Hate to say I told you so: Why “always online DRM” will fail

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In the past days there has been a lot of buzz around the new SimCity game. Sadly, the buzz is less about the game itself (although there seem to be some other issues as well) but more about the awful always online DRM the game introduces. After a rough start in the US due to problems with the server availability, similar problems occurred during the European launch, although Electronic Arts promised they would be better prepared in this case.

And Electronic Arts is not the first publisher who incorporated always online DRM in their games. Three years ago, I wrote a blog article on basically the same topic, but with another protagonist: Ubisoft. They introduced their always online DRM with the Settlers VII and Assassin’s Creed 2 – and guess what happened? They fell flat on their face and stopped the DRM, which – until then – was one huge user experience failure for the honest customers.

Back then, I wrote down some thoughts why always-online DRM / copy protection will fail. Turns out they still apply today:

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 killers 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.

I sincerely hope that Electronic Arts will abandon the always-online DRM sooner than later. Until then, I won’t buy a game with the DRM and strongly recommend to all other gamers to do the same.

Wii U: My first impressions

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It’s been 10 days now since I got my Wii U and after spending some quality time with Nintendo’s new console I am ready to provide some first impressions.

Sadly, the first minutes with my Wii U were one epic user experience flaw: Instead of jumping into the new console experience I had to download a huge day-one patch after booting, which took nearly 40 minutes. But after that painful process of waiting the typical lounge and zen music starts and you are back in the family-friendly Nintendo universe.

The Wii U gamepad works better than I remembered (I played a few Wii U games at gamescom Cologne this summer). It is fairly light and the touchscreen works quite well – although it’s still less reliable than current gen smartphones or tablets with capacitive touchscreen technology. And compared to more traditional game controllers the Wii U gamepad is huge. I have really large hands, but it still feels a bit odd. I think I will get used to it the more I play. Personally, I had some problems with the position of the right-sided buttons. In contrast to the XBox360 an PS3 pads, the buttons are beneath the right analogue stick and – even worse – the button for canceling menu options or actions (B) is on the exact same position of the button to confirm actions on the other consoles (XBox360: A, PS3: X). I bet this is also a thing I have to get used to, but at the moment I often confuse the buttons and pick the wrong one. The Pro Controller looks pretty much like a XBox360 pad but shares the same button layout on the right side as the Wii U gamepad. I prefer using the Pro Controller over the Wii Remote & Nunchuck combination if possible (sadly, not every game supports the Pro Controller).

Enter Nintendoland. It’s a collection of minigames themed with different Nintendo classics like Metroid, Pikmin, Mario etc. It’s cute but the forced tutorials with the ugly robot avatar really killed my experience at the beginning. Instead of exploring Nintendoland by yourself, the robot guides you in every little step you make – there is even a tutorial you have to pass to get to the game’s settings. Nevertheless, I really enjoyed playing through the Metroid-themed minigame, but the Nintendoland really shines in Luigi’s mansion, the Harvest Moon and the Catch-Mario games. All three games are a great example for asymmetric gameplay, in which one player takes a special role (e.g. the ghost) using the new Wii U gamepad and competes against the other players (e.g. the ghost hunters) with oldschool Wii Remotes.

A pretty similar approach can be found in ZombiU – one of the few exclusive core games for the Wii U. In its multiplayer you can choose between the zombie king and a survivor. The survivor has to kill zombies with the Pro Controller (or Wii Remote & Nunchuck) in FPS-style, while the zombie king drops zombies on the map using the Wii U gamepad. The zombie king mode looks a bit like a RTS-game and I had a lot of fun dropping zombies all around my colleagues playing with me the local multiplayer. The singleplayer uses the Wii U gamepad to scan, use items or pick-up stuff. Although I like the usage in most cases, it sometimes feels a bit too forced compared to the great multiplayer.

The third game I got is New Super Mario Bros. U, which is a great Mario game but makes only little use of the new Wii U pad. I am really curious to see how other upcoming games will use the new Wii U gamepad – in my opinion, the asymmetric local multiplayer is the way to go and the only chance to compete against Microsoft and Sony for now.

