Stealing Beauty: A Thief Retrospective
By SteerpikeMay 2004
Where It’s Due
You can’t make a great game without a strong team and a coherent creative vision. Further, those who portray a narrative game’s characters must be fully in tune with the wishes of its authors.
The Dark Project was helmed by Greg LoPiccolo, who left Looking Glass for Harmonix shortly after the game’s release. He, along with Lead Designer Tim Stellmach and Ken Levinewho created the original game conceptwere largely responsible for the flavor of Thief. Looking Glass lifer Steve Pearsall took on project lead chores for The Metal Age and worked hard to maintain consistency with the mythos and universe that had already been created.
Multi-hatted Terri Brosius, who is credited merely as a “designer” on both games, was in fact a major contributor to the Thief universe, especially fiction and backstory, and helped write both scripts. As if that weren’t enough, she designed some of the game’s better missions and voiced the enigmatic Viktoria, which is a tough role to play well.
Fans of the System Shock games may also recognize her as SHODAN, the world’s sexiest evil-but-conflicted supercomputer, and as Marie Delacroix, hapless French inventor of FTL drive and one of SHODAN’s later victims. She also plays the too-weird-to-not-be-on-lithium helicopter pilot Ava Johnson in Deus Ex: Invisible War and has one-line parts in far too many other games to mention.
Terri is working with the Thief 3 team at ION Storm, where her background and vocal prowess will doubtless come in handy. Indeed, this time she’s one of the primary architects of the game plot and script. Given the quality of her creative work in the past, that’s a very good thing.
Actor Stephen Russell plays Garrettand about nine million other tiny roles in the Thief gamesand he’s so good that you simply couldn’t imagine the character sounding like anyone else. It goes without saying by this point that Garrett is a complicated fellow, and a lot of his personality must be conveyed in how he says things. Sarcastic, dry, slightly amused, but with a sharp edge warning of a capability for shocking violence, Russell’s portrayal of Garrett is spot-on. Listening to actors like Brosius and Russell leaves limited sympathy for developers that cut costs by stuffing janitors and interns in the sound studio and handing them a script.
A lot, but by no means all, of the original Thief crew are working with ION Storm on Deadly Shadows. That is obviously good news because they’re likely to stay as faithful as possible to the existing work, and they have every reason to make it a great gaming experience. This is a group of people who have in some cases been with the Thief universe for eight years, who have a right to see it through to the end, who have worked hard and suffered through corporate malfeasance and publisher bullying, who have always focused on one goal: to make Thief the very best it could possibly be. And they are not necessarily culpable for any shortcomings in the previous games.
Like fans, most Looking Glass alums weren’t thrilled with The Metal Age, and with good reason. By the time the game shipped, Looking Glass was in serious financial hot water. They shipped it before it was ready and they know itbut they did it because they had to. Had it not been for the financial problems, they’d likely have let it slip a bit and shipped it in December of 2000 rather than June.
Equally unfortunate is the fact that Looking Glass didn’t realize its demise was imminent when it released the game. It ends with a staggeringly anticlimactic climax and zero closurein fact, it ends with a question that was to have been answered at the beginning of Thief 3. But the arrival of Thief 3 would take a lot longer than anyone anticipated. And so the middle of this story is also the end: the oblivion of Looking Glass was near at hand when The Metal Age reached store shelves, and the series was not to be reborn for many years.
Through a Glass, Darkly
Looking Glass Studios was heralded since its foundation as an innovator in gaming. The studio worked hard to promote the notion that games are an entertainment art form. Founded by past employees of Origin Systems and Microprose when those two now-defunct companies were at the height of their glory, Looking Glass games were award winners, critical favorites, academic darlings. And unlike irritatingly pretentious “artsy” games like Galapagos or Eve or Bad Mojo, Looking Glass made art really, really fun.
It was built on the most solid foundation imaginable: the Ultima franchise. In 1992 Origin published Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss, a spinoff of the seminal RPG series. It was produced by respected industry vet Warren Spector, whose rap sheet reads like a who’s who of awards and critical approbation. He also helmed the award-winning Ultima 7 Part 2Serpent Isle and The Silver Seed and served as associate producer of Wing Commander, Privateer, Martian Dreams, and Ultima 6, among othersall before joining Looking Glass in 1992. Given his history with the Ultima games, he was the logical choice to helm production of the studio’s first major release, Ultima Underworld 2: The Labyrinth of Worlds. Both Ultima Underworld games have long been heralded as pivotal moments in first-person and narrative game design.
