History in the Making — An Elder Scrolls Retrospective

History in the Making—An Elder Scrolls Retrospective Part 2

By SteerpikeMay 2002

Like Eating Liver, Only More Repulsive

So all that excitement ended in 1996, and yet it was 2002 before Daggerfall’s sequel shipped. What, you ask, happened in the interim?

Answer: the same thing that happens to successful TV shows. If something works, you spin it off.

Bethesda was riding high with its Terminator line of games. Daggerfall walked off with countless awards in 1996 despite the industry’s complaints about it. Most consumers considered it a failure, and it suffered from a tremendous return rate. Unlike most other studios, Bethesda Softworks seems immune to the economic tribulations of the industry; they’re part of the Zenimax Media Group and as such have access to dollars from other walks of the electronic world. So as studio after studio went on the DOA list, Bethesda just plodded on.

The Elder Scrolls III: Oblivion (soon to be retitled Morrowind) was in development all those long years, but the company took its time in the high concept stage. Before the release of Morrowind in late April of 2002, it pumped out two other titles set in the world of Tamriel—games that, while not officially part of the Elder Scrolls cycle, were certainly part of the mythos. These were the Elder Scrolls Legends, Worlds of Ultima-style subchapters intended to expand and expound upon the rich world created by the designers and writers at Bethesda. They quite wisely realized that it would be a waste to only produce a handful of games, when clearly so much work had gone into the world. In fact, I’m rather surprised we never saw a tabletop roleplaying version of Tamriel.

The Legends were intended to be tighter games, more encapsulated, with clearer goals addressing some small but intriguing aspect of life in Tamriel, rather than being the awesome, world-shaking adventures that the true Elder Scrolls represented. In their usual clever way, Bethesda’s creative team took that concept to bounds most gamers had never imagined: The first Elder Scrolls legend, Battlespire, took place not in a single province or even a single town. Battlespire takes place in a building.

A very large one, it’s true; the Battlespire, the mystical structural subdimension where Imperial Battlemages must go to prove themselves in a final cruciblic test before earning their pointy hat, is no 1,000-square-foot apartment. But it is a single building. I found that concept very appealing, especially after the oceanic expanse of Daggerfall. The character you play is a sort of graduate student in Battlemage University, with one final exam remaining: get to the top of the Battlespire alive. The only problem is that once you get there, you find everyone dead and the place completely overrun by Daedroth Lords, the slavering demons of Tamriel.

The cleverness in this story concept should be obvious, of course: here you are, supposed to claw your way to the top of this magical standardized test all alone. You arrive with your number 2 pencil, but something seems to have gone horribly wrong … or has it? Could this not be, after all, just part of the ordeal that all Battlemages must endure but about which none are allowed to speak? If you get to the top, will you find the mighty Mehrunes Dagon, the most infernal of all the Daedra, waiting for you, or will you find a wine-and-crackers party set up on the roof, with all your friends there, to celebrate your final victory?

Since I’m possibly the only person stupid enough to have played through the entirety of Battlespire, don’t ask me to give it away. Suffice to say that though the story was as clever as they come, the game was crap. And it was crap for so many reasons that I may have a hard time covering them all here, because this is already a big piece and no one likes to read page after page of nastiness.

Once again Bethesda chose to support DOS instead of leveraging industry-standard APIs. This is in 1997, long after both DirectX and Windows 95 are mainstays on everyone’s computers, yet Bethesda, the Game Studio That Time Forgot, didn’t seem to care—meaning once again, gamers had to manually configure sound and video to run the software. And despite absolute assurance that it would be their first 3D-accelerated title, Battlespire was a brick-pixeled fantasy of software-driven sprites. No compelling reason for this reversal was provided, and the obvious shortcomings of a first-person game running exclusively in software mode were made more offensive by the fact that Quake 2 had shipped only days before Battlespire. By this time most people had 3D accelerators—the Voodoo 1 was the reigning king—and everyone had Windows 95. But Bethesda just didn’t care.

All the creative energy the team had was spent concocting the clever storyline of Battlespire. Once you actually get into the game, you find absurd dialogue and ridiculous, out-of-place, Jar Jar-quality humor peppering the narrative. Your own character, who could be constructed using tools similar to those in Daggerfall, was as poorly written as the NPCs. Battlespire was a much more linear game than its predecessors, and if Warren Spector will forgive me, it, in fact, had more in common with the linear nature of Ultima Underworld than Arena did. But where Ultima Underworld was a watershed game, and spectacularly fun to boot, Battlespire was just a waste of time.

It had its moments, especially on the creative and scripting side. It was wrenching to come across the desiccated skeletons of a human and dragon, curled up together in a massive chamber. A diary at the feet of the human told the sad story of these two unlikely friends, trapped by the Daedra, starving, the bond of their affection preventing one from consuming the other simply to buy a few more hours’ life. Elsewhere, an abandoned town contained on one of the tower’s huge floors gave up few clues to explain its Roanoke-ishness, the lonely tendrils of creeping ground fog obscuring vision in the mournful landscape, meals half-eaten on tables and books sitting by chairs testament to the fact that the place had been recently inhabited. But these moments were few and far between. And even the best of them couldn’t save the game.

