The real question is, for all companies that try to control access to even single user software via online authorization systems, how wise does this look now?
I'm still playing Atari 2600 games, decades later, because they still work. Tying down use to a single-point-of-failure-authorization-system guarantees that your investment in creative works has a short shelf life. But most gamers know at least what the original Super Mario Bros theme song sounds like as coming from an NES.
guarantees that your investment in creative works has a short shelf life
Talk to Thomas if you want actual numbers, but the overwhelming majority of AAA games have fairly predictable sales curves with a peak window measured in weeks or, in some cases, days. See also books, movies, music, etc.
Evergreen content is highly anomalous in creative industries.
> the overwhelming majority of AAA games have fairly predictable sales curves with a peak window measured in weeks or, in some cases, days
Yep, big games are horrendously front-loaded and with very short legs (you can see that if you follow sales threads at e.g. Neogaf).
This is why DRMs which technically "fail" (they fall in, say, 2 weeks) have performed admirably, and as asked/required: for two weeks, where 90% of the game's sales happen, pirated games were not competition.
This is why I can only shake my head in disbelief when people claim DRMs fail as a DRM finally gets cracked 1 month after a game release: as far as publishers are concerned, a DRM which lasted 4~5 weeks has performed way beyond the call of duty, and you can be sure their next game will be using the same breed of DRM.
AMA video game researcher (Computer Science). I can confirm the truth of this, but I don't have any hard sources right now.
If a AAA title doesn't move 1 million copies in opening week, the studio is going to be in trouble either directly financially, or with the publisher (see: Mirror's Edge).
Everyone is fully aware of the ridiculousness of where the market is right now.
I bet game developers hate this effect, years of development time to effectively try and market a game into peoples hands in the first couple of weeks whether they like it or not.
This I much prefer the path many MMO's have taken or a game like TF2, continue to add over time to keep a solid value proposition for years to come rather than the 2 weeks after it comes out.
I think this is sort of what I'm getting at. The Game industry is moving rapidly to copy the Movie industry. Years of work, tens of millions of dollars, splashy and expensive ad campaign all culminating in a couple weeks' worth of sales and the bargain bin/used game box/forgotten 3 months later. The vast majority of which barely break even with production costs.
Old game mags used to have a metric called "replayability". Games with poor re-playability were dinged by the gaming press as offering low-value for the dollar to the gamer. I'm just wondering if the Movie style approach offers similar low-value for the dollar for the game makers in terms of the amount of money required to advertise to gamers for every AAA title that comes out the door, only to throw all that work away next month. It's almost like the industry is pumping out Mandalas, then sweeping them away.
Heck Mega Man (Rock Man) has had 7 or 8 games with virtually the same artwork (the most expensive part of game production). A modern developer might look at this and say "we'll just release a MegaMan game and every year release more enemies with more stages, weapons and bosses that just figure into the main release."
(I'm thinking Mega Man of course because I'm in the process of replaying through the series again and Capcom is losing millions from the PSN nonsense).
I guess what I'm rambling about is that there has to be a better way for the studios and the gamers to find better value in terms of longevity on both the development costs and the purchase price of the games -- and tying the games to a transient online auth system isn't going to do it.
One issue is perception of value. It's a lot easier to monetise a brand new game over one which is being updated or added to.
To everyone except hardcore gamers the current release method is probably very tiring, as in I might pick up a new game and play it for a few months at the rate I play games. In that time so many of these big titles would have come out.
It also means once these releases drop off best seller lists they quickly become unloved. I've seen big bugs and game mechanics issue that just never get fixed I guess because most of the sales have already happened.
The #1 reason companies use online authorization is because people actually pay for it.
Sony is all-too-familiar with people pirating games on their consoles. Online authorization eliminates huge swaths of pirates.
Most consumers aren't thinking about 10 years from now when they buy. They're thinking about getting their dopamine fix RIGHT NOW. And online authorization makes them give up their CC# to get it.
I've always wondered how Sony measures these things. What do they use to show that it actually stops piracy (I'm sure it can slow it down a bit) for a lot of people, and that those people then turn into customers? How do they control for things like "popular game" vs. "unpopular game", how do they control for pirates who try the game then buy?
How many people go through the time and effort to mod their console just to 'try before they buy?' There may be a handful, but this isn't PC gaming we're talking about here.
It's not hard at all to circumvent this, I doubt that it "eliminates huge swaths of pirates". Does Microsoft's Windows activation scheme stop people from pirating Windows? I don't think it had any significant effect, people just download images that have activation already patched out.
