In trying to curb piracy, the PC gaming industry is in danger of ruining the gaming experience altogether. A case in point is the recently released Diablo III
Piracy has long been the bane of the PC gaming industry, as it has been for the movie, music, software and e-book industries?in fact, anything that can be uploaded onto the Internet has been pirated. In the case of the PC gaming industry, though, the companies? backlash against piracy has taken on a new form, using the very tool that enabled piracy on such a large scale?the Internet?against it. However, in trying to curb piracy, they are in danger of ruining the gaming experience altogether. A case in point is Blizzard Entertainment?s recently released Diablo III.
But first, some background. Blizzard?s Diablo series is one of the most popular fantasy action franchises, and the third installment of the game, Diablo III, has literally been awaited for years on end. The premise of the games is simple?you create a character, the hero of the story, who has to fight all kinds of minor demons and monsters to reach the final battle against the Prime Evils, the three demon lord brothers, Diablo, Mephisto and Baal. All across the games’ maps you?ll find increasingly powerful weapons, armour and gems that you can equip your hero with, fostering a very real feeling of kinship with your character as you make him more powerful and capable to handle the dangers of the game world. Now, Diablo I and II could be played single player (requiring nothing but you and a computer capable of running the games) and multi player (either through connecting to other computers via a LAN or through the Internet). With piracy so easy to do, what used to happen is that one person would buy the game and then make copies of it so that all his friends could join him in the multi-player format. Obviously, this was undesirable for the game-makers, who, instead of selling multiple games, only sold one.
Their response was Diablo III, which is likely to change gaming?s future in a big way. Here?s how:
1. Even playing single player requires an Internet connection
To play Diablo III single-player, not only do you need the game installed on your computer, you need a reasonably quick Internet connection as well. To curb the threat of piracy, the game-makers have made it compulsory for players to sign in using unique IDs onto their servers, even if the player wants to play on his own without linking up with his friends. This leads to an irritating added requirement for something that used to be a simple one-step process. The reaction to this worldwide has been of anger and outrage. An Internet requirement for multi-player is understandable, but why should we need an Internet connection if the game is already installed on our computers, and we want to play it alone? Which leads to the second problem…
2. You can?t play single player if their servers are down
Alright, so even single player requires an Internet connection and requires us to log in, we can learn to deal with that. But what that means is that if the servers that host the game go down, then nobody can play the game, period. And that?s what happened with Diablo III?s servers on the day of the game?s release. So many people logged onto the servers that they crashed, leaving millions of gamers unable to play the game they had just paid close to $60 and had waited years for! The servers have gone down several times after that, leaving most gamers dissatisfied with the experience, even though the game itself is excellent. This wouldn?t be the case if logging in was a prerequisite for only multi-player gaming. A linked problem is that, if a server hosts multiple games?Diablo III and World of Warcraft, for example?then if one game overloads the servers, players of the other game would also be unable to access their games.
3. Players with slow, erratic Internet connections will have a bad time
In a country like India, or several other developing countries for that matter, Internet connections are not that fast, and are often erratic. What this translates to is an aggravating lag during gameplay (you press the button for attack, for example, but the game responds a few seconds later because the Internet connection isn?t fast enough).
This, of course, ruins the experience and is compounded by the fact that if the Internet suddenly stops working, as it often does, then you get logged out of the game and will likely lose all the progress you have made. Nothing kills the mood like faulty gameplay.
The problem is that we did this to ourselves. Just like in the movie Dark Knight, when the gangsters of Gotham City were pushed to desperation by Batman and had to turn to the Joker, somebody they didn?t fully understand, so have pirates pushed game companies into taking drastic decisions, the repercussions of which weren?t fully mapped out. But there is no going back. This is the way PC games will be henceforth, and that is a real shame.