Combat was impossible; even on the first floors of the Battlespire, the player would encounter mighty Daedroth Lords that could not be harmed by anything but the most magical of weapons. Locating anything on the useless automap was a lesson in futility. Access to upper levels required passwords, and in some cases they were not provided anywhere in the game and were in fact simply nonsense words—a plot to sell strategy guides, perhaps? Medical equipment of any kind—healing scrolls, potions, whatever—were far more precious than gold. Weapons fell into disrepair and broke so quickly that System Shock 2 was put to shame.

They also saddled it with multiplayer, blowing God knows how much of their development budget on a feature they should have known no one would use, since it’s unlikely that two people would be willing to play Battlespire long enough to get a multiplayer game set up. Perhaps if less time and money had been focused on this useless feature, we might have seen a game that was more endurable. However, thanks to the ebbs and flows of the game industry and Bethesda’s own ignorance of its strengths and weaknesses, the popularity at the time of first-person multiplayer all but demanded that the feature be present in every game that hit shelves.

And then there was the nudity. Bethesda has always loved nudity (and honestly, who doesn’t?), having flirted with the ability to remove your character’s dainty things as early as Arena. But up until Battlespire, some standard of decency had always reigned supreme. In this case, however, you were treated to a monitor-sized nude of your character, male or female, depicted with absolute shamelessness. To imply that the goal of this was anything but stroke justification for minor programming trolls deep in the Bethesda cellars is absurd and offensive. There’s frankly nothing about Battlespire bad enough to earn it a “Mature” rating except for this, and it was totally without justification in the game mechanics. Female characters, especially and as usual, were objectified well beyond the pale in this little gem. In regard to movies, we’re constantly hearing actresses say that they’ll do nudity if it’s appropriate to the story. Here in Battlespire we have just about the least appropriate nudity I’ve ever seen, and I’m a male with high-speed internet access, so I’ve seen a lot of inappropriate nudity.

Daggerfall was a well-intentioned failure, but at least a kindly soul could claim that Bethesda had lofty goals in mind when it created the game. So while Daggerfall failed, it failed aspiring to the very peak of greatness. Battlespire, on the other hand, had no goals at all. There was nothing in it that built or expanded upon an established genre. There was no technology that made it stand out from the crowd. It was simply there in its own special way. And most people I know who played it wished that it wasn’t.

Setting aside the altogether grotesque topic of Battlespire, we can cheerfully move forward to 1998, when the next (and much more agreeable) Elder Scrolls Legend came onto the scene.

Glimmer of Hope

Bethesda took a big detour with the next Legend, both mechanically and in style. The Elder Scrolls: Redguard was billed as a “swashbuckling action roleplaying game,” and that’s what it stood out as: a third-person 3D game with lots of swordfighting and brilliant, lavish 3D graphics courtesy of an XNGine so colossally revamped that even its mother wouldn’t recognize it.

Redguard was antithesis to the free-flowing nature of its predecessors; you were handed a premade character with no option to customize him. Cyrus was a disarmingly unrufflable swordfighter who had returned to his home province of Hammerfell to track down a sister he hadn’t seen or spoken to in fifteen years. The reasons for this sibling breach were explained in a pretty comic book tucked away inside the Redguard box. As usual, thanks to the hard work of Bethesda writers, it’s better than the typical “rid the world of your village’s destroyer” or “rescue your missing girlfriend who looks suspiciously underage” plot that we’re used to in fantasy RPGs—because though the sister certainly looks underage, there’s much more to the story than her location.

The bargain-basement storyline is quickly catapulted into bottomless intrigue as the plot unfolds. It’s no kidnaping mystery, Cyrus soon finds; it’s the key to exposing a political conspiracy of epic proportions brewing in the tiny island community that serves as Redguard’s setting. Our hero is drawn into a three-way battle between the insidious Forebears, supporters of Hammerfell’s independence; the noble Crowns favoring a restoration of its ancient monarchy; and the world-conquering, inexorable Imperials slowly and brutally advancing from the south. At this point Elder Scrolls fans may pause to appreciate irony: Redguard takes place several hundred years before Arena, so we know the political ending here—which won’t stop you from trying to change it.

Where Redguard truly won was in its ambience. Like all the Elder Scrolls games, the lengthy documentation sold it as immersive to an unimaginable level. In many ways, Redguard came much closer than its predecessors, though still not as close as Bethesda wanted it to be. It was intended as a much simpler game than Daggerfall, not even in the same league—barely an RPG, really—but its ability to evoke a believable and persistent world is worth comment. The tiny island of Stros M’kai, with its one-road fishing village, was a place you could feel part of. The environment unfolded before you like a vista—players had no problem believing that this place was real, no problem believing they were there. Redguard bit deeply into the suspension-of-disbelief requirements that all games have.