But like many innovators, Looking Glass was often ahead of its time. It produced highly cerebral game experiences, and early-nineties audiences, still evolving a basic grammar of modern gaming and its fundamentals, weren’t ready for them. This fact was illustrated most sharply with the release of System Shock (1994), a complex genre-bending FPS that combined elements of action, role playing, survival horror, and adventure into a single package.
Revered to the point of gushing by press, players weren’t ready for such depth and complexity in a shooter, which by then had been defined as a mindless blasting platform. Ironically, it wound up posting reasonably good numbers in the end. But System Shock sold so slowly that its tortoiselike climb into the black did little for the studio’s financial stability. The company’s next offerings, Terra Nova and the Flight Unlimited series, also received critical acclaim but didn’t really burn up sales charts. It was around this time that the Dark Camelot idea was born, and concept discussions for the game began.
Spector left to join ION Storm early in The Dark Project’s development; contrary to popular belief, his role in the production of the first two Thiefs is reasonably limited. Other departures were to follow. Given the revolutionary style of stealth elements and patience-required gameplay, the team wasn’t quite sure that its game was fun, so anxiety ran high. Creative innovator that it was, however, Looking Glass chose to see the project through to its conclusion. Even if the game flopped, they’d have a proprietary engine and probably some good lessons learned. Still, there was some worry about the future of both the game and the company.
But industry press, which had always held Looking Glass in very high esteem, latched onto the Thief concept and generated significant anticipatory buzz in advance of the title’s release. Thanks to this attention, the one-level demo was widely downloaded, so when The Dark Project arrived in December of 1998, fans knew what to expect and handed over their cash. It didn’t make sales history, but it had been a fairly affordable game to produce, and EidosThief’s publishergot its money back. Looking Glass, on the other hand, was feeling the crunch of a string of titles that had produced only ho-hum sales. No bombs, but no blockbusters.
Some of this pressure ought to have been alleviated in 1999 with the release of System Shock 2, a game whose history is inextricably linked with that of Thief. Despite an avalanche of coverage from a gaming press still tormented by guilt over its failure to make the original a hit, System Shock 2 didn’t move the numbers it needed to. Nowadays it’s a hall of fame title, a hands-down, flat-out classicso is the original. But it’s a little late.
To this day, System Shock 2 is considered by many to be the most frightening PC game ever made. Its uncanny ability to terrify and its vivid blend of story, character, and action are direct results of lessons learned from Thief. It’s even built on the same engine.
Looking Glass didn’t directly develop System Shock 2. They had teamed with Irrational Games (later known for Freedom Force) and would continue to work closely with them, swapping employees and intellectual property. This relationship started to crumble later, but during the development of System Shock 2 the studios were so incestuous that it could be difficult to tell where one ended and the other began.
Even as Looking Glass coordinated with Irrational to produce System Shock 2, it was also hard at work developing The Metal Age. Very preliminary ideas for Thief 3 were also being bandied about. Here, however, the cracks really began to show.
The Thief franchise is published by Eidos Interactive, which had sprung into relevance with the publication of Core Design’s Tomb Raider. With mad money rolling in from the Tomb Raider games, in 1996when Thief was just a zygotethe company went on a shopping frenzy. It was looking for a trophy studiosome prestige deal that would secure it a position among the big daddies of the game publishing biz. It found that prize in the form of a six-game exclusive agreement to publish a new studio that, at the time, was considered the Holy Grail of game development. This new developer was called ION Storm.
This is a drastic simplification, but the relationship of ION to the Thief games was that Warren Spector had once worked for Looking Glass and now worked for ION Storm, and that Eidos was publishing both. We all know what happened (check here for the viciousbut accurateDallas Observer column that began ION Storm’s shameful public slide into oblivion), so we’ll only rehash the most relevant details.
By 1999, The Metal Age was deep in development and within budget. Over in ION Storm’s Dallas office, Daikatana and Anachronox were already years late and had sonic-boomed millions of dollars past their respective development allocations. What had once been Eidos’s trophy wife was now its gold-digging albatross. ION Storm squandered so relentlessly that it threatened to empty the coffers of its huge, multinational publisher. Despite that publisher’s heroic determination to cover the burn rates of both studios, after the ION Storm vacuum passed through the Eidos vault, there wasn’t much left for Looking Glass.