In Microsoft's case, their main concern is OEM piracy, and the activation system diminishes the quality of the pirated product sold to the unwitting consumer.
And anecdotally, the activation has pretty much stopped casual sneakerware piracy. People don't loan out their Windows CDs like they used to.
Microsoft Activation puts enough down to try and convert more sales without getting in the way to much of legit customers. I think it's a good compromise, only other thing I would do maybe is try and identify pirates and try and get them to pay say $50 or something, they aren't going to pay the full windows price but I think a lot would pay a lower amount that aren't paying at all at the moment.
I will no longer buy creative software that has an activation system that hasn't been fully cracked. I've been bit by problems activating legitimately purchased Sony software (I started as a Sonic Foundry customer) and being unable to work on my music. I don't want to find that, 10 years from now, I can't go back and remix an old song because the activation system is offline.
None of the consoles are using online authorization to ensure game playability. The figures peg consoles that go online to be about 30%, that means the majority will never see an internet connection.
Games like those published by Ubisoft do this on PC, and when it goes down, they say "well, if only you guys didn't pirate our games all the time, we wouldn't have to abuse you this way." And, to be honest, they have a point, because PC game piracy is out of control.
No-one thinks online authorization is great. It pisses off legitimate customers and it's another service you have to run. It's not like the publishers are really getting anything tangible out of it bar the hope that their games won't be pirated to all hell (they will be).
I would like it if games/consoles had a kill switch on them, so that after x years they no longer require an authorization in case the service goes away, but I highly doubt that will happen.
> And, to be honest, they have a point, because PC game piracy is out of control.
No, they do not have a point. I bought Settlers 7, shortly after release, for full price. I couldn't play it. My internet connection at the time would "blip" every ten minutes or so, it would go down for a couple of seconds and come back up. Every time this happened I got kicked out of my game.
The next Ubisoft game that came out, I pirated. Why? Because the pirated version of Settlers 7 /works/. If I'm paying something, I expect a better experience than I would get if I didn't pay. To me, that seems like a fairly basic tenet of economics.
Many game companies "get it". Valve for example provide me with unending streams of new content for games I have paid for, even going as far as giving me a free copy of Portal 2. Thanks Valve! You win money.
...and what do you propose? Unfortunately for the PC games industry, the number of gamers willing to pay for games is not very high.
Companies like Epic have basically gone out on the record and said "we stopped supporting PC because of piracy." If you were a publisher, what would you do? There are precious few successes of games without DRM, and remember that all Steam games are also DRM'd.
I participated in the launch event and earned the maximum number of potatoes, for which I received Portal 2, giftable copies of all the other games they've made (too numerous to list from memory), and a little flag for my robot in Portal 2 co-op.
How does one politely ask, what are you talking about?
My PS3 has been working fine since the PSN went offline. Actually, it's been disconnected from the internet (for unrelated reasons) since long before that. All my games play fine. All my blu-ray discs play fine. I have no reason to suspect that they will not continue to work decades from now should I choose to keep them that long.
Do they see this as a problem? The most successful 8 and 16 bit game companies have been finding ways to capitalize on their past library on all the current platforms. They'd much rather have you pay for a Virtual Console than plug in your 25 year old hardware and have a go.
I think it's a great service, too. I was just pointing out that older games not working might be seen as mildly helpful by the game companies, rather than as a problem. I'm glad they still make games available in modern forms, but I do value the ability to play in emulators.
You know what? I was born after the 8/16 bit era (well, born just as the 16 bit was closing). My choices for playing these games are: ebay, emulators, and virtual consoles.
ebay can get too expensive REALLY quickly.
emulators are legal, but the games I would play on them are definitely pirated. That, and I have to deal with a control scheme the game wasn't designed to be played on.
virtual consoles offer pretty much the exact experience as the real thing, and they're affordable.
So, yeah, I'd much rather pay for a Virtual Console than go out and buy hardware which is older than me.
Some people really value the original experience, and like to have the old hardware. Though the original Sega, Atari and Nintendo consoles and the c64 hold a special place in my heart, I'd rather fire up a emulator or buy an iPod version at this point, too.
Comments
The real question is, for all companies that try to control access to even single user software via online authorization systems, how wise does this look now?
I'm still playing Atari 2600 games, decades later, because they still work. Tying down use to a single-point-of-failure-authorization-system guarantees that your investment in creative works has a short shelf life. But most gamers know at least what the original Super Mario Bros theme song sounds like as coming from an NES.
guarantees that your investment in creative works has a short shelf life
Talk to Thomas if you want actual numbers, but the overwhelming majority of AAA games have fairly predictable sales curves with a peak window measured in weeks or, in some cases, days. See also books, movies, music, etc.
