Tron’s Legacy November 23, 2010

Ten years ago I was at a LAN party being held by a bunch of Open Source Users in my area.  Let me tell you something, Open Source guys REALLY know how to have a LAN.  Every few months, the Southern Connecticut Open Source User Group converted the computers in their offices to a Red Hat distribution that contained only one program, Unreal Tournament.  They also had a full projection system with surround sound able to broadcast whatever they wanted.  Since having a virtual camera on the match playing on the projector usually made everyone sick (it did, I asked) they would instead play classic movies which were staples of nerd culture.  One night in 2001, this was how I was first exposed to the movie Tron.

I’m ashamed to say that for a movie made in 1982, which has been considered by most of my compatriots as the movie which ignited the digital revolution and inspired gamers the world over, gamers who would later become game makers, I had not seen Tron until I was 16 and knew nothing at all about it.  I think I remembered seeing a few previews for it playing occasionally on the Disney Channel back when it was a premium service channel back in the early 90s, but the previews could not do justice to what the movie truly was.

This was the most imaginative depiction of the world behind the computer screen I had ever seen before.  Kevin Flynn was the guy I wanted to be at 16 years old, a cocky self-taught computer genius and he had something happen to him that is an unfortunate reality of such a cutthroat business, his work was stolen from him.  But he wasn’t going to take it sitting down, he was going to do everything he could (legal or otherwise) to prove he was the original designer.  He just had no idea that he was tangling with an artificial intelligence capable of putting him on the game grid he created.  Now the best gamer in the world is forced to play the games he created from the inside or die.  What an epic concept.

Within no time I picked up a copy of the 20^th Anniversary DVD for my own personal home theater collection.  I think I watched the movie so much I wore the DVD out, even the second disc with the feature length making-of documentary got a lot of play.

Then in 2003 I went to my very first E3.  Twenty-one years after the release of the original Tron, I caught a glimpse of what was going to be (what I believed at the time) the closest thing to a sequel the movie Tron was ever going to get, the Tron 2.0 video game made by Monolith Productions (who later went on to make F.E.A.R.).  All of the staples of Tron were in place in the game, the art style, the actors.  I could play on a lightcycle match or match discs against viruses and intrusion countermeasure programs.  When I got the final version of the game, I played through it at least three times.  I hoped Monolith would have made a sequel (they never explained who F-Con’s CEO was), but they never did.

I’m eagerly anticipating the Blu-Ray.  Director Steven Lisburger has confirmed to the press and fans that he has finished the 2K digital restoration of the movie, and knowing that the movie was made to be viewed on 70mm film projectors could make Tron’s BD release the next major industry staple.

Then this came out.

Bring your Encom Group 7 access badges, Tron Legacy comes out December 17^th.  Flynn lives!

I Game, I’m Healthy, Live With It November 22, 2010

I read a question recently on the Halo Waypoint forums that a user asked the group how they kept healthy and kept up with the gaming lifestyle.  While I’m sure he was just asking for tips on how to keep fit and meant nothing disrespectful about it, it reminded me of all the times in my life I’ve heard people tell me if I kept playing games and didn’t exercise I’d be stupid and unhealthy.  Well, you’re reading this article off of a webpage I designed and maintain myself, so I’m not stupid, but believe it or not, I am actually quite healthy as well.

If there’s a smaller slightly-less annoying sister to the “all video games are evil and will make you violent” crowd, it’s the “video games will make you fat” crowd.  I’ve had it with these completely false prophets who claim to know more than I do about my own body’s health.  They claim that by not constantly doing repetitive physical activity instead of sitting for hours in front of a screen interacting with a game, coupled with a high-fat, high-calorie and high sugar fast food diet is driving this entire country into becoming an unhealthy overweight lot and only by allowing them to pass laws to protect ourselves from…ourselves because we’re too dumb to know what’s good for us (and they somehow do), can we become healthy, happy people.

Allow me to remove all the bullets from their points right now.  At 26 years old I am 5 foot 9 inches tall.  I weigh about 135 pounds and have weighed around that much since I was about 15 or so (give or take about five pounds here or there).  I do not exercise, other than regular human movements, (walking from place to place, going up and down stairs, etc) and my only recreational activities as of late (other than posting up here for all of you fine people) are watching movies, TV and playing video games.  My blood tests are perfectly fine, with no trace of diabetes.  I have perfectly fine health expectancy.

