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Comment by danielweber | Hacker News Reader

but piracy seems to be our only guaranteed method of preserving them

You aren't going to pirate Sim City 5.

This is the future of gaming. Companies are just going to avoid all the grief of piracy and weird DRM by either moving to locked-down platforms (iOS and consoles) or into games that have essential online components.

It's a classic prisoner's dilemma. I'd love to by a game and install it on my PC without it taking things over, and the publishers would love to write that and not worry about DRM. But we can't get that because each of us doesn't trust the other party to defect.

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This is the future of gaming.

Then I guess I won't be gaming anymore. Not that I do much now, and I've mostly quit for other unrelated reasons, but if is the future of gaming, you can count me, and I'm sure many others, out.

I used to game a lot. I used to spend a not insignificant amount of money on games. If the publishers want to basically steal my money and call me the thief, then they can forget about having me as a customer.

Actually it is the future, and like you I too don't buy games much any more. Your kids or your peer's kids though will play games this way because it is the only way to get them and they will think its 'normal.' Eventually you'll be called an 'old timer' and derided for all your comments about how in your day when you bought a game it didn't need to download 4GB of 'patches' nor did it require Internet access to run.

What is most curious though, is whether or not this new world order is stable long term. Other creative works publishers like movie studios or musicians, can capture the long tail of revenue for their products long after the initial 'rush' but for game studios and other 'active' products there is this continual draw on the host companies resources to keep servers alive or what not. So eventually keeping a game 'alive' starts generating negative money. And killing a game generates negative customer sentiment. So the combination might overwhelm the business model.

Only time will tell.

There are countless games coming out that don't use draconian DRM. "The future of gaming" is a lot less monolithic than the two of you would suggest.

Yep. I think this is the future of gaming according to EA and a few of the other traditional AAA studios. Not every Publisher is this hostile to users or treats them the way EA or Ubisoft does. Publishers such as Valve, Square Enix, 2k Games have been friendly and respectful to PC gamers for the most part in recent years by using only Steam DRM and avoiding too much "consolitis[1]" in PC games (some of 2k games titles are iffy, but overall they have more hits than misses).

Then we have all the really great indie games coming out, like the successor to Dungeon Keeper Series[2] that looks good enough to be AAA (though no where near the price range), but is crowd funded. We also have a great alternative to Blizzard's Diablo with Torchlight. Some studios will go the way of EA and others I think will be the opposing side. Who will win though I think is up for debate, but I prefer to be optimistic.

[1] http://www.firingsquad.com/games/Firing_Points_Consolitis/

[2] https://wftogame.com/

> "So eventually keeping a game 'alive' starts generating negative money"

When a game nears that point, the publishers can theoretically push a patch that removes the "must be online" components and/or allows connection to self-run servers, so the community can keep it alive.

I'm aware of a few companies actually doing something like this. Years ago, Parallax/Outrage/Volition (of the Descent series) went out of their way to give the community the assets they'd need to keep the series alive.

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

EA actually did this for a fb game:

http://www.joystiq.com/2012/06/20/dragon-age-legends-no-long...

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

I'm not sure if this is the future. Perhaps for the masses, to some point, as you write. However, I already find myself uninterested in any large productions, cause in the end they are indeed all the same... I gamed a lot in the past. Nowadays, I am buying Humble Indie Bundles, and I am truly excited about Kickstarter funded games. It seems to me, that the real creativity is transitioning to there.

Killing a game does generate negative customer sentiment, but if you have a game that hardly anybody plays anymore it's probably not enough to keep them from pulling the plug.

My guess is for "cult favorites" after some period of time they'll just push out a patch that removes the DRM and turn the servers off. Then it's just a question of losing multiplayer.

I agree. When I said this was the future, I wasn't saying it with any cheer. We had a pretty good run for a while there, though.

Kickstarter-funded indie games and revivals led by '90s-era developer icons will be viable alternatives.

This is not the future of gaming. Look at how badly SimCity flopped.

Let me compare to DotA2 which I play a lot. It's exclusively multiplayer and thus needs an internet connection, yet it's free to play. How much have I spent on it? At this point at least $75+ dollars. THIS IS THE FUTURE OF GAMING.

Valve has the right model. I know valve didn't create the F2P model but it has implemented it the best as far as I know. They have pulled more money out of me giving me a free game then they would have made if they sold me 60+ copy.

EA should of just given out free copies of SimCity. Given out free copies with enough features to keep me entertained without the need to spend money. Then releasing toolsets for modders to create items; resell them to us for profit.

The DLC will surely be created but based on how EA conducts DLC in The Sims 3, I expect expensive expansions and stuffer packs.

Online-only play is exactly what I am talking about as the (dystopian) future of gaming. Pushing more and more of the game into the cloud, so it becomes SaaS instead of worrying about DRM.

Freemium versus pay-up-front are both flavors of that.

Do we know that SimCity "flopped"? It's gotten lots of people angry at it, but that's not at all the same as not making money.

Oh I'm sorry I misunderstood. Well at this point I guess we could say it's at least on pause and certainly not a success.

And you know what's exemplary about DotA 2? All that money you spent isn't even short-cutting grind, it's /only/ on cosmetics.

I can't find a better example of F2P models out there, even my beloved Planetside 2 has some pretty big issues with how its model applies to gameplay.

Team Fortress 2, but that's another Valve game, so it doesn't exactly count :)

It didn't really flop though - EA had an immense amount of pre-orders, and that's all that matters. The money has been made, incentive validated.

Valve's free to play is done well, because they don't force you to purchase items in the game in order to compete or find the game fun. They're aesthetic items that let one customize their characters, instead of crippling gameplay.

