Be Excellent To Each Other

This is all spawned from a 6% (I'll double check that, but it was something like that) decline in games sales this year. Nothing to do with the recession or the lack of quality games. Nope, it's because everyone is playing online for FREE, the CHEEKY BASTARDS.



People playing the game online that they bought six months ago instead of buying MORE NEW GAMES is a "continuing problem". Fuck ME. These people will literally do anything for more money, won't they? Let's not forget that MW2 is the top-selling game EVER and stuff (probably).

There's, thankfully, a bit of a backlash developing already, with people saying stuff that I wanted to say. Isn't it nice when you're annoyed and prepare to post an angry comment, only to notice 10 people have already said it much better than you ever could?

This is Pachter, remember. He's a cunt. But I wouldn't put it past Activision.

Links:

http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments ... l_of_duty/

http://www.industrygamers.com/news/acti ... s-pachter/

http://www.vg247.com/2010/07/16/activis ... s-pachter/

Activision are doing a good job singling themselves out as the biggest cuntship sailing the gaming waters at the moment. These are the same waters which house EA, remember.

They certainly are! I honestly don't see this model working, though. I mean, it might work, but it'd completely fuck everything over. If Modern Warfare 3 comes out and gets the same number of sales as the last one, and half of those sales turn into subscriptions, all other FPSes are completely screwed if they want to try the same business model. You'd have to "pick" your game of choice and only play that, much like with MMORPGs. The other option is Acti do this, nobody else does, Acti die in the water. Thing is, the typical CoD crowd are fucking idiots. There are obviously other scenarios but I'm furious.

Get a PC. Whilst I say that completely tongue in cheek it will really help out the PC gaming market if this goes to pass.

Surely if this was to come into force then the games would carry this fee across all the platforms?

I think this is crap but I suppose it was only a matter of time before someone tried it. I would like to say I would boycott the game which introduced this and I hope that I would. Maybe just a case of playing the older ones in the series, so when they release the new CoD just stick with the old one. Not because I don't think the CoD games are worth because I clearly do given how much I play them but more because of the point Jonarob made; I don't want to be forced to choose a multiplayer because not only do I have to buy a game but I also have to buy a subscription.

I have a cunting PC. It's good. I tell you every week! I prefer console gaming. I was once an avid Counter-Strike/Quake/whatever player and keyboard and mouse was absolutely the best control method ever. I got a 360. I decided I was wrong.

Gill. PC owners will simply refuse to play the said game if that were to happen. MW2 did not allow for dedicated servers so people were thrown at the mercy of the ones provided. They were pretty rubbish.

Most PC multiplayer games allow for players to set up their own servers (private if wanted) and play eachother 'til their hearts content. If and when that function is removed they simply play something else. This is why Bad Company 2 has peed on MW2 for popularity on the PC. Just did a google and came up with this -



http://blogs.battlefield.ea.com/battlef ... yers.aspx##

Console owners may well end up paying the fees, but on the PC there are so many online MP games (inc completely free ones based on mods of HL2) that this kind of shittery would never ever work with PC owners.

I mean christ, next thing they'll be trying to charge us to sniff our own farts FFS.

I'm not automatically against the idea of charging for online usage, if it's done in an appropriate way. For example, if instead of paying £40 for MW3 and playing it for three months and putting it on the shelf, I could pay £15 up front and then £2 (heh) a month to play it for three months, I'd be most happy. It would mean there would be much less having to "see what everyone's jumping for" and you could afford to try out games a bit more before deciding which one you want to carry on playing.

Of course, as it's Activision, it'll be £40 up front then £15 a month, so it's a shit idea.

Why should "we" pay again? Xbox Live covers this shit.

Meh, I'll just no buy their games. I'm not fucking pigeonholing myself into one game at a time.


As for folk heading over to PC gaming if it takes off big time? Some might but I reckon the majority are more likely to decide "fuck it!" & either pay up or give up playing online altogether as gaming on a PC is unarguably more of a faff*.
*Although with Steam & the like it's considerably less so.I always hated K+M for FPS games, fortunately the PC has a variety of genres what don't annoy me to play with K+M.

