YourGamer.Net

On the 7th of August I got an email from Rockstar Propaganda. To my delight it was the announcement for GTA 4.

The message I received said:

We are proud to announce that Grand Theft Auto IV will be arriving for the platform it was birthed on this November. Grand Theft Auto IV for the PC will feature everything from the acclaimed original console releases, along with newly expanded multiplayer just for the PC and more.

Grand Theft Auto IV for the PC debuts on November 18th in North America and on November 21st in Europe. Stay tuned in the coming weeks for more details.

Better late than never if you ask me. While my buddies have been playing the game for quite some time, I’ve been holding out. Oh, I’m only human, I’ve driven around and massacred quite a bit, but I’ve saved myself from playing the missions or watching all the little extras so that I can enjoy the release on the PC.

You can expect a full review from me shortly after release!

The date is August 21, 2007. I’ve got my brand new $59.99 copy of Bioshock bought fresh from the shelf. Tearing it open is like that first time you got your very own box of Little Debbie Nutty Bars. Remember that? You chowed down the whole box in 30 minutes. No? Well I did.

Anyway, it’s like that, but when you open the box, the police knock on your door and tell you not to be such a fatass, and take the box away from you until they verify you actually payed for it. Only, in this case, every kid in town got a box and you’re the last in line, (but they still come first thing and steal your box of tasty treats). You go and tell your friend about this injustice, only to see him enjoying his box-o-yummy. When you ask him why he’s so special, he says he nicked it from the drugstore!

So how far should companies go to protect their assets, and should they treat all their customers like lying, scheming, smelly ass pirates? Let’s think about it.

Companies cannot make money without selling stuff. They can’t create games without money. To keep people from sharing discs, obviously some protection must exist. This, I’m not against completely. I’m a hobbyist developer, I’d put in that type of protection, no questions asked.

Now, companies are going a step further, they’re using online verification to tell whether a customer is legitimate or not. This verification is faulty, unnecessary, and insulting. Here’s why.

The scruffy dude next door with a parrot played the game before you, the day it was released. But HOW? Well, piracy protection does not work. A cracker can unlock a game within hours of getting his hands on a copy. It doesn’t matter what a company does. A cracker can open the executable file, take out the offending bits, and you have a full working copy of the game. There’s no way to stop it, because people can always make modifications to the data on their computers.

Here’s where it gets scary, the only way to stop piracy, is to lock down computers making it impossible to modify specific data. Locked down on the hardware level, the average user would need (just like an Xbox or Playstation) a “mod” chip or some sort of hardware to remove this type of protection.

One day, and it won’t be long, Microsoft Windows is going to do just that. They’ve done it already for video, why not for games. Microsoft built into Vista piracy protection against video that requires hardware vendors to implement protections into their devices.

Now this isn’t infallible either, but it’s much, much harder to get around. And because of that it walks all over your right to fair use.

You can’t (easily) copy a Blu-ray disc to a smaller size to, for example, take a copy with you on a road trip, using your in-car DVD player. You can’t use a movie you bought on the hardware you want to use it on.

This can happen to games. You’ll no longer be able to install patches to abolish Lara Croft’s modesty, or make her Jump super high just for the lolz. You won’t be able to install a no-CD crack so you can play the game without having to put in a CD for the 500th time, if you’re like me and don’t want to go around ruining all my CDs.

So tell the game companies now that you won’t put up with their shenanigans. You want to play the games how you want to. You want to be able to mod and mess with the files for your own personal use.

You don’t want them to treat you like a criminal just because you actually purchased the game. You shouldn’t have to tell EA your IP address every 10 days just to play their rehashed FPS titles. You should be able to play the game when and how you want to.

You game developers at fault should be happy to have customers, but no, instead you treat us like dogs, and kick us down when we were so close to eating those oh so tasty treats.

In-game advertising; it’s a match made in heaven. Gamers focus their attention on the action, and if there’s some subtle billboards or ads in the background, who cares? The gamer won’t even notice it. It makes the games cheaper and it makes them “more realistic”.

There’s one problem. A lot of us don’t *like* advertising in media. There’s a reason I no longer pay for broadcast television. It’s not because I could care less about the 4400, or that I’m mad that Jim Halpert still hasn’t proposed to Pam. It’s because I can’t even follow those shows with the 10 minutes of advertising for every 30 minutes of show. Seriously, that’s a third! That’s 1 minute for every 3. And when you’re not in the middle of a commercial, you get product placements in your shows. And they expect people to pay for this service?

So, do we really want to let advertising affect our video games in the same way? Do we want Niko to buy some virtual MP3s off of Amazon’s MP3 store right in-game, and then tell us to “try it out, it’s easy”? Is it more realistic? I kind of dislike our branded “reality” as it is now, why would I want more of it? “Hey look honey, remember when we went to Aspen and we saw that billboard advertising Whoppers? Look, that same billboard’s here in Super Extreme Awesome Snow Boarding XI.”

The games aren’t any cheaper. Last time I looked, games still cost 60 bucks in the States when they first come out. They haven’t gone down. Sure, expenses are increasing when making games, I’ll agree. That cost is partially due to the insane amount of graphic work today’s games require. But do we really want to sacrifice enjoyment (ie., having in-game ads) for more expensive visuals?

And to take this in another direction, how long will it be until advertisers get to have a say in the game development? “Oh, no sorry, you can’t have Gordon Freeman pop that dude right in the face. We want to market lollipops and rainbows. We can’t give you money unless you give Gordan a happy-go-lucky attitude.” I think gamers need to stand up now and say “Screw your lollipops and rainbows. When I pay cash, I want advertising free games!”

Here’s a thought, developers. Make games people are willing to pay money for. Make them fun. If you start putting all these ads in your games, we’re not going to play them. Unfortunately, I’m sure you’ll blame your low sales numbers on piracy, rather than your lack of ingenuity.