Oldschool Hard

I am on the road crew. This is my stop sign.

Happy birthday, Psychonauts. Today you are 5, and if you got through kindy ok, played nicely with the other children, showed appropriate motor-skill development, and did not set anyone on fire with your psychokinetic abilities, you should just be settling into your first year of school.

My, they grow up so fast, don’t they?

Now, I can understand why people don’t quite get what a special little person you are. Your charms are not necessarily immediately apparent. Quite frankly, you are not aging well, looks-wise, even at the tender age of 5. You have good bone structure, but a new haircut wouldn’t hurt, and the best of your personality only comes out after some time spent with you. However, among other heartwarming moments, the way you traipse through that city and your wonderful friendship with the Milkman show you truly are a special individual, and if only people would give you a chance, they would see the care put into your upbringing. More people should spend an evening in your company, especially now that you make such small demands on their wallet.

Yes, yes, you can start opening your presents. But please stop trying to enter my mind, and for the love of Jebus, you need more control before you start trying to light the candles on your cake with your powers. There’s only so much scorched buttercream I can take the smell of…

****

In more current news, hol-eeeee shit, Blizzard has made, by estimates, somewhere in the realm of $3-5 million USD from ethereal sparklehorsies. They couldn’t make money more easily if they became an outpost of the mint. As for me, I’m gonna hold off until the /mountspecial is changed to shitting rainbows, thanks.

Annnnnd, we’re having that ‘are games art?’ hand-wringing competition again, are we? Oh, joy. This is such a useful conversation to have, because, without fail, it always changes the minds of those criticising games, and doesn’t look at all painfully insecure.

Yeah, most games probably don’t approach ‘art’, just as Hot Tub Time Machine is never going to be used as an example of the singular artistic vision of a cinematic auteur. It’s entertainment. ‘Games are not art’ does not have to be extrapolated to ‘games have no value/legitimacy’ every time. Games are usually fun. That’s enough. However, once again we (as gamers) rise to the bait like a dolphin at Sea World. Well, maybe with slightly more or less chattering, but to the untrained eye I imagine it looks quite similar.

Roger Ebert doesn’t get it, what a surprise. News at 11, old man doesn’t understand technology/a medium that rose to popularity after his own youth! It’s just like my grandpa using ‘back in my day…’ to rail against anything he doesn’t understand, without actually judging it on its own terms. Fuggedaboudit. For more, refer to my prior comments about seeking validation from those who are in no position to give it.

Image from Double Fine’s official site.

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You didn’t actually want to be free to own the games you bought, did you?

I’ve started to backup all my files in anticipation of finally installing Windows 7, which I’ve had sitting here for about a month. It’ll be an interesting upgrade, considering I bought XP the week it came out, and have kept using it through a number of different computers, skipping the maladies of Vista entirely. I have years of crap on my hard drives, so it’s taking hours to catalogue and properly backup everything.

The upgrade seemed necessary, though. Partially it’s because I want to actually use all of the 4GB of RAM I have and not have my graphics card use a big chunk of assignable memory, partially because I’d like to see what DirectX 10 can do for my gaming, and mostly, honestly, it comes down to WoW ONCE AGAIN not patching properly for me, whether I use a downloaded or disc installer, different versions of the patches, install under safe mode or to a different folder, or any of the other suggestions that a google search throws out. Blizzard suggests my problem relates to system restore, which I have never used, just like last time I had a patching problem they suggested it was due to a problem with Dell computers. Pity I’ve never owned a Dell in my life…

While that’s a game-related annoyance, it’s only related to one specific game. As part of my process of backing up my files, I stumbled upon a far more insidious problem: shitty copy protection. Using the oft-mentioned Mass Effect as an example, yet again, I remembered that because it uses SecuROM, I had to ‘de-authorize’ my computer or risk losing one of my five ‘licenced installs’, a ‘generous’ upgrade from the three installs that accompanied the game when it was first released on the PC (it also phoned home every 10 days). To do this, I couldn’t do anything in the game menu or in it’s uninstall program. No, I had to download a seperate tool, which scanned my system, gathering god knows what information before determining that Mass Effect was installed, and making me download another seperate tool to give me back one of my precious de-authorizations. Spore is another game requiring a similar process.

A few questions came to mind as I was going through this process. What if these authorization servers ever get taken down? Will there be a effective way to play the games you bought in a few years time when they’re no longer available at retail? Are you even considered to own the copies of games you buy under copy protection like this? The sad fact is, SecuROM doesn’t even seem that bad next to StarForce, which acts a lot like malware, making disk performance worse, opening your system up to security flaws, similar to a rootkit, and installing its own device drivers alongside game installs, that, up until the latest version of StarForce, didn’t necessarily get uninstalled when the game did.

Copy protection, like many things in gaming, isn’t new. Back in the day, there were code wheels, references to certain letters, sentences, or clues in user manuals that you had to match, symbol sheets (some printed on red paper so they couldn’t be legibly photocopied), deliberate errors introduced into the manufacturing process to prevent physical copying, and plenty of others which I either never saw or currently escape me. Sure, some of these methods are onerous, too, and kinda bullshit, but I’m not against people trying to protect their income from their work. But assuming your mother didn’t throw out your game boxes, and that you have hardware still capable of playing these old games, you have the physical capability to get through this copy protection by legimate means, and the only thing the copy protection affects is the game it’s meant for. This won’t necessarily be the case for any games you purchase with current forms of copy protection.

What I ask for from any copy-protection is for three simple rules to apply:

1. Don’t phone home. If you can’t authorize a game using the physical medium or downloaded file which I posess, don’t make me need to authorize it at all. Sure, the internet is basically ubiquitous, but that doesn’t mean your company or the game authorization servers will be around forever. I should have everything I need to play the game available straight out of the box or download.

2. Don’t limit reinstalls. I might forget to ‘deauthorize’ it…I SHOULDN’T HAVE TO ‘DEAUTHORIZE’ IT. I PAID GOOD MONEY FOR THIS GAME. Again, while I might be able to call or email for fresh installs, that doesn’t mean you’ll be around forever. Or the customer service rep might be a dick and not help me out. And also, checking how many more installs I’m ‘allowed’ means phoning home, again.

3. Don’t screw up my computer. Copy protection should exist within the game itself and affect the game only. It shouldn’t install anything seperate, it shouldn’t have any access to anything not directly related to the game it’s for, and it shouldn’t have any impact on the performance of my computer.

Am I asking to much by wanting to own the games I buy?

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