Very intellectual! :D

there are no discussions to be had, as I never mange to get past your first sentence in any single of your posts... again, stopped reading right there.

To me this question sounds a bit like:

"How to make fixed-line telephones and diesel-engine cars attractive to modern people?"

The first question that pops into my mind is, why should they be made attractive to anyone anymore?

Ummmm....those are the only kind of phones we have here. :P

Well, there was a time when Skyrim got a mandatory update that actually broke some of the game's functionality (1.2, which broke elemental resistance (for both the PC and everything else) and made dragons fly backwards, among other issues).

(For anyone keeping score, I believe this botched forced update is the whole reason that Steam has a beta chaneel now.)

Ok that is the ultimate sales pitch: "They are the only available option, so there.". Sold.

I'm not so sure. I know a lot of people here that simply opt not to have a phone at all.

Shit, if it wasn't for the B&B I probably wouldn't have one.

My opinion on that is that access control is ok, provided that it makes sense in the context of the business model it enables.

If you sell me a single-player game, give me the buyers' experience (ie, lump sum payment upfront) and then require me to connect to a server to play, I'd say you're giving common sense a run for its money, most probably in the name of greed (or at the very least some unhealthy control obsessions).

Now, if you're offering a selection of games and your business model is to charge me a reasonable monthly subscription to access those games, I think it makes senses and empowers me with more options on how I want to pay for my games.

Netflix has gone down that route for movies & TV series and I thing they are offering a great service. I've cut down a lot on my movie purchases since I've started using their service (I'll still occasionally purchase the stuff I really want to have a personal copy of) and I ended paying a lot less overall for movies as a result of that.

Similarly, I think the subscription model makes a lot of sense for a massive multiplayer game where they need permanent servers (which incur a recurring maintenance cost) to run the game.

I believe you mentioned WoW in one of your comments earlier. I never minded that they charge a subscription fee (I think it makes a lot of sense given the nature of the game they run).

Actually, the reason they annoyed me and I never played the game is because they charge BOTH an upfront fee to purchase the game and then a subscription fee to play. I felt they were double-dipping there and that rubbed me the wrong way so I never played it (I can be stubborn like that).

Honestly, it if wasn't for my parents and my gf, I wouldn't have a phone. I hate this device so much.

It's a "you can bother me in real time at a time of YOUR convenience" torture device. People call me at all kinds of wrong times... during meetings, at the movie theater when I forget to turn off my phone, when I'm driving, etc... I don't know why people willingly subject themselves to this. Disconnect, enjoy your time offline... just make sure to check your emails at least once a day.

You and most of the video game buying public don't seem to understand there is no difference between a single player or multiplayer game, they are marketing terms. A videogame is just a piece of software and in fact pre high internet everywhere no one had this "debate" that somehow "multiplayer is different" because they couldn't control the software pre internet. The agenda of the corporate world has always to been to remove any control of the software from the end user, the tech industries dream is basically what apple had got with the iphone. Once smart phones took off that normalized the walled garden approach to software, there is now an entire generation of kids playing games on their phone and have no idea how computers even work. That has also translated to steam drm, f2p and mmo's. They pretty much have total control of the multiplayer code of most games now we no longer get complete games like UT2004 or Quake3 in the 90's and early 2000's.

In fact during the 90's you simply got games with BOTH single and multiplayer that you fully controlled. Once videogame companies found out how bad peoples brains were at processing reality we got fraud and mass theft. Which is what is. The new "business model" is microtransactions and lootboxes, that means total war on game ownership from every side for the foreseeable future thanks largely in part to mmo's, f2p dota 2, mobile gaming and gatcha. Do you think big game companies are going to say no to billions of dollars ( https://wccftech.com/clash-royale-hits-2-billion-revenue-landmark/ )

You people are out of your minds if you think gaming will not go fully drm in the future. Windows 10 is now an operating system laying the ground work for permanent software and hardware drm and no one has truly batted an eye amongst most of the public. They are going to get their walled garden because the average member of the public is dumb as bag of hammers.