Now you’re probably going to say I probably don’t eat very much.  That’s not true, I eat and I eat plenty.  Since I can’t cook, a lot of what I eat is either ready-made ramen noodles, or food I can buy on the go (oh no, fast food).  However, it’s not all bad.  Since my mother can cook, she does make me dinner occasionally (and she makes ingredients from scratch) so I eat about a fifty percent good, fifty percent bad diet.

If half of what “health” experts said was true, I should be a 400 pound diabetic.  I’m not.  I’m sure you can see me in any of my videos, other than the fact I grow facial hair faster than Grizzly Adams I’m a healthy individual of average build.  Do they have any explanation for that?  Well I do.

The reality behind weight gain is actually all about the amount you eat on a regular basis.  The human body is quite adaptable.  If you regularly eat the same amount of food at around the same time, you will not gain any weight.  It is only when you throw a wrench into the works and heavily alter your eating habits by eating larger portions of food than you usually do, that you will start to gain weight.  Also there’s been concerns that stress and other emotional factors can affect weight gain, as the chemicals your body produces during these periods can affect the rest of your body.  This is usually why crash dieting is a bad idea, it’s unhealthy and harmful to your body.  Also any kind of physical activity you’ll do on a normal basis will maintain your body weight.  A lot of college students or city inhabitants will walk (a lot!) daily, and by continuing to do this activity their body weight is maintained.  If it’s stopped, the body will react and you may gain some weight, but it again will eventually even back out.  Also, many health experts and doctors believe genetics plays a lot in the factor of weight, although it is a debated topic.

The nanny brigade won’t tell you any of that.  Maybe they should write it all down.  Granted, I don’t drink or smoke, but that’s a separate can of worms.

Who Are the Patriots? November 14, 2010

As a thank you for your regular patience, I decided to dust off one of my full sized research articles dating back 5 years and give it a little update.  It was originally written for my College US Government class, and the subject matter was who the true rulers of the country were, Metal Gear Solid 2’s Patriots.  The article discussed their origins (Pre MGS-4), how they came to be, and what they were responsible for.

Well, now that MGS4 was out, I knew I had to give it an update with the new information provided by the game and post it up for you guys to read.  Since it’s far too long to post on the main page, I have given it it’s own tab on the main site.  I am considering if I have to create a new one to just create one major tab and post all of my longer articles on a subdivision of that.  You can read it here or just click on the tab on the top of the screen.

So if you need any help understanding the history given in Metal Gear Solid 3, or need to know just what the heck the ending of Metal Gear Solid 2 was trying to say, give it a read!

Project Natal vs Kinect: Fantasy vs Reality November 9, 2010

Update:  I have been corrected (by many commenters) about the facial recognition capabilities in Kinect.  I’m altering the article based upon those comments.  I had been misinformed.  I don’t have one and I tremulously apologize for the incorrect statement.

A little under a year before I started this website Microsoft at E3 2009 released this video during their Pre-E3 show.

The media and the internet shit a brick.  I remember.

A year and a half and one name change later the product is now on store shelves, and scene to scene you can clearly see that a lot of what was shown in that video could not make it to the final version.

Was the concept far too grand for Microsoft to deliver on?  Were the people who made the video completely clueless as to the technical capabilities of what they were promoting?  I’ll leave you to decide on that, but I will tell you specifically what parts turned out to be fantasy and which parts got it right.

First off, the opening, where the teenager is playing a fighting game with his whole body.  One player interacting with an AI controlled opponent is quite likely to find a place in Kinect’s library, and who knows, with Xbox Live you could have two players controlling avatars fighting each other from their respective homes.  Sure makes fighting in the parking lot after school obsolete.

Next came the driving game.  While you can see a whole family is watching the tv only two people are actually interacting with the game.  The girl is clearly seen driving and the father is doing the motions of the pit crew.  While this does fit within the rules of Kinect (two players only) the Xbox 360 does have a racing wheel which would work a heck of a lot better.  Hold out your hands for a few minutes and you’ll notice how quickly your arms tire without holding them on something.  The pit crew motion control is much more interesting here, and I think it would work a lot better matching one player with a control device while a separate one does a strictly Kinect motion.  Recent news has said controller plus Kinect interactivity is possible, so it is technically feasible.