As mentioned above, Redguard, like Battlespire, was an XNGine game—albeit a heavily tweaked and optimized version of one. 3Dfx acceleration and a redesign to make the interface more Max Payne than Quake breathed a little life into the aging codebase, but it wasn’t enough to conceal the fact that this game engine should have long since passed into the silicon sunset. What’s worse, the stretch marks left behind by XNGine’s surgery openly revealed the massive tinkering it underwent. What was meant to hurl Redguard fast-forward into High Technology was unfortunately its major shortcoming: like Tomb Raider, it suffered from hideous polygon tearing and collision problems, a critical deficiency in a melee-based combat system. The camera constantly collided with or got stuck behind opaque objects; proof positive that XNGine was never designed with third-person play in mind. Bethesda can hardly claim that these problems never occurred to them. They’d have been better off with the angle-changing camera of Ecstatica. It’s yet another nit that could have easily been worked out in QA, but we’ve already established that playtesting is not something for which Bethesda is famous.

Striking graphics—and they were gorgeous (each and every texture in the game was hand drawn)—couldn’t conceal the fact that 3Dfx implementation was disappointing. Though the visuals were wonderful, and the moody settings through which you ventured evoked an emotional immersion that was nothing short of astonishing, the game was slow and choppy even on the high-end machines of the day. Bethesda’s decision to support Glide only rather than including general Direct3D support (again) was by this point a sign of simple laziness; Redguard was a pixelated mess in software and not worth the time of a non-Voodoo gamer. Once again Bethesda chose not to support DirectX at all—on a game that shipped in 1998. What they were thinking is anyone’s guess.

The combat system was real-time, like the other Elder Scrolls games, but more swashbuckly in nature—Redguard’s third-person swordfights ranged across huge areas and focused as much on the dramatic as they did on the ass-kickery. And while they looked and felt cool, for my money I’d still take the less-realistic but more-fun swordfighting of Heavy Metal FAKK2. I’m not sure whether it was the placement of the controls, the difficulty most players had remapping the keyboard, or something more inexplicable, but combat in Redguard seemed a lot more arbitrary than skill-based—perhaps because there were no stats in Redguard. Like Diablo, in fact, this title walked a very fine line between the admittedly nebulous border separating RPG and action/adventure.

The level of immersiveness in Redguard was impressive indeed, right down to the aptly composed and varied orchestrations, which were always appropriate to your setting and made amazingly smooth transitions as the action changed. Each and every NPC in the game was voice-acted—most very well. Since time in Redguard never really stopped, such features were critical. The scripting of events was done with a keen eye for narrative pacing, and often things happened even when you weren’t there to see them. The island of Stros M’Kai had been designed as a living place, not some two-dimensional fantasy world revolving entirely around your character. Be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and you’d miss something pivotal. Unlike better-designed nonlinears, however, if you missed that pivotal something you wouldn’t be able to finish the game, so it behooved players to keep their eyes open.

Playing Redguard is a lot like watching a good movie when suddenly a video game breaks out. You’d find yourself maneuvering into the coolest possible venues for swordfights, wishing death and sulphurous rains on those bastard Imperials, pondering the game’s fiendish logic puzzles when you should have been at work or school, and possibly shouting “I’m quick!” to your bewildered friends. But unlike the abhorrent Battlespire, Redguard was logical and well-rooted in the world of good sense and cleverness. It still was not the intellectual leap forward that Bethesda was hoping to make with its CRPGs, but it was a big step in the right direction. With all else said and done, Redguard was a lot of fun.

Scroll Bridge

Many folks may be interested in testing out some of these old games. Morrowind is so great that there’s bound to be some interest in earlier Elder Scrolls titles based simply on the strength of the newest one. However, times have changed a lot since Arena shipped, and as I think we’ve probably already established, Bethesda Softworks is often too shortsighted to think about the future when it comes to development.

Not one of the previous Elder Scrolls titles, not even 1998’s Redguard, supports DirectX. Redguard was the first Elder Scrolls title that required Windows at all—Arena shipped during the DOS period, Daggerfall, designed for DOS, should have been updated for Windows 95 but never was, and Battlespire was created under Windows but supported DOS as well. However, until fairly recently, that fact alone would not have spelled doom for a motivated gamer seeking to unroll an Elder Scroll.

Nowadays things are different. After a lot—and I mean a lot—of tinkering, I can say that any attempt to run Arena or Battlespire on a Windows XP machine will likely fail without the help of a DOS boot disk that completely bypasses the operating system. Redguard and Daggerfall may run, but you will encounter highly erratic behavior, missing functions, serious audio problems, and general instability. It appears that the lack of even the phantom of a 16-bit kernel in Windows XP and 2000 is just too much for Bethesda’s older games.

Arena, even when running in compatibility mode, returned a DOS 4GW error when I tried to run it on Windows XP. Daggerfall would run (in compatibility mode) under XP but without sound and very, very slowly. An appalling screech nearly blew out my speakers while I tried to manually configure my sound card for Redguard; once audio was sorted out, the game worked with sound effects but not music. Battlespire didn’t work at all. Gamers who haven’t made the switch from Windows 98/ME, however, shouldn’t have too much difficulty with any of the titles. There are several websites devoted to The Elder Scrolls out there, and many have further suggestions on getting these old games to run on your newer systems.

