Chris Taylor, game designer behind Supreme Commander (as if you didn’t already know that), believes that “secure computing” is the future of the PC gaming world. Now he’s not so naive as to think that DRM is the answer (because SecuROM, pretty much the best in the breed, is about as airtight as a shot-up sponge). When he says secure computing, he’s talking about playing games from a central server rather than on individual desktops.
Now there are all sorts of ways to interpret what he’s talking about, because the description given in the article is pretty vague, but I think what he wants is for essential parts of the game not to ship with the client whatsoever. The only way you’d be able to play is while in constant communication with the server. Think World of Warcraft: anyone can make copies the client, but to be able to play the game, you need to log in to one of the servers, which only accepts logins from accounts that are paying the monthly fee. Only Blizzard has the code that runs the servers, so no one can run their own pirate servers. World of Warcraft is thus effectively “secure computing” according to Chris Taylor’s concept.
Sure, it works for MMORPGs, because a central server is necessitated by the nature of the game, and users accept and understand it. But for other games, especially single player games? Are consumers really going to put up with an unnecessary net connection being required to play for no other reason than anti-piracy? That would ruin the experience on laptops, which many people use in situations where net access is not available (think airplanes, buses, or trains).
And this brings up another problem: the gaming company now has to run and maintain an unnecessary server farm to service all of the requests from people playing single player. Keep in mind that these servers won’t merely be doing verification or validation; if they were, you could either spoof a verification server that would always send back “OK”, or simply remove the verification code from the client executable. No, these servers need to be constantly running a critical part of the game that the client doesn’t have so there is no way the server can be excised from the loop. That’s not insignificant.
The nice thing about computer games as they are now is you can pretty much play them indefinitely, so long as you keep your compatible hardware in operating condition. Not too long ago I went back and dug out my old copy of Dune II (on floppy disks, no less), and played through the campaign for old time’s sake. Now imagine if that game had been programmed using the “secure computing” paradigm; what are the odds that, after all these years, those servers would still be running? Very slim! With this form of secure computing, the PC game purchasing experience isn’t like buying a game in the traditional sense; rather, it’s more like purchasing a license of the game that expires whenever the game’s publisher decides it no longer feels like running the server, or goes under.
If Total Annihilation had used secure computing, no one would be able to play it today, because Cavedog has long since gone belly-up.
I understand that copyright infringement is a big problem in the PC gaming world, but I don’t think that “secure computing” is the answer. It’s simply not fair to the consumer to make games require an online component for no other reason than to prevent unauthorized copying. That’s too punishing of the people who buy the game legally. Thus, I really think multiplayer games with value-added server components (think MMORPGs or matchmaking services like GPGnet) are the future of PC gaming. There’s simply no good way to make a single player game pirate-proof.
Update 2008-02-28: Version 2 of this post is now published on Cyde Weys Musings. Why did I modify it and post it elsewhere? Two posts for the price of 1.5, that’s why! Seriously though, I do discuss some solutions that would make the secured computing initiative more palatable to consumers, so Chris Taylor — go read that one too.