Gaming has come a long way since the days of Pacman. It has evolved
& developed through the past decades through improved gameplay
ideas, interactivity and technology. The emerging of the next generation
systems will further enable gaming to reach new heights than ever
before. The state of gaming is also much more complex today than it has
ever been, with high budget marketing campaigns and online
transactions. But along the long road, this has given birth to some
elements that has slowly evolved to the extent today that they are
solely responsible for many user inconveniences ranging from detracting
from the experiences of a gamer to slowly causing a qualitative decay in
the gaming industry. I consider these elements the enemies of gaming. As
gaming evolves, so do these and some of these elements if not all need to
die a horrible death to save the industry. These enemies are discussed
below in terms of their capacity of collateral damage to the industry:
6. Downloadable content (DLC): Remember the term"unlockables" where in a game, if you had completed specific or harder missions or quests, the game would reward you with little pieces of item that would boost your character's stats, make it look badass or make you feel like all the time spent in the process was worthwhile. They are still there, though only a purchase away. They can be purchased in the form of DLC's of the game from the publisher's digital distribution system or steam.
Now why do I have to pay for these little elements that add little value to the whole experience or the content which I already payed for? Now there are some DLC's that expands the story of the game & provides 3-4 hours of additional gameplay (Mass Effect 2's lair of the shadow broker DLC), those have a lot of work going into them and really worth paying. But those bonus costume pack DLC's or the bonus weapons pack DLC's which is available for $5 or more? Totally unacceptable & plain greedy. The introduction of of On-disc DLC's povide further evidence that they are just another way of extracting money from gamers. As the Witcher 2 developer rightly said, DLC's should be free, so that the legitimate gamers feel rewarded instead of exploited.
5. Pricing policy: This is a global issue though it may look like a regional one. The price of any product in a particular country which is sold globally should reflect the cost of doing business in that country. Take India, the country I live in, there is a vast difference in the G.D.P. of U.S & India and the economic state of the average worker in India is much different than in U.S, obviously. So why is it that we have to pay the exact same price as in the U.S for a software? COD: Black OPS 2 costs Rs 3299 here in India which is about the same in U.S-$59.
Every company seriously interested in growing their market adapts to the local market conditions. I ask now----Do U.S companies pay their people in India at U.S levels? Do their offices & infrastructure in India cost as much? Then why should their software cost as much or more?
Newly released PC games costs Rs.999 or higher in India. Console games costs much higher. It's a no-brainer that many gamers cannot afford this high price. Those who still want to play it turns to piracy or have to wait a year or more for a price cut. Case in point here is BO2 which I just mentioned earlier. If games would've cost Rs 400-500 in India, I believe many honest gamers would buy them, honoring their love for games & the effort of the developers. By reducing the price of games, the publishers could make much more profit long term as more & more gamers could buy the game. I believe pricing policies which acts in disharmony with the economic condition of a country influences increased piracy in said country.
4.Digital Rights Management (DRM): Here's my experience of how DRM punishes legitimate gamers:
I brought Assasins Creed 2 (AC2) on February 2013, installed it, created my account via UPLAY (digital distribution service of Ubisoft), entered my serial/activation code, authenticated successfully & I was ready to play. It's all good. I could play the game offline as Ubisoft had previously dropped it's draconian DRM which required an always online connection to play even a single player game like AC2. Great.
I played AC2 for more than a month & had collected many unlockables which were displayed on my uplay homepage. After some time back in April, my PC started having some trouble, most likely from a virus or malware. Game performance took a dive. After trying out a few things, I figured a clean re-install of the OS was in order. Alright, after a clean install of windows, I reinstalled AC2. After reinstalling, when I went to launch the game, the game asked for it's activation key. But I had already activated the game earlier, surprised, I entered my activation number. To my great disappointment, Uplay gave a message that said the serial number I just entered had already been used on another account. Well, of course it was used, in my account. Why can't Uplay recognize that? Why do I have to re-activate the game? I already activated it once. I had all my Uplay files backed up before the windows re installation. I reinstalled the game again, tried activating but always got the same message than my serial number is used. I didn't know what to do and since that day, I couldn't play AC2 anymore. Now I hear all kinds of news of Uplay accounts getting hacked and all. I tried out in Ubisoft forums but found no solution. Very few people had this problem, they too had no solution. Frustrated, I uninstalled the game.
See, this is exactly what DRM does. I am done with Ubisoft for making me feel cheated like this. DRM does not stop piracy, all it does is punish legitimate customers.
