Why the “Online Pass” in Videogames is a Terrible, Terrible Idea

Fitting that this will be the first post after PAX East.

There’s been a couple of announcements recently that are pointing toward an alarming trend. EA announced last week that starting with Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2011, all EA sports games would ship with a code inside the box that grants access to the “Online Pass” for that game. Once the user entered that code, they’d have access to some premium downloadable or online content that would be released by the publisher.

Oh right, and they could play online multiplayer.

No big deal, right? It’s in the box, everyone gets one when they buy a (new) copy of the game. Oh, you bought a used copy from Gamestop, Glyde or Amazon? No code? Well, you can buy a code for $10. Everyone’s happy!

I disagree.

Here’s a little story. The first videogame I remember buying for myself was a tiny little game called Half-Life, which came out in 1998. If you’ve played videogames at all in the last decade, you probably know what Half-Life is, and you know what it (and publisher Valve Software) has become. I bought Half-Life cause it looked cool. I was 14. I was correct. It was cool. One of the best things about Half-Life was the multiplayer system. It worked out of the box better than any other I’d seen, and probably beats most systems to come out since. Further proof of that is that Valve hasn’t really changed their matchmaking system since then. It just worked, it worked well, and that’s all there is to it.

It was also free.

Well, as free as something can be when it’s part of a $40 purchase. Bottom line is that once I got the game, so long as I had an internet connection, I was good to go. All the features of the game were there, unlocked and ready to go. I bought Half-Life new, but I bet it would have worked that way if I’d gone into Gamestop or EB Games and bought a used copy as well.

Fast forward to 2010, and that system – one that you pay one price for a product, and that product belongs to you – seems to be falling apart a little. EA’s announcement; THQ announced the same thing for UFC Undisputed 2010; Ubisoft, already making friends for their restrictive PC DRM that forces you to be connected to the internet while you play Assassin’s Creed II (if your connection to their DRM-approval server drops, you get booted out of the game), is talking about their own online pass program.

All of these – every single one – is a way to squeeze a bit more money out of your customer base. And in an industry where the price of a game has jumped by $10 with every new console generation, that’s not cool.

I bought a used copy of Mass Effect 2 through glyde.com. I knew when I bought a used copy that I wasn’t going to have access to the Cerberus Network, EA’s built-in news feed, without coughing up some more money. That was a little disappointing, because I knew they would be sending out some free content to subscribers, running some contests and whatnot, but that’s not why I bought the game. I bought it to play Mass Effect 2, in its entirety, as shipped, and I could do that without the Cerberus Network. Am I missing anything by not having that access? Maybe. But I bet if they put out something mind-blowing, I’m going to hear about it, and that might be enough to get me to cough up ten more dollars.

EA’s Online Pass and other similar programs handicap used games from the very start, especially when you’re talking about sports games. I buy sports games to play single-player franchise modes, but I’m in the minority – most people buy sports games to play online with their friends. So now, if someone’s trying to save a few bucks by buying a game used, they can’t use a feature that has been part of the gaming industry since the late 70s?

How do you get this message to parents buying the next Madden game for their kid, and see this used copy over here, which looks exactly the same as the one over there, only this one is five bucks less? They bring it home, the kid pops it in, and suddenly he’s disappointed with a gift because he can’t get online. In fact, in order to get online, the game is now going to cost more than the new copy.

I started getting a little worried a couple months ago, because there was (and still is) a growing trend of games that are offering release-date DLC. If you have this extra content ready for the day the game is released, why isn’t it just on the disc, part of the game? At least a good number of these publishers have the common sense and decency to make release-date DLC free. But just like online pass programs, what it points to is a new fragmenting of content. It’s the ugly stepsister of the microtransaction model that Facebook games are making enormous right now. Why package everything into a game – every feature, every outfit, every mission, every team, etc – when you can put the bare minimum in and then charge a little extra for everything else?!? IT’S GENIUS! SELL PARTIAL GAMES FOR FULL RETAIL PRICE, AND THEN STUFF WALLETS EVEN MORE WHEN PEOPLE COME LOOKING FOR THE REST OF THE GAMES!

I understand the copyright argument, I do. And I know game-related piracy have made the gaming community a little more difficult to trust. But this isn’t the way to regain that trust. Remember, EA/THQ/Ubisoft, you’re the big scary company, and we’re the tiny little gamers. I don’t think it’s unfair to say that you ought to be the ones taking the first step.

There are ways to convince us to buy new games that don’t involve punishing us when we don’t do it. And you’re already doing them! When I preordered Red Dead Redemption on Amazon last week, there was a promotion where Amazon would send me a code that would be redeemed in game that would give me a set of golden guns that only Amazon customers would get. I know Gamestop had a similar promotion. A reward for buying new? Cool!

