84 replies to this topic

[Vainamoinen]

You know, I was confused at first, but now I can see the argument you're making. If a DRM free game required you to have an internet connection that could then be used to track your copy and effectively turn into DRM.

That, certainly. But it goes further than that. I see the industry on the path to "social"/psychological forms of copy protection – starting with the whole achievement/community shebang – and as these systems are often deeply tied into the games' structure, they will infringe on the quality of the games we're playing. Already have, in my opinion.

[agirlnamedbob]

I can see your point. And I'm definitely not super excited about achievements/community stuff being shoved into every single game ever. For the most part my emotions on the topic run between indifference and mild annoyance (generally when it seems like totally unnecessary bandwagon jumping.) I just don't want to start fear mongering over hypothetical scenarios.

 

I had a bigger post on all of that typed up, but I think we're sort of straying from the topic, which is specifically about RTG / DFC and not about the potential horrorscape that the future of gaming may become.

[Edreamer Jamil]

I'll have my Social Function turned on, and anyone else on steam from this forum is welcome to friend me and see what choices I made

[wandrew]

That, certainly. But it goes further than that. I see the industry on the path to "social"/psychological forms of copy protection – starting with the whole achievement/community shebang – and as these systems are often deeply tied into the games' structure, they will infringe on the quality of the games we're playing. Already have, in my opinion.

 

I dunno, I see the move also as part of a shift for devs and publishers from the 'stick' approach to more of a 'carrot' one. I feel like it's a start in the right direction, rather than a further pull in the wrong one.

[Vainamoinen]

I dunno, I see the move also as part of a shift for devs and publishers from the 'stick' approach to more of a 'carrot' one. I feel like it's a start in the right direction, rather than a further pull in the wrong one.

 

 

Maybe it was, initially. Today, however, I consider these 'fresh' systems to be perverted already. The huge badges displayed during The Raven cutscenes, the arbitrary community gem swap system of Child of Light, the senseless multiplayer elements of Mass Effect 3, the whole idea of Early Access... all instant gratification mechanisms to force an element of real life competition into single player games or artificial fragmentation of games content to necessitate repetitive or constant online contact. I consider all that to be forms of effective copy protection, and I think all of them reduce the quality of the games we're playing. In yesterday's world, after you were past the copy protection bit, at least they left you alone with your game. That's not the case today.

 

And "choices statistics" – judging from the way Telltale Games and Electronic Arts handle the same thing – add quite a bit to that problem complex:

1. The collection of said statistics must be considered a consumer privacy violation.
2. "DRM free" games reaching out to the developer's servers without asking the player can be considered copy protected.
3. Immersive, exploration based games in particular do not profit from the constant 'competitive' element of comparison to the decisions of a huge online community.
4. game developers often try to use statistics data to construct "perfect" choices in their future games – choices which divide players in the exact middle, 50%-50%. Which means that choices matter even less - as there's no 'road less traveled by' any more.

[agirlnamedbob]

It's a shame that certain companies who shall remain nameless insist on giving things that could be good a bad reputation. 

 

As far as all of the specific issues, those are largely matters of opinion that I can't speak to. 

 

I just feel like it needs to be said that there's a difference, at least in my mind, between saying "Hey, we need the new Sims game to always have an internet connection. Oh, not that's not DRM, because we've now decided that the game is an MMO! So you have to be online to play it." And saying "We want to add a feature. It's totally optional. It does require an internet connection. But if you don't want to take advantage of that feature, then just turn it off."

 

Granted, there's a  line there between "This is a totally optional feature that has no real bearing on your enjoyment of the game." and "This is an integral part of the game that you're missing out on." I just think it's a shame that some shady companies being greedy or deceitful is robbing other companies of the opportunity to try these things and get them right. 

 

As to your other points...

 

The collection of said statistics must be considered a consumer privacy violation.

 

The collection of statistics without knowledge or consent is a consumer privacy violation. If I'm agreeing to do it, it doesn't violate anything, so long as you only use the information for the purposes I was told it was being used for. 

 

"DRM free" games reaching out to the developer's servers without asking the player can be considered copy protected.