If others followed this model, free to play would not be given anywhere close to the bad name it typically conveys.

DotA 2 isn't out and we don't even know their financials, do we?

> You aren't going to pirate Sim City 5.

I'm tempted to believe that due to the simulation grunt work being done server-side. But people also said the same thing about WoW and Starcraft II, yet you can easily play either of those for free with fully functioning multiplayer (just not on Battle.net).

This is wrong. The simulation is not serverside. If you disconnect from the servers you can play your city all you want. The only serverside aspect is saves and social (including region play), which would be relatively easier to recreate.

The only serverside aspect is saves and social

Am I misunderstanding what you mean by saves? That seems pretty important to me.

Not necessarily. Implementing client-side saving would be trivial compared to the other kinds of DRM that have been successfully bypassed over the years.

Client side saving is already implemented. In a few instances where I disconnected from the server and continued to play, SimCity would try to push my work to the server on reconnect.

At times this wouldn't work and I would lose my progress, but I'm willing to attribute that to the fact that it was supposed to be a rare case backup mechanism, rather than the necessary crutch it is currently.

Important yes, but also presumably fairly simple to reverse engineer.

Gotcha. If that truly is all that's punted to the server we should start seeing cracks in a few weeks, I would think.

And that's the point at which I will consider buying this game. When I can play offline, all the time.

Why did they have to disable accelerated time in the single player game? I'm not disputing what you are saying -- the notion that it had a server-side engine for single player games seemed silly -- but that aspect of the story struck me as very odd.

The theory is that the client communicates with the server for saves based upon in-game time not wall-clock time. So cheetah speed forces the client to talk to the server more often for this purpose.

I made my statement based upon my experiences playing. For one, I played the game for 3 hours disconnected from the servers - I knew my progress wouldn't be saved but I just wanted to play. It seemed to work fine aside from region play and that my progress wasn't saved.

Another time I lost my internet connection for 15 minutes. I continued to play. When I got it back, it claimed it re-sync'd my game with the server. As a test I logged out and back in and it all looked the same.

Maybe there is some simulation on the server side. But it doesn't seem necessary based upon my experiences playing the game.

Another theory other than sbov's theory is that there is calculation done on the server side, but only for cities in a region not currently being played. As long as someone is playing in a region, the other cities are basically on rails, so nothing really changes for the players, but they still will correctly interact with cities currently being played.

I am only speculating here but the server may be verifying a client's simulation to prevent IAP/multiplayer cheating. (Who hasn't played the old SimCity games with infinite cash?)

Could we not reverse-engineer it and write our own servers?

> You aren't going to pirate Sim City 5.

If there's interest in it, it'll be done. The connections will be sniffed and reproduced and/or the online component will just be cracked out entirely, but if somebody wants to do it it will ultimately be done.

I fear the game might just in general not be good enough for this to happen. Replicated pirate servers barely work well enough for WoW, and that is a hugely successful, and arguably very good game.

I doubt SimCity 2013 is going to develop such a cult following to allow for these kinds of cracks.

> I fear the game might just in general not be good enough for this to happen.

My thoughts exactly; Giant Bomb's hour-long video review was pretty telling of the issues in the game that a lot of people just haven't been able to deal with yet. Problems that are only around because so much time was spent trying to implement the multiplayer aspect rather than focusing on the core gameplay itself.

I want a new SimCity game just as badly as everyone else, but at this point I'm looking towards other offerings in this space - hopefully by smaller companies - to hold the torch (any suggestions here would be excellent).

I found this in one of the other sim city threads du jour: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1584821767/civitas-plan-...

they are getting much of my monies

EDIT: Don't remember which thread i found it in, so here are the posts that may have been the one that I found the kickstarter link in:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5343788 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5341070

Thank you! Will be interesting to see how many Amazon-refunded players will be taking that money and putting it into this and projects like it.

>barely work for WoW

flat out lie. there are multiple well run servers that often outperform the legit ones.

this is also true for all games with server emulation or otherwise private servers, they work well and often exactly the same as their legit counterparts.

If you speak from 'experience', then I would suggest you didn't try hard enough to find a decent server.

either way, don't exaggerate and lie to make a point. make the fucking point and leave it at that.

A fair point, but keep the vitriol to yourself.

The simulation is client side. Regions and saves are server side, nothing else. It'll be cracked

> This is the future of gaming

It's a future, but not the only one. There could be crowdfunded open source games, for example.

> This is the future of gaming.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/wasteland-2 http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/obsidian/project-eternit... http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/torment-tides-of-... http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/70755535/dead-state-the-... http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/redthread/dreamfall-chap...

The future of gaming has a few alternatives that look very promising and they're all DRM free.

That is a huge barrier to entry for small developers, so indy games will always be sans-online DRM for the most part.

These games are developed on open PC systems, so that's always going to be around too... your predictions for the future look hazy.

how does iOS or consoles prevent piracy? Piracy is rampant on iOS and every console to date.

Minecraft seems to be doing pretty well. EA can do whatever it wants, that doesn't mean every developer will follow in their path. Sure, lots will sell out, but more show up to take their place.

>moving to locked-down platforms (iOS and consoles)

Where piracy is rampant?

I'll take your (and a few other sibling commenters') word for it.

That just means we'll be moving even more towards not having software that runs just on my hardware.

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

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

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

>It is not mainstream.

Constantly advertised in every free buy&sell paper constitutes mainstream, even if you don't like it.

>but then installing PC games at all ceased to become mainstream.

The number of people installing PC games has steadily increased. Maybe posting "facts" that are the opposite of reality isn't a great base for an argument.

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