It’s very important to point out here that the ION Storm of that time was essentially two studios: the Dallas office was the fiscally irresponsible one unable to complete a game on time or within budget. The Austin office, beavering away at Deus Ex under Warren Spector, was financially stable and firing on all cylinders. ION Austin had little contact with the Dallas office and wasn’t culpable in any of the press debacles that hounded the company’s implosion. Only the Austin location exists today, and it shares nothing but a name with the cataclysmic flatline of the past. Gamers must realize that to associate a negative connotation with today’s ION Storm is unfair and inaccurate.
Shortly after The Metal Age shipped, the Looking Glass board met and confirmed that there was no money left in the kitty. Rather than endure a torturous, humiliating, and almost certainly hopeless bankruptcy reorganization, the privately held studio laid everyone off and locked the doors.
Many opine that Eidos didn’t do enough to save Looking Glass, and also that it was ION Storm’s fault the company went under. Satisfying as it would be to assign villainy, neither allegation is true.
Eidos loyally covered Looking Glass’s burn rate despite the studio’s history of great games that neither flopped nor flew. ION Storm, meanwhile, had no vested interest in the failure of Looking Glass. The only way it could be perceived as “their fault” is if one blames them for wasting Eidos money that could have been spent saving the other company.
The press release announcing the fall of Looking Glass ricocheted a collective gasp of shock through the industry. No one had appreciated the studio while it was alive. Only its death rattle alerted us to the fact that it had represented the spirit of something we needed: a spirit now vanished, dissipated, never to return. It was the lantern bearer of the games-as-art concept, and it was gone. Those who comprehended the scale of the loss understood that the demise of Looking Glass Studios would scar the face of the industry forever. Every artistic medium has to suffer its blackest day. The Beatles broke up, RKO went under, Welles was fired, Van Gogh committed suicide, Poe died penniless and loathed. Video games had to endure the breaking of Looking Glass.
Back to the Future: Deadly Shadows
And so the series hit an unexpected snag. The Metal Age ended with little closure in anticipation of a sequel, but with Looking Glass out of business, the rights to Thief floated in limbo. Many Looking Glass employees wound up back with Spector at ION Storm Austin, and in 2001 that studio nabbed the rights to the Thief franchise and began work on Thief 3, which was originally to be subtitled The Dark Age.
ION Storm has been mum on Deadly Shadows details until very recently, when a new website and a blizzard of press releases amped up the buzz on this game. Where The Dark Project was a Pagan story and The Metal Age was a Hammer story, Deadly Shadows closes the circle by focusing its attention on the third major City power: the Keepers. They’ve stumbled upon an apocalyptic prophecy and Garrettin a revelation sure to infuriate himfigures prominently. Once again he’s dragged into other people’s problems, as his alma mater recruits him to help uncover the meaning of the grim divination. As he gets too close to certain secrets meant to stay buried, however, the Keepers turn on him, and he’s on his own.
We can expect a more persistent world in Deadly Shadows. It looks like the game will remain mission-driven, but Garrett apparently will also have access to the City along with his various story targets. Among other things, a new living economy model implies that you’ll be responsible for making your living as a thiefpicking pockets, robbing houses, and so forth, then fencing what you steal for cash to buy equipment. Most tools of the trade from the old games will make a return appearance, along with some interesting new gadgets that will make life as a possessions redistribution operative that much easier.
The Havok middleware physics engine will be employed to great effect in Deadly Shadows. As studios get more and more comfortable with the awesome power of Havokwhich most gamers first saw in Max Payne 2it will become possible to build increasingly realistic physical models. I don’t think it’s an overstatement to say that Havok will change the way we play games forever. Overall, buzz coming out of ION Storm is that Deadly Shadows is an improvement in every way to its technical predecessor, Deus Ex: Invisible War.
Project lead Randy Smith, who started his career in gaming with Thief as a junior designer at Looking Glass (he is responsible for the pants-wettingly scary “Return to the Cathedral” mission), has generously made himself accessible to fans and members of the press alike. He donated some of his time to speak with me at the Game Developers Conference last March.
Regrettably, many of the questions that deal with the ION Storm/Looking Glass/Thief collective are unpleasant, and some are downright rude. Alas that the most insolent question of all was the one that, in the context of a Thief retrospective, I most had to ask.
Is the PC version of Thief 3 going to be the disaster that the PC version of Deus Ex: Invisible War was?