My recommendation: Wait and see. There are only a few games, which make great use of the new gamepad and two new consoles are around the corner. Nintendo and the 3rd party developers have to deliver more exclusive games to make this console a must-buy for gamers.

CfP: CHI 2013 Games User Research (GUR) Workshop

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SUBMISSION DEADLINE: January 11th, 2013

ORGANIZERS
- Pejman Mirza-Babaei, University of Sussex
- Veronica Zammito, Electronic Arts
- Joerg Niesenhaus, University of Duisburg-Essen
- Mirweis Sangin, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe
- Lennart E. Nacke, University of Ontario Institute of Technology

AIMS AND SCOPE
CHI 2013 “Games User Research: Practice, Methods, and Applications” workshop provides a venue for collaborative knowledge construction, sharing and dialogue across the games industry and the interdisciplinary academic fields. The goal of this one-day workshop is to advance the state of the art in the game industry by knowledge-sharing with frontline research from academia and between companies. It ultimately aims at providing the basis for cross-pollination across the involved research fields and industry sectors. The theme of this year’s workshop is: “Beyond Usability: GUR practices to evaluate video games user experience”. We welcome all contributions from academic researchers and industry practitioners on innovative methodologies and applied techniques to assess fun, appeal and engagement in games.

The workshop invites contributions on the following topics:

- Methods (e.g., how to design calibrated questionnaires)
- Solutions (e.g., guidelines to capture qualitative feedback)
- Industry practice (i.e., lessons from the trenches)

SUBMISSION
Participants are invited to submit a short biography (100-150 words) of the author(s) attending the workshop and either:

A 4-page position paper (in the CHI extended abstracts format) describing work falling within the topics of the workshop. Submissions may describe ongoing work, recent results, or opinions and approaches related to the workshop topic. We also solicit papers with industry, academic in a form of case study to highlight real-world issues that need to be tackled by new research and recent advancements that improve games user research processes, as well as novel and successful methods for evaluation design, player experience, and understanding users.

A presentation abstract and slides (we ONLY recommend this for industry participants).
Participants are invited to submit their submission (one PDF file) via EasyChair (GURCHI2013) by 11 January, 2013. Submissions will be reviewed and the organising committee will select up to 20 participants according to relevance, quality of results, research diversity, and likelihood for stimulating and contributing to the discussion.

PARTICIPATION
If accepted, workshop participants will be provided with a registration code which will allow them to register for this workshop, at least one author must register for the workshop and for one or more days of the conference. Participants will soon be able to check conference rates on the CHI 2013 website. Papers will also be compiled on the workshop website.

IMPORTANT DATES
- January 11, 2013: Submissions deadline
- February 8, 2013: Acceptance notification
- April 27, 2013: Workshop (TBC)

CONTACT
If you have any questions, please contact gurchi2013@easychair.org or any of the organisers.
http://hcigames.businessandit.uoit.ca/chigur/

Global Game Jam 2013

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The Global Game Jam is the world’s largest game jam event. Developers, designers, students and hobbyists meet at different locations around the world to be creative, share experiences and and develop a game prototype within 48 hours of the jam.

I will organize the GDI.Ruhr Game Jam together with my colleagues at the Games Factory in Mülheim an der Ruhr. The jam runs from the 25th to the 27th January and welcomes participants from all different areas of game development. Although the main focus will be programming, artists, designers are welcome to join the jam as well. If you are not living close to Mülheim, there is still a good chance that one of the 160+ game jam locations is in a city nearby.

Registration is now open – please check our website and the Global Game Jam website for further information.

Review: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (PS3)

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Although I’ve been pretty busy in the past month I managed to play through XCOM: Enemy Unknown. Back in the 90s I invested far too many hours in the original game and killed aliens, built up my bases and did research. The beauty of he new XCOM game is that it takes the formula of the original game and extends and streamlines it in a perfect way. I was really surprised how well the gamepad controls work. Firaxis did a good job in using the buttons for the different actions and it I was very pleased to recognize that you need two or three missions to adapt the interface.