 

True. Permission is the crux of the issue, though. So long as you have the option to NOT connect, I don't see a problem. 

 

Immersive, exploration based games in particular do not profit from the constant 'competitive' element of comparison to the decisions of a huge online community.

 

Your opinion. I actually see some interesting room for exploration in this field, if done correctly. Though that's as subjective as anything else.

 

game developers often try to use statistics data to construct "perfect" choices in their future games – choices which divide players in the exact middle, 50%-50%. Which means that choices matter even less - as there's no 'road less traveled by' any more.

 

Okay. If you're the sort of person who prides yourself on taking "the road less traveled" or wants to feel like you're taking the less "obvious" choice, I can see how that would bother you. But I don't see how, when taken on the whole, this is really a bad thing. 

 

It's a truth to designing any story that once it gets out, it suddenly isn't entirely yours anymore. It grows, it becomes in part owned by the fans who love it and project their own meanings, hopes, desires, biases, etc. onto the game and the characters. Which is really cool, but if you're trying to design an experience or create a game that elicits a certain response, it can be a pain when it fails to hit audiences the way you want it to. 

 

I do tabletop RPGs and you run into this a lot. You craft a plot hook or detail that is supposed to carry emotional weight or that's supposed to really make players sit down and think or question something and it just...doesn't do that. At all. So in a game like Chapters, if you're trying to create certain situations where decisions are hard. Where there isn't an obvious choice. And you find you that 90% of players are choosing one option... Why shouldn't you take that into consideration and use what you now know about your players to help craft certain details or options later in the story that carries the weight that you want it to?

 

I don't see that as deceitful or even a problem. That's using all the information available to you to do your job. 

[trentjaspar]

Thanks, agirlnamedbob, you saved me from having to make many of the same points. 

 

Most importantly, as long as it's with knowledge/consent, it's not a privacy problem, let alone a DRM problem.

Ideally, if you play unconnected, it simply disables the feature without the need for intervention.

[Lee-m]

...if you want absolute control of what traffic goes in and out of your PC, don't use windows. And dont install games.
You have choices. I don't like it as much as anyone else, but you make choices about what you install and use.

[wandrew]

Okay, now I feel I have to chime in on Vainamoinen's side.

 

I think companies DO collect too much information from users (fortunately, more than they know what to do with intelligently). I just don't see conspiracy on the part of every dev company - including the small ones - to use your info for Their Evil Plans™. 

 

Is it the thin end of the wedge, and part of a trend making people value their privacy less? In this case I say 'no', but is it part of the bigger picture? Perhaps. But that's why it's so important that companies are transparent about their collecting activities and give you the chance to only opt in (and I say "in" advisedly, rather than relying on people's apathy not to opt out) if you're ACTUALLY keen to participate.

[agirlnamedbob]

Oh, I'm 100% with you. It's a fine line. We live in times where privacy is clearly being valued less and less.

 

I was mostly just disagreeing with the notion that the collection of data from consumers, on the whole, is a privacy violation. I see that as a circumstantial thing. To violate means to fail to comply with a rule or agreement, or to treat something with irreverence and disrespect. You can collect data from people and be respectful about it. By allowing people to choose whether or not to participate and by being clear about what you intend to do with said data. 

 

To me, that sort of thing should be obvious. But to shithead companies out there, it apparently isn't. And because of that, we need to have conversations like this and people are inherently mistrustful of anything that collects data. And that, to me, is supremely sad. But it is definitely not the fault of consumers and I definitely don't blame people for being wary. 

[wandrew]

I guess we've had the Facebook experiment in recent times as a cautionary tale. They partnered with academics and manipulated the mood of people's news feeds to see if it made them feel like shit. Amazingly, it did. Facebook used their powers for bad, no-one was shocked. They defended their actions as being covered by their EULA.

 

What sucked even harder is that the academics involved tried to defend their actions using the same argument. Apparently they didn't need to run it through their university's human research ethics committee because EULA. They didn't feel the need to do follow up or debrief the participants afterwards, either, so they don't even know the full impact of their fuckwittery. Experiments like this are usually voluntary, and require appropriate counselling afterwards. The academics were psychologists, too (although that will be less surprising to some people ).