The best way to ensure good compatibility on Windows XP/2000 machines may be to set up a dual-boot with Windows 98 using a utility like System Commander. If that seems like too much trouble, another option may be a system-in-system software solution like VMWare to create a virtual machine that runs a legacy operating system without requiring an actual partition. Normally games wouldn’t work well under VMWare because the overhead of the virtual machine itself is too great, but I’d bet that the age and minimal system requirements of the older Elder Scrolls titles would probably work to a player’s advantage in this case. Even with the required overhead, there should be plenty of computing power in today’s PCs to handle XP/2000, the VMWare instance, and your game.

Another challenge may be finding the games at retail. Redguard and Daggerfall should still be available in boxed versions if you’re willing to do a hard target search; I found several copies of both Arena and Battlespire for sale at various online auction sites. Tracking any of these games down online shouldn’t be too hard; you’re not looking for a Konstantinov jersey, after all. Don’t waste your time trying to find Arena at places that sell new stuff—Arena is “out of print,” and your best bet is to get your paws on a used copy. If you do find a reliable source, be sure to post the intel at the Henhouse so that anyone else who’s interested can take advantage.

The Phantom Menace

Though I noted earlier that Bethesda seems immune to the slings and arrows of our industry, that may change in the near future. Depending on how Morrowind sells, we may or may not see Bethesda around for long—the company has certainly endured enough critical and retail failures to warrant it being placed on a watch list.

Remember that we’re scarcely a year out from the fall of Looking Glass Studios, which could be lauded for making games as clever, as forward-thinking, and as progressive as Bethesda’s. The difference is that Looking Glass games were almost universally spectacular, while Bethesda has produced some titles so bad that I wouldn’t line my catbox with them. Again, it’s Bethesda’s access to money outside the industry, its rapacious snapping up of surefire franchises like the Terminator and Wayne Gretzky Hockey series, and the relatively free hand it’s been given to operate that have kept it alive so far.

Perhaps a more apt comparison for Bethesda than Looking Glass would be Interplay, another medium-sized company that, despite being owned by a larger conglomerate, is nonetheless practically independent in its behavior in the PC and console gaming space. Bethesda and Interplay both fall into a very narrow category (it’s occupied by exactly two companies)—that is, studios that publish themselves. Considering that we as an industry are currently bearing sad witness to what appears to be the spectacular implosion of Interplay, one may wonder how much time Bethesda truly has.

There are no answers here; only speculation. The truth is pretty simple: Bethesda doesn’t produce many games. If the outside money dries up, they’re through, because they cannot support their infrastructure and burn rate based on their own sales. Considering their history of delays, bugs, and bad customer support, it seems unlikely that a big publisher like Activision or Microsoft would bail them out, despite Bethesda’s newfound friendship with the XBox. Remember that no one came to the rescue of Looking Glass once Eidos bowed out of a deal to save the beleaguered studio, and Looking Glass, too, developed in the console space. Plus, Bethesda Softworks has nowhere near the gamer community support that Looking Glass did.

Keep your eye on sales figures for Morrowind. Bethesda, also responsible for the Sea Dogs and Art of Magic franchises, may be able to pull something out of its sleeve. We’ve come to think of the studio as eternal—it’s been around since 1986—but as the economy of the PC gaming industry changes, Bethesda may find itself in an unusual position.

Cinnamon Scrolls

So let’s assume for a minute that Bethesda stays afloat, due to good sales for Morrowind. I paid my fifty bucks, I’ve written a positive review of it for other gamers to read; hopefully that qualifies as my doing my part. Where do we go from here?

This grizzled veteran predicts that the Elder Scrolls Legends lineup is through. Like Worlds of Ultima, it was destined to run only two titles. Unlike the Worlds of Ultima, which were great games that sold poorly (thus leading to the cancellation of that spinoff), the Legends consisted of one relatively okay game and one unbelievably terrible game, both of which sold poorly. In a way it’s a pity, because there is plenty that can be done with the amazingly detailed world of Tamriel. Anyone who’s played Arena knows how much there is to explore; anyone who’s played Daggerfall knows how much magic and mystery even a small corner of the empire holds. Part of me is eager to experience as much more as possible. On the other hand, I’d rather see fewer games and a universe not fully taken advantage of than be party to the same shameful prostitution of the Elder Scrolls that we’re seeing with the X-Com franchise.

It takes Bethesda between three and six years to release an Elder Scrolls sequel. Barring the release of another Legend or some other spinoff, I think we can assume that it’s going to be quite some time before Morrowind is followed up. I’ll start the betting at 2006 before Elder Scrolls IV sees the light of day. By that time we’ll all have neural shunts and be floating in sensory deprivation pools to further enhance our VR experience.

