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[reprinted from...]
There are some technologies that sound amazing and never quite reach their potential. Flying cars for the masses, affordable 100MB/s broadband for everyone, augmented reality using ultra thin transparent glasses, autonomous robots; the list frankly goes on forever. Today I'd like to discuss one that seems to be a hot topic now but, like many crazy science fiction ideas, is probably jumping the gun a little.
I am purposely using the term "cloud" in a vague sense here. I am referring to Cloud as it stands for interactive media, not distributed computing or web storage. Cloud for many suits in gaming is becoming the solution to piracy, but at the cost of crippling an otherwise enjoyable experience.
 Cloud gaming is taking two steps back and bring old words like "mainframe" back into the picture. Many of you reading this article are probably too young to even know or care what a mainframe and terminal are but it's important to know your roots as we come full circle into the future.
It's not unfair to make a direct correlation of mainframe workstations to the idea of a server-client architecture used in many first-person shooter games today. Though much older shooters like Quake 3 and Tribes used very light weight clients, more similar to that of a terminal, modern shooters are opting for less players (generally 4-8 player) with more heavy-weight clients. The reasons for this are to help simplify physics simulations across machines and reduce a significant amount of prediction code required for machines to remain synchronized. Though the server is still working just as hard as it ever did, clients are no longer simply interpolating fixed states given to them by the server, they are now running the actual simulation and verifying their states with the server.
The different approaches are an important distinction. Old mainframes would quite literally do all the work, while the terminals (clients) would be nothing more than a way to generate the display; an empty rendering shell. It sounds absurd today but this was actually a cost savings in a time when the processing unit (in the mainframe) was so expensive that it was cheaper to simply buy an array of displays and keyboards than giving each employee their own PC. To be honest, the idea of a Personal Computer didn't even exist at the start of mainframe computing.
Here we are, in the future and it seems that progress has taken us back to the primordial era of computing. Games like Diablo III and the latest Sim City have attempted to bypass the hackers by controlling the system, controlling the distribution of their product. There is one fundamental problem to this design that was resolved by the invention of Personal Computing; there are a lot more of us than there are of them. There are over a billion PCs in use worldwide and the expectation is that this number will nearly double by 2014. No single entity can possibly manage this. There is a reason why large companies have tiers of management and governments have branches and tiers and departments that all split into a massive hierarchy of people looking after other people. There is efficiency to be had, by letting individuals think for themselves.
As a side effect of games like Diablo and Sim City trying to control the flow of data they have crippled their games. Most reviews are summed up with, "It plays great! ... When it works," following up with a laundry list of issues from stuttering gameplay to long pauses from connection issues. I have no doubt that PC gaming as we know it and even console gaming will eventually disappear and games as a service will be in full effect. We as gamers will slowly give up our freedoms in the way we want to play games as publishers push toward total control. It will happen because mass consumers will allow it.
We will all settle for pixelated adaptively sampled video streams and intermittent unresponsive controls as we stumble our way to better broadband over the next 20+ years. We will all be sitting in queues and browsing the web, waiting to play the experience that we actually sat down on our couch or in front of our PC to play. We will do it, and we will tell ourselves that it's okay because of insignificant perks like our saved game files will reside on a server that does not belong to us and can be taken from us. We will agree to the EULA that forfeits our rights to raise concern and seek reparation when those servers are finally gone and that game no longer exists. We will settle, we will submit, we will obey. It's only a matter of time.
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-No DRM!
-Doesn't give your computer an anal probe / rootkit!
-Doesn't require an online connection!
-Will actually work as advertised on release day!
There is real value to solving those problems and entire new worlds for games and software to live in that aren't possible by using a single computer alone. Going in the exact opposite direction doesn't really help open those doors.
Lifting this over to the PC market, you need a system delivering "enough" content watermarked and a special build executable per customer. Then you don't need an always on server component, just the right update for the right customer and a complex watermarking process. Its basically some evolutionary new technology thats missing here.
Surely, this system isn't fool proof, but if it takes 2 month to get rid of the watermarks and trying to make an universal update work it could be enough to make it trough the high volume sales weeks.
This is not just a developer issue though, this is also a governmental issue to ensure that the infrastructure is in place to handle the modern needs of the internet.
So unless you got your copy for free as a review copy or from a friend, you appear to be a part of the problem.