Then there was the little boy playing as Godzilla and destroying a city in his wrath.  I think a game like this already existed requiring the vision camera, but I could be wrong.  I do remember XBLA games where you’d have to stand in front of the vision camera and swat balls headed your way and move things around, and the motions the boy is using is very similar.  Please note the vision camera had problems capturing the imput correctly sometimes and Kinect shouldn’t have that problem.  Regardless, one player being captured, perfectly feasible.  It gets a pass, but it really doesn’t look like much fun.

The next video, a girl and her mom playing what looks at first to be Dance Central, but then turns out to be a generic split screen soccer game.  I think that’s already been made, and it fits with the two player limit.  If that game’s not already out, it should be out by Christmas.

Then comes the infamous skateboarder video.  The boy clearly is seen scanning his skateboard into the Xbox 360 to play a Tony Hawk Ride-esque skateboarding game without a board.  One would think if the boy knew already how to use a skateboard and already had a skateboard he would just…oh…GO SKATEBOARDING!  That aside, the Kinect has a 640×480 camera in there, not exactly high-definition by anyone’s standards.  Capturing an image of the board’s appearance from that distance would not give a very sharp texture to apply to the virtual board, and it would be very apparent on the family’s HDTV that the board logos would’ve been blurry when upsampled like that.  You also see some voice command work here when the skateboarder orders the Kinect to “SCAN” and it responds on command.  The final version of the Kinect does in fact have a mic…but voice commands are….well I’ll talk more about it later.

Ahh yes, then we get to the infamous teenage girl scene.  The Xbox in the video clearly recognises the girl’s face and loads her profile.  This is one of the famous bits that made a lot of nerds go crazy, and it is pretty cool, and I’ve been told that the Kinect can in fact do this, so it gets a pass.  As she talks to her friend who also happens to be conveniently using her Xbox at the same time (and she also conveniently has a Kinect installed on her own 360) they rattle on about dresses, and wave their hands around a conveniently placed dress shop which suddenly is selling their wares on Xbox Live, and superimposes a dress on a 3D image of herself before deciding the first one she virtually tries on is the one she likes.  This scene is a complete lie.  I don’t know one woman who likes the first dress she tries on, ever!  Heck I even know a girl that will spend hours dressing her Rock Band avatar with virtual apparel after playing one song, at the expense of the time of an entire group who’d rather just be playing songs.  The Xbox will be able to have full voice and video chat from multiple Kinects allowing for two people to have a full-duplex video chat from their living rooms with voice.  They also claim to have limited voice command support, so telling it to contact a friend online is certainly possible, but voice accuracy technology is still iffy.  Try telling an automated phone service where you’re trying to reach and you’ll likely get an operator every time since the service is useless.  Then there’s the whole dress shopping experience… a total pipe dream.  The framework to have an entire dress catalog does not currently exist in Xbox Live (unless you’re dressing virtual avatar clothing), and there are no real world stores which have deals to sell physical goods through the service.  You can also clearly see that the dress is being stored on a stored 3D image of the girl and not her current physical state on the real time video chat.  While Kinect might be able to take a 3D image of you, there’s just no reason for a user to do it.  You would have to stand in front of the camera and do a very specific series of turns that the system would prompt you to do, and then it would layer it onto a 3D image based upon your 3D frame taken from your current motion capture state.  Plus, since the camera’s resolution is so low, it would not stand up to being displayed in full 1080p and would have to be kept windowed or it would blur.

Next is the game show.  You clearly can see four people on one family’s side playing through Xbox Live with three people of another family in a generic trivia contest.  Aside from the fact the teams are imbalanced (which is kind of unfair) you can clearly see more than two people on each side playing.  Kinect can only support two people, so having a whole family doing a trivia contest is kind of a fantasy.  It’s also kind of unnecessary since trivia games on Xbox Live Arcade already exist using a controller, and would be better suited to just pushing the A button, even my mother would be able to figure that out.  The fact the system would accept voice responses for the trivia questions is kind of neat but time will tell how good that voice recognition software is.  Also we know that Chuck Norris’s push up count is still climbing as I write this, so that’s a trick question.