 

Gratifyingly, they're copping a lot of shit from the academic community for it, so we should be able back down from this particular barricade for the moment.

[Ragnar]

 

Maybe it was, initially. Today, however, I consider these 'fresh' systems to be perverted already. The huge badges displayed during The Raven cutscenes, the arbitrary community gem swap system of Child of Light, the senseless multiplayer elements of Mass Effect 3, the whole idea of Early Access... all instant gratification mechanisms to force an element of real life competition into single player games or artificial fragmentation of games content to necessitate repetitive or constant online contact. I consider all that to be forms of effective copy protection, and I think all of them reduce the quality of the games we're playing. In yesterday's world, after you were past the copy protection bit, at least they left you alone with your game. That's not the case today.

 

And "choices statistics" – judging from the way Telltale Games and Electronic Arts handle the same thing – add quite a bit to that problem complex:

1. The collection of said statistics must be considered a consumer privacy violation.
2. "DRM free" games reaching out to the developer's servers without asking the player can be considered copy protected.
3. Immersive, exploration based games in particular do not profit from the constant 'competitive' element of comparison to the decisions of a huge online community.
4. game developers often try to use statistics data to construct "perfect" choices in their future games – choices which divide players in the exact middle, 50%-50%. Which means that choices matter even less - as there's no 'road less traveled by' any more.

 

 

I can't speak for every company or the entire industry, but there's a lot of paranoia going around — and not all of it is justified. Sometimes, yes, companies will do things that may be (a lot more) beneficial to them than to the customer, but, y'know, for the most part, companies are smart enough to recognise that they're better off keeping their customers happy and to avoid controversy. And if they do dumb things, it's mostly because of ignorance rather than malice. There isn't a whole lot of *evil* in the gaming industry. Some, but not a lot.

 

The reasons for the inclusion of achievements, multiplayer functionality and online connectivity are manifold. And a lot of it is because of player demands. A game with multiplayer functionality, no matter how misplaced or insipid, will often do better than a game without it. Potential customers read the bullet points and, if there's no multiplayer, that may count against the game — in some cases. And it's hard for publishers and developers to know when this is the case. So they add multiplayer, because it's too risky not to. The same goes for achievements: this is functionality driven by Steam and by the consoles, and without achievements a game may get negative feedback. Not all players will care, of course, but again it's a question of mitigating risk.

 

Some online functionality is also to battle the second-hand market, which has hurt some bigger publishers. When retail chains like GameStop encourage customers to bring back their triple-A games as soon as they're done with them, in order to resell those games at *slightly* less than the RRP — and this time without giving a cut to the publishers or developers — they're basically robbing the creators of that money. I don't have an issue with players wanting to trade or sell their used games; what I — and many others in this industry — have a problem with is stores like GameStop making enormous profits from that, and hurting first-sales. So it's mostly a reaction to that, since consoles don't have a huge piracy problem at this point…at least in the west.

 

When it comes to PC games, I think most publishers have come to terms with the piracy issue, and it's become somewhat less of a problem since digital distribution has taken over. It's still there, and it's still an issue — mostly for triple-A titles, and in countries where the cost of a game may be prohibitive — but it's improved. And online connectivity is more of a bullet point than DRM: it's a feature that a lot of players expect and publishers feel they have to supply, whether it's achievements or multiplayer or social features.

 

Which brings me to your four points, which I'll address directly:

 

1. Collecting player data is rarely a 'privacy violation'. Neither Telltale nor Red Thread keeps tabs of which customers do what in their games. Take Chapters. If you've decided to share your choices with the world, the only thing we store (and this goes for Telltale too) are those flags. Nothing more. No IP-addresses, nothing. We have no way of knowing who made what choices, and we don't care. We care about the total number of choices made, and about the distribution of those decisions. If and when you decide to connect your game to Facebook or your Steam friends list, that data is stored, but, again, it's stored securely and not used for anything aside from telling you (and your friends) what decisions have been made. This is a feature made for players, and not for us creating some sort of mythical database of players and their psychological profiles…although that could be an interesting idea for a future game!