But despite the inconvenience, despite the ambivalent history, there will always be something special about the Elder Scrolls. They’re history now, in the Hall of Fame. They made it there not just by being so open-minded, so ambitious; the Elder Scrolls are blessed with longevity and apparent immunity to critical shortcomings. Like the Wizardries, the Might and Magics, the Ultimas, the Bard’s Tales, the Elder Scrolls have a grand and storied history. With luck and more than a little hard work, there is still more ahead than behind for the franchise. Here’s one gamer who will crawl out of his VR tank, towel off the goo, and drive his hovercar down to the nearest software store for whatever magic the future of the Elder Scrolls chooses to offer us. The End

The Lowdown

All Games

Developer: Bethesda Publisher: Bethesda

Arena

Release Date: 1993

Available for: DOS

Daggerfall

Release Date: 1996

Available for: DOS

Battlespire

Release Date: 1997

Available for: DOS Windows

Redguard

Release Date: 1998

Available for: Windows

Screenshots

Arena

Click to enlarge Click to enlargeClick to enlarge Click to enlarge

Daggerfall

Click to enlarge Click to enlargeClick to enlarge Click to enlargeClick to enlarge

Battlespire

Click to enlarge Click to enlargeClick to enlarge Click to enlarge

Redguard

Click to enlarge Click to enlargeClick to enlarge Click to enlarge

System Requirements

Arena

386/25 IBM or 100% compatible 4 MB RAM

Daggerfall

486/66 MHz IBM PC or compatible 8 MB RAM 2x CD-ROM drive 50 MB hard disk space Local bus (or equivalent) video card Mouse

Battlespire

IBM and 100% compatibles DOS 5.0 or higher P133 MHz or better SVGA with VESA 2.0 4x CD-ROM drive, MPC Level 2 or better 16 MB RAM 150 MB hard drive space Soundblaster or compatible

Redguard

Pentium 166 MHz 32 MB RAM 350 MB free hard drive space Windows 95 16-bit sound card Supported: 3Dfx video card, 4-button gamepad

Arena Where to Find It

Daggerfall Where to Find It

Battlespire Where to Find It

RedguardWhere to Find It

Links provided for informational purposes only. FFC makes no warranty with regard to any transaction entered into by any party(ies).

Copyright © Electric Eye Productions. All rights reserved. No reproduction in whole or in part without express written permission.

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29 Responses to The Long, Sordid Tail of DRM

  • Meho

    Good one.

    Of course, it will be very interesting to see the battle between crackers and UBI’s cryptographers. PC version of Assassin’s Creed II is already circulating the warez scene, although as yet uncracked. Everybody seems to think it will be cracked in a couple of weeks time at worst, which, admittedly is better for UBI than what usually happens (games cracked before release). Of course, I won’t be buying it because I find this practice unnacceptable (and I do have the console version anyway) but the success of this game and its DRM might mean quite a lot in the future. Of course, we ARE moving towards the age where you will be required to be connected to do any playing at all, whatwith the Gaikai and OnLive systems rearing their heads on the horizon. Doesn’t mean I have to like it, eh?

  • Spike

    I went to the Ubisoft website and looked at their list of published games.  It seems that the last of their games I played was the last Myst game in 2005.  In fact the only Ubisoft games I’ve played have been Myst games.  So I don’t see that their new DRM crime-against-my-privacy will have much of an effect on me.  But I hate the idea.  It’s an “Off with their heads!” kind of development.  Reminds me of the idea that people will put up with lost privacy in exchange for security.  In this case the security is only to benefit Ubisoft.  Yes, I allow my privacy to be violated every day – each time I visit Amazon, or read Google News -the list goes on and on.  BUT THOSE ARE MY CHOICES.  I also have a choice about where and how I spend my money, and I’d refrain from buying a game that allows so much intrusion into my computer/life.  A game that tells me how I must live my life even in the smallest of ways such as always being connected to the internet is a game I can forgo.

  • Jason O

    Consoles CAN be connected to the internet 100% of the time, but there are still many consoles that never go online. Modern Warfare 2 sold over 11 million copies, yet XBox Live only shows 840,000 users that have been on-line with it. That’s not played online, that means they played the game in any mode while connected to XBox Live.

    Games that have required an internet connection and were multiplayer only have a history of vanishing quickly from the console marketplace. Phantasy Star ONLINE did much better on the Gamecube then it did on the XBox. What was the difference? Oh yeah, you could play PSO without an internet connection on the Gamecube, the XBox version require a live account and an internet connection. That’s hardly the only example but one that is near and dear to my heart.

  • Bennet

    No, no, you don’t get it! Ubisoft’s “always connected” requirement isn’t DRM, it’s value-add for you, the beloved customer. Just like the Albertsons supermarket chain requires employees to plaster obnoxiously bright orange “Thank you for shopping with us!” stickers on your Coke and milk not because they think you’re stealing them but to express their sincere gratitude for your patronage.

    Maybe my memories of a time when consumers paid for a product and got the product, unadorned by FBI warnings and impossible to open wrappings and authentication servers that can vanish at any time without warning were planted by aliens. In the current cultural climate it’s certainly difficult to believe that time ever existed.

  • Meho

    But Steerpike makes a good point: business model, retail model is lagging behind the times. And developers, instead of researching ways to use the existing systems to sell more games rather research new ways to piss off their paying customers.

