Lord of Ultima and the slow death of Free to Play

Originally published on Kupeesh!

Darkness has fallen on Caledonia and once powerful empires have met their oblivion by no fault of their own.

Lord of Ultima is dead, killed by a revenue model incompatible with its keeper.

Those looking for someone to blame need look no further than Electronic Arts (EA.) 

It appears that EA sees no value in what has been described as "niche" gaming.  "Niche" in this case applies to gaming titles that weren't designed to leverage the online cash cow that premium memberships and endless DLC offer in more recent titles.

Lord of Ultima's shutdown is just another casualty of the ongoing implosion of online gaming. 

It's a growing trend following on the heels of a bomb dropped by Gamespy in April when they announced that their longtime gaming services would cease on May 31st.  Even if you've never heard of them before, chances are you've used their services at one point.  Gamespy provided the online middleware for games on platforms from PC to Android.

More recently, EA announced it was dropping online support for many popular older games on June 30th.  A few notable examples include Crysis 2, Battlefield Vietnam and Need For Speed hot Pursuit 2. 

Yes, most of the games getting the cut are a bit long in the tooth but a pattern's been developing .  It wasn't so long ago that online gaming was a choice not a requirement.  Multiplayer games only needed to involve as many people as you could gather at a LAN party and it didn't matter if your Internet connection was down.

As game development has moved from a few hotly anticipated titles to annual installments of varying quality it seems it's less about the game than the franchise it spawns.

Producing a sub-par game is irrelevant if you can prime the hype pump with the promise of a seemingly never-ending stream of content. 

For a price...

With that has come "always-on" requirements for single player games, frequent server outages, half-baked triple-A titles and increasing prices to cover "development costs" even as publishers shut down their development studios by the dozens.

I guess all that bandwidth is expensive...

It's a model incompatible with games that are truly "Free to Play" and in its wake has come an avalanche of titles that may start out to be free to play but are almost always "Pay to Win."

Lord of Ultima was somewhere in the middle.  There were ever more intrusive opportunities to purchase upgrades and buffs to improve the experience but if you were willing to suffer a little more inconvenience than your well heeled competition you could  still do well.

That option runs contrary to a model dependent on the cash value of players.  After all, they're a discerning bunch and won't tolerate banner ads and endless spam flooding the email accounts they registered with.

They say nothing in life is free and it's a fair enough cliche'.  Servers and bandwidth aren't free and the "Free to Play" model is built on the assumption that dedicated players will gladly loosen the purse strings every once in awhile to improve their experience. 

But "once in awhile" isn't good enough anymore and more often than not "Free to Play" isn't free at all.

The model has been perverted.  The experience has become more about the store page than the game itself leading to a score of me-too clones and one-offs looking to cash in.  Some are even blatant about it but they're the exception not the rule.

The practice of "Pay to Win" frequently hides behind the mask of "Free to Play" which  is nothing less than "Bait and Switch" and it's killing the gaming industry.  It's bad faith and that's not a sustainable business model.

Spend a little time reading the Wall Street Journal and you'll find out that companies often receive a valuation based more on their "good will" than the products they produce. 

In that kind of scenario, EA's value is heading over a cliff...

Doing articles on Kupeesh

If you enjoy what I do here, check out my articles on Kupeesh.  It's a new news site with a bit of an edge which suits me nicely.

The latest article I've done for them can be found here.

Just Talkin Tech - Episode 4 No Refunds!

It's all about the product or rather what really qualifies as one.  In this episode we're discussing how software companies can sell you a defective product and you have no recourse but to accept it.  It's a casual but spirited conversation where I try to explain the difference between owning something and just having a license to it. 

In the end anything you don't own affords you very few rights when it goes wrong.   The sad fact is when it comes to a "product" you can't hold in your hand like software code or music (CD's are just a medium BTW) you  don't own anything.

Pain and Suffering

I'm convinced there's a bit of masochist in all of us...

It's not that I have a low opinion of humanity I think it's just human nature if not biology to need a bit a suffering to validate our accomplishments.  Think about it.  Without pain we can't know pleasure.  Without a challenge, victory isn't so sweet now is it. 

That's not to say that wanton suffering is a good thing.  Suffering for no good reason is the definition of masochism.  If there's a goal to reach, however, it's perfectly reasonable to endure a bit of pain.

That's one of the reasons I hate cheaters in multiplayer games.  They add needless suffering for their own selfish ends.  It may be fun to dominate everyone else for a few hours but after awhile it just gets boring.  Unless that's your idea of fun.  In which case you'd be exhibiting some sociopathic tendencies. 

In which case, I'm keeping an eye on the kiddies when you're around...

There was a line I remember from the movie "The Matrix" and I think of it often.  Agent Smith was interrogating Morpheus and made the following commentary on humanity.

"Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world? Where none suffered, where everyone would be happy. It was a disaster. No one would accept the program. Entire crops were lost. Some believed we lacked the programming language to describe your perfect world. But I believe that, as a species, human beings define their reality through suffering and misery"

Agent Smith's premise was good but he paints with a bit of a wide brush.  If we weren't meant to endure some pain we wouldn't have any nerve endings.  We'd just aimlessly walk around stumbling into traffic and occasionally ending up in wood chippers without a care in the world.  We wouldn't have as clear a grasp on consequences either and I'm fairly certain the human race would have been nothing more than a fossil record by now.  In Star Trek 5, Kirk said it best...

"Damn it, Bones, you're a doctor. You know that pain and guilt can't be taken away with a wave of a magic wand. They're the things we carry with us, the things that make us who we are. If we lose them, we lose ourselves. I don't want my pain taken away! I need my pain!"

We're programmed to value our victories more when they aren't so easy to obtain.  We've all wished at some point that we were rich or got paid to do nothing.  The reality is that most of us wouldn't be idle for long.  It's more likely you'd find something to challenge you even if you didn't have to worry about paying the bills anymore.

In the case of Bernie Madoff, his challenge was to not get caught, hence my earlier sociopath example...

Hopefully your motives would be more pure but it ultimately comes down to the same thing.  We're just  not happy unless we're striving for something.  It could be your career, a favorite project, a game or even just surviving to a ripe old age.  All of it involves a challenge and like it or not challenge and pain are synonymous terms.

Nothing has value to us unless we "pay the price."  So long as it's a fair price there's no problem just be sure it's worthwhile.  Otherwise we end up being martyrs and masochists which is just unnecessary pain.

The YouTube monetization follies

I've been waiting....

Waiting for YouTube's vaunted "content ID" system to screw up and it finally did, big time...

On my other blog, Midagedgamer.blogspot.com I do a weekly gaming news wrap-up that generally includes a video of me reporting on the week's events.

For the Week of November 16th I took great pains to not run afoul of anything that would deny me the 26 cents of revenue I could potentially make from viewings.  (I'm not that popular on YouTube)

I had run afoul of the arbitrary copyright enforcement processes that YouTube employs before but in each case I was never clear on exactly what the issue was.  As such I usually hold my breath on every upload till my video clears all of YouTube's legal hurdles.

Knowing that I'm not going to make a living off YouTube I primarily do the videos as a convenience to my Blog readers.  It's also a decent way of getting some cross-pollination between the blogs and the YouTube channel.

Back to my latest YouTube adventure...

After 24 hours of waiting for my monetization request to be approved I finally got the dreaded,
"We need proof of commercial use rights to monetize" email.  I knew it was coming.  Monetization is usually instantaneous unless the video gestapos think there's a problem....

At this time, we are unable to approve your video(s) because we do not have sufficient information regarding your commercial use rights. We may consider your video(s) for further review provided you verify that you are authorized to commercially use all of the elements of your content. This includes all video, images, music, video game footage, and any other audio or visual elements. Learn more Please note that YouTube reserves the right to make the final decision whether to monetize a video, and we may disable monetization for partners who repeatedly submit ineligible videos. All videos are subject to our Terms of Service and Community Guidelines, and may be removed from the site if they do not meet those standards. Please submit your additional information below: "Black ops 2, THQ, AMD, & Sinofsky in the news" Remember that a variety of factors, such as video performance, may affect review time. We may not be able to process every submission, but we continually monitor these factors and prioritize accordingly. Thanks, The YouTube Team

Proof of what? That I have the right to use my own face, voice and content?  Let's not forget that I'm fully cognizant of the gestapo tactics of YouTube's copyright policing so I do everything I can to make sure I don't have to deal with them. 

My reply was simple...

After clicking the "Contains only my own original content" option from the drop down menu under the video's monetization tab I wrote...

Details?  Here they are.  Nothing in this video violates any copyright or requires a release from any party but me.  There are no background noises, radio broadcasts or reflections of a television broadcast in my glasses or anything else that could cause any issue with copyrights not held by me personally.

All the content contained in the video is 100% original and of my own creation.  I challenge you to prove otherwise as I'm confident your efforts will be unsuccessful.

In short, it's my ugly face, crappy voice, bad editing and original content.  The fish has signed a release as well and there is no content that wasn't created and controlled by me in the video. (I usually have my aquarium in the shot in case you wondered) 

To satisfy your request for proof of ownership I make the following statement...

I hereby authorize myself to use whatever content I may produce without restriction.  All content claimed by me is under my direct control.  No copyrighted or derivative works appear in the subject video and I certify that all the content is owned and created by me with all associated copyrights at my disposal.

So now I wait.  In the meantime the few views I have gotten haven't netted me a dime (which would be 1/2 my revenue! )  while I go through the process.

UPDATE:  As of Nov. 27th YouTube still hasn't monetized the video but had no problem with the prior or following videos...