[cod] Off-Topic: The Future of GSPs

James Landi jim at landi.net
Tue Feb 2 07:40:00 EST 2010 

1st as for ISPs letting you use their network to host your server is 
never going to fly unless you buy their very $$ business account and 
even then you're not guaranteed a good low latency connection. Remember 
these systems are a closed system with a couple of connections to the 
outside world with very very bad routing habits/tables LOL.

The problem lies with the developer and publisher.

Like mentioned above, publishers want you to keep buying their product, 
IE every year for a CoD game.  But most important they don't want to 
compete with the community of mappers and modders who lately seem to do 
better work and under cut their own maps and mods, as well as being free.

With this new MW2 model [sic], Activision can lock down their game and 
be the only one providing the extra content... oh at a price of course.  
This is the model that has made them  a lot of money via consoles.

It will be interesting to see how MW2's DLC for the PC works and if that 
will break the camels back in what is still a success both in sales and 
I hate to say it online players. Check out www.steampowered.com/stats .

I for one will not help support a company who wishes to milk a franchise 
dry.  I don't post MW2 news on my site, I don't post press released from 
Activision nor do I comment on their game anymore. (OK thread is 
different). I simply will not help them market their ported console game 
to my community.  I'm sure they can get a well established and machore 
xbox community to take our place helping support their games.

In the long run, I hate to say it but GSPs will have to diversify, they 
need to work on their relations with the big publishes to run their 
backend servers for ....dear I say.... their console support servers.

We really need to watch Treyarch and their next CoD game as well as 
EA/Dice with the next MOH title, in regards to the server side of these 
games.  I think this will be the breaking point for GSPs. and PC gaming 
communities who spring up around these games.

This time don't count on the these guys releasing a backend we all can 
support until we have code in hand.

Jim Landi
Rudedog
FPSadmin.com
Microsoft MVP, Games for Windows 2009. 2010




On 2/2/10 6:38 AM, Midnight wrote:
> Yep.  The game publishers don't care about providing a good online 
> experience, because they don't want people to play the same game for a 
> year or more.  They want them to get bored with it as soon as possible.
>
> Sadly the general population doesn't seem to care about spending $60 a 
> week on new games, even though they really can't afford it.  They 
> won't realize this till their 40 and haven't a dime in their savings.  
> Talk about expensive, buying all these console games only to play them 
> for a week, that's expensive.  Server hosting is nothing by comparison 
> when each guy is chipping in.
>
>
>
> Oliver Warburton wrote:
>> I'm afraid it's all down to the average intelligence and 
>> concentration span of the console user.
>>
>> I recently talked to a friend who has just 'found' online gaming. 
>> 'Have you got Xbox live?' he asked.
>>
>> When I quizzed him about his gaming habits, he'd given up on the COD6 
>> campaign mode- ' got bored'. And couldn't be doing with the 
>> multiplayer mode- 'too hard'. He's now moved onto another game, and 
>> will no doubt have bought another one by the weekend. I did try and 
>> explain to him how I've been playing games 'online' for something 
>> like 8 years now- recounting a tale of how I used to play CS 1.5 for 
>> 8 hours a day obsessively, lol :) He just didn't get it.
>>
>> What's important here, is we remember that this is who the game 
>> makers are now catering for. We're a minority when it comes to gaming 
>> now. A real minority.
>>
>> Oliver Warburton
>> Managing Director
>> INX-Network LTD
>>
>> INX-Gaming.com
>> www.inx-gaming.com
>>
>> Become a fan of INX on Facebook!
>>
>> http://www.facebook.com/pages/INX-Gaming/11051264033
>>
>> On 2 Feb 2010, at 11:17, Midnight wrote:
>>
>>> Ya I think CS Pro Mod is a huge step in the right direction, and 
>>> hopefully other projects will follow in their footsteps.  Sadly so 
>>> many noobs buy games for 10 hours of single player that it kinda 
>>> dilutes the power of a boycott.  And so many xbox players buy FPS 
>>> games now that it is hurting the PC side.  Everything is getting 
>>> watered down to the least common denominator which is basically a 
>>> $150 console and p2p hosting.  Sad.
>>>
>>>
>>> Mavrick wrote:
>>>> Here in Australia they're introducing Fibre to Home under the new 
>>>> National Broadband Network, apparently it's going to cost over 
>>>> 14billion (of tax payers, you & me) dollars.
>>>>
>>>> However I don't see the end of GSP's, open-source will introduce a 
>>>> new breed of games that players, hardcore gamers and clans will be 
>>>> willing to pay the price to host on high quality servers, with high 
>>>> quality non-congested networks.
>>>>
>>>> escapedturkey wrote:
>>>>> I'm starting to wonder if the future of hardcore PC gaming 
>>>>> community (with a desire to run servers under their own complete 
>>>>> control) will be on open-source / independent projects; for 
>>>>> example, Warsow, Alien Arena, Nexuiz, etc.
>>>>>
>>>>> RedDragon wrote:
>>>>>> I think, it isn't the bandwidth.
>>>>>> The publisher heading is from dedicated servers to peer2peer. In 
>>>>>> some cases like EA/Dice the server are too expensive for most 
>>>>>> clans and communitys to rent them for a cupple of months.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> -RedDragon (clanleader)
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Am 02.02.2010 11:27, schrieb escapedturkey:
>>>>>>> Do you believe GSPs will become obsolete as home bandwidth gets 
>>>>>>> larger and hardware evolves faster and smaller?
>>>>>>>
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