You remember how panda bears entered the dark future? Or the anti-usability award 2008? In case you`re not: It was all about the copy protection methods of publishers trying to get rid off the software piracy. We all know that it didn`t turn out the way it was intended: E.g., a lot of people who honestly bought games with the SecuRom copy protection could not play their games because some hardware or software issues came in between (remember the GTAIV PC version?!). Well, some publishers learned their lesson and now advertise their games with features like “Mass Effect 2 uses no SecuRom technology” (Source: Amazon.de).
On the other hand, there are still publishers who try to come up with a “better” DRM or copy protection method. One of these publishers is Ubisoft introducing their new always-online DRM for PC games with Assassin`s Creed 2 and The Settlers VII in the next weeks called Online Service Platform.
So what`s the deal? The idea behind the copy protection is easy: You have to be online to play. If you`re losing the online connection during play the game will pause automatically and only continue if you go back online. Even more, savegames will be stored online. Of course, there are some benefits like playing the game without disk or installing the game on every computer you want to. Sounds a lot like Valve`s Steam platform but Ubisoft is going a bit further with the need to be always online and not only at the start of the game.
From an user experience perspective this system might lead to some problems. Here are some of my thoughts:
1.) Not everyone is always online. Most hardcore gamers / heavy users have flatrates and are permanently online during play. But believe me: There are still (casual) gamers out there who play games on systems without a permanent online access. Suprisingly, they might even want to play on a laptop system while travelling.
2.) Wireless LAN is great fun if it works fine but due to the increasing growth of inner city networks and number of access points there is a real wireless network smog around. Depending on your hardware and the density of networks around your home it is not unlikely to lose your wireless lan connection for a few seconds until your signal is found again. These might be short breaks of only a few seconds but I cannot imagine some better killer of immersion and flow during gameplay than a pop-up message of the copy protection telling you that you lost your connection.
3.) Server accessibility. Well, even the best servers go down some time. Or your local provider has some connection issues. The consequence will be the same: You cannot access your singleplayer savegames. You cannot start your game. It`s already a bad issue if that happens to a game which is free to play. But it`s an epic fail if people pay 50 bucks for a game and cannot play the singleplayer campaign (!) because somewhere a server went down. I already experienced a Steam server downtime during a launch day. No fun at all, believe me.
4.) Longtime server availability. What happens if it turns out the game doesn`t sell well? Or people will stop playing it? Servers get shut down after a while and your game won`t be playable anymore. Of course, the publisher might fix this via patch – but there are enough cases of games which were abandoned completly.
5.) Legal customers are the ones who will suffer. It`s a general problem of every error-prone copy protection system: It`s the people who legally buy the game who will face the problems. It might be the software pirates hacking the copy protection who will be the ones facing less problems than the legal customers. It happened in the past and it might happen to Ubisoft`s system, too. If it does, it`s hard to explain to the legal customers.
Personally, as a former developer I am well aware of the software piracy problem on the PC gaming market and see the need for a copy protection system. What I don`t understand is to build a system based completly on the idea of being always online. Everyone`s personal internet connection is something neither the users nor Ubisoft can control and that`s why my guess is that this system won`t last long.
Submissions for the Entertainment Interfaces track include full papers, posters, system demonstrations and workshop proposals. The submission deadline is the 8th of March.
After some months of inactivity my blog is back online – due to a provider change and some technical issues I was forced to change some stuff and finally the blog is up and running. Stay tuned – there will be a lot of things coming up the next weeks.
I am really looking forward to next week because I am happy to be part of the panel about ‘Playability and Player Experience Research’ at this year`s DiGRA alongside with Lennart Nacke, Anders Drachen, Hannu Korhonen, Kai Kuikkaniemi, Wouter van den Hoogen, Karolien Poels, Wijnand Ijsselsteijn and Yvonne de Kort. The panel will present and discuss the current state of playability research, biometrics & player experience, gameplay metrics & player experience and a multi-method approach to measure player experience.
So if you are at DiGRA next week, come and join our session!
Yesterday the first GamesCom trade fair in Cologne opened the gates for the trade visitors and I took the opportunity to get my hands on several upcoming games.