It’s value-adding for loyalty, not restriction for frugality. The issue a lot of publishers have (though you’ll never hear them say it) is that they get a cut of every new game sold through the game retailers. Not true for every used game. They see none of that cash. And Gamestop puts out some pretty nice numbers for their used game sales. Can you blame them for wanting a piece of that action? But if the problem is that the retailers are selling your products without giving you a cut, it seems to me that that is something you might want to work out with the resellers, not take out on your customers.

Besides, even if the publishers aren’t seeing money from the used game transactions, it’s still potentially very helpful to them. After I bought my 360, I bought a used copy of Assassin’s Creed from Gamestop. Ubisoft saw none of that money. But you know what I did a year later? I walked into Best Buy and bought Assassin’s Creed II the day it came out. Cause the first game had made me a fan. By punishing used game buyers, you’re potentially stunting your fanbase growth. If the kid who buys Madden 11 used can’t play online, and loses interest in the game because he doesn’t want to spend the ten extra bucks for a basic feature, how likely is he going to be to pick up a new copy of Madden 12? Or what if that same kid decides he doesn’t mind being without multiplayer, and decides to buy Madden 12 used as well, because he doesn’t need that feature that has suddenly become an extra, not a basic reason to buy the game.

Bottom line, I’m concerned about the idea of breaking games into pay-by-the-feature. If that were going to go the way of paying $40 for a game with no multiplayer, and $60 for the full game, that’s fine. But it won’t. It will keep games at $60, and then another $10 for multiplayer. It’s a slippery slope, and one I’d rather the industry not start heading down.

PS - another excellent side note raised by the guys over at IGN Game Scoop is that if you own an Xbox 360, you may very well already pay a premium for online contest in the form of Xbox Live. I know it's different companies, and technically a different service, but that feels an awful lot like double-dipping to me.

PAX East Tomorrow

For those of you interested in that sort of thing... you'll note a new box over on the right there. I'm spending the day at PAX East tomorrow, so I've set up a little photo depository. I can't promise a ton of pictures, or that any of them will be any good, but if you're not at the show and you want to see what I'm looking at, take a peek over there.

Left 4 Dead Demo Impressions

This probably would have been more insightful had I posted it when I intended to – before the full game got released – but whatcha gonna do? It’s almost appropriate, actually, since Valve’s first game, Half-Life, turns 10 years old today.

I’m still in more or less the same mindset about Left 4 Dead, which is…

… I’m not convinced yet.

I’m not sold on the game, which is actually a little upsetting to me, because Valve Software  is yet to do wrong by me. I remember basically draining my savings account to pick up the original Half-Life the weekend it came out, and have snapped up every other game Valve has released just as quickly. I was planning on doing the same with Left 4 Dead, but I started getting a little hesitant the more I read about it. I initially had 3 main concerns: 

1)      Graphics

2)      Variability

3)      Single-player

Graphics: … but not in the way you might think. Yes, the Source engine is starting to age, but as far as I am concerned, it’s aging very well. It seems to me that with each new use, (Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2: Episode 1, Half-Life 2: Episode 2, Team Fortress 2, Portal and now Left 4 Dead) Valve has found pretty significant ways to squeeze some new life out it. I’m sure it helps that it was developed in-house, since it allows them to tweak and re-tweak it as they build on it. My fear with Left 4 Dead was that they would abandon it and require a dual-core system, as they are starting to become more commonplace – at least in system requirements, if not in home PCs. My PC most definitely does not have one, so I was enthused to see that not only was I not automatically disqualified by my system, but I was pretty well supported. Even though I was basically running it in 800 x 600, I still got a very respectable framerate, and I was very content with the overall look. 

One thing I’ve always thought the Source engine and the guys at Valve do particularly well is texturing. They have a way of making everything look real – not photoreal, but legit and honest – without draining system resources. To be honest, I’m not entirely sure I want my game to look photoreal. What they’ve done in the Half-Life series is still very convincing and makes sense, but still maintains a certain level of fantasy that sort of reminds the player that it’s just a game. I like that. I also appreciate the stylized choice they made with Team Fortress 2. In that case, it immediately erases any nags of “reality” that might drag the game down, and makes it much more welcoming for certain ideas that have become integral to the game – rocket jumping, a double-jumping scout, invisibility – stuff that would have been out of place had they clung to something more grounded and real. 

In the graphics department, Left 4 Dead fits pretty nicely in the Half-Life style. It’s close enough to be convincing, but so close that it’s disturbing or unnatural. It looks good, I can run it and enjoy it on my current system (though nowhere close to maximum settings), and it presents a certain style that is notable artistically and that absolutely fits with the zombie B-movie aesthetic they’re aiming for. 