For the record, I didn’t phrase it quite so bluntly when I spoke with Randy at the GDC, but I was pretty damn blunt and he had every right to end the conversation there. But he didn’t, and he answered my questionsrude and otherwisewith tact and candor. I thanked him privately then and do so publicly now, not only for his frank responses, but for his willingness to answer my questions in the first place.
Before we get to his answer, let’s look at why it needed to be asked.
ION Storm released Deus Ex: Invisible War for PC and Xbox last December, and few will argue that the PC version of the game plays like a clumsy afterthoughtan afterthought so egregiously ill-conceived and poorly executed that it took five months, two patches, a fan-made texture pack, and an avalanche of default.ini tweaks whose complexity approaches that of brain surgery to make the game what it is today: vaguely playable on hardware so powerful that only the most up-to-date gamers have a chance at running it acceptably.
This applies to Deadly Shadows because like DX:IW, it’s being developed simultaneously for both platforms. Also like Invisible War, it uses a massively retooled and Havok-enhanced Unreal 2.0 engine. While other Unreal 2.0 gamesUnreal 2 and UT2K4 come to mindlook glorious and run fine on the PC, ION Storm’s mods to the engine are obviously focused on maximizing play experience on the Xbox with little if any regard for the needs of PC gamers.
DX:IW, with its massive HUD, claustrophobic periphery, repellent aliasing, and jiggling textures, is designed for optimal viewing from about ten feet awaythat is, from a couch, looking at a relatively low-res display powered by an Xbox.
PC gamers play from no more than eighteen inches away and look at a very high resolution display, and what works on one doesn’t generally work on the other without significant tweaking. ION Storm didn’t do this tweaking for the PC version of Invisible War, and as such released a nauseating abortion of a game for that platform. It is still riddled with bugs (my personal favorite: it refuses to run if your My Documents folder is on a network share) and unplayable by many; I only got it to run at an acceptable level in the last few weeks. It’s a pity, because beneath the patina of crap, Invisible War all 12 frames a second of it on my Athlon 2800+is a terrific game with an engaging story, gorgeous visuals, and a lot of promise for the franchise.
When I asked Randy the rude question above, he told me two things.
First and foremost, he reminded me that studios are often trammeled by the wishes of their publisher, who want games they can sell to the largest possible consumer segments. Given how difficult it can be to return a game in today’s retail environment, there’s little reason for a publisher to wait until it’s done before compelling the developer to release it. It is by no means inconceivable that Eidos forced ION Storm to release Invisible War on both platforms in time for Christmas, regardless of known technical issues.
Eidos has already insisted that Deadly Shadows be more violent, more action oriented, less intensely cerebral, and more forgiving of a nonstealthy approach. According to Randy, the designers responded with a game that supports either play stylea move intended to appease both Eidos brass and lovers of the franchise.
He also said that they are testing it equally on PC and Xbox, and that in his opinion, the PC version of the game wouldn’t be the tragedy that Invisible War was. This, coupled with the fact that much of the original Thief team is involved with Deadly Shadows, implies that its creators will work hard to make the game good. The only variable is the publisher, who might yet force ION Storm’s hand.
So when Randywho because of his willingness to chat with gamers and his long association with the franchise has come to be seen as a sort of Thief messiah in fan circlessaid that he didn’t think we’d see the same complaints about Thief 3 as we did about Invisible War, I didn’t have a hard time believing him.
There’s only one problem.
The Problem
Randy Smith left ION Storm in early April, scant days after my conversation with him at the GDC. His departure came at the same time as another high-profile exit: Harvey Smith (no relation), project director of Invisible War, also split. It’s been all over the industry grapevine. Exits like this are bad, bad press and leave Warren Spector running a studio with no project leads when one game is about to ship and another (Deus Ex 3) is in high concept.
I haven’t asked Randy why he left. Partly because it’s not my business; partly because as a Thief fan I’m not sure I want to hear his answer. The fact is, project directors don’t voluntarily unemploy themselves when a game they’ve worked on for years is literally weeks from release. Project leads who bolt under such circumstances are either forced out or are not happy with the game as it is and unwilling to put their name on it. An official comment from ION Stormthat Randy left because they’re in bug-squashing mode and he’s “not needed” for thatis little more than a press smokescreen.