After playing a first session of Diablo 3 (which was really great) I testet DJ Hero and Tony Hawk: Ride. Both games will ship with new interface gadgets – one being a small-sized plastic turntable and the other being a skateboard without wheels. I was very sceptical when I first heard the announcement of DJ Hero but after playing it I must admit that it is really fun. Scratching felt really precise and the hardware looked much better than the first prototypes. The overall turntable looks robust but from my first impression the mixer could be a potential weak spot.
The skateboad controller of Tony Hawk: Ride looked and felt tough too but I was not very happy with the gameplay of the attached game. It felt like a skateboard game on rails with action events in between where you have to perform tricks at the right moment. I think this game will work pretty well for casual gamers but fans of the Tony Hawk series will perhaps be disappointed about the lack of freedom and control.
The PSP Go looked a bit smaller than I thought but I was surprised how well the sliding mechanism works. Still I think it was a wrong descision by Sony to use only one analogue stick for the console but the overall impression of the handheld was very positive.
Surprisingly the console version of EA`s Dragon Age looked really bad – both in terms of graphics and character control. I thought I would definitely buy this one, but now I am quite sceptical that this one will be as successful as Mass Effect 2 (which made a far better impression).
Heavy Rain looked really good but played a bit strange since the control scheme is very untypical – I hope this feeling will fade after playing some time because graphics and story really make me wanna play this one. Other games I can recommend to test at GamesCom are God of War 3, New Super Mario Bros Wii, Pixeljunk Shooter, RUSE, Starcraft 2 and the already mentioned Diablo 3 (and I am pretty sure that I forgot at least 10 more titles…).
Compared to last year`s GC at Leipzig the GamesCom at Cologne seems to be a bit smaller and has – except of the official unveiling of the PS3 Slim – less big news than the GC 2008. But if you are into games and have time to visit the GamesCom till Sunday I strongly recommend you to go there.
After three days of GDC Europe in Cologne I just wanted to wrap-up some of my impressions. One of the most interesting talks and presentations for me was about “New Human-Machine Interfaces” and organized by Malte Behrmann (general secretary of the European Game Developer Federation, EGDF).
His guests presented different new game interface technologies and the most striking one for me was a small ball from the finnish company Ball-IT presented by Pasi Pirttiaho. The ball tracks rotation, velocity and – even more interesting – the degree of pressure you put on it. It connects to PCs and consoles via Bluetooth and will be available in September.
Ulrich von Zadow from Archimedes Solutions showed several game interfaces and media art installations like a multi-touch table which is able to track hand movement before it touches the surface of the table, an idea for a pong game in combination with a traffic light (see video above) and a mixed reality RC-cart game which can be controlled via game pads and the cars react to the digital images projections.
Mike Song from Digiwinner (Hongkong) presented a motion tracking system for games which looked similiar to Microsoft`s upcoming Project Natal but can not only track people and their motions but also objects like tennis racks which have to carry a special ball-shaped sensor. More than 10 people can be tracked by the system simultaneously and several objects with sensors can be used.
Other talks I found most interesting were given by Kellee Santiago from thatgamecompany about Flower`s Postmortem and by Matias Myllyrinne from Remedy about their upcoming game Alan Wake.
Gaming devices like the Nintendo DS or the Playstation Portable are designed to enjoy gaming on tour. But how much does the gaming experience on tour (e.g. on public transportation) differ from playing at home? How do the surroundings change the experience? What kind of games or genres are suited best for the mobile gaming context?
To put in other terms: Did you already play Metroid Prime: Hunters on a bus tour? Or tried to master Dr. Kawashima`s Brain Training in a train filled with school kids? Well, I tried both and these experiences lead me to the idea of a short study focused on mobile gaming experiences.
Two of our students (Christian & Sebastian) put both the NDS and the PSP to the test: For each console 3 representative games were chosen. All games were played by a randomized group of subjects in a quiet and comfortable home environment and another randomized group during a ride with the bus. We compared the high-scores and the time to reach a certain goal and got some interesting results.
