Admittedly I've not read the entire discussion thread on the Bioware forums, but one thing that strikes me about this 'phone home' (and something that also holds true for Steam) is that it is much less about piracy prevention, and much more about internal KPIs. Since every copy has to be verified online, EA knows exactly how many copies have been activated, and can match this against how many copies have been sold (better JIT metrics for manufacturing in the future?).
And since customers have to re-verify every 10 days, EA knows exactly how many people are still playing the game over time, which can be used to prove KPIs, or be used for future planning of add-ons or expansions. Sounds much more like business and marketing intelligence gathering than piracy prevention.
since no matter how many TV shows are made available on iTunes, I can't buy any of them - as they're not for sale in my localised version of iTunes, and I'm not allowed to buy from the US iTunes store.
Good article, but the contention pre-supposes the reader is American.
It struck me this morning that tech companies could be on to a winner with the analogue hole. If legislation requires every device to honour instructions from content owners, there's nothing stopping the device manufacturers from implementing this - and then requiring the content owners to license the right to use the embedded code that honours the content protection, and simply not displaying anything that has content protection but hasn't been licensed for display.
Sort of like the DVD license, but in reverse. This would mean content owners (like the MPAA's members) would have to obtain a seperate license from each device manufacturer to ensure their content is protected. The device manufacturers still implement the requirements, since not all analogue content will be 'protected'.
I'm not sure how content owners would react if their content couldn't actually be displayed, especially if this was implemented by some of the larger device manufacturers.
In short, device makers say 'we will honour content blocking in analogue signals, but we will block all such content unless you pay us a license fee to display your protected content.'
The 'test' presented may well be a measure of how most people deal with phishing emails in their email program, but what was presented left out far too much information to be really interesting.
For example, no email headers were available, not background history of similar emails to the account - all that was presented was the HTML version of the email as an image. So you couldn't even mouseover links to see where they went.
Carriers are dropping LBS because no-one is using them - with bloody good reason - they're too expensive. I have several LBS-based concepts I want to egt up and running - subscription-based services, real-world MMORPGs and much much more, but frankly I can't make any money on a business model for a game where *EVERY MOVE A PLAYER MAKES* will cost them 25p or 50p.
To make an LBS game work, you have to remove the stupidly high cost per access. If I can give unrestricted access to the LBS network to my players for ?10 or ?15 a month, then people will play. But ?10 or ?15 translates into only 20 moves a month - the game needs 20 moves per *day*.
The single biggest barrier to LBS services actually being even a little bit useFUL as opposed to overpriced and useLESS, is the carriers themselves.
Here's a challenge to the mobile carriers: drop the access price for LBS services and maybe, just maybe, people will actually start using them?
We've been trying to become a content provider to 3 for more years than I care to count. What do we offer? A 'Breaking News' service related to computer games. OK, so we deliver it via premium SMS rather than video clip, but the basic response we've been getting since day one is 'our customers aren't interested'.
We're one of these 'micro multinationals', and have been since we launched in 2001. For example, during 2002-2003 we had a full time employee in the USA and a full time employee in Canada, both working on live satellite television in the UK alongside UK-based employees. It's a logical extension of online work, and a concept I've been speaking about (http://www.alienpants.com/bizcase.zip) and writing about (I contributed a chapter in the recent Massively Multiplayer Game Development 2 book specifically about providing customer support using online staff). All my staff work remotely using the Internet, and frankly I don't care where they live (except when it comes to working out tax :) ). We even had one guy presenting a live TV show from his bedroom using a webcam. That version ran for 11 months, and the show itself is still broadcast daily almsot 3 years later (although they now produce it in a studio using proper cameras).
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usage metrics too
Admittedly I've not read the entire discussion thread on the Bioware forums, but one thing that strikes me about this 'phone home' (and something that also holds true for Steam) is that it is much less about piracy prevention, and much more about internal KPIs. Since every copy has to be verified online, EA knows exactly how many copies have been activated, and can match this against how many copies have been sold (better JIT metrics for manufacturing in the future?).
And since customers have to re-verify every 10 days, EA knows exactly how many people are still playing the game over time, which can be used to prove KPIs, or be used for future planning of add-ons or expansions. Sounds much more like business and marketing intelligence gathering than piracy prevention.
shouldn't the mpaa be happy?
After all, VoD is helping to reduce the number of movies rented - and isn't that another market they didn't/don't like?
Good idea
since no matter how many TV shows are made available on iTunes, I can't buy any of them - as they're not for sale in my localised version of iTunes, and I'm not allowed to buy from the US iTunes store.
Good article, but the contention pre-supposes the reader is American.
Plugging the Analogue Hole
It struck me this morning that tech companies could be on to a winner with the analogue hole. If legislation requires every device to honour instructions from content owners, there's nothing stopping the device manufacturers from implementing this - and then requiring the content owners to license the right to use the embedded code that honours the content protection, and simply not displaying anything that has content protection but hasn't been licensed for display.
Sort of like the DVD license, but in reverse. This would mean content owners (like the MPAA's members) would have to obtain a seperate license from each device manufacturer to ensure their content is protected. The device manufacturers still implement the requirements, since not all analogue content will be 'protected'.
I'm not sure how content owners would react if their content couldn't actually be displayed, especially if this was implemented by some of the larger device manufacturers.
In short, device makers say 'we will honour content blocking in analogue signals, but we will block all such content unless you pay us a license fee to display your protected content.'
4% of people detect 100% of phishing emails
The 'test' presented may well be a measure of how most people deal with phishing emails in their email program, but what was presented left out far too much information to be really interesting.
For example, no email headers were available, not background history of similar emails to the account - all that was presented was the HTML version of the email as an image. So you couldn't even mouseover links to see where they went.
Interesting survey, yet very flawed.
Location Based Services
Carriers are dropping LBS because no-one is using them - with bloody good reason - they're too expensive. I have several LBS-based concepts I want to egt up and running - subscription-based services, real-world MMORPGs and much much more, but frankly I can't make any money on a business model for a game where *EVERY MOVE A PLAYER MAKES* will cost them 25p or 50p.
To make an LBS game work, you have to remove the stupidly high cost per access. If I can give unrestricted access to the LBS network to my players for ?10 or ?15 a month, then people will play. But ?10 or ?15 translates into only 20 moves a month - the game needs 20 moves per *day*.
The single biggest barrier to LBS services actually being even a little bit useFUL as opposed to overpriced and useLESS, is the carriers themselves.
Here's a challenge to the mobile carriers: drop the access price for LBS services and maybe, just maybe, people will actually start using them?
Not particularly surprising
We've been trying to become a content provider to 3 for more years than I care to count. What do we offer? A 'Breaking News' service related to computer games. OK, so we deliver it via premium SMS rather than video clip, but the basic response we've been getting since day one is 'our customers aren't interested'.
Re: The Rise Of Micro-Multinational Companies
We're one of these 'micro multinationals', and have been since we launched in 2001. For example, during 2002-2003 we had a full time employee in the USA and a full time employee in Canada, both working on live satellite television in the UK alongside UK-based employees.
It's a logical extension of online work, and a concept I've been speaking about (http://www.alienpants.com/bizcase.zip) and writing about (I contributed a chapter in the recent Massively Multiplayer Game Development 2 book specifically about providing customer support using online staff).
All my staff work remotely using the Internet, and frankly I don't care where they live (except when it comes to working out tax :) ). We even had one guy presenting a live TV show from his bedroom using a webcam. That version ran for 11 months, and the show itself is still broadcast daily almsot 3 years later (although they now produce it in a studio using proper cameras).