To clarify, I'm not advocating each and every game having a monthly fee associated with it. I'm more thinking about having a AAA version of a service like Gamefly. You pay a monthly fee to play all you want of the games available on the service. I'd be willing to pay a pretty big fee for that sort of thing, probably $100+. Then the service provider would divvy up that money based on which games are being played the most. Thereby creating a direct relationship between a game being played more, and it making money. If you have a launch like SimCity where people want to be playing the game and aren't able to, EA is directly losing money.

An interesting idea. I'd love to see something like this. I suppose the real question is if existing power houses could potentially make more money this way than at present. A system where you're free to play whatever, invites more diverse playing. That seems likely to disturb the balance of power we see today.

I'm a big fan of subscription models, but you run into a lot of problems when you get narrative games that players tend to play once and never play again. With a buy/once model you get $60 for the 10 hour experience that might carry more weight for a user than 30 hours of fps multiplayer. With a subscription model you have to cater your game to keep people playing longer rather than more meaningfully.

Not sure of a system around that, but it's just a problem I've thought about. Maybe add payouts based on some user ratings system? But those most always end with people who troll rate things. You'd have to do some serious fidgeting with weighting ratings by hours played then paying out based off of a pay rate deemed by that rating.

It becomes super hard because so many people rate on a 5 point scale; it was terrible, it was bad, it was ok, it was good, it was great. But this scale doesn't really say anything about the differences between great games or the net enjoyment you get out of it. Did you get more out of 3 hours of journey than 3 hours of counterstrike? etc. NON TRIVIAL PROBLEM.

Since 2000, I've learnt not to buy a PC game on release and certainly not at full price.

No offense to any professional developers out there, but on release day I am forking out £40 for a program that hasn't had the bugs ironed out through patches, nor enough information shared on the internet to deal with any known issues. If we are now adding game-server issues as well...then its more reason to hold back buying a PC title on release.

I certainly hope they don't try this stunt on console games, because console gamers have even less patience and understanding than PC gamers when it comes to "faulty" games...

Let's not generalize Anri, there are very good game studio for PC. My last example is Arma 3, which gives support for mods and editor day 1 of the alpha version.

One may say "Oh yeah but Arma 3 is an upgrade of Arma 2". But still, that's really huge, especially nowadays where there are less and less support for mods or even editors for the whole life time of PC games.

I think the fault (for problems like always-on games) is more on people which are not gamers, and also new gamers which don't know what was done before.

Let's not generalize Anri, there are very good game studio for PC.

There are indeed many great game studios for the PC, and nor did I say otherwise. My point is, though, that its sods law that when you buy a PC game on release - theres always a 50/50 chance theres some issue with the game that might require a patch or a work around - sometimes even a hardware upgrade just to get playable performance with low detail settings, even though you have the required minimum spec.

Throwing in persistant internet connections for single player games is only going to add to that frustration. I hear rumours that the next MS XBox machine will have such a "feature", but I doubt console gamers will stand for it...

Couldn't they... not make a single-player game require a permanent connection to the internet in order to work?

That.

QFT.

Dont ....

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Game

The problem is that it's not just drm. The game's data and some of the simulation exists primarily in the cloud. If it were just drm they could have turned it off for a couple days to save the bad publicity.

Apparently not as much as they claim. There are several stories around the web where people are simply disconnecting their pcs and the game continues for minutes or even hours, so their "computations are handled server side" seems like bullshit. Hell, even if it were true, there's a simple fix for that part; release a server binary that can be run locally or even on another machine on your LAN. Yeah, the saves wouldn't be cloud and you couldn't interact with other cities, but it's definitely possible.

So, lets be honest, this is primarily about DRM. And to some extent, I can understand that. I may not like it, but I can appreciate the intention.

That said, a developer is going to require a consumer to be always online for the developers benefit, then the developer should be ALWAYS FUCKING ONLINE for the benefit of the consumer (ya know, the ones who are paying for the service). No excuses. Otherwise, AFAIC, you have sold people a product that is not fit for purpose.

Yep, a few reports exist of people playing unconnected - I don't have a link to the post but someone apparently created a new city and then pulled their network cable and managed to play for 7 hours!

The only thing the servers get you (the player) afaik is being able to play with others in a region and trade with them etc however given you can set a region to 'private' and then play on your own kind of makes a mockery of it.

The fact they seem to have lied about it (including an oft repeated claim that the simulation couldn't run on someone's home computer) and then lied about being able to get refunds just makes it even worse.

I'm not saying I'm going to boycott EA games (although them being on Origin makes me buying them unlikely) but they have basically lost any and all pre-order chances from me until they can prove that they aren't a bunch of cash grabbing unreliable bastids

The fact they seem to have lied about it (including an oft repeated claim that the simulation couldn't run on someone's home computer)

They didn't lie about it. They've said a bunch of times in r/simcity exactly what gets simmed on the server. If you aren't connected to the server you lose pretty much any interaction with the region and the global market until you reconnect.

The fact they seem to have lied about it (including an oft repeated claim that the simulation couldn't run on someone's home computer)

They didn't lie about it. They've said a bunch of times in r/simcity exactly what gets simmed on the server. If you aren't connected to the server you lose pretty much any interaction with the region and the global market until you reconnect.

Unfortunately, what seems to be getting reported on (and popular opinion) is different e.g. here http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/03/12/simcity-server-not-necessary/

Also unfortunately, there are now some criticisms being reported about the simulation/gameplay itself: e.g. here http://kotaku.com/5990362/with-simple-ai-like-this-why-does-simcity-need-cloud-computing

However, since I have not played the game I cannot opine how badly the latter would affect the fun level, if at all.