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SimCity Burning: A Warning to Publishers on The Dangers of Always-Online DRM

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Re: SimCity Burning: A Warning to Publishers on The Dangers of Always-Online DRM

#191

Post by jfoutz »

nemothekid wrote: post #115
jfoutz wrote: post #12

If anyone could achieve a decent launch, it's blizzard. They have a lot of money and talent, and a real attention to detail. They're willing to wait to ship games "till they're ready" But launch still eludes them. I've purchased every game through Diablo 3, but that put me off the whole thing. Heart of the swarm will be the first Blizzard game i just don't bother with. The launch will be a disaster. Since they've tak…

When Diablo was released people complained about the same exact thing. Its amazing how these issues completely blow over once the product is stable. http://www.neoseeker.com/news/19169-diablo-3-launch-marred-b... Reddit's /r/gaming was filled with Diablo launch problems.

I had a bit of nerd rage over the d3 release. I never could convince anyone there to delete my battle.net account, so I had to settle for an authenticator. Then, of course, I deleted the authenticator from the phone.

Blizzard makes great stuff. I, however, have limited time. I wound up paying more that a dollar a minute for the time I got to played d3. I have no interest in buying another blizzard game, ever.

Re: SimCity Burning: A Warning to Publishers on The Dangers of Always-Online DRM

#193

Post by rdl »

papsosouid wrote: post #40
danielweber wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but piracy seems to be our only guaranteed method of preserving them You aren't going to pirate Sim City 5. This is the future of gaming. Companies are just going to avoid all the grief of piracy and weird DRM by either moving to locked-down platforms (iOS and consoles) or into games that have essential online components. It's a classic prisoner's dilemma. I'd love to by a game and install it on my PC without it taki…

>moving to locked-down platforms (iOS and consoles) Where piracy is rampant?

iOS and console piracy is in no way "rampant". It is possible. It is not mainstream. Most users don't pirate on those platforms, although those who do probably pirate a huge number.

PC game piracy at one point was fairly mainstream, but then installing PC games at all ceased to become mainstream.

Music and porn piracy is mainstream; streaming services sort of prevent that, at the cost of destroying revenue for creators/distributors. Movie/TV are probably at the tipping point (youtube and netflix helped a lot).

Re: SimCity Burning: A Warning to Publishers on The Dangers of Always-Online DRM

#194

Post by illuminate »

sgarman wrote: post #45
illuminate wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It's an online game. Pirating it is about as feasible as running a pirate copy of google.com" What a silly, untrue statement. A better analogy would be "as feasible as running a copy of World of Warcraft offline", which people do.

Which in a way relates to Irregardless's post http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5345217 . One of my favorite MMO's Ragnarok Online won't get locked away and lost when Gravity decides to close it down, there are plenty of backends and open source projects that support the game.

I really prefer playing shards to the original game. Less/no grind, I can whiz through most of a MMO including the minimal story in a few months, the price isn't necessarily the issue, I just don't care to compete with millions of other people and devote several days a week to survive at that level and stay up to date (let alone be on "top".)

I want to have fun, I don't need artificial constraints to surpass. Thank goodness for these emulators, which are fun now and will continue to be fun when pocket-sized in the future :)

Re: SimCity Burning: A Warning to Publishers on The Dangers of Always-Online DRM

#195

Post by illuminate »

nitrogen wrote: post #151
tobyjsullivan wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I may have failed to clearly communicate my point. My intention was that they could do a lot more to manage expectations of their customers which would, most likely, greatly reduce the ill will they are currently experiencing.

Managing expectations in this case is code for convincing consumers to be happy about being ripped off.

Of course, "managing expectations" is forever about the mitigation of disappointment.

Re: SimCity Burning: A Warning to Publishers on The Dangers of Always-Online DRM

#196

Post by illuminate »

idunno246 wrote: post #134
ConceptJunkie wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps, but companies like that are the exception, not the rule. I fully expect that companies like EA don't give a warm bucket of spit about anything past the initial phase during which a game will be sold.

EA actually did this for a fb game: http://www.joystiq.com/2012/06/20/dragon-age-legends-no-long...

A FB game that was used as marketing for their AAA game is not the same as "freeing" a AAA game, though.

Re: SimCity Burning: A Warning to Publishers on The Dangers of Always-Online DRM

#197

Post by andyking »

Kiro wrote: post #172

Am I the only one who has no problem with always-online DRM? In what situations don't you have internet nowadays?

I'm moving house next week and won't have a connection to the internet for a little while. I'd rather pass the time playing SimCity than watch crap TV after work for a week or so.

Re: SimCity Burning: A Warning to Publishers on The Dangers of Always-Online DRM

#198

Post by sirobviouspoint »

mattmanser wrote: post #189
seanp2k2 wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"Instead, I would recommend pricing the game at something like $60 for two years. " While I personally understand all the costs involved and would perhaps be willing to do this (kinda like the WoW model where the game had an up-front cost plus recurring service fees), I think many would feel scammed by this model. My question is: what is wrong with the model where single-player is totally offline, but multiplayer re…

It's an economic consideration, by allowing offline play they believe they'll be leaving more money on the table than if they make it online only. They'll convert people who would have just got a cracked version into buying it. Unfortunately for Maxis they obviously didn't hire any programmers who had a clue how to write scalable server code. And the result is that they have managed to lose a lot of sales in the firs…

> But economically speaking, sound decision, just poorly executed.

I'm not sure it counts as a 'sound decision' if you take a very risky option that hasn't panned out well for competitors in the same market on the premise that if you beat the odds, you'll get a bit more money.

I think EA underestimated the cost of their "always on" DRM, and didn't adequately assess the risk against the payoff - and now have taken a business hit from it.

For example, literally no one I know that I used to play Sim City with for hundreds of hours as a kid purchased this game - precisely because of EAs decisions regarding always on DRM and their history with Spore design. They've effectively driven away over a dozen people in their 20s, perfectly willing to fork over $70-100 on a game they like. (Or $200 or $300 or $1000 on a really good game they like; I'm looking at you table-top guide books, trading card games, and minifigures.)

I consider that exactly the opposite of 'sound decisions'.

tl;dr: You have to assess the risk that you're going to poorly execute your choice to make a 'sound decision'; I'm not sure EA did.

Re: SimCity Burning: A Warning to Publishers on The Dangers of Always-Online DRM

#199

Post by Osiris »

seanp2k2 wrote: post #188
tobyjsullivan wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the real mismatch for EA and Gamers is that EA is effectively selling a SaaS product but pricing it like it's an boxed product. It's not just unlikely but, in fact, impossible for the operating costs of the servers to be worth keeping on forever since no (significant) additional income will be coming in from the title after some point X. SaaS companies have been dealing with this for years quite successfully…

>"Instead, I would recommend pricing the game at something like $60 for two years. " While I personally understand all the costs involved and would perhaps be willing to do this (kinda like the WoW model where the game had an up-front cost plus recurring service fees), I think many would feel scammed by this model. My question is: what is wrong with the model where single-player is totally offline, but multiplayer re…

If you have to pay a monthly fee, why should you have to pay upfront? That doesn't make any sense. If the monthly fee gives access to the game, then the client should be freely downloadable with a monthly access fee to play the game. If you pay up-front, then you should be able to use it without requiring any additional payments.
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