Pay for what you find valuable

Ubisoft’s Philippe Tremblay wants you, the customer, to get comfortable with not owning their games. Seems like he missed that people who use Steam as their main driver more or less already are.

Tremblay wants to push for the subscription model for video and computer games as that has been somewhat a success as a continuation of television. The whole streaming wars thing might disagree with this view, even when Disney+ seems to be bleeding customers. People seem to prefer when everything is in one place rather than multiple services each popping here and there with worse options than the last. These services are going fast the way of the cable TV.

Ubisoft has been the proponent for sub-based products, with them launching Uplay+ in 2019, rechristened as Ubisoft+ the year later. Now the service has been split between Ubisoft+ Premium and Classic, both at different price points. Rebranding away from Uplay was a good move, as the name has been marred in negative connotations and implications ever since Ubisoft launched their original Game Launcher to compete with Steam. Not that Ubisoft’s own name isn’t controversial in itself, with some marking the company being worse than EA.

Customers have multiple types of behaviours, as Tremblay states. Some come in for one game, which they later purchase. He mentions how Ubisoft is fine with a customer coming in, subscribing, then later buying that game and ending the subscription. If they were fine with this model, they wouldn’t have a need to find a way to stop this sort of customer stopping their subscription. That’s a loss of revenue for Ubisoft.

Multiple sub tiers splits these games, if this interview is anything to go by. Earlier access to upcoming games, different editions with different amount of content and some rewards that go unmentioned. This business model shatters whole games into bits and pieces; no Ubisoft game is whole anymore. Whatever you think about games being art or not, Ubisoft clearly makes a stance of them being a corporate product and them needing to service the corporate interest by any means necessary even if it means screwing the customer from their ownership.

Once you give an inch to gaming subscription, it’ll take the whole yard. While Tremblay says, there’s no reason to force things, just give people options. Certainly, there is a customer section that doesn’t give a toss about ownership and simply wish to consume games momentarily and then move on, but the lack of ownership and games being tied to service model always means they’ll become obsoletely as product at some point. When the service ends, so does the access to these games. Even with games you own, if they have an online-only component that relies on servers, it’s already a dying thing. There’s really no way to resurrect a dead service-model game without hacks and mods, and no game publisher is keen on giving instructions how to recreate custom servers or enable local play. Games like Elite Dangerous will end up waste of digital space once the servers die despite nothing really stopping the developers from making a genuine single-player mode for it.

Despite streaming service adoption, physical media, DVDs and BDs, hasn’t gone anywhere. Probably one of the main reasons why game consumers still buy physical media is that we know how badly gaming companies tend to screw us over. Streaming services get shit thrown at them every time a show or a movie license expires and vanishes from their library, but the games consumer usually is aware when companies try to screw them over for some reason. Like trying to prevent mods, or selling mods. Having a physical copy is a means to ensure future access to that title. There’s also the classic idea of building a library of games, which is something Steam encourages with constant sales.

While subscription based gaming probably is the dark and depressing future we’re going to get, the worse is streaming games. Cloud gaming would be other name for this. If Google couldn’t make it work, neither will Ubisoft. Tremblay streaming Ubisoft’s new games for couple of minutes shows how out of touch he is with the issues regarding cloud gaming. These range from standard performance issues to horribly downgraded graphics and input lag. Latency will be an issue Ubisoft won’t be able to solve.

However, Tremblay saying game customers have to get used to not owning games has a ring of truth to it. There’s an upcoming generation that has lived with subscription model as a standard, and that easily translates to the whole You will not own anything and be happy. This generation will rent things easier and give away their freedom to do anything with the things they spend their money on, as well as have no responsibility over them outside what the service provider demands of them. That’s where future is screwed, as then we won’t have any say on the things we put out money in. Subscription to Netflix gives you a small library of titles to choose from, and even if you are paying for the service, they’ll choke the bitrate for their own reasons. They have licenses that come and go. If a thing sits on your shelf, these issues no longer exist.

While older generations have to acclimate to upcoming changes with how media is available, we also don’t need accept it wholesale. We can champion on personal ownership for the copies and other items we put money into and have the say on the things we have at hand. We can have the best of both worlds, but that requires voting with your wallet.

