NWN2: MoW - DRM Limited Install Removal

I'm totally cool with that, actually. If -- and it's a big if -- they can leverage that to deliver better value than with the traditional method of delivering games. There's a lot you can do with a subscription-based model that you can't do with a single-release model; for example, you can create and deliver new content dynamically as the players are playing; you can even follow them to figure out what they'd like, and then craft stuff based on the information you've gathered.

Knowing the way these guys think, though, it's far more likely that all we'll see is more desperate attempts to copy the WoW formula.
 
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Like the great value of DLC? I smell something and it ain't roses.
 
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Well, technically, a game-as-service would necessarily be *all* DLC. But no, that wasn't what I had in mind -- although I share your pessimism that it's probably what we're going to see.
 
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Is the server half empty or half full?

Maybe that is what it is going to be for EA , but I can't really see things like console (especially handhelds like the DS) totally moving over to a service formula. I'm not the kind of person whose it going to rent a play of Tiger Woods.

Still, I hope Ossian get a boost in revenue for this move.
 
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Is the server half empty or half full?

Maybe that is what it is going to be for EA , but I can't really see things like console (especially handhelds like the DS) totally moving over to a service formula. I'm not the kind of person whose it going to rent a play of Tiger Woods.

What if the play cost 50 cents?

(Assuming you want to play Tiger Woods at all, that is.)
 
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50 cents would be fine for me today. Back when I was a kid, when I learned to love gaming, 50 cents would've been way too much. I could've played it twice a week. I believe they will lose a big part of their young audience and therefore future customers through this kind of service.
 
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I would be more than willing to pay 50 cents if im in sudden need of latest hockey/football game or som partygame. Or anything I will play only occasinally. I am interested of somtimes renting games.
 
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I suppose I'm just too much of a skeptic, but I believe any major change like going to an online service model is going to hurt the consumer. It's not because I believe it's a zero sum game - although it very well may be - it's because it will reduce the power of the consumer much in the way has been done in and by the console market.

Look at online publishing of books. Readers like myself used to think this was a holy grail as book prices continued to mount. "Take the publisher out of the equation" we said. "Let's pay the authors less than we paid the publishers and they come out ahead and so do we." But that's not how these things play out. Instead we pay as much or nearly as much for digital books as we did for the paperbacks and yet I suspect, even with all the money they put into pointless DRM, their costs are likely significantly less.

I see where some of you are coming from. In a perfect world that could benefit the consumer. But I doubt it will play out that way.
 
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50 cents would be fine for me today. Back when I was a kid, when I learned to love gaming, 50 cents would've been way too much. I could've played it twice a week. I believe they will lose a big part of their young audience and therefore future customers through this kind of service.

But the full game costs 50 bucks. If the game cost 50 cents an hour, you could play 100 hours for the cost of just one game. If you could afford those, how couldn't you afford the hourly rate?
 
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50 cents would be fine for me today. Back when I was a kid, when I learned to love gaming, 50 cents would've been way too much. I could've played it twice a week. I believe they will lose a big part of their young audience and therefore future customers through this kind of service.

Funny that 30 years ago (apply proper $ deflation), nobody ever complained about paying $.25 for each game of Space Invaders :)
 
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I suppose I'm just too much of a skeptic, but I believe any major change like going to an online service model is going to hurt the consumer. It's not because I believe it's a zero sum game - although it very well may be - it's because it will reduce the power of the consumer much in the way has been done in and by the console market.

How does the distribution model reduce the power of the consumer? I think it'd do the contrary, in fact -- digital distribution lets even bit players in; just look at Steam. This would simply change the way companies charge for the games; it doesn't make any difference to their content. In fact, gamers would be *empowered* since they'd only pay for games they actually play, and the cost of entry would be much lower.

I've made plenty of mistakes in my game purchases -- either not buying a game (until much later) that actually turned out to be really awesome (e.g. Gothic 2) or buying a game that turned out to be rubbish (e.g. Oblivion). I'd be trying many more games with a pay-as-you-go model, and I'd probably be giving more obscure games a fair shake.
 
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What if the play cost 50 cents?

(Assuming you want to play Tiger Woods at all, that is.)