Whatever the reason, it’s (naturally) resulted in forum discussions of apocalyptic proportions. Randy’s departure has been seen as everything from the ignition of western civilization’s collapse to a sad fact that won’t seriously affect the quality of the game. Forums are a terrible place to look for gospel information, but they do give you the completeand often highly amusingbuffet of human opinion.
Based on some things I saw at the GDC, there is another potential explanation for Randy and Harvey’s sudden exit. Both of them are aggressive supporters of the emergence movement in gameplayemergence being a process by which players can cause reactions not immediately foreseeable based on their predicative actions. Emergence encourages player improvisation and unexpected behavior in approach to game challenges. In fact, both men support emergence to the detriment of linear, developer-driven narrative, on the not-implausible logic that how individual players approach and solve game challenges should drive the game’s story forward. Invisible War is certainly a very emergent game.
Until recently, Warren Spector believed more or less the same thing, but fan reaction to Invisible War seems to have affected him in a very profound way. At a GDC lecture on game narrative, Warren strongly implied that he now sees significant value in carefully implemented developer-driven linearity. The latter technique allows game developers a great deal more control over how the game is experienced but sacrifices some player freedom to accomplish that. The phrase “it didn’t work” escaped Warren’s mouth more than once in connection with Invisible War, and it may be that he has changed his viewpoint to accommodate more developer control over the game structureand, by extension, less emergence.
Both views have strengths and weaknesses, and neither is wrong or right. They are merely different approaches to game making, the equivalent of realism and formalism in cinema. But they are not mutually compatible, and one can imagine the sort of sparks that might fly in a game studio when the boss is questioning a philosophy that his lead designers espouse. It’s possible that these oil-and-water viewpoints just couldn’t coexist any longer.
Invisible War and Randy’s departure notwithstanding, to flatly condemn Deadly Shadows based expressly on rumor and forum chatter would be ill-advised. All fans of the franchise would rather it be a good game than a bad one; barring outlandish success, it is almost certainly the last in the Thief series and by far the most ambitious. Questions of its quality will be answered in a few weeks when it comes out, but uncommitted gamers might want to wait on this one and read some reviews from trusted sources.
Thieves’ Tools
You’re in luck if you missed the Thief series the first time around and want to check it out before Deadly Shadows ships. Thief Gold and The Metal Ageand, to a lesser extent, Thief Platinum and The Dark Projectare all available both at retail and various online sites. If you shop around, there’s a good chance you’ll find any or all of these games for nine bucks or less (check the CompUSA bargain wall) either by themselves or as part of a larger shovelware pack.
Moments like this are when we should all stop what we’re doing and whisper a collective thanks for DirectX. Think what you will of Microsoft, but by forcing an industry-standard gaming API on developers, it all but guaranteed older compliant titles at least some minimal level of compatibility with future operating systems. Thief and its spawn are all DirectX games, and there’s a good chance they’ll work for you out of the box.
If not, you can find a helpful technical FAQ here. Through the Looking Glass is dedicated to preserving the Looking Glass legend and discussing those games and studios it sees as Looking Glass’s creative or spiritual successors. This is a fan site, created and maintained by civilians, so don’t assume that anything posted there is official or condoned. Still, it is a dedicated community of friendly people, and they’ll certainly be happy to welcome new Thief converts into the fold.
The games get a little cranky if you try to install them on NT-based operating systems, including Windows 2000 and XP, because the NT kernel, as Thief sees it, doesn’t support DirectX. The games run fine on these systems, however, and a simple switch will bypass the OS check altogether: just type x:setup.exe lgntforce, where x is your CD-ROM drive, to begin the install routine.
The other major technical gripe people have is that the cutscenes sometimes won’t run, or work at first and then stop. Thief uses the Intel Indeo video codec to control its mission briefings and some game movies; oftentimes this codec isn’t installed or becomes corrupt on modern machines. Check the forum above for instructions on making a .bat file that will solve this problem. If you’re not comfortable with that kind of surgery, post your problem at the forum or get in touch with me by email and we’ll set up a generic copy of the file here.
You might have trouble running Thief without patches, and some of its patches are a little hard to find. Enterprising fans have collected the most important ones and made a few of their own to fix some of the bugs that never got hammered out by Looking Glass. Additionally, since the Dark Engine is kind of long in the tooth these days, graphic snobs may wish to download some fan-made texture packs that hi-resify the meshes and textures in the game. You can find such patches and enhancements here. Thief enjoys a pretty hearty online cult following, so a bit of Googling will usually reveal what you need.
