Even if you’ve been hiding under a rock, you know that despite one of the best-executed marketing juggernauts in history (and a legitimately awesome game), the big story around Spore has been the Digital Rights Management kerfluffle. Sure, every major media outlet has been trying to carry the carefully pre-packaged drama about how Wright wants to make you into an atheist’s Intelligent Designer. Something like that. I dislike wasting my precious time with choreographed controversy, so I’ve barely paid any attention to that meme. You can find that “story” in Time Magazine, the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, and more.
A more authentic story is that customers are a raging ball of hate for the way EA chose to handle the DRM issues.
Spore is a strange hybrid between online and offline, single player and multiplayer. The full game as designed can’t be consumed without some element of connectivity to the game’s servers and to other people. In an attempt to keep piracy at a minimum, EA opted to go with Apple’s highly successful model of granting “licenses,” where the supposedly owned content can only be played on a limited number of authorized machines. The wrinkle is that you must be re-authenticated every time you want to download new content. (Well, and unlike iTunes, EA didn’t make it easy to transfer/authorize/deauthorize. Their fairly rational reason for that was most people install a game on one machine, maybe a second if the old computer gets replaced.)
It sounds questionable, but it’s old hat to MMO players – and besides, originally the plan was that your game would just not work at all, even offline, unless you logged in every ten days. The new model is downright airy and trusting in comparison. A subroutine verifying that your copy is legit before you can have the goodies doesn’t strike me as terribly onerous. Also, “not having to have the disc in the machine” strikes me as useful. You would have to see my desk to understand. I mean, you cannot actually see the desk.
But I’m a broken shell of a woman after years of MMOs. Apparently much of the Spore audience is unfamiliar with the “we own the content you create with our tools, and possibly you as well” stance of today’s online entertainment providers.
EA is apparently aware of how the drama may be impacting sales of the most wildly hyped game in their stable, and this story was posted while I was typing the first draft of this column: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10046288-16.html (Kotaku has the full EA statement. The vaguely threatening statement that without draconian DRM, publishers will stop making PC games is, for my money, the most hilarious part of the entire release.)
For us as a group here at GamerDNA, the money quote in the Cnet post was “As such, EA really should be thinking differently, allowing unfettered access to the game itself for users–though likely in a crippled form–and then allowing customers to buy their way into the game to get enhanced functionality.”
In today’s highly connected environment, more and more players expect demonstration levels, trial periods, and limited-function freeware options. They want to share and discover new forms of entertainment, and the discovery has more satisfaction for them than being passively informed via traditional marketing or advertising. The major providers in the casual gaming sphere have already learned that five free levels with minimal controls will reach millions of players. Enough of that critical mass will pay for a full-featured version to make the model profitable (see past editions of this column for more details). Now, the major studios need to take that leap – and that level of faith may not be easy for today’s “intelligent designers.”
Next week: Why the rage? Why now, when the plan for DRM’s been known for months? I have a hypothesis that there’s a generation gap here, as well as a number of people unaccustomed to MMOs and DRM in general. Tune in next time to see the numbers, and whether or not I’m crazy!
Posted in the categories: Market Trends
Comments:
Ex-Spore
Scootz
crazyinatophat
TheTwan
