Pay-to-play PC Shadowrun?

[A Black Falcon]

A few points/quotes...


- No Non-Microsoft support yet ("third party" is the wrong phrase. Microsoft may make Windows, but they have no preferential treatment as far as publishing PC games goes, so there are no "first parties" really...)

GFW: Is this the first announcement in Microsoft history that hasn't included a single third-party publisher?
Peter Moore: Well, I think we've probably made some other announcements that don't involve third-parties...as we've told all of the other third-parties, and I've been instrumental in this with third-party publishers, the complexity of what we're proposing to do with Games for Windows Live is something that my studios and Microsoft Game Studios are focused on first, learning some of the challenges, learning some of the obstacles to successful deployment of the service. We do have third-parties that are ready, standing by, but it's very much a first-party initiative first, and then third-parties will follow.

GFW: So you're saying that some third-party support is lined up?
PM: Not that I can announce. These are not things that you just turn on overnight and suddenly there'll be a game there. We have been very aggressive in laying out our entire program, initiative, and three-to-five-year strategy for this to all third party publishers. I've been involved in most of those meetings on the road. And while nobody is in a position to make an announcement yet, there's a lot of activity.

GFW: Let's linger on that. If the third-party support is there, wouldn't it make more sense to wait until those partnerships are secured, then announce the whole program all at once?
PM: I want to drag you back up to 30,000 feet and the overall strategy behind this, which is building a broader community around gamers regardless of the device that they're playing on; the ability to access Xbox Live whether they're at work, whether they're on the road, in their hotel room on their laptop, whether they're at home in front of their TV. We think that's as important as cross-platform play. So while having content that is both rich and deep is going to be important, and while cross-platform play is going to be very important, access to the community shouldn't be overlooked. When I talk to gamers, what they're excited about is being able to [access Live] 24 hours a day, seven days a week, whether they're at their office or whether they're in their hotel room or whether they're online in an airport waiting room.

- They're trying hard to come up with excuses for why they think PC gamers will pay for something free

GFW: As someone who subscribes to Xbox Live, getting Gold perks on PC is great. From the diehard PC player's perspective, it's different. On Xbox 360, you don't have other options; if you want to play Gears of War online, you get Live. PC players, however, have other options, so I'm wondering, what is it about this particular option that makes it a must-have?
PM: Well, don't underestimate achievements. You're right, though. If you're a hardcore PC gamer [...] you have to hang back and have a look. But we are giving you a choice, and we're opening up a world where you get access to the console community. A lot of existing Gold members are going to get better value out of their Gold membership, and I like to think that we'll also grow both Silver and Gold memberships because of the breadth of the device-agnostic gaming experience that we're now providing.

-They never really answer the following point... it's brought up a bunch more times, but they dodge the question left, right, and center... and for good reason, considering how huge it would be if it were true.

GFW: One developer says that, if he signs his game up for Games for Windows Live support, Microsoft's agreement blocks him from offering many Gold-tier features to nonsubscribers. So say, for example, that there's a Battlefield 3, and that it works with Live; that Gold users get voice-over-IP and can collect medals and all these other things that are already in Battlefield 2. Now we'd have to pay the premium for Gold accounts to access these features. The developer could no longer offer its own versions of voice-over-IP and stat tracking.
PM: I'll throw that back to somebody else to give you an answer. We'll get back to you on that.

GFW: He sees it as a hostile move. The words he used were "hijacking" and "hostage-taking." [Moore laughs] Yeah, yeah...hyperbole, but if that is the case, it would be a matter of suddenly having to subscribe to get what some people feel entitled to, to get what they're used to getting for free. I guess it's a matter of how much else you're offering....
PM: That's it, and the consumer will make that choice, the gamer will make that choice, and they'll see the value and subscribe, or not. Nobody is forcing anybody to do this. As the company that built the 360 and the company that's...reinvigorating the Games for Windows platform, we think that bringing the two platforms together as a very viable and powerful community, as well as offering some unique cross-platform play, is an opportunity that gamers want. Nobody under any circumstances is saying you must do this. You can still continue playing in the PC game environment that you like, and if the free environment's important to you, then have at it, great, we love people who play games on the PC. Because we're Microsoft, we'll continue to support that conditioning. Now, the concept that we debuted at [the Electronic Entertainment Expo] last year was, "Wouldn't it be great if we could somehow bring it all together?" We've deployed a tremendous amount of work, a tremendous amount of effort, and a tremendous amount of financial resources to make that happen, and we'll continue to invest in making that happen. I'm hoping that gamers will see the value when they look at what they get for their 50 bucks a year. But they may not, Shawn. You may be right, and they'll choose to continue to play using the services that are free, and God bless 'em. As long as it continues to be on a Windows PC, I don't think we have too many issues with that. A good example is what we do on the 360 with HD-DVD. Under no circumstances did we force high-def movie playback into the console. Rather, we gave you the opportunity to buy an HD-DVD player separately should you be fortunate enough to own an entertainment center at home that can take advantage of high definition.