In general, the subjects in the comfortable and quiet surrounding out-performed the subjects in the mobile gaming scenario in all tested games which is likely the effect of the typical enviromental effects of a bus ride like shaking, noises or bad lighting. But the impact of these enviromental effects differed a lot from game to game and that`s why we compared the games and their results among themselves.
Both racing games (Mario Kart & Wipeout Pure) had only a 4% difference in time-to-goal performance while Tetris-playing subjects already differed by 14% between both surroundings; Tekken generated 16% difference. Much more significant differences – even within the game – appeared while playing Dr. Kawashima`s Brain Training: All disciplines generated different performances with “calculation” being the one which suffered the most under the bus ride (+90%), followed by “drawing” lines (+74%) and “memory tasks” (+33%). We also did focus groups afterwards to get more qualitative feedback about the kind of problems the subjects had but i will come back to that later in another short report here at my blog.
What do we learn from this study? Never play Dr. Kawashima on public transportation if you want to lower you brain age. Stick to racers or other button-based games, the touch pen interaction is error-prone if the public transportation vehicle shakes too much. Even more, games which need a specific lighting like Wario Ware Snapped! will work only half of the time. So chose wisely what games you want to take with you on the next bus ride. Sadly, not every game designed for a mobile gaming console works in a mobile gaming context.
The E3 is back – after a smaller show and lots of criticism in the last year, last week`s Electronic Entertainment Expo was an overwhelming success. Of course, there were tons of games but I am not going to repeat everything that you already heard on all the gaming news pages. As usual, my focus will be on the game interfaces and usability topics of E3. Here we go:
Microsoft`s “Project Natal”
Months before E3 a lot of rumors occured surrounding the news that Microsoft had a deal with 3DV, a small company located in Israel which works on 3D-cameras which will be featured in a new XBox360 addon. Well, these rumors turned out to be true as Microsoft presented the motion-sensing camera technology in their keynote last week. The system is capable of tracking not only the body movement but also the depth of the position of different body parts, enabling the software to use the whole body as an input device. I really like the idea but not being able to test it myself I am still a bit skeptical how precise the input will work and if there are any latencies due to the lack of a haptic input device. I have no doubt that all the sport and mini games will work properly BUT games with the need for very precise and direct inputs (e.g. the demoed racing game) will be a challenge for the technology in my opinion. From what I have seen I expect a similar precision the Wii controls have (what already will be a great success).
Sony`s Motion-Sensing Tech Demo
Sony showed a tech demo of their motion-sensing controller without giving it a codename. It is, in comparison to Microsoft`s camera-only approach, a combination of camera tracking and controller input. It looks like a Wii Remote with a light bulb on top, working single and double-handed. I was impressed by the very precise movement during the sword fight demo: The presenter was able to manoveur the sword under the chin of a skeleton puppet – a level of accurany the Wii certainly cannot reach – even not with the Motion Plus addon (see the video of the tech demo). According to Sony the first versions of the new nameless interface are already in the hands of third-party developers.
Another new piece of hardware is Sony`s PSP Go, the successor of the PSP 3000 which will skip the UMD drive and for this reason will focus on digital distribution. A lot of people hoped to see a second analog stick but Sony stays consistent to the older PSP models with just one of them.
Wii Motion Plus and Vitality Sensor
Nintendo had no surprising news because they are only a few days away from the launch of the Wii Motion Plus addon. This little addon can be plugged onto the Wii Remote and will provide a more precise detection of movement and alignment of the Remote. Some sad news were that several games which use the Motion Plus turn out to show no considerable improvement according to journalist reports. E.g. first reports from people playing Red Steel 2 sounded a bit disappointing so it is possible that not every developer gets the best out of it or it is no significant improvement over the old Remote.
In addition to the Wii Motion Plus, Nintendo showed also a small piece of hardware called “Vitality Sensor”. It is a small box where you can put a finger into and everyone was sure that this will add up to the sports and fitness games Nintendo is doing pretty well with.
Summary
To sum it up, it is interesting to see that all big console manufacturers now have their own motion-sensing input devices (which is no big surprise after the success of the Wii and its new control scheme). In the end, the games make the difference and both Microsoft and Sony have to prove that they are able to create great games with their new technologies.