3. Piracy: Everyone knows about piracy & how it affects the game industry. Publishers & developers lose TONS of money, entire game studios are forced to close, developers lose their jobs...you know it all, right?
Wrong. Do you have any idea how piracy is literally taking a leg out of PC gaming & PC gaming only? When developers & publishers see that games like Bioshock, COD & other popular titles are selling 10 to 1 on consoles vs PC,what do they realize? They realize that the PC is no longer the primary platform of choice compared to the consoles. What happens next? Ever wondered why most PC versions of multi-platform games are released with so much bugs, glitches & performance issues? Heck, some of the PC games available today are broken on day 1 & very much unplayable before they are patched. Case in point is the PC version of Grand theft Auto 4 (GTA4) & Dark Souls. Console games remain unaffected. Many PC games available today are simply ports of their console versions. The PC versions are not getting the treatment they deserve from the developers because of unprecedented piracy. Developers see little value in the time needed to deliver a polished PC version as they know it will sell much less than the console versions, so they just throw out an inferior port.
Gaming is a hobby only to those who can afford it, it's a stone cold fact. Just spending money on a powerful PC is not enough. Of course, many publishers who employ DRM hurt more to legitimate customers than to pirates, but that's not reason enough to illegally download a game. Whatever way you want to put it, game developers are normal workers who need a game to sell well to continue making games because of the increased development costs of game today. If they don't, they will just focus more & more on the console versions and this will only hurt PC gaming further. So the next time you hear about a crappy or late PC version or why there is no word on the PC version of GTA5, think deeply. You may already know why.
2. Corporate Publishers: They are essentially business men with nothing but profit & paranoia on their minds. They care more about making money for the shareholders than the progress of gaming & unfortunately, their position in the gaming industry has never been more dominate. Of course, every big company needs to make big bucks to sustain but these guys are in this for all the wrong reasons. These greedy publishers tend to think the whole gaming industry is a big Supermarket & they do everything in their power to cash it dry. They are more concerned about "broadening the mass appeal" of a game than it's artistic integrity so that the game could sell more copies. IP's like Call of Duty, Need for speed, Medal of Honor are essentially rehashes with little to no innovation which is released year after year annually with only one intention----Cashing in. Those games can conveniently be called as expansion packs of their earlier versions.
The goal of these corporations is monopolizing the gaming industry to fill their coffers. By putting pressure the on developers to churn out games as early as they can thereby reducing the quality of games drastically, throwing out day 1 DLC's, subscription based services, online passes, aggressive DRMs--these suits turn the gaming industry to a service based factory outlet. Remember the Guitar Hero franchise? Activision milked the series so dry for several years that the series became totally stagnated, and then Activision pulled the plug on the franchise, effectively killing it. Westwood studios, Bullfrog entertainment, Pandemic studios and many others have fallen prey to their sick methods. But still the machine rolls on. Time will tell how much more damage they will cause to the industry before one day the gamers start boycotting their products.
1. The Casual gamer: The casual gamer is the centerpiece of all the decadence in the gaming industry today. But first let me explain the term "casual gamer". A casual gamer is someone who plays games on a regular basis, fine. But the problem is not about their gaming consumption, it's about their attitude towards games. A casual gamer does not play games because he/she loves games, it's because they got nothing else to do on a lazy Sunday afternoon or nothing better to kill their time. Gaming is simply a way to pass the time for these people. They treat games like use-and-throw pens, like chewing gums, chew up & spit out and they generally play games on "easy" mode because they do not like challenged by their games.
The casual gamer will play Crysis 3 or COD or any other modern heavily marketed game & then say "OMG, <insert name of a hugely popular fps> is the best freaking fps ever" & start a fanboy war on the forums with anyone having different opinion, but scratch their head if the name "Half-Life" is mentioned. They do not pay attention to all the intricate, finer details of a game. They simply want entertainment. They are totally satisfied with no innovation in their games & likes all their games made as simple and spoon-feeding as possible. As a matter of fact, casual gamers makes the majority of gamers today, sad but true. Really, who stands first in the long line for COD, NFS or Medal of Honor year after year? The casual gamer, that's who and make no mistake, those corporate publishers mentioned earlier targets specifically for these casual gamers, who will be easily persuaded by tons of trailers of a game on the internet & lap it up as soon as they are launched. It's the casual gamers who have filled the pockets of these publishers,it's because of them that these corporates enjoy their billion dollars every year. The worse news is that more & more developers are making games today with the casual gamers in mind.
