My Guess: DLC Will Evolve into Monthly Subscription to Play Civ 6; Licensed Mods

[builer680]

You don't give up so easily, do you?

We (and everybody in their right minds) won't buy the damn original products IF there are hidden or further applied fees attached.
It is against the Law to steal people.

You already HAVE bought at least ONE 'damn original product' under the pretext that your access via Steam is free.

And you did THAT under a scenario where you actually DID have other choices of games that weren't DRM. Now imagine buying more, to the point where you have ALL of your games on DRM, and any game you could conceivably want to buy was DRM. That's what I mean by consolidation.

Now what if they start charging you for account access? It was free when you bought those games. You thought you were making a choice to use something because you weren't being taken advantage of, ie, forced to pay to access your stuff. But, in doing so, you agreed that they can change that at any time for any reason. You've already signed away the power that you think you have. Any game you buy via what is currently free access DRM is vulnerable to this possibility.

 

[Zyxpsilon]

That's because stealing people is called kidnapping.

As for "further applied fees", well, there are lots of games out there that have them. Most of the MMOs nowadays, for example. All that need happen is that the fees be declared up front.

Yep, and i tell you what... once people pull out their pocket calculators and start adding the entire cost for (say) a two years contract to have a cell-phone - they'll think twice before purchasing a gimmick sucking their bank accounts dry on 1500$/per year expense just to use it.
As if one trap wasn't enough for your luxury toys.

 

[Selous]

I'm betting you would have said the same things you are saying today about the prospect of paying a subscription for single player games.

Ever hear of Cities XL? Monte Christo attempted to do just what we are talking about - while single player was technically "free", they intentionally made the single player experience very bad to try to get people to pay for the MMO Planet Offer. Unfortunately for MC, the future is not now, and they went bankrupt. But that doesn't mean someone won't succeed in the future. As far as current trends go, Cities XL was just ahead of its time.

i bought and played that game, for the first month, it was a pretty cool game, they tried essentially, to turn a citybuilder (at the heart a singleplyer game) into a MMO with trading between citys and players looking at other peoples citys, but they tried to charge $15 a month for the privilige ... crashed and died because there was no value for money at all!! and after the first month anyone that bought the game abandonded it and the servers had to close

That's all off the top of my head. I'm not saying Valve won't start charging for Steam out of the goodness of their heart. I'm saying they won't because they're already making oodles of cash, and initiating subscription fees would risk those revenue streams.

and this is why a company like valve wouldnt go to a subscription model, they make a buttload of cash from steam!! i believe that it is 40% of the cost of a game, but of course there are no "real" figures out there (apple charge 40% to sell music on itunes)
i dont see why a company would ever change a very sucsessful business model such as this to a model that make people angry

 

[The_J]

Moderator Action: Please cool a bit down in here.

 

[builer680]

and this is why a company like valve wouldnt go to a subscription model, they make a buttload of cash from steam!! i believe that it is 40% of the cost of a game, but of course there are no "real" figures out there (apple charge 40% to sell music on itunes)i dont see why a company would ever change a very sucsessful business model such as this to a model that make people angry

This "very successful business model" already makes (some) people angry. Why would they care if changing it did the same? Ask any corporation that makes a "buttload" of cash if they would do something that would make even more of a "buttload" and I guarantee you would get 100% in the affirmative.

Making people "angry" doesn't bother them in the slightest. Look at all of the (imo mostly justified) DRM hate on the internet. Corporations don't care about that. They care about $, and ways to make more $.

If you're saying that this will make them less money, I agree that is true RIGHT NOW, it would drive many out of business. They don't have the clout they need yet, (control of millions of user's access to already purchased games, competition consolidation, and cornering the market with exclusive purchase access to at least most new games).

 

[Zyxpsilon]

Now what if they start charging you for account access?

Same answer as before, i'd sue for refund until they shut the hell down off the web because i am already PAYING for access to the account they're maintaining on my behalf.
I wouldn't even hesitate to involve every darn last & first associated businesses (developpers, producers, studios, EA, Blizzard, name it) using them as an outlet for distribution.

