[cod] Off-Topic: The Future of GSPs

Rick Payton rick at mai-hawaii.com
Tue Feb 2 15:00:32 EST 2010 

man you guys are painting a grim picture for dedicated hosting. I can't
believe that EA, DICE, Activision, & Infinity Ward just don't see how
successful other companies can still be (ie; Valve, id) while providing
actual Linux client (id) and server support.

And to have NO mod support for Battlefield Bad Company 2 - holy shit!
Did these companies forget what made some of the previous games the most
talked about and played games? Hello, just look at Counter-Strike. That
game is on its way to being ... 11 years old now? And it's STILL played,
people STILL buy it, people STILL TALK about it. But hey, Valve must be
doing something wrong, eh?

Battlefield 2 could have been the next "Counter-Strike" but EA/Dice
decided to royally fuck us in terms of patches - remember the v1.3 patch
anyone? How long did we have to wait for THAT one to get fixed? If that
was Valve, or id, or hell ANY other game company, that patch would've
been fixed the next day, if not in a couple of hours. That kind of lack
of support can right quick kill any community based around a game ...

I know Valve and id have the same goal as EA and the others - get the
$$$. Gotta pay employees, pay for other expenses, and still turn a
profit. I get that. At least with Valve, I personally get the feeling
that they actually CARE about how the customers feel, and when a patch
is bad, they'll fix it right quick. They would NOT have let a server
crashing BUG go unresolved for over 6 months. 

And I know on the hlds mailing list there's a ton of hate towards them
as well - you'll find that in ANY game dev ran mailing list. I
personally don't feel they deserve all the hate mailed on their list but
I understand those admins' frustration as well.

I've read the entire thread of "future of gsps" and if every post is
accurate, then the future does seem bleak. I rather enjoy knowing HOW to
run a dedicated server at home for me and my family to play on, or
knowing how to configure and setup a rented server. I'd hate my own
knowledge of knowing that stuff just go to waste. I've never liked
consoles much, but recent developments in the PC "world" is making me
not like them even more. My PS2, I played Gran Turismo and Need for
Speed. My xbox? Need for Speed and Project Gotham Racing and Full
Spectrum Warrior (that was an interesting game). My 360 - I use it to
watch streaming videos from tversity. Every time I watched my kids play
Halo or anything other "shooter" game, all I could ever think about was
how much better this could be on a PC...

Console games have their place, don't get me wrong, but we can't let
game devs think that's the only way games should be played. Hell,
console game get developed ON A PC - why NOT do the PC version first -
since you're already WORKING WITH ONE, then rework the controls and
graphics so it works on a lower end console? Doing the console first
then doing a throwaway port to the PC is just ... backwards ... if you
ask me.

These game companies ... bewilder me. I'm still going to hold onto a
small shred of hope that EA/Dice can pull their heads out of their
collective asses and do BF3 right - proper mod support, and dedicated
server support for both Windows & Linux. I know, I read they've stated
that's not going to happen .... but I don't want to beleive that 100%
just yet :(

--mauirixxx - PC, Valve, and id software fanboy - in case you couldn't
tell.


-----Original Message-----
From: James Landi [mailto:jim at landi.net] 
Sent: Tuesday, February 02, 2010 2:40 AM
To: Call of Duty server admin list.
Subject: Re: [cod] Off-Topic: The Future of GSPs

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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>>>>>>
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