Everyone has the right to play games and have fun, it's the sole purpose of games but sadly, these gamers bear no love for games. It's truly disappointing to see a significant number of gamers are influencing the decadence of gaming.
I have no idea how these enemies can be defeated. As gaming is on the verge of entering a new generation, any technical advancements further won't necessarily mean much if these issues continue to plague both the gamers & the industry----that's for sure.
6. Downloadable content (DLC): Remember the term"unlockables" where in a game, if you had completed specific or harder missions or quests, the game would reward you with little pieces of item that would boost your character's stats, make it look badass or make you feel like all the time spent in the process was worthwhile. They are still there, though only a purchase away. They can be purchased in the form of DLC's of the game from the publisher's digital distribution system or steam.
Now why do I have to pay for these little elements that add little value to the whole experience or the content which I already payed for? Now there are some DLC's that expands the story of the game & provides 3-4 hours of additional gameplay (Mass Effect 2's lair of the shadow broker DLC), those have a lot of work going into them and really worth paying. But those bonus costume pack DLC's or the bonus weapons pack DLC's which is available for $5 or more? Totally unacceptable & plain greedy. The introduction of of On-disc DLC's povide further evidence that they are just another way of extracting money from gamers. As the Witcher 2 developer rightly said, DLC's should be free, so that the legitimate gamers feel rewarded instead of exploited.
5. Pricing policy: This is a global issue though it may look like a regional one. The price of any product in a particular country which is sold globally should reflect the cost of doing business in that country. Take India, the country I live in, there is a vast difference in the G.D.P. of U.S & India and the economic state of the average worker in India is much different than in U.S, obviously. So why is it that we have to pay the exact same price as in the U.S for a software? COD: Black OPS 2 costs Rs 3299 here in India which is about the same in U.S-$59.
Every company seriously interested in growing their market adapts to the local market conditions. I ask now----Do U.S companies pay their people in India at U.S levels? Do their offices & infrastructure in India cost as much? Then why should their software cost as much or more?
Newly released PC games costs Rs.999 or higher in India. Console games costs much higher. It's a no-brainer that many gamers cannot afford this high price. Those who still want to play it turns to piracy or have to wait a year or more for a price cut. Case in point here is BO2 which I just mentioned earlier. If games would've cost Rs 400-500 in India, I believe many honest gamers would buy them, honoring their love for games & the effort of the developers. By reducing the price of games, the publishers could make much more profit long term as more & more gamers could buy the game. I believe pricing policies which acts in disharmony with the economic condition of a country influences increased piracy in said country.
4.Digital Rights Management (DRM): Here's my experience of how DRM punishes legitimate gamers:
I brought Assasins Creed 2 (AC2) on February 2013, installed it, created my account via UPLAY (digital distribution service of Ubisoft), entered my serial/activation code, authenticated successfully & I was ready to play. It's all good. I could play the game offline as Ubisoft had previously dropped it's draconian DRM which required an always online connection to play even a single player game like AC2. Great.
I played AC2 for more than a month & had collected many unlockables which were displayed on my uplay homepage. After some time back in April, my PC started having some trouble, most likely from a virus or malware. Game performance took a dive. After trying out a few things, I figured a clean re-install of the OS was in order. Alright, after a clean install of windows, I reinstalled AC2. After reinstalling, when I went to launch the game, the game asked for it's activation key. But I had already activated the game earlier, surprised, I entered my activation number. To my great disappointment, Uplay gave a message that said the serial number I just entered had already been used on another account. Well, of course it was used, in my account. Why can't Uplay recognize that? Why do I have to re-activate the game? I already activated it once. I had all my Uplay files backed up before the windows re installation. I reinstalled the game again, tried activating but always got the same message than my serial number is used. I didn't know what to do and since that day, I couldn't play AC2 anymore. Now I hear all kinds of news of Uplay accounts getting hacked and all. I tried out in Ubisoft forums but found no solution. Very few people had this problem, they too had no solution. Frustrated, I uninstalled the game.
See, this is exactly what DRM does. I am done with Ubisoft for making me feel cheated like this. DRM does not stop piracy, all it does is punish legitimate customers.
3. Piracy: Everyone knows about piracy & how it affects the game industry. Publishers & developers lose TONS of money, entire game studios are forced to close, developers lose their jobs...you know it all, right?