They don't scare me one bit.
2K & Firaxis sold me CiV and if they ever want to raise the cost for a DRM scheme *after the fact*, i've got the receipt, the account number on Steam and everything necessary to bring them all together to Justice for criminal intent.

Maybe they will start charging for access. Then, i'll spend my money on everything else BUT their games. Eventually they'll regret the abuse - possibly too late.

 

[Zyxpsilon]

If you're saying that this will make them less money, I agree that is true RIGHT NOW, it would drive many out of business. They don't have the clout they need yet, (control of millions of user's access to already purchased games, competition consolidation, and cornering the market with exclusive purchase access to at least most new games).

They simply never will reach that point where total control allows them to abuse the free-market. Get a degree in Economics such as what i paid for in University, learn how markups work, fiddle with the perspective of inflation & capitalism debt & assets... then, you'll understand how thin the bottom lines are when regulations expose liabilities on year-end statements taxed to fill an honest report.

It's the model you're questioning. Without any rational grasp of limits.

 

[Jatta Pake]

I agree with builer680 that subscription service is coming for single player games like Civ. And guess what? Hard core fans will happily pay it. Why?

First, games marketed to the casual gamer are becoming crowded as the marketplace becomes saturated with new titles. If you want to target casual gamers, you need to collect payment upfront because they aren't going to stick around. Casual gamers come and go. It is likely that the newest incarnation of Civ aimed at casual gamers will be free. Yes, Civ 6 could be free.

Hardcore gamers desire depth and replayability. Just as Jon Shafer pointed out, it is a complete waste of money to develop a good AI for a game marketed to the casual gamer. Not so with the hardcore gamers and strategy lovers. They demand a "deep" game. However, the process of building a "deep" strategic game requires more resources than a one shot game release. It requires balancing, AI development, ever increasing complexity, strategic diversity, and replayability.

Enter the subscription service. You get a free game, Civ 6, and a limited amount of content. It plays like Civ 1 with some fancy graphics. But if you want the extras you need to upgrade to a Upgrade account for $1.99 per month. The extras include multiplayer support, various stat keeping crap and ability to create "guilds", modding support, a vast expansion of the basic core game concepts, and an AI that learns based upon the collective playing experience of users. For a Premium account, $4.99 per month, you get everything in the Upgrade account plus all of the downloadable content like extra civilizations for free. A Diamond account, $12.99, will get you full free Premium access to all Steam games.

Subscription services are entering entertainment industries across the board. Even Mattel recently launched a subscription service for their He-Man line of toys. Toy collectors get new releases each month.

This is a natural and welcome evolution to the Civ franchise.

 

[Horizons]

Wrong. The future is not games via Steam. It's games via Facebook in Internet Explorer or Google ChromeOS.

 

[builer680]

This is a natural and welcome evolution to the Civ franchise.

I agree it's natural. I don't agree it's welcome. But there certainly isn't any going back to the old model either.

 

[builer680]

They simply never will reach that point where total control allows them to abuse the free-market. Get a degree in Economics such as what i paid for in University, learn how markups work, fiddle with the perspective of inflation & capitalism debt & assets... then, you'll understand how thin the bottom lines are when regulations expose liabilities on year-end statements taxed to fill an honest report.

It's the model you're questioning. Without any rational grasp of limits.

I have real life experience. I've seen this story play out before, over many years, even decades, in some cases. As has anyone capable of reading and posting on these forums, whether or not they can correlate those lessons to this situation. My rational grasp of limits is gained from observing the behavior of other corporations who've made similar power plays just within my own lifetime... not to mention throughout the history of capitalism.

I don't need a Canadian degree in economics to know that corporations go after money, and that they don't spend time and money to corner markets and create interfaces expressly designed for the purpose of taking away consumer choices... just to maintain the status quo. They wouldn't need to expand and get more subscriptions and exclusive distribution rights if they just wanted to maintain the status quo. Supposedly it's to combat piracy, but we both know that's bunk. Piracy can not be stopped. That leaves only one real reason.

 

[Jatta Pake]

Wrong. The future is not games via Steam. It's games via Facebook in Internet Explorer or Google ChromeOS.