There is no caveat. It is more of a faff. That's why "online gaming" is so huge now. We've been at it for, what 15 years on PCs? The consoles have come along with their fancy internet connections and idiot friendly interfaces and now people are enjoying shooting people in the face for the first time even though it's been available since the nineties. These people won't go to PC - they could've been playing Counter-Strike years ago but they weren't interested, they'll pay the subscription fee or stop playing online.

The main problem with this Wullie is it actually taking off and working. If that happens who is going to want to spend loads of man hours putting together half decent single player games?

I mean, why would you given that you can whack something up like MW2 that lasts about ten minutes and then generate funds indefinitely by charging people to go online and play the same shit?

In MW2 the single player mode was a complete afterthought. Thankfully no one had to pay to play the MP game so it was almost justified.

Because you can !

That's the attitude being taken here. They want to charge for something that they don't charge for already.

As I said dude, next thing you know they'll be putting corks up our fucking arses and charging us to sniff our own farts.

I agree with pretty much everything Jonarob has said in this thread.

Mmm! Vintage!

Indeed. Say I want a game of anything on the xbox. Get three people and start playing & chatting. Tried to do that on DoW2 on t'PC with a Gaywood and a Dimrill, and getting the voice communications to work properly just didn't happen.

I'd like some fun 3ply DoW Last Standing, but know that getting chat working is more grief that it's worth, so end up with 2 player + random with the chat handled by the xbox.

I don't think it will happen, but I think it has happened already with the releases of DLC for maps, cars, stuffs. That is their way to get people to keep playing.

Some people will pay, and then their friends will, and so on and so forth.

I think the ease of getting XBox gamers into a room and shooting at each other over VOIP is something they prefer more than "Let's squeeze this some more".

I'll drop (a contact -Legal Ed) an email

Well, no, it likely won't. Pachter is a common talker of arse, and I'm not sure why he keeps getting column inches, because he hardly offers an inside view.

If APB did well, then there'd be a bigger chance, but it looks like it's bombing.

Also, I kinda object to paying more than 50p a week to play with my chums on the eggbox. Increasing that charge will mean I'll just go back to DoD:S on the PC or EvE, or something.

APB was an awful game though wasn't it?

As for that dude.. Well he may well speak ass but after the tricks EA has pulled over the past couple of years (the latest C&C game any one?) this is an idea that you really don't want to give them.

On a PC of course you have a keyboard and a mouse and an open source platform (because as much as Microsoft tried making it pay per release they couldn't) that will always have paramters that can be adjusted and configured providing the game supports it. On a console? Well I can't see the ability to set up your own servers with a pad and no OS.

I mean damn man, you would literally need to ban teh internets to stop people playing online for free on a PC. On a console though? the thought is actually very worrying because they could do it quite effortlessly. Especially with the console license issuer (say Microsoft for the 360 and Sony for the PS3) being in full control of who releases what on their platform.

WTF? That's a complete non-point. If someone makes an awesome SP game people will buy & play it whether they're paying a subscription to [generic FPS] or not, therefore making SP games would still make perfect sense.

Again though JC, you're appropriating your views and experiences on the entire online gaming community.

A percentage (Lets say, 90%) of XBL and PSN users choose consoles because it works straight out of the box, and they don't have to do anything. The box is cheap. Most gamers don't buy more than a handful of games a year. Under this suggested pay to play model, they will either pay, or not play online.

Most of them don't want to invest in a gaming PC to have the same quality experience at an initial hardware outlay of several hundred pounds plus frequent upgrades to keep pace, even if they can hack and use their own dedicated servers to avoid any similar charging model attached to PC games. A small percentage, a very small percentage, will make that move.

Perfect sense to who? us players? of course it would.

However, when you see the gaming market as a way to squeeze out every single penny you can why would you spend years putting together loads of levels and scenes when you can make ten, sell them and then charge people to play them over and over?

Now I know that this dude basically talks from his bum. However, he also smacks of pure greed. Sadly so does pretty much every single game developer out there. It's the same with broadband man. Why would some one provide a completely uncapped service when they can start choking it and charging per usage?

A few years ago near on all ISPs were uncapped. Over the past couple of years even the ones who brag about being uncapped and unlimited have started to stick in restrictions and no doubt over time they will choke it up charging for whatever small bit they can.

Right now a MP game has little single player content. They are the same price to buy however. For the extra cash you are getting all of those servers set up for you and laid on a plate, free. You can then play that game online as much as you want without ever paying another penny for THAT game to THAT game company. Do you think they're happy about that?