Evergreen content is highly anomalous in creative industries.
> the overwhelming majority of AAA games have fairly predictable sales curves with a peak window measured in weeks or, in some cases, days
Yep, big games are horrendously front-loaded and with very short legs (you can see that if you follow sales threads at e.g. Neogaf).
This is why DRMs which technically "fail" (they fall in, say, 2 weeks) have performed admirably, and as asked/required: for two weeks, where 90% of the game's sales happen, pirated games were not competition.
This is why I can only shake my head in disbelief when people claim DRMs fail as a DRM finally gets cracked 1 month after a game release: as far as publishers are concerned, a DRM which lasted 4~5 weeks has performed way beyond the call of duty, and you can be sure their next game will be using the same breed of DRM.
AMA video game researcher (Computer Science). I can confirm the truth of this, but I don't have any hard sources right now.
If a AAA title doesn't move 1 million copies in opening week, the studio is going to be in trouble either directly financially, or with the publisher (see: Mirror's Edge).
Everyone is fully aware of the ridiculousness of where the market is right now.
I bet game developers hate this effect, years of development time to effectively try and market a game into peoples hands in the first couple of weeks whether they like it or not.
This I much prefer the path many MMO's have taken or a game like TF2, continue to add over time to keep a solid value proposition for years to come rather than the 2 weeks after it comes out.
I think this is sort of what I'm getting at. The Game industry is moving rapidly to copy the Movie industry. Years of work, tens of millions of dollars, splashy and expensive ad campaign all culminating in a couple weeks' worth of sales and the bargain bin/used game box/forgotten 3 months later. The vast majority of which barely break even with production costs.
Old game mags used to have a metric called "replayability". Games with poor re-playability were dinged by the gaming press as offering low-value for the dollar to the gamer. I'm just wondering if the Movie style approach offers similar low-value for the dollar for the game makers in terms of the amount of money required to advertise to gamers for every AAA title that comes out the door, only to throw all that work away next month. It's almost like the industry is pumping out Mandalas, then sweeping them away.
Heck Mega Man (Rock Man) has had 7 or 8 games with virtually the same artwork (the most expensive part of game production). A modern developer might look at this and say "we'll just release a MegaMan game and every year release more enemies with more stages, weapons and bosses that just figure into the main release."
(I'm thinking Mega Man of course because I'm in the process of replaying through the series again and Capcom is losing millions from the PSN nonsense).
I guess what I'm rambling about is that there has to be a better way for the studios and the gamers to find better value in terms of longevity on both the development costs and the purchase price of the games -- and tying the games to a transient online auth system isn't going to do it.
One issue is perception of value. It's a lot easier to monetise a brand new game over one which is being updated or added to.
To everyone except hardcore gamers the current release method is probably very tiring, as in I might pick up a new game and play it for a few months at the rate I play games. In that time so many of these big titles would have come out.
It also means once these releases drop off best seller lists they quickly become unloved. I've seen big bugs and game mechanics issue that just never get fixed I guess because most of the sales have already happened.
The #1 reason companies use online authorization is because people actually pay for it.
Sony is all-too-familiar with people pirating games on their consoles. Online authorization eliminates huge swaths of pirates.
Most consumers aren't thinking about 10 years from now when they buy. They're thinking about getting their dopamine fix RIGHT NOW. And online authorization makes them give up their CC# to get it.
I've always wondered how Sony measures these things. What do they use to show that it actually stops piracy (I'm sure it can slow it down a bit) for a lot of people, and that those people then turn into customers? How do they control for things like "popular game" vs. "unpopular game", how do they control for pirates who try the game then buy?
How many people go through the time and effort to mod their console just to 'try before they buy?' There may be a handful, but this isn't PC gaming we're talking about here.
It's not hard at all to circumvent this, I doubt that it "eliminates huge swaths of pirates". Does Microsoft's Windows activation scheme stop people from pirating Windows? I don't think it had any significant effect, people just download images that have activation already patched out.
In Microsoft's case, their main concern is OEM piracy, and the activation system diminishes the quality of the pirated product sold to the unwitting consumer.
And anecdotally, the activation has pretty much stopped casual sneakerware piracy. People don't loan out their Windows CDs like they used to.
Microsoft Activation puts enough down to try and convert more sales without getting in the way to much of legit customers. I think it's a good compromise, only other thing I would do maybe is try and identify pirates and try and get them to pay say $50 or something, they aren't going to pay the full windows price but I think a lot would pay a lower amount that aren't paying at all at the moment.