 

(And, expanding on this: we have talked to a lot of potential players about connecting their game and seeing the decisions made by others, and the feedback has been very positive. Not everyone wants this functionality, clearly, but a LOT of players do — enough that we felt it was a really cool and intriguing feature to have in the game. With the option to switch it off, of course.)

 

2. As far as I know, most games that ping a game server — like Telltale's games, and Chapters — can also be played without being online. I'm not sure, then, that this qualifies as DRM. For comparison, almost every website you visit (unless you've turned on private browsing) keeps track of you. In some countries, like the U.K., websites are required to inform you of this. In others, like the U.S., they're not. DRM? No. Invasion of privacy? You can choose to look at it that way. I personally don't and, for the most part, I don't care that I'm leaving a cookie trail. If I did, I'd always browse with privacy on. Or game with my internet disconnected.

 

(Luckily, in Chapters, you can choose to stay disconnected, if you absolutely want to. But there are good reasons for not doing that. Keep reading.)

 

3. There's absolutely no 'competitive' element to the decisions made in Telltale games or in Dreamfall Chapters. I've NEVER heard of anyone who felt they either had to make the same decisions as everyone else, or who felt they had to disagree with everyone else on principle. Never. On the contrary, I've seen players become engaged and intrigued when confronted with the decisions made by others: they're curious about why those decisions were made, and what they led to. Some may want to replay the game to see the consequences for themselves; others may simply want to hear those stories retold, on forums, in walkthroughs, in conversations with fellow players. And I've also seen how this functionality has made players more aware of the decisions they're making; how it's made them think twice before acting, not because they're competitive, but because it just feels like it matters a little more when that decision will affect a global statistic. I have a hard time seeing how this mechanic can ever become competitive, unless we're talking about incredibly insecure players. And those players, if the exist, can simply…disconnect. No harm, no foul.

 

4. No, no, god, no. That would NEVER be our goal. Ever. 50/50 is dull. I'd be incredibly happy with 75/25. 10/90. 5/30/65 (there are sometimes more than two choices). Those stats are a LOT more interesting to me and to us. 50/50 means…I'm not even sure what that means. That doesn't tell us anything. No, the choices that excite me the most are the ones that are controversial, dangerous, interesting. The ones that really fire people up and make them passionately angry, happy, frustrated, excited. Of course, if one of the Decision Points in Dreamfall Chapters ends up with 100/0 — with a choice that's spectacularly unpopular — then we've probably done something wrong (or maybe something very, very right). But anything else is fine. And, yes, we will use that data — but not to make things bland. We don't even know what we will learn yet or how we will put the data to use, and that's fine. We will learn something. And hopefully we can use that knowledge to become better designers and storytellers, and to make better games.

 

Apologies to Vainamoinen for using HIS post for this long explanation/rant/outburst — it's not really directed at him (you!) but rather at everyone in this thread, in order to explain a bit more about what we're doing and how this industry is evolving. Feel free to comment or disagree or ask questions, just keep in mind that we always have the best interests of our players at heart, and not any mysterious, conspiratorial intrusion of privacy motivations. We wouldn't even know what to do with that 'customer data'.

 

Ragnar

[Ragnar]

Knowing myself I will probably have it toggled off for the first playthrough... until I reach a particularly difficult decision. Then I'll toggle it on, see what others have selected, debate with myself for about 10 minutes, before ultimately just going with my initial gut feeling. 

 

You don't actually have to toggle this on or off in order to hide it. Keep your game connected and influence the global stats, just don't click on the Balance wheel when faced with a Decision Point! That way, your choices won't be influenced by others, and you can still decide to look at a summary of your choices at the end of each Book — presented in a narrative format, with percentages. Or not. If you don't want to.

 

There's no reason to actually keep your game disconnected, unless you feel it's a potential privacy violation (it's really not) and then you can either click the appropriate setting in the game or stay off the internets when playing.

[Ragnar]

This is true. I was wondering about that myself, to be honest. Especially since I'll in theory be getting "early access." ...And probably playing the game as soon as I get it. I wonder how much data the game will even have at that point and also how much the percentages will swing once it's been running for a while. 