One bit I find interesting is Tremblay mentioning how their older titles from the subscription service finds constant consumptions. Considering how bad rap Ubisoft’s modern games get, that shouldn’t be surprising. People loved the Prince of Persia: Sands of Time trilogy and outside Thief, Splinter Cell was considered the only legitimate challenger to Metal Gear Solid, sometimes cited as the better game series to boot. I can’t fault a company or a corporation wanting to make money, that’s their reason to exist in the first place. However, Ubisoft shouldn’t screw with their paying customers, as it’s very easy to simply pirate a game. Locked behind a subscription means very little if the other option is being free from the shackles that bind you.

Steam has made certain kind of DRM palatable for consumers. No game is owned on Steam, and it has been a successful venture for Valve. Even the older generations are mostly fine with Steam. It has become an industry standard for the most part. Tremblay putting it in so many words and making it clear how customers will not own Ubisoft products in the future is a PR stumble. The response was similar to Sony pulling some of the movies from PSN due to licenses expiring. Of course, when you use the term Buy, the general understanding is that you buy things to own. I don’t buy the argument that because somewhere in the eighty page EULA companies change the meaning of the word is applicable. To quote Rossmann, that’s rapist mentality. Companies aren’t straight with the customer what they are actually doing and what kind of transaction it really is. Valve got into trouble with EU about this some years back and had to change description.

The relevance here is that if the customer has spent his money to access product, they have all the rights to access that product even if it means via piracy. For example, if you’ve paid a streaming service some extra to have 4K quality video, and they decide, for whatever reason, not to deliver that, you have the moral right to find it wherever you can, piracy or not. If customers have found your service and products worthwhile enough to pay for them and you screw them over, nobody should be surprised when they pirate the piece. When people stop pirating your product, then you’ve got a problem in your hand as that means your product is no longer desired. Companies screwing customers justifies the use of piracy. Hence, if buying isn’t owning, piracy isn’t stealing.

Ubisoft’s corporate evolution isn’t about making better games or more games. It’s about how much they can screw the customers until they hit the wall. Sycophantic publisher/developer fans will always stick with them. Arguably, access to hundreds of titles for measly coupla ten bucks sounds good, but the lack of any control over the titles themselves and how easily you will be screwed over really stains the whole thing. Paying what you find valuable encourages that sort of thing more.

This also applies to Microsoft’s PC Game Pass, but that’s a whole another deal and already shows that Ubisoft is chasing the torchbearer with a smaller library. That, and Microsoft hasn’t come out to cause a small uproar like Tremblay by saying you’ll have to get used to not owning the stuff you buy.

Service model gaming probably will be the future for big publishers. However, that’s where all the smaller companies and developers can find a fitting niche by putting their games out in a more traditional fashion. Hell, I’d be rather excited if some indie developer would publish their game and include an .ISO file with some labels and artwork so you could burn and print your own legit copy and put it on your shelf.

Cinematic PlayStation E3

SONY as a games company has always succeeded when Nintendo has failed. PlayStation was a success when Nintendo 64 pushed 3D and less games, PlayStation 2 did more things right when GameCube’s games were lacklustre and we got Wind Waker instead of badass Zelda we saw at Spaceworld 2000. Then Nintendo did DS and the Wii, and they were massive hits while PlayStation3 took the back seat. SONY has always failed with the handheld consoles, and just like with every competitor with Nintendo’s, the Vita is essentially dead in the water, abandoned by Sony without anything to push it forwards. Pretty much like the Wii during its latter half of the life.

There’s nothing much to take from SONY’s E3 this year. Bad acting from a hipster guy and black top girl made things cringy didn’t make watching the Press conference any easier. Every single thing was so by the numbers that nothing stood out. It doesn’t help that they had repetition from UbiSoft’s presentation with Watch Dogs 2. Hell, let’s talk about that for a bit.