It doesnt matter to EA that there games are broken or bad if everyone keeps buying them. Given that the horrendous problems of getting this game up and running have been caused by it selling far in excess of what EA expected I see little to no motivation for them to stop abusing their customers.
You cant win over a company when nobodies bothering to fight them in the first place.
Let's see what this launch damaged.
1) EA's credibility with players.
2) Maxis's credibility with players.
3) Origin's credibility - which, I note, EA is banking pretty heavily on in case you hadn't noticed.
4) Their credibility with distributers such as Amazon who had to make the unenviable decision to remove SimCity from their sales after having to refund a huge number of copies.
5) Their credibility with investors - their stock has plummeted since the release.
6) Additional expenditures on maintenance and staff to solve the problem.
When people say that you are 'part of the problem' for buying games with Always Online DRM, it seems that they are living in a fantasy world where a business isn't impacted by its decisions beyond what individual sales mean.
The damage is done, and EA and Maxis are both learning some hard lessons. We'll see what they do with those lessons in the future, but I think they've been adequately humbled. For my part, I think Maxis put together a great game, and I understand their vision of an online city game. Unlike Diablo 3 the game is built with online access built into the gameplay. Every time you import or export something it is taking information from the world. Even if you play a region by yourself there are strong online world components that dictate the price of goods and the number of tourists and other things which - although they could be simulated - are a necessary part of the gameplay. It's not just DRM for the sake of DRM, they are providing a service. Which is more than I can say for Diablo 3.
I'm not going to punish the developers for what appears to be a temporary problem. I knew what I was getting into when I purchased the game and although the launch has been a disaster in the truest sense of the word, I wish them the best of luck ironing things out, and I hope they will be more careful in the future in deciding what kinds of games need to be always online.
EAs reputation was damaged years back and it's only getting worse for each passing day. For every game they release more and more people get frustrated over how EA treat them and it's slowly tightening the noose. If they keep this up we will moste likely come to witness the death of EA in a manner worse than THQ.
I dont think they are maniacal. I think they are a business and they make there choices based on how much profit they perceive they can make. Shifting games to a service model, regardless of how good or bad it is for players, stands to make a lot of money and the only reason they will stop is if there is a strong indicator they are going to lose customers.
Blizzard did much the same thing, still selling like hotcakes despite credibility damage. (In fact Activision are seeing bigger profits than just about anyone else, so while you chastise Diablo3 it doesnt appear to have done them any harm.) I would put my money on the same happening for EA. Its not like EA had the best reputation before this and... here we are.
'I think they've been adequately humbled.'
How exactly? because amazon took the game down briefly because it was selling too much? because they had to do major upgrades on servers because of the influx of players? How are these things humbling them in any way other than with regard to how many people are still willing to buy and play their products? (and meanwhile people wait for SimCity to stabilise by playing Crysis 3...)
'it seems that they are living in a fantasy world'
and I think people have to be living in a fantasy world to think a company is going to change tact if they continue to buy everything it makes. That is their bottom line. (Even at the cost of immediate profits with a service like industry.)
We will see in a few months time, but I shall make my prediction.
The outrage over Sim City will fade, its huge user base will pump countless millions in to EAs coffers via a healthy trade in DLC . There will likely even be a small backlash against people being bothered by all this. EA will learn nothing, and in all honesty probably dont need to from any sane business perspective as there profits will remain largely on track. (and personally I will be a little disappointed but there are plenty more fish in the sea.)
If I turn out to be horribly wrong I should think it will be because companies like Amazon put pressure on them rather than any consumer influence. In every other respect much of this has already been done before (Most damningly by EA themselves.) and not only have the companies shown no indication of changing their behaviour but based on sales and profits they dont even have a reason to.
On the other hand, I wouldn't be surprised if publishers concoct some hybrid peer-to-peer solution to harness the CPU of all those "billions of PCs" while still being hard enough to crack. And with services literally streaming whole games, as opposed to simply authenticating them, it doesn't seem like solid always-on tech is too far off. Which isn't to say I want it.
Thank god for the indies.
Either that, or they made some very bad design decisions that involve everything going through single points of failure. But this is EA, they have experience with this. Similarly, I don't blame Blizzard for the WoW launch crush, because they Just Didn't Know, but by Diablo III there was no excuse.
Edit: Since the first sentence is harsh, I'm not saying the devs didn't care. I know a lot of them cared a lot about the game and are probably horrified what's happened to their beautiful game. But at some point someone(s) who needed to care didn't care.