 

I may have to take notes. Or maybe there will be some way to just look at the statistics 

 

There will be some late-stage beta and stability testing, and at one point we will decide to NOT wipe the servers anymore…so there will be data there during early access, just not a whole lot of data. Of course, you'll never see how many players have made decisions, only the percentage of players per choice.

[Happy Tree]

If I decide to use Steam to acquire the game, will I be able to run it in offline mode on the Steam system? Ideally I'd want to run the exe from the directory without involving Steam at all, like I did with TLJ. In which case I imagine Gog would be the best distribution method for me. Or wait till the box comes out and use the disks.

[Vainamoinen]

Many valid points up there; allow me to nitpick on the few things that I do disagree with - or which incite intriguing questions about the way RTG intends to handle things. I do appreciate a whole lot that these are issues you do wish to clarify. Because other developers generally do not.
 
 

for the most part, companies are smart enough to recognise that they're better off keeping their customers happy and to avoid controversy. And if they do dumb things, it's mostly because of ignorance rather than malice. There isn't a whole lot of *evil* in the gaming industry.

Yes, there is scarcely any evil. But sometimes really bad decisions are made just because developers think customers will accept them anyway, and sometimes customers do accept those bad decisions because they think they have no other choice.

 

A game with multiplayer functionality, no matter how misplaced or insipid, will often do better than a game without it.

While that may definitely be true for genres like the FPS or RTS, it is not true for single player RPGs or adventure games. For example, I have no doubt whatsoever that the Mass Effect 3 multiplayer was primarily DRM; and it was well hated by players when it was announced.

 

Some online functionality is also to battle the second-hand market, which has hurt some bigger publishers. When retail chains like GameStop encourage customers to bring back their triple-A games as soon as they're done with them, in order to resell those games at *slightly* less than the RRP

I would strongly argue for the customer's right to resell his games. He'd never sell the perfect game anyway. However, I find a professional reselling machinery like GameStop about as needless as the frequent online Steam key resellers - who are desperately trying to be middlemen where ideally no additional middlemen should exist.

 

Take Chapters. If you've decided to share your choices with the world, the only thing we store [...]

So there actually is such a DECISION to be made in Chapters? (Because there sure as hell is none in Telltale's games) And that decision is not made by installing the game and consenting to the EULA? Can you actually deactivate any such kind of sharing AND collecting data in Chapters? Because, yeah, that would be an exception considering the state of the industry today.

 

With the option to switch it off, of course.

 I'd rather have the option to switch it on. So it's "on" by default then?


 

If and when you decide to connect your game to Facebook or your Steam friends list, that data is stored,[...]

So the actual names we've seen displayed in the early gameplay video are collected from Facebook and Steam? Which is not really a problem for me of course, because I use neither.

 

This is a feature made for players, and not for us creating some sort of mythical database of players and their psychological profiles…

And no one has believed that, I guess. What I was primarily talking about were such features and their psychological capability as copy protection. To be more concrete: If gamers have come to believe that they can not play a game the way it's meant to be played if they're not online and connect their copy in some way to the developer's server repeatedly, then those features are effective copy protection. Or maybe Valve can describe what I'm after in a far more precise way:
 

Customers won't want to pirate a game that's connected to 20 million gamers and a feature-rich platform. Features like Steam Achievements, Anti-Cheat, Auto-Updating, and Steam Cloud simply dont exist outside of Steam.

Furthermore, constantly updating your game with upgrades and content leaves the pirates in the dust they are relegated to a featureless game with no community of players.

That's basically it. E.g. the necessity to constantly update a game is factually advertised as DRM... and I am so not OK with it.
 
 

2. As far as I know, most games that ping a game server — like Telltale's games, and Chapters — can also be played without being online.

SIDENOTE: Games bought from the Telltale Store still have DRM - supposedly a one time activation. However, recent Telltale games sometimes have trouble accepting that first and supposedly only online activation. Telltale says that shouldn't happen and it is not meant to be that way. Still, Telltale game players today often deal with heavy activation/connectivity issues and are often forced to be online. I suspect that this a result of faulty programming in connection with in game episode downloads, auto updates and auto statistics. They simply don't get those "features" under control.