I agree, I was just using Steam as an example. Your examples works with all of the above.

Frankly, I have high hopes for a subscription based Civ game whether through Facebook, Steam, or other portal. I think the potential is there to build a very dynamic and frightening human-like AI that learns from human players.

 

[spider1]

It's a balancing act between how much you want something and if you are willing to pay for it (or how). As with a lot of folks here, I don't really like purchasing the civs individually marketed as DLCs, but the thing is, I want them and am willing to pay the price.

Now let's say Civ VI comes out and it's a subscription based game. Because it's a new Civ I'd buy an initial contract to check it out. If the game pleased me, I'd continue to "rent it" and probably make a lot of posts here about not liking renting the game. If I didn't like it, I'd not renew my subscription after it's initial phase and chalk it up to experience. I don't like paying all that money for cable TV either, but it pleases me to have it so I pay for it anyway.

Life ain't all roses sometimes.

 

[Jatta Pake]

I forgot to add this:

"I, for one, welcome our new Civ DRM overlords".

 

[builer680]

I agree, I was just using Steam as an example. Your examples works with all of the above.

Frankly, I have high hopes for a subscription based Civ game whether through Facebook, Steam, or other portal. I think the potential is there to build a very dynamic and frightening human-like AI that learns from human players.

This is a different discussion, but I think the limits of today's computing makes this very difficult to achieve. You can probably get close, but the processing power required to analyze so many choices in a game like Civ, especially in a 1upt environment, and actually learn and make GOOD choices... almost puts it in the realm of supercomputing, at least if you want results in seconds (turn times) and not minutes/hours.

Quantum computing, if it's ever invented for practical applications, is where I believe we will start to see true AI, in the sense that it actively learns and adapts with response times we'd consider reasonable for something like a video game. Obviously, I doubt its first use would be for video games though. And of course, hopefully it doesn't develop sentience

I forgot to add this:

"I, for one, welcome our new Civ DRM overlords".

Funny stuff.

 

[builer680]

Blizzard?

Before WoW there was EverQuest.
Before EverQuest there was Ultima Online.
Before Ultima Online there was Meridian 59.

Blizzard established?

Perhaps established was the wrong word. Successfully implemented on the way to becoming one of the most successful game companies of all time. That's more accurate.

Happy now?

On a side note, never heard of Meridian 59. Might be an interesting read on the wiki for me.

 

[Frugal_Gourmet]

I don't think it will evolve into monthly subscriptions. DLC as it stands make a helluva lot more sense, and that's where the model will stay for awhile.

 

[Jatta Pake]

This is a different discussion, but I think the limits of today's computing makes this very difficult to achieve. You can probably get close, but the processing power required to analyze so many choices in a game like Civ, especially in a 1upt environment, and actually learn and make GOOD choices... almost puts it in the realm of supercomputing, at least if you want results in seconds (turn times) and not minutes/hours.

Quantum computing, if it's ever invented for practical applications, is where I believe we will start to see true AI, in the sense that it actively learns and adapts with response times we'd consider reasonable for something like a video game. Obviously, I doubt its first use would be for video games though. And of course, hopefully it doesn't develop sentience

Funny stuff.

We Jayhawks have a great sense of humor. (Noticed your thread about watching KU games with your brother). KU is why my cable bill hits $200 per month. Basic cable thinks I only care about USC or UCLA. Gag!

This is purely hypothetical, but couldn't a "learning AI" be supported with the distributed processing power of game players? What if player tactics were constently sent back to a big Firaxis server and analyzed? The system could hash out tactics used by the best players and adjust accordingly. Especially during multiplayer. Each time you play you unknowingly downloaded regular AI updates on the backend which tweaked various areas of the AI play. Developers could run simulations for additional tweaks to balance the game and nerf exploits.

 

[builer680]

We Jayhawks have a great sense of humor. (Noticed your thread about watching KU games with your brother). KU is why my cable bill hits $200 per month. Basic cable thinks I only care about USC or UCLA. Gag!

