Ubisoft chief claims PC game piracy rate as high as 95%
By making some PC-exclusive games free-to-play, Ubisoft hopes to monetize these titles in a more reliable way. The free-to-play games include the likes of Silent Hunter Online, Anno Online, and The Settlers Online. Players would be able to download and play without paying, but additional content will be sold in the game.
Ubisoft has famously resorted to rather draconian DRM schemes that require legitimate gamers to be constantly connected to the internet in order to play. There have also been major security issues presented by Ubisoft’s form of invasive anti-piracy tools. The developer did end up loosening restrictions with Driver: San Francisco and From Dust, but players still had issues playing games during server moves.
Ubisoft representatives have said in the past that the company hopes to build gaming experiences that are more expansive, integrating social platforms, frequent updates, and mobile content to discourage piracy. It seems clear that anything Ubisoft does will be better for the piracy problem than its DRM scheme.
The company employs some truly annoying DRM, but where are the results? If locking down games like it has isn’t stopping 95% of games from being pirated, you have to wonder why resources are being spent on developing and maintaining the DRM systems. It’s also possible Guillemot was attempting to pull a large number out of thin air to justify the move into free-to-play games.
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Review
Publisher: ValvePlatform: PC, Xbox 360, PS3
UK Price (as reviewed): £11.99 Incl. VAT
US Price (as reviewed): $15.99 Excl. Tax
It's Counter-Strike. It's back.
For the most part, that's all any of you will really need to know; that it's the exact same game you used to love but refashioned at a higher visual fidelity. There are a couple of additions and a couple of absences which we'll come to in time, but for the most part this is just Counter-Strike made prettier.
Proper Counter-Strike too. The game is available for consoles as well as PC, but Valve hasn't let the controller change the game hardly at all. If you're playing on PC then the only concession to thumbsticks that you'll even notice is that the Buy Menu has been refashioned as a radial selector, rather than a list. That's hardly worth stressing about, is it?
Meanwhile, the rest of the game is perfectly preserved. It's two teams, evenly matched and with opposing objectives thrown into tightly designed arenas which demand conflict. The speed and feel of the original game has been captured perfectly, but what's better than just that is that the formula has been distilled even further.
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You see, Counter-Strike has always been about two things. In the short-term it's about the unrelenting speed of the violence and the enjoyable pressure that creates. Meanwhile, in the long-term it's about cultivating an intimate and strategic understanding of environments which are only superficially simple. Play enough of the old Counter-Strike and you'd naturally shift from one position to the other; what would start as twitch-shooting would eventually become strategic discussion.
The most fundamental improvement which Global Offensive makes is in increasing the level of granularity on this spectrum by presenting two flavours of experience; Casual and Competitive.
Casual modes are all about the short-game. When you start you're given Kevlar armour for free and you get only a few seconds to buy your weapons, with the implication being that you should stop planning and start fighting. Get out there and shoot that gun. When you die, you can watch the rest of the match from any position you want and soon enough you'll be funnelled on to the next map.
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On the other hand, Competitive modes are all about the long-game. You get nothing for free and when you die you're limited to watching only your team-members from a first person viewpoint. Matches are balanced to go on much longer too, with the implication this time being on encouraging a meticulous attention to detail. Here, it's not about the fastest finger, it's about the perfect sightline.
These differences between Competitive and Casual might sound subtle, but examined closely they're indicative of so much, both in terms of how the game was made and how it's played. Drop into any random Casual server and you'll find people running around, shooting each other and jumping on to voice comms only to swear or yell jokes. A Competitive server, on the other hand, has a completely different atmosphere; expect rebukes if you're anything less than focused on the task at hand.
Whichever you favour, the fact that you have the ability to more finely tune Counter-Strike to suit your needs is no bad thing whatsoever, especially when it's build onto Valve's typically robust multiplayer framework.
Star Wars: The Old MMO Problem
Another month passes and another big MMO announces it's moving from a standard subscription model to free to play, with the publisher strenuously re-iterating that this is both A Good Thing and also What They Planned All Along. Nothing super interesting in that, except that the MMO in question is Star Wars: The Old Republic - the most expensive game ever made.Not only was it the most expensive game ever made, but it was also developed by one of the best studios in the industry and based on one of the world's most popular franichses. And it's still unable to run on subscriptions after less than a year? Blimey.
Now, there are a lot of reasons why The Old Republic specifically has struggled since release and there'll doubtlessly be a lot of other critics pointing out the holes in EA's online strategy, the issues with Bioware's design and so on. Personally though, I don't think the issues we should be concerned with are exclusive to The Old Republic. I look at the other big MMOs which have faced the same transition - Age of Conan, Lord of the Rings, Star Trek Online - and wonder if there isn't a wider problem with MMO design.
Not even if you paid me.
Actually, strike that. I flat-out know that there's a problem with what we've come to accept as conventional MMO design. It's that that design rests on ideas which are explicitly manipulative of players, having been cynically created to trap them in a system that will never reward them enough to make them feel they can stop playing.
This is the dirty little secret of most MMOs. They are not designed to be fun, interesting or even social experiences. They are designed purely so that you keep playing. They are not entertainment; they are traps.
Now, there's a lot I could say on that point about developer responsibility and the evils of systems which promote and glorify these types of design, but those are other arguments for another time. What matters as far as the fiscal realities of SWTOR and its ilk go though is that there's only room a certain number of games that are this brazenly manipulative - and I think we've already reached that limit. Most gamers simply aren't interested in more games like that, while those that are have already got unbreakable bonds to existing games, such as World of Warcraft.
Who remembers Age of Conan? Anyone?
This doesn't mean that the MMO genre is dead, however - merely that developers need to look at new approaches and new ways to make the medium work. EVE: Online is a great example here, becoming successful for eschewing conventional design in favour of a pure sandbox model. Likewise, Second Life.
It still baffles me that there are so few games which are classified as 'Massively multiplayer' which offer genuinely social experiences. MMOs such as SWTOR and WoW may occasionally host social experiences, but these are by happy accident rather than design. In fact, a casual Twitter poll I just run (thanks to Kieron Gillen, Richard Cobbett and Joe Percy) only came up with one really likely looking possibility, called A Tale In The Desert. I'm going to dedicate some time this month to checking it out.
The rest of you can play The Old Republic, if you prefer.
No PS Vita price drops until 2013
Sony Worldwide Studios president Shuhei Yoshida told Eurogamer recently that Sony’s engineers are working hard to lower the manufacturing costs of the Vita. However, the planned revisions won’t happen until sometime in 2013. He said that this year, essentially this holiday season, was too soon for a price reduction.
At this point, Sony is concentrating on
getting more content onto the Vita in the form of classic PS One titles,
as well as new Vita games. The problem, of course, being that
developers are wary of spending money making games for a platform
without a large install base. And with the Vita still selling for $249,
many casual gamers are steering clear. Sony needs content from those developers to get people to buy though so it’s a catch-22.
The Vita is a very capable gaming device with dual analog sticks, a
touch screen, good resolution, and fast internals. With the prevalence
of smartphone and tablet gaming, the Vita isn’t going to fly off shelves
until that price drop comes. Bundle deals might be able to move a
little hardware, but the platform is lacking in blockbuster titles. In
order words, 2013 might be too late for anyone to care.