It's definitely worth a read - especially how the lesson of Diablo III was completely lost on Maxis and they don't think it applies here.
I played a few of them and apart from the occasional "refresh the page now", it worked pretty well, and I read they were quite successful.
Edit: oh and WoW too.
It seems to me that "Cloud: We Are Not Ready" is a way too broad statement, and the author has omitted some memorable success stories.
Exactly, but it's not really an issue of "being cheap", there will always be more of us than them. Even if they could somehow manage the processing load there is that other little issue of broadly available and reliable internet access. All signs point to a future where, even if bandwidth increases, latency will actually become an increasing problem not decreasing problem. We will see more burst data transfers and mechanisms that may aid in download and streaming of large content but that is almost opposite of what you need for cloud gaming, where input latency is a major concern.
Multiplayer games being always online is common sense. Multiplayer gamers are used to these launch day mishaps, server queues, expired unplayable games and whatever else. As publishers shoehorn singleplayer games into online services though they add limited new value alongside the crippling new problems singleplayer gamers (like myself) have never had to experience before. I would suffer through new hardships and annoyances with no benefit in the end besides social stuff I likely would never use much.
They expect that people like me will convert and fall in love with the social aspects because they're so awesome, but I think that is a flawed outlook.
I agree with the jist of it, and dislike the way things are headed. I love multiplayer games, but I love single player games too - which I want to run on my PC without a 'net connection.
I'm not sure if harkening back the mainframe was a necessary analogy. Really, what we have here is something all gamers are familiar with - a rocky launch of a client-server based game. We see this in MMOs all the time. We also see this in multi-player components of non-MMOs.
The real story is the big publisher move to server-based tech for single player-"ish" games, as you also talk about in your article.
Insults tend to get tossed around at the big publishers a lot. People accuse them of being intentionally malicious in a hundred different ways. Usually, these insults are wrong. Big corporations pursue the path of greatest profit. That's what they're doing here (although they've obviously stumbled over the new tech). You may not like it (and neither do I), but it's logical. And it's based on the consumer's purchasing (and pirating) habits.
If you like true single player games, buy them.
I agree with Lars' thoughts above - it could be a great opportunity for indies.
I think you're IDing the right risks, but your tone and the way you've told this story really just inspires people who are already angry to be more angry, rather than energizing them to solve problems.
@Benjamin: This situation is exactly "being cheap", as it seems that EA wanted to save on the server infrastructure. They actually knew the number of shipped units and also could calculate the amount of load their servers will need to handle; if they didn't prepare accordingly, then it means they were expecting their game to fail on the market which to me seems a bit odd?! Or they expected people to buy their game and not playing it?
Also, I don't think that latency will be a problem in the future, but this topic really leads to a different area. As internet service is being (and will be) migrated to fibre infrastructure, this will be solved.
I agree that latency will soon be just software's fault and not your hardware's network connection. Sloppy code is always worse than intermittent network connectivity, so sadly it will reign on (myself included probably).
Address consumer concerns. Do not give them the everything is fine rant. If it's not, the consumers will respond to this with low scores on metacritic. Stop talking over your customers. It's bad business.
So with Everquest or WoW, when the online part fails there is a certain amount of resignation. Yes, I remember the months of launch hell there, and I stuck with it. But when you can't even play your single player game because the online component /you don't even want/ fails, you are going to be a lot less tolerant.
Customers are right to demand a game that can be played offline, and some one else will capitalize on this. But Maxis is supplying a bigger demand, which is for more engaging gameplay experiences with others.
When I played SimCity on Thursday night it was an offline experience. I lost connection to their servers every 5 minutes, but was able to stay in my city and keep building. I came away from the experience feeling like the game was decent, but upset about all of the changes they had made from Sim City IV. The world was small, there was no challenge, and I missed some of the micro oriented features like the routing maps.
Then I played it last night...It's a completely different game! And for the better. Not only do all of the changes make sense when you're connected to others, the game becomes much more sandbox like and challenging at the same time (I know that seems impossible, but its true).
There are multiple demands to fill: your demand, the region's demand, and other cities' demands. This allows for so much freedom because you don't have to be contained to what your population can support. Every building you place and upgrade you make impacts everyone and everything (I haven't even started playing with the taxes yet - kind of excited about this one). This is also why it's more challenging online. The region is constantly in flux, so your citizens' behavior and demands are constantly changing too - that is if you can keep them.