The movie selection system comes next, and you can clearly see the arm control system in place, another scene that made nerds go crazy.  This is not a fantasy, this is now a part of the Xbox 360 system, as is the full selection of movies to watch in full 1080p through Zune Marketplace and Netflix.  Technicians and programmers have been swapping back and forth about if Kinect can support arm motions while sitting or standing, originally it couldn’t, but after E3 it could…can we get a ruling on this?  Please post a comment if you own a Kinect and know if it can or not.  In the last bit of the video you see the woman telling the Xbox to shut off.  People interpreted this that you’d be able to turn the Xbox 360 on and off just by voice command.  You can’t do either.  Update:  The Fall 2011 update has added the ability to turn off the Xbox 360 by voice command.

So thank you for reading through this meaty article comparing what was originally promised with Kinect back when it was called Project Natal and what is actually coming with Kinect.  If you don’t get anything out of rewatching the video a year and a half later, at least you get to hear some of Wolfmother’s “Joker and the Thief”.

Very Political Day in US Today November 2, 2010

Today is Election Day in the US, which is decreed in our Constitution as the first Tuesday after the first Monday of November.  I don’t know why the guys who wrote it didn’t want it to be convenient, like on a weekend or something, but it is what it is and it doesn’t look like it’s going to be changed.

Today is also the day that the Supreme Court is going to be hearing arguments from both sides about California’s unconstitutional violent video games law, which despite being struck down by every court is now headed to the highest court in the land.  By the time I write this the hearing has already passed and has definitely made for some great reading.  It seems Justice Scalia has quite a wit about him saying such things like, “Would you Censor Grimm’s Fairy Tales?” (a fair question that has been asked more than once historically) and the other Justices seem to be on the ball asking questions about their clerks who play a lot of Mortal Kombat and what would happen to them if the law would be allowed.

Logic be damned there are no studies to equate violence in games to equally violent behavior in reality, it seems California’s sole evidence on their side is to equate games to porn and their whipping boy seems to be the game Postal 2, which has been referenced a lot by California’s side.  I’m sure the free-speech minded makers of Postal 2 are upset that their single game is being used to demean such a diverse and comprehensively succesful industry.

I seriously hope that the citizens of California, a state on the verge of bankruptcy, who make their games, record their music, produce their movies are appalled by the complete waste of money this has been for the state not just because of today’s proceedings but for the five years they have tried unsuccessfully to force passage of this illegal law.

Please note nothing is going to be resolved today this is just the beginning.  A ruling in this case will probably not be given for many months (It does take time).  Also note that just because the law has been struck down as unconstitutional in every other court below it the Supreme Court can vote differently and even some times in defiance of the Constitution (just ask the late great George Carlin).  However there have been cases where free speech has prevailed (ask Larry Flint).

G4 Dropped by DirecTV, No One Cares November 1, 2010

Satellite provider DirecTV has announced starting today they will no longer carry the G4TV station.  Because of this, starting today their subscribers will no longer be able to watch 24 hour reruns of Cops and Cheaters, much to the contrary position of G4’s wishes.

I’ve been playing very close attention to the comments section of most of the news articles being posted up about the decision DirecTV made to drop G4TV from their lineup, and they do not agree at all with what most of the articles proclaim or what G4 wishes to be known.

The internet has pegged G4 as getting a bad rap because of these proceedings and have been slamming DirecTV for what they claim are unfair business practices probably due to the fact that G4 is currently owned by Comcast, one of their competitors.

I myself have written about the downfall of G4, and it looks like I was right on the money.  DirecTV claims it’s the lowest rated station they provide and the cost to continue to carry it that G4 wanted was not justified given the low viewership.  I couldn’t agree more with this logic.

G4 used to be a good station.  I can’t stress that enough, and all the feedback I’ve read about this event seems to agree with that statement.  It has not been a good station since after the merge with TechTV.  Both stations had a perfectly unique lineup of shows which had a very dedicated viewership.  Once new management took control of the stations in the interest of changing the viewership to a much broader base, the station was completely wrecked and never recovered because they did this by either cancelling, shifting, or restaffing all of the well received shows leading to a viewership exodus which never recovered (and based upon the fact G4 hasn’t brought back any of the shows they produced that their former viewership watched it never will).