Variability: I’m honestly a little torn over this one. On the one hand, there’s something to be said for putting everyone on a very level playing field – everyone can do the same stuff, the only difference to be had is based on a decision you make about what weapon to carry. It’s almost a nice change from something like Team Fortress 2, where there is (or should be) a ton of strategy involved in choosing a class.  On the other hand, I can only assume that in a zombie apocalypse that certain people would survive for certain reasons, and that not all of those reasons would be the same. So to have the four characters pretty much identical beyond the model, voice and attitude (none of which are controllable by the player) seems a little short-sighted to me. That being said, I don’t really know how to rectify the situation without getting into the class balancing issues – something Valve has started addressing with the class updates in TF2. The class element brings a degree of uniqueness to each session – you can choose your class based on how you feel like playing the game that particular day. Now, because I’ve only played the demo, I can’t speak to the Versus mode, which sounds like it has a little more variation thanks to the boss zombies. That may very well take care of my reservations, but I haven’t seen it. I can certainly see both sides of the fence on this one, but I think I fall on the side of customization, which isn’t where Valve was going for this one. 

Single-player: I love single-player games. For awhile growing up, I didn’t have an internet connection that could really support decent online multiplayer, and in college I couldn’t afford to pay for an Xbox Live subscription, so I really came to appreciate a well-executed single-player game. Valve has most certainly championed that, taking the shooter genre to levels it had not previously seen with the Half-Life universe. I’m sure a little bit of it has to do with the fact that in most multiplayer games… I get my ass handed to me. I’m not bad, I’m just nowhere near as good as the people who really know these games and dominate the servers. I’ve never snubbed multiplayer – Battle.net, Team Fortress Classic and now TF2 have constantly grabbed gaming hours – but in most cases I’ve never even considered multiplayer until I beat the crap out of the single-player campaign. For me, it’s like an extended training ground. And to that extent, Left 4 Dead works. Playing the bots offline definitely gets you comfortable and prepared for the online play. Heck, more than that – because switching to online co-op adds other thinking humans to your team, multiplayer becomes easier on paper. What is disappointing for me is that lack of difference. There’s nothing unique or more in-depth about the single-player campaign in this one. 

Admittedly, that’s by design. Valve made it very clear what they were making. It was designed as a co-op game, with single player as an option for those who want a break from other people. I get that. But I think there are ways they could have gone that could have made the game a little bit deeper, and filled in some of the gaps in the game’s background story (again, I realize it was designed to function as four different “movie” campaigns. I’m just tossing around some ideas). What about giving each character a personalized “origin story” of sorts? Show Louis fighting his way out of his overrun office building; we could find Francis with his back to the wall as his favorite dive bar is surrounded by the newly-infected; Zoey could have a whole campus to get through in order to connect with the others; Bill might have been at the local veteran’s hospital – or holed up in his basement gun room – when the disaster hit. They each find their way to a common point, thus begins the No Mercy campaign. There’s also, I think, a good opening for some sort of Sole Survivor mode. Expanding it beyond a time trial should be left to better minds than me, but if you look at something like Dead Rising, there’s certainly an appeal to being the only one left and surviving by any means necessary. 

I don’t think the demo really showcases everything Left 4 Dead has to offer, nor should it. It’s a demo. But there are certain sections that aren’t clear to me – I’m still a little fuzzy on the AI Director – outside of triggering the horde in different places at different times, I didn’t notice any real change in gameplay in my dozen online sessions. I think a taste of Versus mode would have been very helpful, at least for me, to see some of the variability I was looking for in play styles. Some sort of preview - maybe not necessarily playable, but something - of the other three campaigns would have been nice to see what you’re in for with the full version. But it’s not like they can shove everything into a single demonstration, because there’s no surprises left for the buyers. 

In the end, there’s no doubt that Left 4 Dead is a good, fun game. The first horde rush two minutes into the demo will tell you that. I just wonder about its longevity. I also wonder if its longevity as a whole would be vastly different than its longevity with me specifically. Maybe I went in looking for something too specific from the game, but the fact is I didn’t quite find what I was looking for, and if I’m going to drop $50 on a game, I really would like to know that I’m getting something with a little staying power. I pre-ordered Half-Life 2 and beat it in the first weekend. I still play through it once every couple months. I don’t see the depth in Left 4 Dead that excites me. And because of that, I’ll definitely be waiting for price cuts. 

Don’t get me wrong… Left 4 Dead will make a lot of people very happy. I just won’t be one of them. At least not yet.