In the last months a lot of rumors evolved around the new Tony Hawk game possibly introducing a new piece of hardware: The skateboard controller. Today Activision released a teaser trailer for Tony Hawk Ride which features a short glimpse on a board-like controller without wheels but with some buttons along the side (see video). Presumably, this controller will feature a kind of motion control which is not officially confirmed yet.
The first pictures of the upcoming “DJ Hero” turntable controller arrived on twitpic (likely this is not the final controller but a similiar prototype design). Still I have problems to imagine how this controller is supposed to work with the game. Three buttons only + scrachting and speeding up and down the wheel? No sign of a mixer, yet. And can you use two turntables? Presumably we will hear more about the game and the controller at E3 and be able to buy it at the end of year.
Ubisoft`s Always-Online Copy Protection = User Experience Fail?
24. Februar 2010You remember how panda bears entered the dark future? Or the anti-usability award 2008? In case you`re not: It was all about the copy protection methods of publishers trying to get rid off the software piracy. We all know that it didn`t turn out the way it was intended: E.g., a lot of people who honestly bought games with the SecuRom copy protection could not play their games because some hardware or software issues came in between (remember the GTAIV PC version?!). Well, some publishers learned their lesson and now advertise their games with features like “Mass Effect 2 uses no SecuRom technology” (Source: Amazon.de).
On the other hand, there are still publishers who try to come up with a “better” DRM or copy protection method. One of these publishers is Ubisoft introducing their new always-online DRM for PC games with Assassin`s Creed 2 and The Settlers VII in the next weeks called Online Service Platform.
So what`s the deal? The idea behind the copy protection is easy: You have to be online to play. If you`re losing the online connection during play the game will pause automatically and only continue if you go back online. Even more, savegames will be stored online. Of course, there are some benefits like playing the game without disk or installing the game on every computer you want to. Sounds a lot like Valve`s Steam platform but Ubisoft is going a bit further with the need to be always online and not only at the start of the game.
From an user experience perspective this system might lead to some problems. Here are some of my thoughts:
1.) Not everyone is always online. Most hardcore gamers / heavy users have flatrates and are permanently online during play. But believe me: There are still (casual) gamers out there who play games on systems without a permanent online access. Suprisingly, they might even want to play on a laptop system while travelling.
2.) Wireless LAN is great fun if it works fine but due to the increasing growth of inner city networks and number of access points there is a real wireless network smog around. Depending on your hardware and the density of networks around your home it is not unlikely to lose your wireless lan connection for a few seconds until your signal is found again. These might be short breaks of only a few seconds but I cannot imagine some better killer of immersion and flow during gameplay than a pop-up message of the copy protection telling you that you lost your connection.
3.) Server accessibility. Well, even the best servers go down some time. Or your local provider has some connection issues. The consequence will be the same: You cannot access your singleplayer savegames. You cannot start your game. It`s already a bad issue if that happens to a game which is free to play. But it`s an epic fail if people pay 50 bucks for a game and cannot play the singleplayer campaign (!) because somewhere a server went down. I already experienced a Steam server downtime during a launch day. No fun at all, believe me.
4.) Longtime server availability. What happens if it turns out the game doesn`t sell well? Or people will stop playing it? Servers get shut down after a while and your game won`t be playable anymore. Of course, the publisher might fix this via patch – but there are enough cases of games which were abandoned completly.
5.) Legal customers are the ones who will suffer. It`s a general problem of every error-prone copy protection system: It`s the people who legally buy the game who will face the problems. It might be the software pirates hacking the copy protection who will be the ones facing less problems than the legal customers. It happened in the past and it might happen to Ubisoft`s system, too. If it does, it`s hard to explain to the legal customers.
Personally, as a former developer I am well aware of the software piracy problem on the PC gaming market and see the need for a copy protection system. What I don`t understand is to build a system based completly on the idea of being always online. Everyone`s personal internet connection is something neither the users nor Ubisoft can control and that`s why my guess is that this system won`t last long.
Tags: copy protection, DRM, piracy, ubisoft, user experience
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