All an "MMO" is an invented marketing term by bullshit ceo's and their marketing departments to relabel NORMAL RPG games we got in the 90's to push the agenda to get people to pay for the same rpg monthly while not owning it. Thats why blizzard was so mad with wow private servers - it exposes the scam and rot of the game industry, that the game industry is full of thieves.

The whole business model argument people are engaging in here, you don't seem to understand you've fallen for the propaganda trying to "be fair" with the corporate world, the same corporate world who has destroyed the constitution and the public domain. You do not live in a world where rule of law exists for the average member of the citizen of any capitalist nation is historically and politically ignorant how the world actually works. The last 200 years of copyright extension by big business getting what it wants everytime is overwhelming evidence the dominance will continue.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/77/Tom_Bell%27s_graph_showing_extension_of_U.S._copyright_term_over_time.svg

You for some reason compare MMOs with normal RPGs. They are fundamentally different as in I have zero interest in any MMO, yet play a ton of normal RPGs.

MMO!=RPG. Never have and never will. I still don't understand what the appeal of WOW is but from what I've seen, I would be bored in 10 minutes. Same with basically any other MMO. It is its own genre that apparently has its audience (for one reason or another). But don't compare MMOs to normal games, because they aren't.

Technically, there is single-player, multi-player and massive online multiplayer.

In one case, I'm playing alone. In the other, I invite my buddies over to play. And in the last, I'm playing with a bunch of strangers over the internet, possibly in some kind of persistent world.

The experience is different and the game needs to be tailored/adapted for each. I've done all three btw (still play alone and with my buddies, played Utopia for almost a decade).

The first two can/should be DRM-free at least for the buyers' business model.

It's more nuanced than that. I think there is at least a good 60%-70% of the audience that shouldn't go anywhere near the bloody internals of their machine. They simply don't have near the required competence to manage an OS.

Many years back, I shared a machine with a friend and he got so much sh*t in there (including trojans and the like) that the machine become unusable and I had to format it (at which point I put a different password on it and told my friend his computer access privileges had been revoked). Trust me, Microsoft telling this guy what he should install on his computer is a very very good thing.

That being said, I agree with you that yes, corporations will get all the keys to control your experience if you let them and yeah, techies like me got completely ignored in the smartphone/tablet scene (technically, you can now hack a mini-tablet with a Raspberry Pi, but that's a relatively recent development).

You didn't have the internet in the 90s. The internet has opened the door for all kind of services you could only dream about in the 90s: email, wikipedia, Google, virtual storefronts like this one, forums, matchmaking web sites, Github and I could go on. Most of these services require some kind of centralized control.

And then, there is the browser... the component of the web that initially drew to the web... you don't realize how pervasively evil platform lockins are until you've had to maintain gaming middleware that runs across 12+ of them. This kind of endeavor requires specialized knowledge for each platform, it requires some insane pre-compile macros that would make your blood curl and it requires nightly builds and testing session that takes the entire night.

I've come to embrace the web as a deliverance from this madness. scr*w consoles, scr*w smartphones, scr* tablets, scr*w MacOS, scr*w Windows, scr*w Linux. Seriously, as far as clients are concerned, scr*w everyone... guys, just make sure to put some kind of browser in your platform and I'll support ya. Just don't ask me to spend MY valuable time figuring out YOUR platform-specific language, libraries and idiosyncracies. I can't be bothered quite honestly.

Well, I wouldn't go so far as to call people dumb (they just have needs that differ from ours), but between the consoles and the smartphones, what you suggest Is quite possible.

Luckily, I have a backlog to last me a lifetime. Might even play some MMO if I ever get to have the time again (they tend to be so demanding... they should have more that catter to people with a life).

Na, I've played Utopia long enough to understand that it fills a need.

I prefer to call my point of view nuanced.

I think skepticism toward modern corporations is fully warranted and companies will overstep (inserting control measures were none are warranted).