UbiSoft’s presentation was generic game showcase that didn’t show anything, but it showed that we are going to go into an era of video game movies similar to what comic book movies have been going on. Assassin’s Creed and Watch Dogs movies are indicative that companies want to start making these cinematic takes on games, and while America may give cold shoulder to WarCraft, the Chinese loved it and that’s a market that’s taking over as the money-making machine. Hollywood has been progressively been moving towards the Chinese market and have included content that panders straight up to them, with varying success.  Iron Man 3 had an extra scene where a Chinese doctor did the surgery for Stark and the reason Pacific Rim had Chinese triplets was to pander to them. Pacific Rim 2 seems to be development solely because of its success in China, and to the fact that Legendary is now owned by a Chinese millionaire makes thing easier.

The trouble with game movies is that they’re very much the same as comic book movies, and those have burnt out the audience pretty well already. The fatigue is setting in and it doesn’t help all these super hero movies are melding together to one very similar bits. Their formulaic approach has tired the audience out, just like the Westerns did.

Anyway, a new God of War got flack for having father-son bonding through hunting. These people need to get a better job or hobbies if they get insulted by games like this. Grow a pair of balls or something.

SONY has always managed to make their E3 rather cinematic to the point of being jarring. Nothing has changed this year, with SONY showing The Last Guardian loads of other concept trailers alongside with number of faux gameplay. At least SONY allows these to play without much interruption. Credit where credit is due, on-stage presence was superior to those they had outside. Unlike how Nintendo usually tends to have a Japanese person speaking in broken English, SONY had PR people speaking in clear, easy to understand English. Well, outside sucking up to Kojima. He has stupidly rabid and large cult worshipping him.

This cinematic presence thou extends to the games as well, with most of the shown titles, including Horizon: Zero Dawn showing cinematics takes on the gameplay elements over pure, undiluted gameplay. It’s an interesting dichotomy, where game developers claim they can’t do anything due to the lack of power in the machines, but still sticking with cinematics instead of games’ own forte to push these titles onwards as games. By that I mean they’re essentially still doing glorified FMV sequences and throwing movie effects into games rather than refining gameplay elements for the sake of play.

Of course, E3 has been progressively less about the games themselves and more about hyping.

The thing we’ve seen this year is push for VR titles, and none of them were impressive. Almost all of them have the same gameplay problems from movement to essentially being the same game in a different setting. VR in itself won’t make games any better or innovative, it only showcases another challenge to the developers. SONY sure has put a lot of money and faith into VR, as evident on the number of developers choosing to develop games for it. Then again, maybe it’s easier to just tie camera movements to the VR headset’s accelerators instead of trying to code one yourself. This is of course limits the game to first person only, and that’s something not everyone enjoys.

And the Vita is dead, no games or anything for it. Long live the Vita.

But y’know, I must admit that the Spider-Man design they used in the PS4 game trailer looked pretty spiffy with its silver spider back and forth. It’s an interesting combination of the black symbiote suit and the classic red and blue.

Steam tags going haywire, or showing proper characteristics?

Valve has allowed interesting transparency with Steam with the use of user generated tags with the software their system provides. This gives a lot of freedom to the customer to voice their mind to the publishers through the tags. Unsurprisingly, these tags have become abused as of late. Assassin’s Creed Unity and Far Cry 4 have been tagged with some seriously harsh tags, such as Don’t Preorder, remember watchdogs and Uplay warning. I understand the last of these, as nobody wants to use Uplay. Then again, it’s just another layer of DRM on top of Steam itself, so it can be argued that the point is moot. I don’t really know who would want to preorder digital games, it’s not like it is possible to run out of digital goods. Artificially limiting the amount the distributor is willing to give out in digital products nothing short of stupid and strange. Watch-underscore-dogs is understandable, as the whole issue of keeping the better looks stashed away shows how little the industry thinks of PC nowadays and further shows how forcefully mixed and confused PC and console markets are.

Of course, the tags contain childish additions to boot. Tags like peasantry, casual and Kawaii are the closest thing you get of useless shit throw on the Internet for the mentioned games. They don’t support the claim the PC games should have; furthermore they undermine the little weight the developers put on negative customer feedback nowadays.

While the users, yours include, have an issue with modern Ubisoft titles and their forced Uplay, the way this dissatisfaction should be brought out in a far more constructive manner rather slamming stupid shit in the tags. As always, hitting Ubisoft where it hurts most is most effective. Refusal to purchase their products and spreading the information around is the best way to tackle their current game handling.