 

Also, I suspect those functionalities to be the reason why Telltale's cooperation with GOG.com stopped beginning with The Walking Dead in 2012. They'd have to reprogram their games too much, so they don't even bother. To summarize: Lots of features not primarily meant to be DRM turn out to be heavy duty DRM.

The 'offline mode' today is an additional feature implemented for some nagging players, while 'online' is the uncontestable default even for single player games. This mode may or may not work, maybe it works on some machines and doesn't on others (Origin). The "what if the player isn't online?" is not really considered any more in many stages of game development, leading to bugs galore for the offline player.

 

If I did, I'd always browse with privacy on. Or game with my internet disconnected.

Welcome to my world. And you wouldn't believe how many doors are slammed in your face then without real reason.
 
 

3. There's absolutely no 'competitive' element to the decisions made in Telltale games [...]

Oh, I do agree here (but would then proceed to question percentage statistics). The competitive element comes with the whole achievement/badge/trophy shenannigans which, in my opinion, have zip to do with story based games and will potentially ruin immersion.

 

because it just feels like it matters a little more when that decision will affect a global statistic.

This is all personal preference, but in all honesty, I'm making choices for the protagonist in a story, not for any global statistic. Or to put it another way: What doesn't concern Zoë doesn't concern me.

 

No, no, god, no. That would NEVER be our goal. Ever. 50/50 is dull.

I agree to the fullest. However, Telltale has been particularly proud attempting to construct the 'perfect dilemma' in their games. Which certainly is one of the many wrong paths for episodic games, but they were so enthusiastically set on that stuff...

 

All those Telltale comparisons are not without their share of unfairness, I concede that. RTG has named them multiple times as a bit of a role model for Chapters though – and now that you're going episodic as well, a good deal of compare & contrast is inevitable, I guess... hopefully with a heavy emphasis on contrast.

 

Of course, if one of the Decision Points in Dreamfall Chapters ends up with 100/0 — with a choice that's spectacularly unpopular — then we've probably done something wrong.

In my book, individual players can still be very happy with that decision when they absolutely don't know that everyone else also chose that way. I guess a game designer could never be happy that no one sees the alternative path. All that work, for nothing.

 

Apologies to Vainamoinen for using HIS post for this long explanation/rant/outburst — it's not really directed at him

You're always cordial in your replies and I feel somewhat special for often having my posts disected as discussion material.
 

[DiskJunky]

Wow, I disappear for a week and I come back to this For myself, I generally do browse the internet effectively in private mode - and AdBlock enabled. When it comes to games, i generally prefer to play them off line but as Vainamoinen said, you wouldn't believe how badly games these days behave offline, in many cases flat out refusing to work at all (the latest Batman games being my biggest bug bear for that one). It's...irritating as my internet connection isn't always great and it hurts my play experience. The worst experience I've had to date is playing Diablo 3 - it requires so much bandwidth that when I click to fire a shot, it can take several seconds to see the result on screen. This effectively renders the €60 game unplayable. Not that RTG are going down this route but it's an extreme example of the issue. Keep single player games offline unless the player actually WANTS to. Ragnar said that most players when asked say they'd play the game online - I'd love to meet these people 'cos they certainly aren't around here

 

Anyhoo, as for DFC as it is now based on the videos - I've no issue with. Data collected seems minimal and it comes with the option to turn it off. That makes me happy

[Mr Moo]

[...] Ragnar said that most players when asked say they'd play the game online - I'd love to meet these people 'cos they certainly aren't around here [...]

 

Most people are always on-line, including when playing games. They also prefer to keep in touch with others on-line, something you can't do when off line. More news at 11.

[DiskJunky]

That's the first I've heard of it anyway. Any time I physically see people playing they play by themselves. Likewise, when I'm talking about games to someone, the invariably say that they prefer offline too. I haven't (honestly!) met anyone who likes playing online

[Happy Tree]

I won't be happy unless I can play DFC in an isolation bubble like Michael Jackson. Or in a vacuum. With gloves. And chopsticks. While having an out of body experience :-D