Without a strong lineup of unique well made shows (like what they used to provide) there is no incentive for someone to watch your station.  If no one watches your station then no provider will offer it.

Bring back your shows G4 or you might as well shut down.

The Making of Doom 3 October 31, 2010

Happy Halloween everyone!  In honor of the holiday I dusted off something I promised for all of you, the entire research paper I wrote six years ago on the development of id Software’s Doom 3.  The article itself is far too long to just simply post here so I created its own page on this website.  To view it, you can click on the tab marked “The Making of Doom 3” on the top of this webpage or just click the link right here. 

If you’re a historian of gaming news, a fan of id Software, or just curious what goes into development of a video game, feel free to check it out.  Enjoy!

What Happened to Pre-Order Cards? September 29, 2010

I picked up Dead Rising 2’s Zombrex Edition the other day and recieved it along with my pre-order incentive code and noticed for the second time what could be a distrubing trend.  The code was given to me on my reciept.  This is the second time this month I noticed this.  The first was when I got my GameStop Multi-Threat Armor when I picked up Halo Reach.

Normally when I preorder a game, if there is any preorder DLC included, usually you’re given along with your game a glossy index card with a scratch off code on it.  The card usually contains art from the game (or from the DLC itself) and instructions on how to redeem the code.

Does this mean the death of the Pre-Order card?  There are several good reasons why the cards should be discontinued.  They use extra paper which could be saved by just including them on a reciept.  They also ensure you don’t run out of codes, espessially if they’re tied directly into the Microsoft service so a new code can be generated every time one is requested, just like in a casino with paper money vouchers.

The problem is It’s not like it’s preventing code theft.  A guy online was still selling multi-threat armor codes on EBay for 60 dollars a pop (somehow).  Could he have gotten the codes by hacking the system, or did he just generate a bunch of codes and write them down?  Or was he just a plain fraud and the codes didn’t work?

I have to say I’m not really sad to see these things go.  I mean, I’m sad now but it’ll pass.  I’m glad that it allows some companies to save on some paper, that’s definatly enviromental thinking.

Death of a Consumer September 28, 2010

The following article was originally written on November 9^th, 2004, just after I had attended the midnight launch of Halo 2.  It was submitted to my freshman college English class that following day where it drew a cult following among the students and the Professor.  What follows is a slightly updated version of the article, mostly just minor tweaks.  The article is about advertising, and how it differs gender to gender.

A lone figure walks down a dark shadowed hallway.  The hallway is made entirely of metal and looks like the corridors you’d see in a futuristic spacecraft.  The figure is clad in space armor and walks down the hallway with purpose.  The light shines upon him and the viewer recognizes the figure.  It is none other than the Master Chief, the hero of Halo.  Reaching into a weapons locker, he grabs a rifle from the cabinet and enters an elevator.  Over the speakers play distress signals from across the galaxy, military forces in dire straits with need of help.  Finally the Master Chief makes it to the bottom of the elevator and steps outside of it.  Then the following two voices are heard.

“Admiral, tell your men to hold their positions, re-enforcements are on the spoke.”

“The entire fleet is engaged, Cortana.  With respect, what the hell sort of re-enforcement have you got?!”

The Master Chief looks out a window in the spacecraft.  In the darkness of space a familiar object is seen.  Earth is under attack.

At the end of the trailer appeared the subtitle:  “Stop Destruction of Human Race…In Progress”. 

The Master Chief readies himself to be blown out the airlock and opens the airlock doors, sucking himself into space and on top of the closest alien ship he can hit.

Sounds like a scene in a movie doesn’t it?  It’s not from a movie at all.  It’s from a commercial.  This one advertisement for a game that would be two years away started a new generation of gamers.

“Lose inches off your waist with no money down”, “More absorbent then the leading pad”, and “Have a very happy misses at home” are just a few examples of this strangle hold the advertising media has on the country.  It stays subliminally in our consciousness showing in between breaks of our favorite and not so favorite television programs.  It takes time away from our lives to corrupt us to feed money into the capitalist machine that is the world.  Yet advertising is all around us.  By integrating itself into our everyday lives it has us working jobs we hate to buy stuff that we don’t need.

