Tag Archives: user experience

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.

In the grim dark future is only war… and annoying grenades?

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Last weekend I played through Warhammer 40K: Space Marine on my PS3 (yeah, I know I am bit late with that one). First I have to admit that I always enjoy visiting the Warhammer 40K universe with those fancy space marine servo suits, orks in space and the over-sized weaponry. Sadly, the story and the dialogues are completely forgettable and the game would have been more enjoyable with a bit more variety within the level and art design.

But we’re in the grim dark 40th century and looking for some action, right? In most cases you start approaching the enemy’s forces by some short-range shooting with your guns but end in close-combat surrounded by a group of enemies. That’s not only because your Space Marine rocks in close-combat but also due to the fact that the only way to regenerate health is dropping finishing moves on your enemies at close range.

Sometimes the third-person camera comes so close to your servo suit hero that you have to manually zoom out, while bashing buttons or continue bashing buttons and pray to the emperor that you’ll hit some foes. You may get used to this issue, but close-combat has a much more serious problem. If you’re starting a finishing move a fixed animation starts and will last some seconds with optional quick-time event button pressing to overwhelm your combatant. During this fixed finishing scene no other enemy can touch you in close-combat, which works similar to the quick-time events and finishers in God of War or other hack’n slay games. I am ok with the fact that other enemies can shoot at you during the finisher, but which really annoyed me was the fact that – especially later on in the game – there was a high chance that someone would throw a grenade right to your feet during the finisher phase. You see the grenade landing nearby, hear the warning – and can do absolutely nothing. Neither can you stop the finisher nor can you kick back the grenade or evade it. You just sit there and watch your Space Marine die. Dear Relic Entertainment – why not include another quick-time event to add a chance to escape this situation?

Shooting works out pretty fine until you come across a stationary weapon that is even larger than your super-sized weapons you already carry around. To use the weapon you have to approach the weapon and press a button, which shows up when you stand in the right area of interaction. Sounds pretty easy. But the tolerance for the area of interaction seems to be pretty small, so I often walked back and forth several times to exactly hit the right spot in order to use or rip-off the super-sized weapon in front of me (ripping it off is always better to keep moving and make a use of cover). Being veteran gamers we all know that big guns are there for a reason (e.g. large waves of enemies or boss fights) and that’s why it is a frustrating experience when you approach the weapon and cannot use it immediately because those enemies won’t wait until you are ready. Come on, Space Marines are not known for their fine motor skills, so why do I have to take several attempts to use the big guns?

That said, Space Marine delivers great combat action but it would lead to less frustration if someone would have taken care of these issues.

Looking for German Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Players

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We are currently looking for German-speaking Battlefield: Bad Company 2 players, who are willing to take part in a short online questionnaire. The study is focusing on the play style of first-person shooter gamers and is NOT yet another questionnaire about aggression etc.

If you play BFBC2 on the PC, PS3 or XBox360 please feel free to take part in the study. Here is the link to get started:

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Study (German only)

Entertainment Interfaces Track in Duisburg, 12th & 14th September

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Next week the Interaktive Kulturen conference will take place in Duisburg and feature the Entertainment Interfaces track. Together with Maic Masuch and Matthias Rauterberg I am organizing this track and want to provide some information about the contents.

On Sunday, the 12th of September the track kicks off with the workshops on “Using Game Design and Affective Evaluation to improve User Experience and User Research” and “Game Design und Game Development in der Hochschullehre”. For the followers of this blog the first workshop is of special interest because it will provide an overview of available methods and techniques of evaluating game design and foster a productive discussion on creating guidelines for studying users with affective evaluation methodologies. For more information about the workshops check out the workshop page of the Entertainment Interfaces track.

Tuesday will feature the Entertainment Interfaces keynote “Trajectories through Entertainment Experiences” by Steve Benford (University of Nottingham, UK) and the two sessions “Player Experience” and “Entertainment Interaction”. Much more sessions will be provided by the other three tracks of the conference (Mensch&Computer, DeLFI and UPA), so check out the full program. Hope to see you in Duisburg next week!

Ubisoft`s Always-Online Copy Protection = User Experience Fail?

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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.