Let me be clear - the future of gaming is not going to be pretty. The reason is not due to lack of efficient coders, but lack of creative heads. Ubisoft and EA are two of the famous and notable Game development studios among others, which accounts for some breathtaking and memorable games in the past few decades.
Here comes the catch - DRM. Recently Ubisoft's head suggests that Consumers are ready for "Always On" gaming, which means that the consoles must be connected to Internet and to their servers always inorder to play the game they purchase with their hard earned money. You bought a game, you ought to play whenever and wherever you wish. Full-stop.
" This is like a watch company which sells you a watch and requires you to be near their store inorder to see the time, everytime. and if you move away from the store, the watch would not display time at all. "
The store is their server and the watch is the game. How many people can stand near the store at a given time, even if the store is as big as a city? What if everyone tried to get into the store at the same time? What if new people want to get into the store but could not get into due to excess crowd? What if the total store goes crashing down due to the weight of the crowd? Poof.. Your dreams to see the time are shattered!!! So are your dreams to play the game!!! Regardless of the capacity or the ability of the store, asking consumers to stand near the store to look at time is baffling and stupid to the lowest degree and this is exactly what the big companies want from the gamers!!!!
But you may ask - what about the pirates? What if the pirates make a copy of games and distribute? DRM is necessary for those stuff!!!
You are right at some point but let me ask you one simple question. There are public Clock towers. There are countless people who wear watches. There are multiple clock designs in home.If you want to know the time, you can ask anyone or see anything from the public towers to home clock. Yet more people buy watches everyday. Why? Does it mean that since my neighbor has a watch and he can tell me the time, the watch company is losing one customer? So should the watch company advice every customer that they should not tell other of the time or else they will face severe consequences, like staying near the store? Doesn't it feel absurd to even think like that? It should, so does the DRM and always on stuff.
If seeing time whenever you want seems legit, so does playing game whenever you want is. If knowing time is a necessity, so is playing a game,else it would not have become such a large industry. As time moves on, companies get carried away. They feel they know what people want and force what they feel is good for the company and profit. But they fail to see that if there is no happy customer, there is no company and hence no profit.Forcing
a customer to do what a company wants is never good for business. There
will be someone in the horizon who poaches the bitter customer and take
the market share away from you. That is how it works.
"To backup my words, EA has been voted as the Worst American Company for the second time in a row. "
Is there a solution for the piracy? There might be. Offering games at reasonable price? Offering rewards for every original purchase? Offering a compelling product and authentic experience? These are some, but the companies have to think beyond the pirates and think about the actual customers who buy the product, since it is for them the franchises produce games and not for the pirates!!!
And speaking of compelling products, it is the story for another exciting post!!! Stay tuned and log in your comments..
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