sales? 'Cause if it's "not a lot," we need to find some way to get these messages to everyone.

 

[aba1]

To be honest if it is online only I don't buy it. I get that MMO's and such have to be online and that makes sense but for the most part if it is online only I won't touch it. If the multiplayer is online it might as well not be there at all for me online multiplayer is just not nearly as much fun for me and would much rather play local.

 

[Costia]

Spoiler

You brought up diablo 3, it's a good example.
After a few days of server troubles it became stable and sold 12 million copies (source: http://diablo.somepage.com/news/1489-activision-blizzard-q4-2012-earnings-report)
I expect the same to happen here. After the rage-storm is over, people will buy it and enjoy it.

And saying that maxis\EA did this on purpose sounds ridiculous to me. Not only they are loosing money, but they are also hurting their brand, which is in trouble as it is. It's Maxis's first "MMO" title, and i don't think that blizzard was willing to share their secrets.
They screwed up. Badly. But saying that they don't care is an exaggeration.
I don't like always online DRM either, but I am not going to make stuff up to justify my opinion.

let me tell you a little story about a game called torchlight 2
when it first game out everybody in the world who had prebought it was downloading it all pretty much at the second they could. almost noone could use multiplayer because the servers were jammed and crashed. the company that released it got up early got on their forums said sorry our bad we're fixing it and fixed it within 24 to 48 hours.

if a small company like that can do it then larger companies can do it too. sure downloads i can excuse when everone in the world is trying to download your game at the same time noones gonna get the file very fast. but always online servers... welll you should know a little something about the demand thats gonna be placed on your servers and have as many as needed to carry the capacity from day 1. there is no excuse for not doing that.

You are mixing 2 different issues:
1) the time it takes them to fix it: There is a significant difference between Torchlight and Simcity. The amount of players. And I bet the complexity of SimCity is much greater than of Torchlight. I don't think that they are just sitting there taking their time to fix it. It's hard. It will take time. Like I said, they screwed up. And now they are trying to fix it as fast as they can.
2) The necessity of always online DRM: I think they should have separated the DRM from the game, so they could remove it if necessary. But their design was such that the DRM is part of the game. I think it's bad for many reasons. Not being able to play at the first week of launch is not one of them.
Their excuse to putting it there is piracy. And if you look at the bottom lone, at how much money they are going to make, they are probably going to make more with this DRM than what they would have gotten without it, even with all the rage that you see now. So for them it makes a lot of sense to use it.

 

[Rad Party God]

The thing is, Jim, that even if we wanted to pirate the game (*wich I don't condone in any way...), it would practically be impossible, due to it functioning as a client/server game, akin to an MMO or Diablo 3, making it rather difficult, if not impossible without having to entirely need to emulate the entire infrasctructure of EA's servers.

I love MMO's and I love online games in general, but this is the kind of BS I just can't stand, transforming SP games into online games and then selling a completely disfunctional game, I think this kind of BS need even more backlash than a shitty, but [small]barely[/small] functional game (*cough*A:CM*cough*).

[small]*Please, don't red flag me again [/small]

 

[direkiller]

I would say consumers are already lashing out at some practices.

DeadSpace 3 failed to meet it's first week sales expectations by an ass load
to the point EA started backpedaling about micro-transactions speech

UbiSoft switched to a 1 time activation&uplay account for FarCry 3 rather then there always on-line never working cloud-save bullshit. (and removed always online from everything but settlers 7)

 

[r_phix]

There is also an argument that you didn't elaborate while you presented the old "Sim City" cover...
But consumers seam to have a problem thinking in long term... I mean... I can still play the old Sim City on my PC if I want. But as soon as EA will stop the servers... well... too bad for everyone and thank you for the 60 dollars !

This is a mainly solo game, so this is not acceptable !

Before you paid for the right to play more or less indefinitely (more or less, because of course, obsolescence exist in computer development). Now, you pay the same amount of money for something you can be prevented to play whenever the publisher will decide. Could be next year for instance, if EA decide it... Why not ?

So consumer accepted the fact that the right to play whenever you want, for as long as you want, was replaced by the right to follow the decision that are taken abroad... The same difference between having a DVD or a copy on your hard drive, and watching a streaming version... you are dependent of the website availability if you want to organize a movie night !

Oh, and by the way !
I am living in New Zealand, and here, unlimited internet is non existent. I am paying my internet gigabyte by gigabyte... So the people arguing that "you can always be online bla bla bla" are just ignorants who take for granted what they have ! First world problem...

 

[Aikayai]

Was looking forward to this episode, was not disappointed.

On a note of EA's free game as an apology, this was intentional from the start. The bigger your Origin library, the more dedicated you have to be to the service. If you need proof, see what Valve did with the DOTA2 release and tell me that the user base didn't increase.

 

[Hellfireboy]

What is really the most amazing thing about this is that EA, in an effort to stop piracy, has in fact made piracy the most convenient method of playing the game. Brilliant!! Actually you should all go to Amazon and look at the positive reviews of the game. Yes, the positive ones. They're amazing.