Nevertheless, there are some small issues I came across. The game lets you only rotate in steps of 90 degrees, which helps a bit to orientate (where is the landing zone, where is my target) due to only four possible setups but often generates confusing situations in smaller rooms or complex installations like larger UFOs. I often tried to get the best possible perspective on the situation but discovered that all four possible camera setups were not satisfying. Another issue relates to the selection of actions of your marines. With growing experience your marines receive new abilities, which is a great feature. But the abilities are all lined up in the interface, sometimes continuing in a second line of boxes representing the abilities. I often tried to skip some actions by moving the cursor down or up between the lines, but this is not possible. The only way to get to the second line is scroll left or right until you reach the end of the first one.

I mastered the game once in normal mode and started a second one in the impossible mode, which is really tough. The aliens hit better and harder, you hit worse and your marines panic more often. But the missions are not the real difficulty (at least if you’re not playing ironman mode) – my problem was the meta game with the panic level of the countries you have to protect. One mistake I made in my second playthrough was not directly going after the engineers, which would have been necessary to build more workshops, receive even more engineers, build a satellite uplink and dispatch more satellites. The game won’t tell you, that it is better to start looking for engineers early. I think this is fine for an impossible mode, where you have to look after every detail but I wish there were more hints on this issue.

I had a lot of fun with my first playthrough and I am still confident that I’ll master the impossible mode in my second attempt. I also had a lot of fun modifying my marines to look like my friends and telling them how they are doing in the game (see the LEGO version of my squad above). XCOM: Enemy Unknown is a great game and if you’re into round-based strategy games you should consider buying it.

GUI Wars 2 vs. World of Tooltips: The tutorials

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Although I have little time at the moment I spent a few hours this week in Guild Wars 2 and the new World of Warcraft add-on Mists of Pandaria. There were only a few hours between playing a fresh-faced Pandarian monk and a Norn necromancer and I was really surprised how different both tutorials worked for me. Before I start going into details I must admit that I played a lot of WoW in the early years but dropped it due to a lack of time, so haven’t been around Azeroth for a long time. And I never played Guild Wars 1, so I definitely have it easier to get back into WoW, than start learning a new game.

Nevertheless, when I got back into WoW a lot of things changed when it comes to the skill system, the quest help and some smaller interface functions. The WoW tutorials are very linear with a pre-defined line of quests one should follow. The interface and in-game interactions are very well described and pop-up in the moment you need them. As a veteran player it might sometimes be annoying with all the offered help you do not need, but then again, you can easily skip all tooltips and hints. I was even more impressed when I stopped running through the Pandarian starting zone and reactivated my old paladin back from the days. The new skill system was easy to pick-up due to unobstrusive but helpful tooltips how to distribute the skill points.

Entering Guild Wars 2. I rolled a Norn necromancer because I liked the style. The interface looks pretty familiar if you already played an MMORPG and some of the in-game information visualization is pretty standard as well (quest hosts, map highlights). Regarding the tutorial, Guild Wars 2 does a lot of things wrong. There are pop-up messages pointing at different GUI elements or some which introduce key shortcuts. From my first hours of play, it seems that these messages pop-up randomly or at least not necessarily at the time you need a description of the respective mechanic (or much later after plenty of time already using the mechanic). I missed also tooltips for items or equipment slots, because I did not know how to use them or what effect they would have if I use them. In addition, the quest system is designed very flexible right from the start, so you receive additional quests for events around you, but they come and go very fast, which might ask a bit too much from beginners.

In my opinion the lack of linearity in the beginning is not the biggest issue of Guild Wars 2, but it is how the tooltips do (not) adapt to the player’s actions. Of course it is easier for the tutorial designers to provide the right information at the right time when the first minutes or hours of play move along a linear path. Guild Wars 2 should focus on the basic actions and goals of the game and save some of the complexity for later on. Techniques like phasing allow different players in the same game area to see different things according to their status, which could serve a tutorial very well.