There's also a great deal of collaboration involved. If someone builds an important building or technology it's shared with all of the cities within their region. If you have excess supply for your utilities it's trivial for someone to purchase them from you win/win for both. This is on top of the natural competitive/curious urges you will have to check out the other cities, which is probably the best collaboration tool out there. I've learned more about the different ways cities can look and be structured by looking at the cities of 4 strangers in my region than I ever did from scouring through Simtropolis. I cared a lot more and watched them grow since they all impacted my city.
I can't say everyone will have the experience I had, and I have sympathy for users without reliable internet connections who are still waiting for a new Sim City they can play. But if you have access to the game and you have a decent Internet connection, the game is a remarkable achievement. And based on the complete 180 experience with their backend between Thursday and Friday, I can attest that they are fixing most of the launch issues (just join a new game on one of the new servers, East Coat 1 and 2 are borked). I'm very proud to see Maxis take such a big risk like this after Spore - the results are like night and day to me. This is another classic!
I actually do like the idea of regional play with other people in the method they've chosen, and I'm sure a lot of people will grow into it and enjoy it.
But it's still not something most Sim City fans know they will like or even wanted, and that combined with the lack of offline fallback mode when you simply can't be connected (or the servers have fallen over) is still, I think, what's causing the amount of outrage here compared to EA, PSO, WoW, etc. as in Jonathan's initial post.
I'm not sure where you live, but in Australia consumers have rights and no company can make you sign away your rights. Any documents that attempt to do so are illegal and not enforceable in Australia.
If there is a major problem with a product or service, the consumer is always entitled to a refund.
And as such, many Australian gamers have already returned their copies of Sim City for full refunds as the product/service does not work as advertised.
"The consumer guarantees cannot be changed, limited or refused by a seller, manufacturer or importer. It is also against the law for a seller to do anything that leads consumers to believe their rights are limited, or do not apply -for example, by claiming that no refunds will be given under any circumstances.
Any misleading claims a business makes about consumers' rights under the consumer guarantees are invalid and do not affect a consumers' rights to obtain a remedy under the consumer guarantees. These claims are also likely to breach provisions of the ACL (Australian Consumer Law) relating to misrepresentations or misleading and deceptive conduct."
But I'm not sure this trend is inevitable. From coding cursor locations on an ADM 3A terminal connected to a mainframe, I soon had a PC of my own. Later, from centralized online systems we moved to peer-to-peer networking. Centralization doesn't seem to be inevitably one-way -- new technology tends to disrupt central control structures.
This pattern, of centralization to distribution and back again, seems even older, actually. In the '80s I read Eric Raymond's Jargon File, which (still) has this entry for the 'Wheel of Reincarnation":
"[coined in a paper by T.H. Myer and I.E. Sutherland On the Design of Display Processors, Comm. ACM, Vol. 11, no. 6, June 1968)] Term used to refer to a well-known effect whereby function in a computing system family is migrated out to special-purpose peripheral hardware for speed, then the peripheral evolves toward more computing power as it does its job, then somebody notices that it is inefficient to support two asymmetrical processors in the architecture and folds the function back into the main CPU, at which point the cycle begins again."
We just need to ride out this current wave of publishers asserting control. Here's hoping it's over soon.
While any SP DRM can be cracked, when you integrate you SP game so tightly into online play, you'll have a very effective form of DRM. As much gamer outrage as there is, I think EA will come out ahead in terms of revenue. I imagine Simcity must be a massively pirated game.
So even if I concurred with your 'piracy as a form of consumer protection' argument, in this case it would be false anyways, as the pirated version of the game (which is notably ABSENT currently) will be effectively a handicapped version of the game.
Single player DRM is rarely ever successful -- but this is the 1/100 case where it will be, because they did smart move, which was making the SP game a MP game effectively.
Not liking a product because it doesn't work as promised entitles you to a refund. Software is not like other products.
However, the biggest problem has to do with sunset servers. Case in point, just a few months back, the same very EA shutdown a bunch of game servers. Forever. Since SimCity was built to be online all the time, it will eventually suffer the same fate. So you all who bought it, might as well think of it as a glorified MMO which one day you will not be able to play. At all.
This is hopefully NOT the future of PC gaming.