You can see the trends in advertising marketing with the major difference in style of the first Halo 2 trailer and the Halo 2 commercials that aired on television.  The internet is seen as a different type of medium than the television.  The first trailer was intended for the people who loved the first Halo game and would use up their internet bandwidth to retrieve it to watch it.  Even though it didn’t show much except some new footage of the Chief going down an elevator and then later blowing himself out of an airlock hangar to hopefully land himself on board an alien ship’s hull while subtitles played, the intent was more to jar the memories of the first game with the players of Halo 2 using extremely simple methods while making a simple nod to where the second one will go.  It also showed off an early version of the new graphics engine to whet the appetite of what would be possible for the second game visually.

This is quite different then where the current TV commercials for Halo 2 are targeted.  They are more action oriented with an attempt to appeal to a person who is unfamiliar with the Halo universe.   These ads are professionally done, more targeted around showing off what the game can do to appeal to people who have a casual interest in video games other then the demographic of Halo gamers who the advertising agencies probably figured were already set to buy the game regardless of advertising.   There certainly wasn’t any intent in the commercials to make the game appeal to women.

Men and women are hardly alike.  I must admit this is hardly a controversial statement to make.  Such books have been written to show this very statement, including the very popular book, Men are from Mars, Women are From Venus.  Personally I would’ve preferred to come from Jupiter, but that’s not the point.  Men and Women have different tastes and different interests.  It’s not true in every case.  Sometimes women share interests with men and men share interests with women.  For example, cooking is not a common practice for only women.  There could be a man who is an excellent skilled chef like Emeril or Wolfgang Puck.  However, if there was one gender demographic that would be stereotypically assumed would be done by males would be gaming.

Advertising only recognizes trends using either surveys or sometimes just relying on stereotypes to market their product.  In the end, to the advertisers we are nothing more than empty vessels, ready to consume regardless of gender.  If it’s not a stereotype and their surveys don’t show a need for something, they won’t bother with it, and they saw no need to market Halo to women.

Now because of the amount of time that advertising has been harassing people it would take forever for me to write a paper about all the different examples in advertising for targeting of gender.  Perhaps if I had a grant and no life I would find it interesting, but it’s hardly a requirement of this article.  So for that reason this paper will be focused on one particular advertising campaign which has recently gone into full effect, the Halo 2 launch.

In November 2001, Microsoft launched their home video game console, the Xbox.  The flagship video game that was launched with the console and became the must have game for the console was a game called Halo.  In the span of four years, the game has sold over four million copies in its existence and to this day is the number one game to play at parties for teenage males.  So much of a fan base was created by the game, it was inevitable for Microsoft to convince their developer, Bungie to create a sequel.

Their prayers would finally be answered in September 2002, when Bungie announced development of Halo 2.  With the announcement came the very first commercial for the game, which was the very same commercial that was described at the beginning of this article.

The only game to actually successfully appeal to women was Will Wright’s The Sims, which was never the original intention of the designers, but strangely upon release the designers saw women loved the game more than men.  Halo, when it was released, was considered the norm.  It was viewed as a game that only young men enjoyed.  Because the game industry usually doesn’t make games they feel would appeal to women, they don’t waste time trying to advertise to them.  The outcome was as expected.  When Halo 2 was finally released on November 9, 2004 at 12:01 AM across the country, lines formed out the door.  Stores who said they were expecting sales of over a thousand copies.  Each!

The people who waited in line were gamers by every definition.  There was such a difference among all of them in appearance and style the only thing that actually held them all together was the fact that they all loved Halo and wanted to be among the first to play the sequel.  In the crowd of a hundred people at the release party I attended there was roughly a ninety-six percent male population in the group.  Of the four girls that were actually in the line that night, about half of the girls looked like they were there just to hang out with their boyfriends and had no actual interest in the game, but the other half of the girls left in the crowd were actually there for the game.  It was a genuinely disheartening statistic, but not a surprising one.

It was kind of sad to see this enormous imbalance along the genders in the crowd.  Over the years gamers have accepted these trends but still profess to attend events like this out of love for the games.  With these numbers they must be, they’re certainly not doing it because they think they’re going to get laid.