They'll charge you for anything they can and pull off as much as they can get away with. With MMOs on the PC you have a choice. Some are completely free, some you pay a premium for. But the choice is there. That freedom of choice is something out of the hands of assholes like Pachter. However on a console all it takes is one dick like him to put the wheel in motion and that's it.

Applepie. Oh hells yeah dude I know exactly what you are saying man. Of course it's absolutely piss easy to MP game on a console and a faff around on PC. Thing is on a PC you at least have the choice.

The fuckers reserve the right to simply unplug the servers a year after release anyway, whatever the platform. And if not the publishers, the platform-holders, such as Microsoft euthanasing Original Live the other month.

And as Dimrill put it, Live already covers this shit.

Also, if they don't want people playing their games online for more than 6 months, they should just make shitty derivatives that no-one wants to buy (oh wait), or leave out multiplayer and do some hard, costly graft on the single player instead of providing 4-8 hours and still wanting £40 a pop.

I love your optimism that they'd go "Yeah, let's charge for this on the consoles but leave PC alone as that's fine. That's just fine."

I think you're missing what I'm saying Dim. On a console they can get away with it because they could basically stop game companies releasing games that are not pay per view. At which point no developer would be allowed to release a game on the 360 that Microsoft haven't intercepted. I'm not saying it will definitely happen but the possibility is there. I mean, what are you going to do? Set up a dedicated or private server? Of course you're not going to because you can't. Microsoft made fucking well sure of that when they released it.

On PC however? They would be free to go ahead and try. Sadly though Windows is an open platform and Microsoft can not charge royalties or licensing fees. They tried, but were told to piss off. That means that any one can code a game for the PC and do whatever they like. Give it away, sell it, stick it into the realms of their colon and so on. And Microsoft can't do a damn thing about it because they lack that control. A MP game for the PC usually contains the options to send the connection to a server of your choice. It's very similar to setting up say a Newsgroup. You put in an I.P and a port or two and you're away.

Because of this there are many games released completely free. Neo Tokyo is a semi recent example that uses the HL source engine and then you go off and set up servers and clans and so on. What I'm saying is none of that is possible on a console because it's all completely locked down and out of harm's way (IE out of free's way).

So theoretically this business idea would work absolutely swimmingly on a console but would fail in the face on a PC.

I think that was the main reason for the shit storm when MW2 was released on PC. I mean damn man, people are still playing Doom online. Bit hard when the game lacks the interface to make it last forever.

Which is basically why BC2 was so much more popular. People can play it for as long as they like and get as good at it as they want forevermore. Without the sword of damocles waving worryingly over their head.

Yes, except it's not MS/Sony who would be collecting, it would be the games publishers. And they do have a reason why they wouldn't release on PC if they couldn't charge for multiplayer.

And, of course, they could if they wanted to, you can waffle on about open platforms, but sadly, that's also bollocks. If enough is server side (eg WoW) then they can hold you to a charge.

Dave for it to ever truly work they would need to climb into bed with Microsoft. Who in their right mind would pay for a game you have to play to play online when they can get one where you don't?

If Microsoft let, say, EA release say Bad Company 3 on the 360 with free online MP who in the hells would pay for MW3 knowing they have to pay out the ass to play it every month?

Again, I am not saying this would ever happen but the possibilities are just absolutely there on the 360. They're there on every other console too.

There are lots of games on the 360 which allow you to host as the server. Loads of them. Microscrofula have nowt to do with that. Or have they got moles working in every games developer and telephone exchange now?

OK great. I never knew that. So you lives and learns

EDIT. But whose server do they go through?

No, they'd need microsofts consent. Microsoft already charge for Live. They wouldn't see any of the extra money. There's nothing in it for Microsoft.


And on the PC.

So if this kicked into force the PC would no longer be able to play MP online of any sort?

Well you have a choice. Either you can go for The Saucer People's or The Reverse Vampires from the RAND Corporation's.

Any games that used this scheme would be similary unplayable without paying regardless of platform.

As it stands, the chances of it happening are zero. But that's not anything to do with platform.

Wot no Skynet?

This is all the same as Lave getting paranoid about the introduction of iAds spelling the doom of paid apps now being infested with adverts. The markets generally won't stand for being fucked over, bar a few people who'll pay stupid money for stupid things. We'll be fine.