That being said, I enjoyed Guild Wars 2 more than the return to World of Warcraft, because of the more flexible way of questing and leveling and the impressive visuals of Tyria. Then again, I only had a few hours of time, which is far away from sufficient to rate an MMORPG.

Why the Wii U faces a rough start

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Although I have always been a huge supporter of Nintendo and their way to push gaming’s boundaries, I must admit that since the announcement of the Wii U my skepticism grew if this console would be the right move. After seeing last week’s Wii U press event and gathering all the tiny bits of information from different sources, I came up with five reasons, why I fear that the Wii U won’t see a glorious start into the next generation of gaming like the Wii did.

1.) Pricing: You can argue that the console is not as expensive as other consoles at release but for Nintendo’s standards the pricing is higher than the previous generations. That might not scare off the core gamer crowd, but for the casual gamer who bought a Wii, it might be too expensive. A real bummer is the high price for a second controller with around $150. Although none of the games of the start line-up supports a second controller, it is a very high price point to get another player into the game later on.

2.) Online functionality: We’ve seen some of the in-game social connectivity features of games, but there has been no overall vision presented by Nintendo regarding the online store, user profiles or a (in-game) message system. Will the awful “friends code” system of the Wii return? How is online functionality integrated into the main console menu? How do you purchase digital content? So many questions, which have to be answered prior to launch.

3.) Media center: Yay, there will be Netflix and Hulu in the US. What about Europe? Are there any video streaming services? What about the TVii functionality beyond Japan and the US? Futhermore, the Wii was not able to play DVDs so the question is if the Wii U will be able to serve as a kind of media center platform for playing DVDs, Blu-Rays and providing access to further streaming services.

4.) Target group: The main success of the Wii was the enlarged customer base. A lot of people who never owned a game console before bought a Wii and a handful of games. I think that most of these people won’t be in need of a new console soon, so we won’t see so many casual gamers buying a Wii U. In my opinion it is up to the hardcore gamer crowd – they have to be convinced to buy the console and spread the word. I know a lot of core gamers who bought a Wii, which now collects dust since a months or years. Most of the early excitement for the motion controls is gone now. After all those Wii, PS Move and Kinect casual games people will be more skeptical about new input technology than at the start of the current console generation.

5.) The games: From the ‘release window line-up’ of around 50 games, which will be released until March 2013, a lot of the games we will see are versions of already published games with extra content. Nice for someone who has not played Batman: Arkham City or Mass Effect 3 yet, but to be honest – most core gamers, who are interested in these games already own them. And if not, they will be much cheaper on the PS3 and XBox360 the time the Wii U arrives.

So, what about the original games for Wii U? The New Super Mario Bros. U game looks great as all Mario games do, but it seems not to make use of the new controller in a convincing way. Nintendo Land seems to be the Wii Sports of this generation – lots of mini games to show off the controller’s possibilities. It looks very family-friendly – so I think the appeal to core gamers will be limited. The only game at release day with potential appeal for the core gamer crowd is ZombiU by Ubisoft, which uses the controller very well and introduces some interesting and new gameplay aspects. Some of the other exclusive games like Pikmin 3, Bayonetta 2 (who would have thought…) or The Wonderful 101 seem to miss the launch window until March 2013. Of course, there are some forthcoming multi-platform titles, which will be also available for the Wii U, but there is little reason to buy a new console for these if you already own a PS3 or XBox360.

To sum it up, I think the Wii U will face a rough start – maybe similar to the one of the 3DS. With the PS4 and XBox720 around the corner, I think most gamers will wait until they know what’s coming next year and afterwards make a decision about their future investment.

Review: Rayman Origins (PS Vita)

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Another game which I played a lot during my holidays was Rayman Origins – the beautiful 2D-Jump’n'Run game with Ubisoft’s Rayman (but without the ravin’ rabbits, which I did not miss at any time). And when I say beautiful, I mean it: The game looks like a painting coming alive. The backgrounds are full of wonderful details and the level themes offer a lot of variety. In addition, the animations of Rayman and all enemies and other characters look great and fluent all the time.