I will no longer buy creative software that has an activation system that hasn't been fully cracked. I've been bit by problems activating legitimately purchased Sony software (I started as a Sonic Foundry customer) and being unable to work on my music. I don't want to find that, 10 years from now, I can't go back and remix an old song because the activation system is offline.
None of the consoles are using online authorization to ensure game playability. The figures peg consoles that go online to be about 30%, that means the majority will never see an internet connection.
Games like those published by Ubisoft do this on PC, and when it goes down, they say "well, if only you guys didn't pirate our games all the time, we wouldn't have to abuse you this way." And, to be honest, they have a point, because PC game piracy is out of control.
No-one thinks online authorization is great. It pisses off legitimate customers and it's another service you have to run. It's not like the publishers are really getting anything tangible out of it bar the hope that their games won't be pirated to all hell (they will be).
I would like it if games/consoles had a kill switch on them, so that after x years they no longer require an authorization in case the service goes away, but I highly doubt that will happen.
> And, to be honest, they have a point, because PC game piracy is out of control.
No, they do not have a point. I bought Settlers 7, shortly after release, for full price. I couldn't play it. My internet connection at the time would "blip" every ten minutes or so, it would go down for a couple of seconds and come back up. Every time this happened I got kicked out of my game.
The next Ubisoft game that came out, I pirated. Why? Because the pirated version of Settlers 7 /works/. If I'm paying something, I expect a better experience than I would get if I didn't pay. To me, that seems like a fairly basic tenet of economics.
Many game companies "get it". Valve for example provide me with unending streams of new content for games I have paid for, even going as far as giving me a free copy of Portal 2. Thanks Valve! You win money.
...and what do you propose? Unfortunately for the PC games industry, the number of gamers willing to pay for games is not very high.
Companies like Epic have basically gone out on the record and said "we stopped supporting PC because of piracy." If you were a publisher, what would you do? There are precious few successes of games without DRM, and remember that all Steam games are also DRM'd.
Why did they give you a free copy of Portal 2? Do you own so many of their games?
I participated in the launch event and earned the maximum number of potatoes, for which I received Portal 2, giftable copies of all the other games they've made (too numerous to list from memory), and a little flag for my robot in Portal 2 co-op.
I think he's referring to how if you buy Portal 2 on the PS3, Valve gives you a free copy of it for PC.
Nope (although I have that one too!), see my reply above.
There are titles on the PS3 that won't work unless you're connected to PSN.
I /think/ there are 360 titles that do this, at least to some content.
It's not something that the console makers do themselves.
[edit, spelling]
It's apparently two titles that were download only. Not games that came on discs, which would be the appropriate comparison for older consoles.
How does one politely ask, what are you talking about?
My PS3 has been working fine since the PSN went offline. Actually, it's been disconnected from the internet (for unrelated reasons) since long before that. All my games play fine. All my blu-ray discs play fine. I have no reason to suspect that they will not continue to work decades from now should I choose to keep them that long.
http://kotaku.com/5794533/playstation-outage-makes-some-capc...
I think he's referring to this item from earlier in the week:
"This is What Irony Tastes Like: Capcom and the PSN Outage" http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2539591
Oh, so a downloaded game doesn't work. Well, if we're to compare apples to apples, the Atari 2600 online store has been offline for a while, too.
But when the iTunes store is down, I can still play Angry Birds and Splinter Cell, to make a much more appropriate comparison.
Do they see this as a problem? The most successful 8 and 16 bit game companies have been finding ways to capitalize on their past library on all the current platforms. They'd much rather have you pay for a Virtual Console than plug in your 25 year old hardware and have a go.
You know what, often times I'd rather pay for a Virtual Console than plug in my 25 year old hardware.
I think it's a great service, too. I was just pointing out that older games not working might be seen as mildly helpful by the game companies, rather than as a problem. I'm glad they still make games available in modern forms, but I do value the ability to play in emulators.
You know what? I was born after the 8/16 bit era (well, born just as the 16 bit was closing). My choices for playing these games are: ebay, emulators, and virtual consoles.
ebay can get too expensive REALLY quickly. emulators are legal, but the games I would play on them are definitely pirated. That, and I have to deal with a control scheme the game wasn't designed to be played on. virtual consoles offer pretty much the exact experience as the real thing, and they're affordable.
So, yeah, I'd much rather pay for a Virtual Console than go out and buy hardware which is older than me.
Some people really value the original experience, and like to have the old hardware. Though the original Sega, Atari and Nintendo consoles and the c64 hold a special place in my heart, I'd rather fire up a emulator or buy an iPod version at this point, too.