Actually you have just reminded me what happened when Midway tried to put ads in its games. It failed horribly. In the end they gave those games away free (Area 51 with some diet coke ads) and so on..

Sorry, I don't have faith in this argument anymore. I can think of loads of examples where companies are, frankly, getting away with murder, charging ridiculous amounts. Sky Sports is a fucking ludicrous rip off for example. Modern Warfare 2, both the retail and DLC prices were stupidly expensive - everyone bought it already. Even WoW - what is it, still £8 a month? They have 10 million subscribers for fuck's sake - they're printing money. They could half the sub cost and still make a killing. Why do all of these things work? Not necessarily a few people being stupid, but it's because they're perceived as value for money purchases. A bit extravagant perhaps, but what's the other option? If Acti-Blizz-Twats decide to charge whatever they like for people to play CoD, I'd be very surprised if just a few people who pay stupid money for stupid things decide to jump on board. There'll be fewer suckers than there are now, sure, but there'll still be plenty.

Where's the 'sucker' element come into it though?

I remember perfectly well SF2 on the SNES costing £60 at one point, this is the proper UK cartridge, running on the old 16-bit SNES. Indeed, brand new 'triple AAA' (as they're known now) carts for both the Megadrive and SNES routinely cost £39.99 or £49.99, a 'cheap' game would have been £29.99.

And these games were single player, on a single console, no online, no updates, no patches, no support, you handed over your fifty quid, and that was it.

Forgive me for sounding like the old fart in the room here, but gaming has never been fucking cheaper! The consoles are cheaper, the screens to play them on are cheaper, the games are far more intricate and involved, seriously, you're getting a genuine fucking bargain with console and PC games these days, you don't just pay less - (and I don't mean less with inflation adjusted prices, I mean you pay less than was the case for the 'top games' damn near twenty years ago in basic pounds and pence, i.e. it's got an awful lot cheaper) - you get a far better game as well.

I don't see why games publishers should be obliged to support and/or upgrade their games for free, forever, especially when the cost of entry is so low. If you pay £30 for a multiplayer game and it stops working eventually, then tough shit, that's the way it goes. Single player games last forever, so choose those if you're so fussed about it.

Blizzard aren't 'printing money', people pay their subscriptions every month for a reason, if Blizzard abandoned the game, their subscribers would fuck off. It's the fact that the game is constantly updated and improved, that problems are addressed, that new stuff is added and old stuff revamped, that keeps people paying their subs.

Everyone who plays WoW has a choice, everyone can fuck off if they choose to, explain to me please how Blizzard are 'getting away with murder.'

(And by extension, any company that chooses to support a multiplayer game online for years, you think your pre-owned £15 disc buys you that ad infinitum, for example?)

That's kind of a big straw man argument right there. Never did I deny that gamers have choice. That's not the point at all. Of course we can choose not to buy games. But we don't want to make that choice, because we like playing games. And the point isn't the WoW subscription model anyway - yeah, it's priced how it's priced and if people don't like it, they don't pay it. What I was demonstrating, in response to Malabar's post if you care to, like, read it, is that there are people out there who do pay for this sort of thing, and would pay for a subscription Modern Warfare game - because they perceive, (and I myself perceive in the case of MW2 and Sky Sports, and, actually, WoW once over - I played the beta and then for two years or so after the initial release) value in the product they're paying for. That was my argument. You seem to have just waded in without reading the whole thread.

As for games being cheaper than they used to be - yeah, they are, but they're also a damn sight more mainstream and popular than they were in the early Nineties - more people are buying them, so publishers can afford to make them cheaper. But hey, I don't set the prices - they set the prices. They've set a precedent with these prices, people are happy as it is, they've got used to it. They have to expect complaints when they decide, suddenly, to try to get more money from people.

Of course, your argument is the publishers are perfectly within their rights to charge as much as they like and we can always just vote with out wallets. Yes. This is the case with all consumer goods and it always has been, but don't you dare try to convince me that it denies me the right to complain about it.