This is purely hypothetical, but couldn't a "learning AI" be supported with the distributed processing power of game players? What if player tactics were constently sent back to a big Firaxis server and analyzed? The system could hash out tactics used by the best players and adjust accordingly. Especially during multiplayer. Each time you play you unknowingly downloaded regular AI updates on the backend which tweaked various areas of the AI play. Developers could run simulations for additional tweaks to balance the game and nerf exploits.

I'm not the best guy to ask about this, but from my understanding... what you're suggesting would require one of a couple of possibilites.

• A central game host/supercomputer (even for SP) somewhere... hosting and monitoring every game being played, and using what it "learns" from watching players... and applying it to every game being played in the world at once. Or several supercomputer hosts... think of the dozens of servers for MMO's. Not sure how economically feasible that is (dozens of supercomputers analyzing the moves for the AI for tens of thousands of games at once) when it comes to a video game like Civ V, but I'm not an expert on such matters.
  
• I suppose an alternative is what you're suggesting, a constantly updated AI upload (downloads for customers) to paying subscribers, but the net end effect of such a system would be the same as including an AI capable of making such calculations with the game in the first place. It would become part of the game, and run locally. Basically patches. That isn't impossible, but it's the same problem we already have. If we want home computers to process decisions using an AI as complex as this would rapidly become, AI turn times would be measured in minutes/hours, instead of seconds.

Your suggestion of constant updating of the user's PC installation isn't the same as using millions of PC's to solve problems and send the results to a centralized host who can process it but never has to send it back, (like I think some things already do, like that alien hunting thing I saw once in my email about 10 years ago). This is using a supercomputer (or clusters of them) to first gather information, analyze it, and then send new information back the way it originally came, what I'd consider 'uphill,' in a sense. Servers do communicate back and forth already with home PC's, but I don't think they do it while calculating the best moves for every unit for every Civ in 50,000 games of Civ V at the same time. They could of course use different servers to do the actual data transmission, but damn, all those supercomputers would get expensive as heck...

Then... there's the idea of expecting home computers to solve problems using an AI developed by and sent to them from a supercomputer. Like designing Indy car engines en masse from lessons learned observing Yugos, then sticking those Indy car engines in the Yugos. Except the Yugos don't have the frame, brakes, or transmission to handle those engines, so they still top out at 20 mph.

Either the AI processing for every move in every game in the world at the same time would be done on their end (extremely expensive and maybe impractical, but I don't know) or just for our own game on our end as it is now, which would make turns last for ages, because of the complexity required to make an AI that can intelligently utilize 1upt on such a congested battlefield, and trying to run it on 20 mph Yugos. That's my take on it anyway, but my take is suspect to say the least, because I"m not an expert... and I'm not paid to develop and deploy great AI for PC strategy games. But apparently, neither was Jon Shafer.

P.S. Rock Chalk Jayhawk KU! (random but good youtube clip)

 

[Zyxpsilon]

That leaves only one real reason.

Profits.

But, mark my words... the bubble will blow right in their faces as it always does.
The curve is simple; opportunity, spike through popularity, sharp drop to the void.
That's the lifetime of products.
Comes in the *supplemental* gimmicks of alternate outlets (such as virtual distribution & subscriptions fees) within the above pattern; result is a longer slope of effects that drives consuming above the usual margins.
Gamers lose.
Corporate greed wins.
It's still a trap where a vast majority of -s'cuse the term- luxury wasters spend their money on.

Recession-Stability-Bubble and the wave is looping as often as necessary to create cashflow & assets known as profits that gets stacked in banks or spent by shareholders.

Value or property... you do the math.
Is it in the right hands... you work it out.

In the meantime, your logic is flawed and i proved it with overpricing goods. But you weren't paying attention to such unquotable details. Pick & choose what you want, the facts remain -- growth has limits beyond which fraud occurs on a tagged price of any products.
Population either follows or loses their living means & some essential power of consumption.

This is a natural and welcome evolution to the Civ franchise.

A product destined to hit the bottom as everything else if there's no demands or need for it, specifically if it becomes unaffordable to all or any online users through a fees meter based on usage.
I can download 60Gigs per month off the web - anything above, i'm overcharged. But, the bandwidth time isn't clocked.