That being said, realize that there are valid use-cases for centralized control and that some people really prefer to cede complete control over their devices so that they don't have to manage them.

The big thing for me is price point and what I actually get. If all I'm getting is a thin little manual and a plastic dvd/bluray case, I'm not interested, because I'm paying more for things I don't want or need.

That said, I think publishers need to take a step back and review what their practices used to be, like Infocom's "Feelies," large maps, manuals filled with lore, amazing box art, etc. Yes, these things cost money, but that is literally the only draw to buying physical. I can back up my digital installers in any way I'd like to, at least with my GOG purchases.

I could rant about manuals for an extended breadth of time alone. As far as music goes, yes and no. Yes, online only is definitely the leading way to purchase content, and is likely never going to get displaced any time soon, but consider the vinyl renaissance that's been happening, with limited runs, the resurgence of the record shops, and people purchasing modern record players. Is it a niche? For sure. But for a lot of people, it's becoming a lucrative niche.

I feel like something similar could be possible in the games market, but only if done the correct way, even if it's only limited runs, like many music artists have been doing.

You don't seem to see the the internet has undermined capitalism completely. You have no power over these businesses, the reason we live in this modern videogame dystopia where games are literally being destroyed as we speak is because the great myth of capitalism is bullshit.

We have exactly zero ability to influence the blizzard and EA's of the world because there a sucker born every minute. The vast majority of the game playing masses do not care, why do you think world of warcraft even exists? You don't have a nuanced point of view. I've literally watched games having been stolen out from under us,. the literate half of the PC game community from the 90's without us being able to do shit because the internet has radically undermined customers power.

The whole ideology of vote with your dollars and "We have the power" is 100% bullshit because the internet enabled companies to gain access to the people with impulse control problems. Think about this - gacha and mobile games profits are entirely dependent on less than 1% of the users. Before the internet no business could ever hope to sustain itself on such a small group of people. The internet now gives 24/7 access to the stupidest and richest among our species.

In an internet enabled age you'd need physical proximity to businesses making games to be able to effect their negative business practices.

The reason steam exists is not because we wanted steam or drm back in 2004, the reason these things exist is because the only way we could have put a stop to steam drm back in 2004 was if we lived in a society where we had physical proximity to the business. It would have been hard to defraud the game community of the PC literate half of mankind had been within 2 blocks of valve corporate HQ.

You don't seem to get the market is a myth and hence you are in fact uneducated. People who believe in the free market are just like the religious people of the past.

You have no market power if you have zero ability to influence how things are made. Pre internet it was impossible for software companies to lock software on their computers, they physically had to put the entire software on discs and phyiscally ship us the complete software or else they wouldn't get paid.

All Gabe Newell had to do in an internet enabled society is just sit comfortable in his office, cut the game into two pieces, hold part of the game hostage on his servers in his office and laugh maniacally and wait for a bunch of teenagers to make him filthy rich.

You don't seem to understand no one really "chose" steam, Gabe newell smart man that he is - realised that the vast working and underclasses of capitalism are dumb and gullible as a bag of hammers. Let's say its back in 2004, steam is just about to be forcibly shoved into half-life. We - that means all of us, now that the internet has enabled valve have ZERO MARKET power against his attack on our software. If we were all within two blocks of valve during that time, do you really think steam drm would have taken off? When you can sit in your office and create software in a way hostile to your customers and your customers are 200+ miles away you don't live in a market society anymore.

Anyone who believes in the free market fairy at this point is literally uneducated. The free market was always a myth for the masses.

See here below, protectionism for the rich and big business by state intervention, radical market interference.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHj2GaPuEhY#t=349

Science on reasoning, your brain doesn't see reality as it is:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYmi0DLzBdQ

Manufacturing consent:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwU56Rv0OXM

https://vimeo.com/39566117

US distribution of wealth

https://imgur.com/a/FShfb

http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

That's who rules American?

I thought we were an Autonomous Collective.