Granted, the whole tag function appears to be in some sort of beta stage and not wholly finished, and this sort of event just shows how a freeform system needs certain level of administration to weed out all the bullshit tags out. I am sure things will be changed when the final version of the tag system rolls out, but part of me does enjoy seeing things going like this to rather large extent. If Valve would care about the users, they would find a golden middle between the demands of the developers and the customers.

I wouldn’t mind if they’d favour the customer a bit more in their choice, whatever it is in the end.

It’s a good question whether or not PC is seen as a worthwhile system by Ubisoft. The thing is, both Assassin’s Creed Unity and far Cry 4 are, at their very core, PC games. If PC was the platform they would develop these games from the ground up, and only for PC, these products would eclipse their brethren. Of course, when console games are developed with the same mindset and the machines’ strengths are played out, the results should be something akin to the first Rayman in both success and popularity. Then again, perhaps Rayman is not the best example, as it was developed for Atari Jaguar.

I don’t really remember a time when Ubisoft’s PC games were not panned. It’s expected from Ubisoft to have a horrible PC port of their PC game on a console.

The current state of Steam tags is really interesting in another way as well. At this moment, they allow the users to add the very things they see describing the games most accurately in both negative and positive tones. A negative tag for one can be a positive to another, like No multiplayer.

It is expected that the developers want to control the tags they’re given. This is very foolish, in a manner of speaking, as it would also mean that honest interaction between the customers as well as the developers would be prevented. Tagging a game with something like Low FPS might be seen as a negative tag from the developers’ perspective, but it’s their damn fault such that tag is related to their games. Tags could be seen as one of the methods to do slightly invasive customer research, as the companies would see what sort of tags the customers value over others if done well.

It would be highly damaging if Ubisoft would come out and claim that these tags damage the image of their product. The thing is that of course it does; the customer decide the image of your product in the long run. Customers are fickle beings, especially on the Internet, especially in a place like Steam, and putting extra effort to meet their wants and needs are things that would need some attention.

In a perfect world, a good game would receive no bad tags but we know that’s not going to happen. We should also question if the tag system would need more emphasize on adding positive or negative views. For example, a tag could have plus and minus relations to a game. How this system would work in all actuality is a whole another issue, but it’s an interesting thing that might work if well designed. Could be a training exercise for future, I guess.

It will be interesting to see how Ubisoft will reply to these user made tags. I doubt that they will make any official statements and almost everything will be done behind the scenes. While I support the curtain between the provider and the customer, Valve’s transparency with the tags will pose some problems to the developers rather than Valve itself. It’s an interesting, and most likely unintentional, feature which can either give the developers a lot possibilities or fire back like as it has with Ubisoft.

Actually, screw that. Allow the users to put whatever tags they want and vote which tags describe the games most. Have few thousand people voting on Awful controls for a game as the most appropriate tag and let the developer sweat a bit. Perhaps this way the customer could put some pressure on the developers.

Ubisoft, Nintendo, what the hell is this?

Rayman Legends’ trailer was leaked. It’s not impressive. The trailer, which Ubisoft stated to be for internal use only, tells quite a lot about the WiiU… and about current game developers.

First of all, let’s dismiss the game and the console itself. The actors are what struck me. They’re overacting, but if you visit any game related forum, you’ll see that a current real world player is like that. They get easily excited, but rarely pull anything through properly. However, this isn’t as important as what the actors look like. Why are we seeing nerds play these games? We, the customers they already have, don’t have a need to see ourselves playing the game on the screen. There’s no reason to out us into the fray. We are not interesting marketing ploy, nor successful for the matter. If Ubisoft knew how to market their product, they’d put rich people with Master of the Universe like proportions to play these games. Neckbeard nerds are not interesting ploy to get customers, they’re not people we want to be, especially if the customers are already like that.

For countering example, the Wii commercials were good. Customers didn’t identify themselves with the parents the nice Japanese business men met. People were acting like the business men. You and Me bought the Wii so that ‘we’ could play it with our friends. You and Me bought PlayStation 3 so that ‘I’ could play it. An advertisement should have something that we, the customers, want not only to have, but to be as well.

Then, how about the game itself?