    Seriously, in my opinion, pirates pirate games because they are better value than retail games. Not just in the sense that they get to spend less money on them, but they get them faster, do not have to go through any hassle with DRM and have full control over the game. I think that Gabe Newell put it best saying that Valve sees pirates as customers who haven’t been served yet.

    I think UBI and their ilk should look for ways to make retail games more valuable to their customers than (free) warez copies. Yes, stuff like achievements/ trophies helps a little, sure. There are other ways too and one of them is resale value. But, oh, what a surprise, used games market pisses publishers off MORE than pirates do. In fact most of the current DRM schemes are only effective against resales. EA’s ten dollar project and all other free DLC on day one initiatives. So, honestly, I’m afraid that UBI’s online-all-the-time-or-no-service DRM is basically only going to affect sales of used games. The crackers are going to bring their games to pirates eventually. I believe that draconic DRM schemes such as this will only inspire people like GeoHot, Dark Alex and Yoshihiro to spend more of their time on circumvention. Their street cred is going to be huge after all…

    What Valve seem to understand is that playing games through Steam should make playing MORE valuable/ comfortable than not playing games through Steam (which is, at the end of the day a DRM system). Being able to instal a game on as many machines as you want and not having to have a disc in the drive is exactly what pirated games give us too, but with Steam you also retain all your stats, friends lists, achievements and everything. So it’s BETTER than playing pirated games. I only hope that UBI wake up and realise they have to ADD value, not just subtract freedoms.

  • Lewis B

    I’m not really sure I see their DRM as a huge problem.  If my PC is turned on, so is my internet.  I’m fully aware that my name is probably on a million data bases already, and although it might be annoying knowing that Ubisoft have implemented such a security feature, if you don’t physically notice it, I don’t particularly care.

    I’m currently playing Myst at the moment, having never before.  What an odd game…

  • Meho

    Well, you know, just from a philosophical standpoint: if the game is unplayable as soon as you don’t have Internet connection (which, I’m afraid, happens to me more regularly than I am comfortable with) for no other reason than making sure you have paid for it then to me this is pretty much unnacceptable. Requiring a connection for something that is a function of the game itself is OK, but enforcing it just for the sake of protection of the publisher, sorry, no sale.

  • Lewis B

    True Meho.  I had 40 minutes the other day before I went out and thought I would have a quick skirmish on Dawn of War II.  Steam (despite my love for it) wouldn’t launch the game because for some reason it kept freezing and refusing to connect or launch in offline mode.  I couldn’t actually locate the source directory either to boot the game up manually. So, I didn’t get to play and instead spent 40 minutes in a fit of rage cursing Valve and all who work under them. 

    Not exactly the same situation, but not hugely dissimilar.

  • Gregg B

    I’m really not concerned about the privacy issue simply because that illusion is just that, and doesn’t really comfort or unsettle me. My problem with this whole thing is that internet connections can be temperamental at the best of times and the idea that if the connection falters I will lose my progress (and thus my invested time which I’d argue is more valuable than my money) then quite frankly Ubi can fuck off. I’ve been pretty placid up to press with DRM simply because it’s not seemed that intrusive but this will affect the paying customers more than the pirates. It devalues the product and I fear it will push otherwise paying customers to download cracked versions that don’t suffer from this shit. Which, of course, will play into Ubi’s hands.

    Am I right in believing all this stems from the hideous retail model that just refuses to die? Physical retail creates pressuring deadlines, costs considerably more due to increased physical production (and overheads in staffing and floor space), it’s inflexible with stock limitations and shelf space dictating the range of titles available in any given store and by the sounds of things is the sole reason for this ‘tail’. If you look at Steam, it isn’t always the newest games that sell the most due in no small part to their sales and weekend deals.

    “I wonder if we’ll ever get to a point where a person would be just as likely to invest in a beloved classic as a hot new release.”

    From my experience there are a lot of people who simply can’t stomach old looking games, even some of my friends who’ve been playing games since they were young have turned into total graphics whores. Seriously you want to see the totally underwhelmed look on their faces when I show them XCOM for any period of time. We’re at a stage now where graphics are so advanced that for a lot of people going back so far to sample an allegedly classic title is simply too much. Thankfully GOG is doing a fantastic job of making these titles as accessible, and valuable, as possible.

    EDIT: Spot on Meho. My point exactly.
    See what I mean though Lew? Time. Valuable stuff. A quick skirmish on DoW turned into a 40 minute skirmish with Steam.

  • Mat

    This seems like an awful idea.. or at least one which sounds like a good idea to somebody somewhere, but in reality is unworkable.

    Since I’ve been a paying internet customer I have lived at 3 different addresses and used around 5 different ISP’s. I have ALWAYS had problems with my internet connection. With my current set up it tends to go down if a menacing looking cloud passes overhead..

  • xtal

    Some people may like to play a game offline now and then; this is especially easy with older ones before the dawn of activation codes and online authentication. While those aren’t that annoying, having to maintain a constant internet connection just to play a game that you paid for, which is not specifically a MMO, really bites.