A virtual arcade, I suppose it could work for them, but no, not interested. Maybe once in a blue moon, but it certainly wouldn't make up for the EA titles I've bought. Another plus for them is cutting out the retailers and pre-owned buyers which is probably a big deal for them.
 
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How does the distribution model reduce the power of the consumer? I think it'd do the contrary, in fact -- digital distribution lets even bit players in; just look at Steam.
Perhaps I was unclear, and I'm certainly speculating rampantly here. If you reread what I said, however, you should see I'm not concerned about digital distribution at all, I'm concerned of games as a service, which is very different. Steam is a distribution model that is still very much like what we've had all along, we just receive it differently (and the DRM can be different). But you buy a generally non-revocable license to play that game as much as you want.

It's not the digital distribution model that worries me so much as a linear path between creation and consumption. Right now you have many digital distributors all competing for our money. That's a very good thing. Competition is the most powerful force there is to empower the consumer. But I'm worried that some of these wonderful ideas are going to end up with too much control in the hands of a single publisher for a single game.

And while I agree that initially we will be tempted towards a games as a service model by them being cheap, once that model becomes commonplace, we are the ones who will be paying. Those prices WILL come up once they don't need to lure us away from the older distribution model. At THAT point we will have less choice and we'll just have to live with the consequences of being cheap.

Furthermore, think of some of the other consequences of games as a service. I certainly see it having a major impact on us being able to play games, say, 10 years after release, something I do all the time. There are multiple reasons for this. (a) The service will likely give up support for old hardware and old OSes over time (necessarily). We wont have the game to play without the service so, poof, there goes that game. (b) I think there may be good reason for these hypothetical game service providers to want to dissuade us from wanting to play an old game for $0.10/day rather than their hottest game for $1.00/day. I'm shooting from the hip here so I haven't mulled this over enough to give other concerns, but I suspect there are others to contemplate.

Concern (a) even might be apt for Steam, to be honest, but it hasn't happened yet. Now you might argue that Steam currently supports a number of old games, some even run in DOSBox IIRC, but that may still be a different animal. Those are for games designed for the old model. If a games service model were to supplant the current one I suspect we will see games designed for the new model. Unlikely? I don't think so. This is little different from locking in titles to a single console system, which is horrendously bad for the consumer and a definite case of the consumer losing power. It's obviously in the publishers best interest to lock a game to a service and collect royalties rather than give consumers a choice, else it wouldn't be such a prevalent practice in the console market. (I personally believe this remains very true beyond the additional benefit of it being cheaper to develop for a single system.)

As I said - I'm speculating. But we need to be mindful of the long term effects of short term decisions. These concerns will not pan out immediately even if games as a service took off as the next big thing tomorrow. But I think they will start to show up down the line if games as a service becomes the dominant force in the market.

Edit: One more thing, your comment about games as a service empowering the consumer by letting us pay for what we play is a VERY compelling one. I agree with this completely and would consider this perhaps the greatest consumer benefit of games as a service. The only weak rebuttal I have to this is that we should not forget MMOs which are games as a service, and yet they still charge an up-front fee (usually) in addition to a monthly fee. There's little reason not to believe the same would happen with all other styles of games.
 
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Edit: One more thing, your comment about games as a service empowering the consumer by letting us pay for what we play is a VERY compelling one. I agree with this completely and would consider this perhaps the greatest consumer benefit of games as a service. The only weak rebuttal I have to this is that we should not forget MMOs which are games as a service, and yet they still charge an up-front fee (usually) in addition to a monthly fee. There's little reason not to believe the same would happen with all other styles of games.

I think we would see a wide variety of pricing models. Blockbuster games would certainly charge an entry fee, because they could -- but smaller games and indies wouldn't; they might even go with the crack-dealer business model ("first dose is free").

And that would not be a bad thing IMO.
 
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EA will want their own titles on their infrastructure he didn't mention anything about providing a route for independent developers. It cuts out mods and any such tinkering still sounds pants to me.
 
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Absolutely agree - that is what I've said in various articles / posts ... Full draconian DRM for ~1-2 months, peel back limits, then within a year go to fully DRM-free. Reports have said that it is only the first couple of months that are the piracy-block targets anyway.

Sounds reasonable to me.

I'm also pro removing DRM when the game doesn't generate cash anymore.

But unfortunately most gaming companies just "forget" them instead ...
 
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