No, I'd say that "hijacking" and "hostage-taking" aren't really hyperbole at all...


This quote illustrates the point even more clearly. The question is put up several times, but he never actually addresses the point... which, I am afraid, means that it might well be true... he says "no", but then only talks about Live online -- he doesn't say a word I can recognize about NON-Live online networks for games and what is allowed there if you've got a Live-enabled game, and that is an incredibly important question...

GFW: One question I put to Peter involved restricting choices. Imagine a Battlefield 3. It's on Games for Windows Live, it has voice-over IP, stat-tracking, and a promotion system. Now, is it true that, at that point, EA or whomever could not provide workarounds for people who purchased the software but not Live subscriptions?
JJR: Short answer to your question is, no, if I heard it correctly. Let me walk through the specifics. Just like we're giving consumers choices, game developers are always going to have choices as well. They can create multiplayer play for Silver users. If they want matchmaking, if they want to take advantage of our zones and achievements, they can add Gold. They're not restricted to one or the other.

GFW: Say they offer Silver and Gold through Live, as you say, but then they also want to provide stat-tracking, matchmaking, medals, and VOIP to people who do not subscribe to Live, period. Can they? JJR: Game developers are in complete control over what stats they have in game. People who are not Gold, who are just Silver and are not paying anything, are able to access and earn every single-player achievement. With multiplayer achievements, that's where we got into it and asked, how do we make...these worth something? On the console side and also when we were going out and seeing what PC gamers wanted -- they wanted something that was almost auditable or accredited, free from all the hacking and the cheating that's customary in PC games. What's a rank matter if you think everybody above you is hacking? So you want your rank to...I don't have a good word for it....

GFW: ...be based on merit, and not exploitation?
JJR: You want confidence that it's against a common scale. So for some classes of achievement, we had to figure out a way to create a common scale, and that's where Gold multiplayer achievements come in. You have to be in the ranked matchmaking system to know that you're playing by the rules. So yes, a game could have ranking, and that's why I said your short answer is no, but they wouldn't throw in Gold-ranked match achievements because they're not within that system. Does that make sense?

And then there's this...

GFW: Another question that Peter wasn't able to answer at the time had to do with certification and how it pertains to patches and additional content. Let's say your MMO works with Games for Windows Live. You need to patch it, pronto, or perhaps you want to add content. Would you need certification?
JJR: I remember reading your magazine in the last couple of months, and you loved a high-profile game but dinged its rating because it shipped with some bugs. If you want to talk about this, that's probably a good example. The point of us working on stuff is to stop that from happening. Which way do you want it? Do you not want us there, so you have the bugs, or do you want us there, so you don't have the bugs?

GFW: So that's an indirect yes, right? That you'd need to certify patches and other content?
JJR: If you're taking advantage of the Games for Windows Live network, then, yeah, because we're not gonna have a game go up that breaks the matchmaking service, or violates the way our security measures work. Go back to achievements, for example. The first thing we ask is, did they give 100 or 1,000 or 10,000 gamer points? Somebody needs to check and confirm that, yes, they gave 1,000 like they were supposed to. Not too many, not too few. We make sure that multiplayer matchmaking and achievements and everything else works, and that's to avoid the problems you guys cited.

GFW: Yeah, that makes sense. What about requiring third-party developers to charge for content that they might prefer to offer free of charge?
JJR: Developers are still in control, on the console as well as on PC. They choose what to do.

GFW: Epic is another story with Gears of War, but if they said, "We don't want to charge for whatever content we're doing," would that be their decision to make?
JJR: I think developers determine what to make and how to make it. If they wanted to use PayPal in Live Marketplace, we're going to say, guys, we're using Microsoft points.

GFW: I'm talking entirely free. No points, no payments.
JJR: We're certainly not forcing anybody to do anything.

You aren't? But what about all that about Epic not being allowed to offer free content for Gears of War, then? Are there different rules for Windows Live than Xbox Live on that issue?