    Gregg B said:
    “Am I right in believing all this stems from the hideous retail model that just refuses to die? Physical retail creates pressuring deadlines, costs considerably more due to increased physical production (and overheads in staffing and floor space), it’s inflexible with stock limitations and shelf space dictating the range of titles available in any given store and by the sounds of things is the sole reason for this ‘tail’. If you look at Steam, it isn’t always the newest games that sell the most due in no small part to their sales and weekend deals.”

    I agree with this. Just a few years ago I couldn’t see myself paying for intangible, digital goods. Fast forward to now and it’s really my preferred method of computer gaming, whether it’s GOG, Steam, or elsewhere, I find it’s the model that works best for the customer. If I’m not mistaken, I believe once upon a time that was who the industry was trying to serve, no? The customer?

  • Cesar

    You know, I’m from Brazil and there piracy is HUGE. Maybe for that reason I feel for the industry and understand the efforts to stop it. However, I suspect this crack delay would have a very minor impact in markets like Brazil. People can’t afford the games, so they wouldn’t pay full price anyway.

    It is a shame that we don’t have privacy anymore. The other day a friend of mine on XBox Live sent me a message to congratulate me on a goal I scored in Fifa 10. I didn’t know but apparently not only you can see I’m playing Fifa, but you also see when I score and my avatar cheers! While that sounds very cool, it is also very disturbing. But like Matt points very well, privacy is already gone. And since I don’t have it anymore, why not help stop piracy?

    On the other hand, the plurality of solutions is a different matter, it becomes a hassle. I think the solution should be platform dependent, not publisher dependent. In Brew phones, the control is embedded in the system and you cannot use an app if it cannot be verified, which means if you are not connected to the network you can’t play.

    Unfortunately that cannot be applied to consoles, there’s a considerable number of devices outside the internet umbrella. But if the game constantly checks if you are online and tries to authenticate the copy, online piracy will suffer a big hit and the technological move towards full connectivity will make the practice more and more efficient over time.

  • Andrew

    Not going to buy the game, long tail or not, it sucks to have that kind of persistent connection needed for offline play. Not even just startup authorisation either. I must admit any Game For Windows Live games can be similar (Dawn of War 2 being one of them necessitating it) although most of them allow offline profiles, and most of them allow the saves to be moved easily between any online or offline accounts.

    Oh, and if you’re disconnected it won’t kick you out of the game too, even Microsoft didn’t get that wrong.

    I don’t even understand how privacy comes into it, my main issue is twofold:
    – The above note about simple, offline play (and disconnects for blips in service)
    – The fact it isn’t just your connection that is necessary, it is THEIR connection and servers

    The second point as a partial game historian leads me to wonder how many years (not decades) the servers will be there. Publishers have removed much more necessary servers quickly if they are a cost liability (or they want to push people onto a newer game…). Downtime is also, considering some of the services require payment (Xbox Live for instance) devastatingly poor considering the user base sizes, especially on high load days (and I wonder if we’ll see “Assassins Creed 2 unplayable at launch due to server overload” at all, heh). Lucky it’s “just games” though, no worries if we only have 99% uptime right?! 😉

    (Also, frankly their Assassins Creed 1 port was poor until they patched it, where at least then it was playable (in full on 16:9…for some reason), which makes me wary of any PC release of a console game they do. I wonder also if they still have unskippable cutscenes, I’ve not checked it out on the consoles).

    The fact they’ll never have enough sales of this PC version due to the earlier console release to either say this is a roaring success or roaring failure. It’s the longest end of the tail in the first place. Or they’ll lie about whatever happens anyway. It’s utterly bizarre…I just don’t understand it.

  • Meho

    Cesar: I’m in Serbia and here piracy reigns supreme (much worse than Brazil, I imagine) but still, this is pure and simple bullshit. I purcahsed BioShock 2 today, for my PS3 even though I’d prefer to play it on my PC just because of the stupid DRM that won’t let me control the use of a game I pay for. They can fuck off with that. So, my purchase was influenced by DRM, depsite the game being more natural to play on a PC. Protection measures should not create this kind of bitterness in a human being.

  • Matt "Steerpike" Sakey

    The issue of server overload on release days is significant. Think about it – a game like Modern Warfare 2? Or any other hotly anticipated release? Of course the servers would go down. It’s not cost-effective to install a server infrastructure capable of handling Day Zero traffic. That would royally piss people off.

    Ubi and others who use draconian DRM typically insist that if they ever go out of business or shut servers down, they’ll issue patches so the games can be played offline.

    Around the holidays here, big stores like Best Buy station a guy at the exit. His job is to go through your bag and consult your receipt to make sure you haven’t stolen anything. That’s a very similar ideology to this one: treat all consumers like thieves in hopes of catching the few who are.

  • Lewis B

    Considering most MMOG servers cannot cope on launch day, I see it as a gaurentee that when the next Modern Warfare is released, if they do follow through with this, would see many unhappy players.

  • lakerz1

    This new DRM policy will totally be screwing me over because I have a wireless internet setup, but my signal is a bit weak so here and there it drops out for a 10-15 second period before it reconnects.  Plus my wireless router is a bit wonky and will just stop working once in awhile until I cycle power to it.  So, until my setup changes, I will be forced to avoid all Ubi PC games that use this.