Except that's not the way it goes. History shows us Half-Life and its mods which are still going strong today - on an original £30 purchase. Yeah, some games have the servers turned off a few years down the line, for example some of the older EA Sports titles. Fair enough. But in the history of online shooters, generally, damn straight I expect at least a good few years of, if not "support", at the very least the ability to play the thing online with other people - especially if that's one of the features on the box, and very likely the main reason I bought the damn game in the first place. That's why we're complaining about the possibility of having more money squeezed out of us. I didn't, and nobody else did as far as I can tell, say that I expect publishers to support games forever. Like I say, read the thread. You seem to be responding only to my post, out of context, and not only that, you're putting words in my mouth.

I can never understand these publisher-sympathetic arguments which outline the fact that the consumer has choice and therefore has no right to complain because they can always just, y'know, opt not to buy anything at all. That's complete bullshit, and frankly, this sort of argument from a person visiting a forum mainly based on the discussion of video games makes me a little suspicious.

I think with the number of subscribers they have, they could very easily charge half what they're currently charging and still be massively well off. Maybe getting away with murder was a bit dramatic. I was simply demonstrating, though, that lots of people are willing to pay a premium for something if they perceive it as good value. I was not complaining about Blizzard being an evil rip-off corporation thing. Whether they are or not is for a different thread. This is about subscription fees possibly coming into play for games which don't traditionally have them, because, shock-horror, sales have dropped during the recession. Like I say, read the thread if you haven't already.

Although, judging by your recent posts, you are a WoW subscriber, so I feel you may well just be acting out of defence for your monthly expenditure, after all, those people have been labelled as suckers in this thread. I don't think you're a sucker - it's your decision and if you think it's value for money, great, which is what my post was actually about. I pay Sky a frankly extortionate amount to watch a bit of footy on a Sunday and Monday - ridiculous, but I see the value in it, just like I think, contrary to Malabar, that people will see value in subscription CoD, therefore the awful model suggested by Pachter is actually feasible, which is bad.

Not a premium then, is it? What with the definition of good value being 'worth what you pay for it'. And don't tell me that 'perceived good value' is different. If you're getting enjoyment out of X, you're getting that enjoyment. You're not just 'perceiving' that you are.

I enjoyed a lovely walk in a forest. It was free. Therefore I AM MUMRA

Yeah fair enough. But would you deny that most people think of Sky Sports as a premium service? As opposed to, say, council telly or even a bog standard Sky package? That's what I mean by a "premium". Of course it isn't a premium to the person paying it - unless they're really struggling to pay for it but still manage to scrape the cash together every month or something - that's the point. It's a premium to people who don't see any value in it.

For example, Malabar obviously doesn't see value for money in subscription CoD. It's a "premium" to him by my definition. He says because of this, it won't work. I've been saying that I think it still would work, because lots of people are more than willing to pay a "premium" for other services, e.g. WoW, Sky Sports, etc. Let's not get bogged down in semantics - I was just disagreeing with Malabar about whether or not SubCoD is actually feasible on a large scale.

If it was decided by the mighty Microsoft that all online MP games on the 360 were to be paid for that would be that. There is no other option but to pay for a sub to play any new games coming out.

How many ways are there to play online without paying for Xbox live again? oh yeah, none.

If it was decided by Microsoft to try doing that on a PC they would get a nice warm glass of fuck off. Try as they may to stop it people would still continue to release and mod MP games. Something that isn't possible on a console. Infact I clearly remember an N64 emulator for the original Xbox that literally had to be covered up and leaked because the guy used the Microsoft devkit and didn't pay the license fee (not that Microsoft would ever have allowed him to release it).

And you say the chances of it happening are zero but I don't agree Dave. What's this cloud thing (Onlive or whatever the fuck it's called now) again? Oh yeah ! something you pay for or don't play at all. You get nothing on your actual PC that you can play if you don't pay the sub. Just like with Sky Sports if you miss a payment or decide you don't want it *poof* it's gone. And I wouldn't fucking put that kind of idealism past any one let alone slick Billyboy Gates. He is the most controlling fucker ever.

I'm sure at some point you're going to realise that the topic is game specific charges, not platform charges.

But that day hasn't come yet, maybe tomorrow.

It already is tomorrow!

Man, if you hate Microscrofula so much why haven't you bought a Mac yet?

JC, see the only reason you can play online for free on your fucking spaceship PC is because the folk that made the games have either provided their own servers or released the tools that you'd need to set up your own.

Bearing that in mind, how the hell would you still be able to play new games for free if the publishers started operating under the subscription model?