The question remains, will these trends remain?  As time goes on, a casual trickle of female gamers are appearing in LAN events.  This is a very encouraging sign of the changes to come, and I welcome it, I just hope advertising joins me.

The Problem with Online Distribution September 19, 2010

Right now it’s a hot topic so I figured I might as well talk about the elephant in the room that gamers are looking at right now, especially after the shutdown of Good Old Games, which as far as I know was the only DRM-free game distribution service online.  I want to talk a little bit about the history of online distribution and the DRM that has come along with it, and why unfortunately even while it’s creating record breaking money in sales, it is still based on a broken system which the customer will suffer for.

What follows is an original article created over two and a half years ago which has been updated to reflect the current times.

For the longest time online distribution and DRM have gone hand and hand with each other, because for some reason never made clear making something available for download online, even if the person is paying for it, was scary to publishers.  If they were going to do it, they were going to make it as restrictive as possible to the end user, both as a deterrent for them to use it, and for the “true owners” (IE the people with the millions of dollars who financed it, not the people who bought it) to have a minor sense of comfort over what they were doing.  Of course DRM can be broken as fast as most people can click a simple button, and just because people are downloading their games after paying for them, the same percentage of people who would unfortunately do illegal things with their data would be just as likely to share a physical copy of anything as they would a digital copy.  So already the whole system was started with a flawed argument, and unfortunately everything since then has been based on that flawed argument.

People have been burned pretty badly by DRM used by online distributers in the past, not just because of the game industry. Sony Connect was Sony’s failed attempt at competing with Apple’s iTunes at online distribution of music.  Their biggest promotional call was when they gave out codes to the soundtrack for the first God of War game for free to anyone who bought the game and registered their manual’s promo code on the service.  However, while people were fine with redeeming a simple code for some free DRM filled audio content, they had no interest in buying anything else through the Connect while better options like iTunes already existed.  It was a massive failure, and Sony eventually decided to shut it down.  Famously, when Sony’s Connect system was brought down around 2007, making any DRM protected files you purchased through the system no longer accessible, and making anything still protected by it forever locked after it was shut down. Sony famously sent an email telling all their customers to simply copy their files to mp3 after burning the files to CD-R while the service was still on, which is basically the way to remove all DRM from audio files that will allow you to burn them to CD.  If the customers didn’t do this while the service was still running (or hadn’t done it before already) they would not be able to listen to their music ever again, music they paid the same price for as they would for a CD.  So basically they openly advocated the procedure they didn’t want their customers doing just so their customers could keep listening to files they paid for. Will I complain? No, my only files were the God of War soundtrack and it was free and I had removed the DRM immediately anyway upon purchase. I still had the master files backed up just in case, but that turned out to be pointless.

On another side, I had purchased one of the initial download copies of Half-Life 2, downloaded through Steam, unlocked through Steam when released, requiring an internet connection to get to work. And you know what? It worked fine, and did not take my rights away from using the game. In fact it gave me more rights, I had the ability to download the game onto any computer at one given time and access it with a simple password and username like I would use AIM. No need for discs, no need for installation. It worked, and worked well, and all my impressions of Steam are positive.  But what if the time comes when the Steam service no longer exists?  Will I still have access to my games?

Something like that did happen, just ask any of the early digital downloaders of the game Prey. I saw no point to getting the downloadable version of the game through triton as what I wanted was the retail collector’s edition. I got it, and installed it just like any game. It functioned perfectly fine. Then in three weeks or so everyone who had Triton versions of the game were no longer able to play it because the company went out of business. Their money was wasted and they had no game to play. To save face 3D Realms gave free retail copies at their own expense to all triton purchasers, and made the Triton access codes compatible with Prey’s Steam release.   The damage was still done, people finally saw just how fragile digital distribution and rights management could become if the master the protection needed to phone home to no longer existed, they were screwed and completely out of money.

So now the Good Old Games owners are feeling the burn of online distribution, and from what I can tell online, they don’t like it.  Unlike the Prey users, they’re fortunate enough that their downloaded copies still work, if they were smart enough to back up their installers, but you know if DRM was included on those games it would be a whole lot worse.