  • Igor Hardy

    I seriously doubt a person which would normally pirate a game, will pay money for it just because she has to wait a short while longer for the cracked version. This can work only for very cheap games – like 1$ cheap.

  • Meho

    Just for those keeping tabs: the Russian version of Assassin’s Creed II has apparently been successfully cracked, with a fix for the saves too. Of course, I don’t KNOW this for sure but that’s the word circulating through the grapewine.

  • Cesar

    Brazil is a strong competitor in the piracy rates. 95%-97% if I am not mistaken.

    Anyway, I don’t have a problem with the privacy issue. Not even with the assumption that we are all thieves. If you extrapolate that idea, you will conclude we shouldn’t have patrol cars on the streets. They assume people will commit crimes and have to keep watch. Homo homini lupus. Society isn’t perfect and even though losses are part of the model, no one is ready to lose out of good faith alone. I don’t mean to say DRM and police watch are the same thing, I’m just saying it’s not that simple to draw a line where it becomes offensive to monitor society.

    That being said, it is not acceptable to have a DRM impact gameplay at all. I don’t mind it authenticating my copy. But if I am offline it has to work. And if I loose connection during the game I shouldn’t be kicked out.

    And while the efficacy of the solution might be questionable under these circumstances, like I said in the previous comment, it only tends to increase.

  • Andrew

    “Ubi and others who use draconian DRM typically insist that if they ever go out of business or shut servers down, they’ll issue patches so the games can be played offline.”

    I have seen this happen to absolutely zero games ever. The fact that it is nearly impossible to sanction any work on IP if a company is in administration is the key. That and it is non-trivial to get around your own disk DRM by producing an installer that will work with your disk copy to install it.

    I’d love to be proved wrong…this is by far the most worrying thing of the deal, just installed Bioshock 2 and it has online activation (sigh)…worried I might need to download cracked versions to install it in the future!

    Oh, did you see the patch notes of the first patch? It makes the DRM very very very slightly “better” (I mean, better as in “still shit”):

    http://www.fileshack.com/file.x/17456/Assassin%27s+Creed+2+Patch+1.01+-+US

    “Game can now be continued from the exact same point when connection is restored”

    Ho ho ho. Ho.

  • Gregg B

    I like this bit:

    “Only those who purchased a copy of ACII or SHV legally appear to be affected. Pirates playing illegally downloaded cracked versions of the game are able to play without a problem.”

    Is it apparent pirates are having no problems yet? If they’ve properly cracked it then what I feared (above) is true. Last I heard was that the DRM apparently downloads levels or important files as you play. I don’t know whether this is true or not though.

  • Spike

    Meho beat me to it.  I just read a similar article on The Register.  I don’t suppose that the DDoS attack will make Ubi rethink its evil ways, but this might (I can dream, can’t I?):

    “Meanwhile Ubisoft’s much criticised controls have been broken by software hackers. A hacker group called Skid-Row managed to bypass DRM restrictions on Silent Hunter 5 less than 24 hours after the game was published. Skid Row has releasing a crack for the game based on this work, Zdnet reports. ®”

    Full article here: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/03/08/ubisoft_anti_drm_hack_attack/

  • Littermate

    Spike.  RE: The Register article
    There is a comment to that article that claims the crack for SH5 is not a complete crack and would only allow an incomplete experience, because not only are save games stored online but some of the game data files are stored online too, implying that the boxed game you buy is incomplete.  This seems plausible and effective IMO, because if I was demanding an internet connection for my software this is how I would do it.  It demands not only that a games code be cracked but that missing data files be supplied too.

  • Spike

    Having just read this article – link below – I’m thinking that DRM will be fine and dandy AND hunky-dory with me as long as the packaging it comes in is “green”.  Yep.  That makes it more palatable.

    http://www.fastcompany.com/1620105/ubisoft-green-recycled-case-digital-manual-sustainable-packaging

  • Matt "Steerpike" Sakey

    I would kind of like to buy games in potato cases.

  • xtal

    I was thinking… and remembered one of the most creative instances of “DRM” if you can call it that: King’s Quest VI! I looked it up and sure enough it is mentioned on KQVI’s Wikipedia page:

    A booklet titled “Guidebook to the Land of the Green Isles” (written by Jane Jensen) is included in the KQVI package. Aside from providing additional background to the game’s setting, this booklet serves as part of the game’s copy-protection. The player will not be able to pass the puzzles on the Cliffs of Logic that guard the Isle of the Sacred Mountain without information from the booklet. The booklet also includes a poem encoding the solution to one of the puzzles in the labyrinth on the Isle of the Sacred Mountain.

    I guess that’s not very feasible today, what with widespread use of the internet around the world. I still think it’s more creative than the “thank you for your money, we intend to treat you like a criminal” method.

  • Bluebogle

    I played the KQVI game with the booklet. I was a kid at the time, and thought the booklet was so cool! It really added to the whole game’s experience.

    The quest for Glory games came with fun booklets as well, though I don’t remember if they had copy protection elements to ’em.

    Ahh, the good old days..

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