Wrong. Do you have any idea how piracy is literally taking a leg out of PC gaming & PC gaming only? When developers & publishers see that games like Bioshock, COD & other popular titles are selling 10 to 1 on consoles vs PC,what do they realize? They realize that the PC is no longer the primary platform of choice compared to the consoles. What happens next? Ever wondered why most PC versions of multi-platform games are released with so much bugs, glitches & performance issues? Heck, some of the PC games available today are broken on day 1 & very much unplayable before they are patched. Case in point is the PC version of Grand theft Auto 4 (GTA4) & Dark Souls. Console games remain unaffected. Many PC games available today are simply ports of their console versions. The PC versions are not getting the treatment they deserve from the developers because of unprecedented piracy. Developers see little value in the time needed to deliver a polished PC version as they know it will sell much less than the console versions, so they just throw out an inferior port.
Gaming is a hobby only to those who can afford it, it's a stone cold fact. Just spending money on a powerful PC is not enough. Of course, many publishers who employ DRM hurt more to legitimate customers than to pirates, but that's not reason enough to illegally download a game. Whatever way you want to put it, game developers are normal workers who need a game to sell well to continue making games because of the increased development costs of game today. If they don't, they will just focus more & more on the console versions and this will only hurt PC gaming further. So the next time you hear about a crappy or late PC version or why there is no word on the PC version of GTA5, think deeply. You may already know why.
2. Corporate Publishers: They are essentially business men with nothing but profit & paranoia on their minds. They care more about making money for the shareholders than the progress of gaming & unfortunately, their position in the gaming industry has never been more dominate. Of course, every big company needs to make big bucks to sustain but these guys are in this for all the wrong reasons. These greedy publishers tend to think the whole gaming industry is a big Supermarket & they do everything in their power to cash it dry. They are more concerned about "broadening the mass appeal" of a game than it's artistic integrity so that the game could sell more copies. IP's like Call of Duty, Need for speed, Medal of Honor are essentially rehashes with little to no innovation which is released year after year annually with only one intention----Cashing in. Those games can conveniently be called as expansion packs of their earlier versions.
The goal of these corporations is monopolizing the gaming industry to fill their coffers. By putting pressure the on developers to churn out games as early as they can thereby reducing the quality of games drastically, throwing out day 1 DLC's, subscription based services, online passes, aggressive DRMs--these suits turn the gaming industry to a service based factory outlet. Remember the Guitar Hero franchise? Activision milked the series so dry for several years that the series became totally stagnated, and then Activision pulled the plug on the franchise, effectively killing it. Westwood studios, Bullfrog entertainment, Pandemic studios and many others have fallen prey to their sick methods. But still the machine rolls on. Time will tell how much more damage they will cause to the industry before one day the gamers start boycotting their products.
1. The Casual gamer: The casual gamer is the centerpiece of all the decadence in the gaming industry today. But first let me explain the term "casual gamer". A casual gamer is someone who plays games on a regular basis, fine. But the problem is not about their gaming consumption, it's about their attitude towards games. A casual gamer does not play games because he/she loves games, it's because they got nothing else to do on a lazy Sunday afternoon or nothing better to kill their time. Gaming is simply a way to pass the time for these people. They treat games like use-and-throw pens, like chewing gums, chew up & spit out and they generally play games on "easy" mode because they do not like challenged by their games.
The casual gamer will play Crysis 3 or COD or any other modern heavily marketed game & then say "OMG, <insert name of a hugely popular fps> is the best freaking fps ever" & start a fanboy war on the forums with anyone having different opinion, but scratch their head if the name "Half-Life" is mentioned. They do not pay attention to all the intricate, finer details of a game. They simply want entertainment. They are totally satisfied with no innovation in their games & likes all their games made as simple and spoon-feeding as possible. As a matter of fact, casual gamers makes the majority of gamers today, sad but true. Really, who stands first in the long line for COD, NFS or Medal of Honor year after year? The casual gamer, that's who and make no mistake, those corporate publishers mentioned earlier targets specifically for these casual gamers, who will be easily persuaded by tons of trailers of a game on the internet & lap it up as soon as they are launched. It's the casual gamers who have filled the pockets of these publishers,it's because of them that these corporates enjoy their billion dollars every year. The worse news is that more & more developers are making games today with the casual gamers in mind.
Everyone has the right to play games and have fun, it's the sole purpose of games but sadly, these gamers bear no love for games. It's truly disappointing to see a significant number of gamers are influencing the decadence of gaming.
I have no idea how these enemies can be defeated. As gaming is on the verge of entering a new generation, any technical advancements further won't necessarily mean much if these issues continue to plague both the gamers & the industry----that's for sure.
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