The modding community for Thief has been a busy group, producing a number of user-created levels and episodes. The Thief level editor, DromEd, in addition to being one of the most buggy, obtuse, frustrating, and user-unfriendly creation tools in existence, can be downloaded here or is available on both the Thief Gold and Thief 2 installation discs. If you want to learn more about DromEd and how to be frustrated by it, visit this FAQ. Lots of keen user-created missions, including Episode 1 of “The Circle of Stone and Shadow,” a major fan-built original Thief story of novella proportions, can be found at this site.
The final trouble spot is a trickier one to deal with. Once you get Thief up and running, you might find that the game plays so fast it’s nigh-uncontrollable on a modern PC. The original required only a Pentium-class CPU; today’s gigahertz systems might be as much as fifteen times faster than the base requirements to run the game. If you experience this problem, your best bet is to visit the advanced settings tab in your Windows display dialog and crank all your video card’s special effects up to the maximum. Essentially set your card to run with a level of quality that would make your computer explode if you tried it with a modern game. This usually solves the problem.
It does beg the question, however, whether the Thief games will survive the march of progress. CPUs may hit five gigahertz by the end of this year and will almost surely reach 10 GHz by 2007; even turning up your video settings won’t be enough to throttle a Dark Engine game back down at that point. Serious gamers who want to observe older titles in their natural habitats have to maintain snapshot systems from various milestones in computing history. It’s frustrating and unfair, but there’s no one to blame except Gordon Moore. Still, the thought that Thief may one day be forgotten because technology has charged too far past it is a depressing one.
Stealing Beauty
May 26 will be the swan song of the Thief universe. Whether or not Deadly Shadows is successful, it’s highly unlikely that we’ll see another Thief game. The idea of Garrett toddling off into the silicon sunset is a melancholy one, because in a way it means that the final whisper of Looking Glass Studios will also vanish. The City, with its lush history and superbly crafted environment, the Keepers ever lurking in the shadows, the Hammers with their do-as-I-say moralitythese are but sparks of the true depth and beauty of Thief. The realization that there are at least twenty more pages of material that I’d like to cover is testament to how incomprehensibly vast and towering this achievement truly is. Going on and on about Thief is not dissimilar to waxing poetic about a true love. There is always more to say.
The Thief series transcends mere “game” and has become something that to its devotees is an emotional conduit to manifested dreams. You don’t “play” Thief, you experience it. As Wagner James Au notes, “You must become Garrett … or die.” And so you must: to merely play Thief is to miss some of the tapestry of its richness. If you squirm when it is suggested that computer games can be profound, can be truly meaningful, Thief is probably not for you.
This is the reason that anticipation and dread alike run so high for Deadly Shadows. For those who cherish Thief, those who really got it, describing what it means to them is nearly impossible. There are simply not the words, and the chance that an ill-conceived sequel might diminish that which has been so meaningful is frightening indeed. Only a handful of games reach this point, when players cease to be fans and become disciples. To look at Thief, to experience its symphony of enchantments and subtleties, is to touch the divine future of gaming.
The Lowdown
Developer: :Looking Glass Publisher: Eidos Release Date: December 1998 (Thief); 2000 (Thief 2)
Available for:
Screenshots
Thief
Thief 2
System Requirements
Thief Pentium 200 MHz (with 4 MB SVGA video card, no hardware acceleration) Pentium 166 MHz (with 3D hardware accelerator card, minimum 4 MB on-board RAM, 100% DirectX 6.0 compliant) 32 MB RAM Windows 95/98 Mouse DirectX 6.0 (included) DirectMedia (included) Intel Indeo video codec (included) 100% DirectX 6.0 compliant sound card 4X CD-ROM drive 60 MB free hard drive space
Thief 2 266 MHz Pentium II or equivalent Windows 95/98 48 MB RAM DirectX 7.0 compliant 3D accelerated video card DirectX 7.0 compliant sound card DirectX 7.0 or higher (included) 4X CD-ROM drive 250 MB free uncompressed hard drive space Keyboard and mouse
Where to Find It
GoGamer 14.90 (Thief Gold); 14.90 (Thief 2); 39.90 (Thief 3 preorder)
Prices/links current as of 05/15/04Links 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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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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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…
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.
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.
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.
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..
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
“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.
Oh:
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/ubi-under-fire-as-drm-servers-go-down
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.
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/
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.
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
I would kind of like to buy games in potato cases.
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.
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..