Molly Rocket

[jai]

I was just reading how Braid is now available for a direct online service, and it's DRM-free. Now, I have zero idea if what I am going to mention was the intent of the Braid folks, but it just sparked something in me when I read it:

I've read about The Long Tail here and there, and that seems to describe what I see is evolving in media because of the Internet. It occurred to me that a lifecycle for DRM would also be a good fit for such a graph. If instead of having only one DRM strategy for the entire life of your game, you can have a DRM that matches the power law graph in the Wikipedia article in restrictiveness:



So, for example, when your title is launching, you keep it in a walled garden, such as a console platform, or other physically restricted environment. You see that all the time in games where something is release first on an exclusive platform, with extra code to take advantage of that platforms gizmos. That's the ultimate DRM right? Even if someone cracks it, it still can spread no further than that platform. Then, in the low, fat part of the red, you open it up, and basically release it into the wild with your standard medium restriction license -- one copy for one CPU. sell it to a friend, trade it online, whatever, except there's only one copy. You do this at the fat, low part of the red because you know it will be cracked. That's OK. Because by the time that happens, you've exhausted your reach in your core audience. This is when you enter the yellow portion of the DRM lifecycle. In The Long Tail hypothesis, the yellow portion of the tail are niche markets. In the DRM Long Tail, the yellow portion is the wild Internets. At this point, your work is basically public domain. Mix it into your YouTube videos. Let college kids put on homage musicals based on your work, etc. I think Nintendo has been pretty cool in this way, allowing people to keep old stuff alive in emulation, homage artistic works, etc.

The yellow part of the DRM Long Tail is where you will run into the end user who has never heard of you, doesn't even normally go in for your stuff, but says 'What the heck' on the recommend of a friend, or wondering why it has become a YouTube internet meme -- because at this point, the file the end user is running was probably free. But if that person likes your work, they will go and find more -- you have a new fan. Once they have consumed all the free stuff, they will will want the new stuff because they are fans now. But in order to get at the new stuff, they will have to get it while it's in the red portion of it's DRM lifecycle where the author reaps the most reward for their work. In addition, if those free copies phoned home, you could gain access to something that has real monetary value -- information: screen sizes, GPUs, CPUs, OS, user metrics, game play statistics, perhaps even AI machine learning information.

The movie business had naturally created a similar lifecyle: movie theaters ( like a console, unless you have your own projector at home of course, then you could pirate a film reel I suppose ), then to DVDs, then to the filesharing sites. They just haven't been able to wrap their heads around the copy protection free yellow part yet.

Anyway, just thought that a lifecycle like that is something people could live with, where at the end of life of a work, use is free for the most part, as long as use is non profit. Just some ideas, and time spent dodging the work I have to get finished for this afternoon.

cheers

[casey]

My understanding is that companies like EA are actively adopting this approach (or have already), in that they believe that console sales drop off dramatically once a PC version is available, due to piracy. Whether or not that's actually true I'm not sure, although I'm sure they have better data than what I can get...

So, you're not the only one who thinks this is a good idea

- Casey

[eric]

I don't like this, because you're basically supporting closed platforms before open ones. It's a positive feedback cycle, and is part of the reason why PC gaming (and PCs in general if you take a look at Apple's offerings) has been decelerating.

Beyond the issue of DRM, I think the issue is also of exposure and availability. Keeping your game closed by region already affects piracy and sales, and restricting it by platform probably has similar effects. You're basically harming your own sales by releasing the game later on another platform, when it would've likely have sold more, regardless of piracy, if you had released it on all platforms and regions simultaneously.

As a PC gamer, I don't buy year old console games, especially when they're tailored to the previous platform. Releases like Halo PC are ridiculous. I don't own an Xbox (though I buy plenty of games on PS3), and don't expect me to buy one anytime soon just to play timed exclusive releases.

Despite wanting to buy Braid upon release, I still haven't because it just wasn't as important when it came out much later for platforms I owned.

I think it's more of an excuse by companies like EA to delay releases due to their own dev and production problems, not really an actual way to combat piracy. Understandably, multiplatform dev is a pain, and I believe Blow probably knew it wasn't worth the effort upfront.

[ryg]

[Wolf Mathwig]

For the vast majority of games, all that has to be taken care of is input recognition; sometimes, also ripping out the specific network stuff and DRM magic. The low-layer rest, like using different graphics API calls, usually is already covered in the backend of things. Especially if we're talking about the big studios because they've had code that's been written with cross-platform compatibility in mind forever. And a lot of 3rd-party libraries are cross-platform anyway. So you don't really have to port a lot. It's more a matter of details and compile flags.

If they render new textures and give you an AA toggle in the menu, that seems like a lot to the consumer, but it's really not. That's like 2 days max without compatibility testing for one inexperienced programmer.

Most importantly though, it's not like the game's finished and then, some dude comes along and says: "Hey guys, I got this crazy idea. WHY DON'T WE MAKE PC VERSION HURRH". When the game ships, the PC version is already detailed out, probably done for the most part.

Getting a console game onto PC is pretty easy technically, especially in relation to what you have to take care of to make a game in the first place. The other way around, it's much more complicated.

So the idea that delayed PC releases are a business strategy isn't as wild as you might think!

Edit: Also, Jonathan Blow is one guy. For the port, he had to take care of getting the game onto Steam, he actually bothered with porting the game to OS X, dabbled with Linux code and so forth. And it could only be considered worthwile after Braid was a commercial success. Making the leap from Jonathan to EA in terms of relevance of required effort for a port job is not sound!

[eric]

If shipping on PC was so easy, then it would happen a lot more often (even if it was late), but the large draw of consoles isn't just reaching a market, its the ease of developing for a single platform. Often if the resources are not there, it'll be PS3+Xbox or Xbox+PC. Getting the full big 3, or even 4 platforms, is only reserved for the largest of budgets and teams.

Sure were running the game on PC when were developing for consoles, and we often joke that we should just ship for PC, since it's already there. It's a joke, though, because it just isn't that easy. While PC is often more stable memory wise, there's sets of code that are just going to be PC specific. You're also going to need engineers for installers or integration with a PC digital service (if you want a similar experience to that of the consoles). And as mentioned, compatibility is a time sink, just like console TRC. Platforms just don't settle in nicely on a single ship date, so you'll be holding onto a gold version of platforms before others, and the bigwigs don't like that.

I think you answered your own question Ryg, why spend more time and money on PC? By profit measurements it'd probably be worth it to ship on PC, but you're facing production issues. Publishers want ship dates and it done within limited budgets, and there's still stigma with publishers and PC (which again, is a part of the positive feedback cycle negatively affecting PC gaming). Were talking extra QA, marketing, manufacturing (brick storefront is a massive time investment), and middleware SKU costs. That marketing is huge investment on PC, because you're not getting the advantage of releasing on a more restricted platform. XBLA prints money if you release on it, just by being listed and browsed.

I think PC releases are often done later or after the console dev cycle, Mathwig. They're testing the waters, or just plain testing, on the consoles, then going for the extra bit of cash with the PC release later on. Or it's just done by a completely separate team after the fact. For example, GTA missed their very own delayed PC release, well after console release. It wasn't just ready to ship out the door right after consoles.

I think the big developer concerns are just amplified when it's just Blow or whatever indie doing all the platform specific requirements.

Of course, all this tangential talk probably wasn't worth the effort, as my main point is still simply that I don't like this being used as a DRM scheme. There's gains to be had developing for console first if you're an indie, but hopefully piracy shouldn't be the primary one.