A while
back, as of the time of writing, Game Trailers released a news story
about a game named Darkspore, published by Electronic Arts and
developed by Maxis, makers of The Sims and SimCity. The game was
newsworthy because after many months of problems with it, rendering
it nigh unplayable, Steam
has officially delisted it, making it
unavailable for purchase. This is interesting because the issues have
nothing to do with the game itself. In fact, the real issue is that
the EA servers are not operational. That is correct: In order to play
Darkspore, even in single player, customers had to connect to EA
servers. You see, EA had cited that the servers were needed for
the betterment of the experience, and not as a
form of DRM. It is this particular issue that I wish to talk about:
the cloud.
Lately,
especially with the dawn of the next generation of gaming consoles,
cloud gaming has become a serious talking point for both Sony and
Microsoft. Quite a few next-gen games, most notably Titanfall
from Respawn Entertainment and Ubisoft's upcoming games The
Crew and The
Division, also made it perfectly clear that
they will require the use of cloud-processing in order to function. I
have heard a lot of people in the industry praise the advent of
cloud-processing. After thinking about it, I am not convinced that
such an innovation is healthy for the industry. However, I cannot
just say that I think it is bad. My task is to argue the point to
those who do not share my view, which I intend to do.
The
biggest point someone prosecuting cloud-processing in a video game
can make is that utilizing it is another way to mandate that players
of the game are constantly connected to the internet at all times. In
other words, regardless of any potential benefits, it is another form
of always-online DRM. In order to actually use cloud-processing
services, it is necessary to connect to the servers where the
calculations being remotely handled for the purpose of streaming
inputs and receiving outputs. Since the odds of any given person
playing the game in the same room those servers are located in are
<1%, this can only be reliably done via the internet. Going
further, this connection must be maintained in order to continue to
make use of the cloud for offloading calculations, because otherwise
there is no way to transmit data. The unfortunate reality of this
necessity means that cloud-processing will always demand that users
get online and stay online, giving publishers and developers a very
convenient excuse to implement always-online policies. We have seen
this is the past with 1 very infamous case study.
Of
course, I am talking about SimCity
(2013). Also released by Maxis, SimCity (2013)
was actually the fifth installment of the series with the same name.
Unlike previous installments of the city-building simulator, this
game featured an ability to communicate with other players' cities
and share resources between them. Sadly, this otherwise interesting
feature came with a cost. EA decided that to facilitate the sharing
of resources, all saves had to be uploaded to their cloud servers,
with no copies on a given user's computer. In order for this to work,
EA mandated the players be constantly connected to these servers.
When people cried foul at this, Maxis claimed that due to the way the
game was programmed, it was literally impossible to add this new
feature without also including always-online. This was later proven
false by a
simple modder who allowed the game to function
perfectly fine without any sort of online connection. Though EA and
Maxis deny that the system implemented was for DRM to
this day, most of the people who saw it unfold
would be hard-pressed to accept that for truth. The notion of
utilizing the cloud was quite obviously another way of sneaking DRM
into a game that does not need it.
Another
issue with cloud-processing in video games is the sheer
impracticality of its use. Though I spoke of this last week when
talking
about the Xbox One, the issue with maintaining
servers applies equally to cloud-processing. Needless to say, without
servers to offload calculations onto, it is impossible to actually do
any offloading. Creating and maintaining said servers cost money,
which is already a dwindling and precious resource in the industry.
Since many people in the industry lament a lack of profits due to a
variety of reasons, it seems foolish to knowingly forge an unwritten
and unspoken contract with consumers to keep and maintain servers so
that a given product remains playable. Though not living up to their
side of the contract is certainly still legal in this case, it has a
way of tarnishing a publisher's reputation, and lowering consumer
confidence in future products.
Another
key practicality issue is that there are only so many calculations
that can be offloaded to the cloud. Ignoring the issue wherein many
people do not have reliable internet connections, there is only so
much data that can be transferred through wires and even the air
itself. Bandwidth is very much a finite resource, so it is necessary
to limit the amount of data that needs to be transferred between
cloud servers and the machine playing a given game. As a result of
this limit, things like high-definition graphical data are pretty
much completely out of the question. While I do not consider my own
internet to be particularly terrible 70-80% of the time, there is
absolutely no way I would ever be able to stream HD graphics through
my connection. I can barely play YouTube videos at 480p. Other types
of calculations exist on a spectrum of practicality, so at best cloud
processing can really only be used as a supplement and/or for games
that are not very system intensive. With this in mind, claims from
Sony regarding Gaikai,
which is their reported “solution” to backwards compatibility,
and Microsoft having “infinite
power with the cloud” seem dubious at best.
To best utilize cloud processing would require an intelligent, and
nuanced, approach that minimizes the amount of data streamed through
the internet. That notion contradicts claims made by both major
console manufactures.
The
last, and maybe most significant, issue that cloud-processing
presents is that over the long term it will result in a lack of
longevity for video games that use it. Like I said in my previous
point, utilizing this new computation technique requires servers that
must be maintained. Although it will probably take a very long time
for most games, eventually the time will come when a business
decision gets made. It will be decided that the costs to keep servers
up and running outweigh any benefits of keeping them, so they will
shut down. Like in the aforementioned case of Darkspore which started
this article, cloud-based games that suffer this fate will be
permanently shut down unless publishers are generous enough to put
the tools out there for consumers to make servers for the game. This
results in making games that, unlike every other entertainment
product out there, have a finite, if unknown, shelf life.
To be
fair, this is a very hard case to make to publishers. After all,
whether or not a game works 10 years from now does not really have a
noticeable impact on profit margins. Also, making games like this
enables them to charge years later for higher definition remakes and
ports of those same games, giving them a financial incentive to make
games that will expire in some way, shape, or form. However, in the
future, it will be necessary to have these products available as a
way to study and learn from them in many the same way people learn
from old books or movies. If the servers no longer exist for these
games to be played, then they will forever be lost to history. This
is a problem that has yet to truly be solved, and even services like
Steam will need to eventually face it. Although the thought sounds
laughably absurd, there will eventually become a time for each of
these companies to forever close their doors or be merged into
another. This new technology is ripe for abuse in this regard, and
that is something that can be frightening to many.
On that
note, I want to make very clear that this article was not intended to
be an alarmist piece on cloud-processing in video games. All I wish
to do is inform you, the reader, that there are still many concerns
that must be addressed before it becomes a more viable model. There
are positives uses for it, too. After all, Steam, Playstation Plus,
and Xbox Live users have already become accustomed to the benefits of
storing backup save files on the cloud. For games like the
aforementioned Titanfall and The Division, which have made it clear
to consumers that they are exclusively online multiplayer games,
cloud-processing is a perfectly viable tool for offloading some
extraneous calculations away from the console/computer.
It only
becomes concerning when we see cloud computing in areas where it does
not necessarily belong, like in the case of Darkspore, as the
problems then outweigh the benefits. There is also the opportunity
for a nuanced approach, using cloud-processing only for the
multiplayer components of a game, not affecting the single-player
portions. It can, in fact, be a benefit to gaming. However, it needs
to be done smartly, else many other problems are born
as a result. It is a difficult balancing act to make, and I am
honestly not sure that major console manufacturers, game developers,
and publishers are able to do it. Who knows? Perhaps I will be wrong.
Nonetheless, make sure that you are informed about the technology
before you pass judgment one way or the other.
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