This screenshot shows why I never bought Rayman Origins either. It looks empty and uninteresting. Over 80% of the screen is unused. There’s very little to do or see, a matter which has depressed modern games in general. Feel free to show me zoomed-in screens with loads of cannon fodder enemies if you must.

Rayman Origin, and now Legends, are what artistic people produce. One of the Origin’s selling point was that they had artists working on the game and it’s world. Artists should just stay making character designs and backdrops, not the game itself. To make a game a 2D throwback and putting your customers into a nostalgic trip doesn’t make your product good. You need to make it good. People value good products, not artistic products.

I believe that Rayman Legends’ trailer was leaked on purpose to cause a little bit commotion in the industry, and in the customers. However, I hope most of the viewers do see deeper than what the trailer shows. There are new playable characters, and we’re only shown one. Are the rest in-development, or DLC? Why did Ubisoft decide to use geeks in the trailer? To make the customers identify with them? Why make us want something that we already are? It seems that Ubisoft, and the general industry at large, thinks even less than this. If we’re lower than your normal street walker in the developers’ mind, the industry’s going to fall down. No industry has any room to rise above the customer. The customer is the alpha and the omega.

Then there’s the gimmick, the one Nintendo’s going to unveil at some point at the future; the Near Field Communication of WiiU.

Now, let me ask you this; who gives a damn about this, or rather, why should you give a damn about this?

Near Field Communication has become increasingly cheaper during the last years. iPhone 5 will most likely use it, as will bunch of other devices that have no use for it. It’s kind of funny to see Nintendo putting this kind of thing to their console. It tells that they do think that Apple and other similar companies are competing with them, while in reality none of Apple’s products tread the same waters. Apple competes in completely different places where Nintendo does. There’s not direct competition between the two. So why would either company want to wager their machines in the same Red Ocean? To be blunt, it’s because they’re both stupid.

The WiiU is a selfish one-man console. Rayman Legends trailer shows that one person is holding the tablet whilst other people are playing the game with the Wii Remotes. It’s not a selling idea to isolate one person from others, especially in multiplayer game. Imagine playing the likes of WoW, but you’re the only person not allowed to play in a team, but you’re the one there to open doors with a joypad. The reason the NES and the Wii were successful was that it was a console made for everybody to enjoy together. The WiiU is will fail because Nintendo once again decided to do what they wanted, but the customers did not.

Nintendo’s failing as a company. Their obsession in 3D is their downfall once again. Iwata actually said that it’s unfortunate that the 3D televisions are not selling. A wise businessman would deduce that the customers do not value 3D and would pour his resources into something that the customers do value. If you’re Nintendo’s Iwata and Miyamoto, you’ll blame the customers not getting how great 3D is. 3D is the reason why 3DS isn’t selling. That, and the lack of games. Miyamoto’s especially deluded in his obsessions on 3D. Marketing has never been the problem with Nintendo. Everybody knows what their console is capable of and what it has to offer. However, the problem, for Nintendo, is that people refuse to get invested in their consoles. Nobody cared about the 3DS’s in-built programs and demos or the 3D screen. Nintendo’s consoles and games have very little relevance since the end of NES. Not until the DS Nintendo became truly relevant again, and now they’re making themselves irrelevant again.

Nintendo still has that unique place in electronic game industry that they have their roots in the arcade industry, much like SEGA. Nintendo and SEGA had their golden days during the NES era, specifically Nintendo with the NES and SEGA with the Mega Drive. As soon as Nintendo begins to step away from their arcade roots, their stock value falls, and their games and systems do not sell. New Super Mario Bros. sold extremely well, because it was a step towards the right direction. Super Mario 3DS Land did not sell well because it was a step to a wrong direction. How NSMB2 will sell is an open question, as the game is rushed and has little to no budget. Customers value good games over anything else anyone in the industry does. Then why not make good makes and not artistic games? None of the games that have creativity as their basis have sold well.

Earlier I asked why you should give damn about WiiU’s new gimmick? The answer is that you should give a damn about it, as it’s one of the many signs of Nintendo’s plaguing obsession, which needs to be cut down. We’re the customers, we are the one who decided which succeeds and which not. We are god which the likes of Miyamoto and Iwata should serve.