The only downside of the fluent animations is that the player sometimes doesn’t exactly know where the collision box of the character ends. It often happened to me that I missed a jump by a few pixels or was surprised that an enemy hit me before I could hit him. This happens not all the time but often, so I think this is a trade-off for having those beautiful fluent character animations.

Although I played quite some time without collecting all the coins, the campaign still continues with more and more great level designs and I highly recommend you to buy this game if you got a weakness for 2D Jump’n'Run games. Rayman Origins is available not only for PS Vita but for all other major home consoles.

Review: Resistance – Burning Skies (PS Vita)

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During my summer holidays I spent some more quality time with my PS Vita. One of the games I played through was the mobile adaption of the Resistance series: Resistance: Burning Skies.

It doesn’t matter if you played the PS3 games of the series or not – this is a pretty straightforward FPS game, which will be easy to pick up for anyone playing FPS games on a console thanks to the twin analogue sticks of the Vita. The game looks really great and has a high frame rate, which seems to drop only a bit in the multiplayer matches. The game is more linear than its PS3 predecessors and has some small usability flaws you don’t wanna see in a 2012 release: The cut scenes cannot be skipped, some save points are too far away from critical scenes and require the player often to run a bit more than necessary and running controls are messed up (you gotta press down on the d-pad and up on the left analogue stick simultaneously…).

Despite these small flaws the game is great fun and I really enjoyed playing through the campaign which took me around 6 or 7 hours. After that I jumped into the multiplayer deathmatches, which caught me by surprise because it really feels like playing a good FPS multiplayer game on a home console. I played a lot of games on my previous mobile consoles but THIS is the first game, where the multiplayer part is on par with the rest of the game.

If you own a PS Vita and like playing FPS games on the console, I highly recommend to buy Resistance: Burning Skies.

Why Nathan Drake’s latest adventure isn’t as much fun as it could have been: Golden Abyss Review (PS Vita)

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After spending some quality time with Nathan Drake in his latest adventure called the “Golden Abyss” on my PS Vita I am double-minded how to judge this game. It is one of the best looking games on the Vita and catches a lot of the atmosphere of Nathan’s adventures on the PS3. I also like the shorter episodes, which work very well being on tour.

But there are some things, which really got me frustrated and I am looking especially at you, mini-games. To those of you who haven’t been in touch with the game: There are several mini-games like shooting photos, cleaning items or tracing stone markings on paper. Most of these games force gamers to use the motion or touch controls and it’s not difficult to imagine how these mini-games made it into the game, considering the fact that Golden Abyss is one the main launch titles for Vita and here to show the full potential of the console. The idea may sound right to introduce the different input methods by mini-games but most of them are dull and repetitive or suffer from inaccurate controls. In addition, there is some much stuff to collect (and to miss) in the levels, it’ll be too frustrating for most players to collect everything to unlock the correspondent trophies.

The mini-game I probably find most frustrating is cleaning-up the archaeological items you find. You have to use the backside touch of the Vita to rotate the item and the front touch controls to clean it. Sadly, the developers implemented a spherical model, which is quite difficult to control. I often find myself making random inputs on the backside touch controls after I lost control of the rotation. The cleaning gets even more frustrating because the texture size you have to clean with your finger movement is often a bit larger than the model shown on the screen, which leads to random cleaning moves on the front screen because the visualization says you’re already done.

In addition to the mini-games, some flawed controls can be also found in the main game. Balancing on a stem with the accerelometer or performing swipes on the touchscreen during close combat make me feel like playing one of the cheaper smartphone games with a lack of precision. This wouldn’t bother me that much if those were optional controls but sadly they’re the only way to interact with the game in this situation.

Still, Golden Abyss is a good game but I could have been much better without the mini-games and if the developers decided not to throw every potential way of interaction of the Vita into the game with no alternative input options.