ReD's Corner: The Ward of Infinite Wisdom - ReD's Corner

By Paul "ReDeYe" Chaloner

Whoever thought up social networking sites, particular the kind where a small bird can enable you to tell the whole world what you are up to, might come in for a bit of stick this week, especially if you are a member of staff at Infinity Ward. Our good friends, who were responsible for the “better” versions of Call of Duty made a bit of a gaff this week, or at least one of their number did, with an announcement on his Twitter account of an interview about the forthcoming and community saving game Call of Duty : Modern Warfare 2 (aka Cod6). It sparked unprecedented scenes of virtual running for the hills in the face of what seemed to be an apocalyptic sized announcement.

For those of you living under a rock these past seven days, a quick recap. Infinity Ward decided to move away from the traditional multiplayer model of dedicated servers and punkbuster cheat protection. Along side this, it was announced a move to the steam platform for delivery, but not implementation of the multiplayer itself. Instead, Infinity Ward have come up with a bespoke solution called IW.net which you, as well as a steam account (if you intend to download the game) will need an account on in order to play the game in multiplayer.

It will also mean an end to having your own server (if you are a clan) or being able to host one (if you are a server provider). It was also announced that any mods for the game would not work unless approved by IW and implemented somehow in to IW.net system. The implications for the competitive side of the community are massive, not least for the inclusion of a pro mod. Like every game that comes out these days, it is hard to believe that it will be competition ready on release (include demo recording, TV client, spectator slots, ability for people to stream video from the game and include even a rudimentary set of competitive tools like scoring properly), but I could be wrong.

This last point alone could lead to the game being overlooked by the competitive part of the Call of Duty community and in turn lead to it being ignored by the bigger leagues and ladders, those like ESL who have backed games that support the traditional esport model which enable them to deliver all of the things a player expects and at the same time provide accessibility to spectators.

What the impact is on server providers such as Verygames and Multiplay is harder to understand just yet. It could be that those companies can partner with IW and provide bandwidth and servers in return for their name being splashed over the server, but its not the same as actually running a business where you sell game servers and clans can pick and choose who they play on them.

Add to this debacle the decision to drop punkbuster and instead use Valves VAC2 anti cheat system, a system which is about as much use as a one legged man in an ass kicking contest. Its bad enough that this crummy waste of CPU is used in games such as Counter Strike Source and Team Fortress 2 (to name but two) and fails to catch many of the hundreds, possibly thousands of cheaters roaming the public and occasionally the competitive servers out there, without now giving an outdated, under developed and near useless product (bar catch the simple bots that have been on the market for 18 months) the chance to protect and preserve the next big game to come on the market.

So far it’s all been doom and gloom, but there is hope on the horizon for those of us who had and still cling to high hopes for the next iteration of Call of Duty. At the time of writing, a petition that went up less than a week ago, has over 100,000 signatures attached to it. Its aim is simply to ask IW to overturn the decisions they have made, which could so badly damage the game before it even comes out and almost certainly close down an entire competitive community.

And I have to ask this before we go any further. Is it me or do the changes look great if you are a casual player who has no inclination of playing in a clan or a tournament? Perhaps this is the key issue. Perhaps IW don’t give a stuff about the competitive scene and instead feel they will sell more games if they appeal to the casual player, who, lets face it, is the majority here. We seem to forget that despite plenty of signatures on the petition, we are a very small niche within a niche and our opinion doesn’t really count for much when it comes to actually making money from a game. It may be arrogant, but why should IW care anyway? All we do is moan about what they decide and what they intend to do with “our” game. On the other hand, it could be argued that we are the very people who keep the game alive longer than it would ordinarily live for by our tournaments and coverage of it, in turn leading to more sales.

Regardless of your position however, we are far too arrogant as a community of gamers when it comes to demanding certain things from developers. The trouble is, it’s a very old fashioned way of doing things and companies have moved on from developing games they love in their bedrooms to needing to make a profit and grow and although I would prefer the former approach, those guys got swallowed up by the big boys and it is what it is these days. We are lucky to get scraps of information from the likes of Bowling at all with the way we treat them, yet still, there are some fundamental worries about the release of this game and rather than bomb IW headquarters before the game is released, perhaps we should wait until it does come out before judging the changes so critically.

Anyway, I digress, back to the original plot! Robert Bowling recently updated his Twitter to say that IW would be listening and taking in to account the petition, but honestly and realistically is this going to change anything? I have my doubts. For starters, rumours are also doing the rounds that the game code is set and if it hasn’t gone gold (i.e. its been mastered and sent to press the game CD’s) already, then it is close to doing so. On the flip side of that, we have been told once more that the release date will be met. When you add these two things together, it doesn’t take a genius to work out that any changes to the game and how it works, especially something so fundamental regarding server use and mod blocking, could only be changed with a patch. They either cant change the gold version now or they would have to delay the release date to implement them.

Recent mistakes like this have meant an early death for the game it affects. I am thinking of Unreal Tournament 3 in particular which was a great game when you finally got in to a server, but near useless because of the menu system and the lack of code allowing you to join one. Before that, iD software, or more to the point, Raven failed spectacularly with Quake 4. 18 months after it was released, it was a great game, especially after iD software stepped in and saved it from death many times. The trouble with both of these examples is that because the code which made it on to the shiny disks in the shops was shit, the game never had a chance beyond the hardcore who stuck with it and even that was a tiny minority of those who bought the game.

Sure, it could all be fixed by a patch after release, but the game could already be dead by then.

It might not be all doom and gloom however. We haven’t even considered that iw.net might just be brilliant. We also haven’t heard IW say categorically that they won’t allow mods to be added, in fact the opposite it is true. It may also be that choosing to use VAC over punkbuster could be inspired, especially with news of the PB team practically folding anyway. Who knows, Valve may even invest more money in to updating and improving VAC, which might then benefit other games it serves.

Now obviously, all of that is very optimistic from our point of view, but is there anywhere on the internet right now that is even considering any of that? No, didn’t think so, its just bitching at IW and not a lot else. And you may ask why, but its simple really, we have become so used to being shafted by big companies over the games we love, particularly sequels. We are too used to being let down and ignored. We are also a pretty fickle bunch when it comes to dealing with change. We are gamers, we don’t like change and this is a big set of changes, so its no wonder we are feeling worried about it. IW hasn’t really done much to allay those fears either, despite saying they would take in to account the petition. As I have pointed out already, it’s probably too late to be back tracking on what they have already decided will go on the disk for release.

It may also be that having control of the servers means improved pings, more localised games and ones which pit you against similar skilled opponents and where you don’t get your head blown off every 2 seconds but instead actually learn about the game and can improve at your own pace. We sometimes forget what a harsh place a public server can be for a newbie. These ideas aren’t new and although I can only guess at the model they will use, we only have to look at iD software and Quake Live to see that, after a few teething issues at the start, this kind of system can work. The initial problem for iD was one of volume, just the sheer amount of people wanting to play their game made them use a queue system which sometimes took an hour to get through, just to join a server. It was bedlam for a while, but eventually and fairly quickly really, they sorted it out and got enough server power to cope.

That’s all very well and a good example if ever IW needed one of the need to get it right on day one, but we also must remember that was for a free game. It didn’t matter too much if you had to wait, you were losing only time and hadn’t parted with any hard earned cash to play the game. For IW its going to be very different and I for one won’t be very happy having parted with my cash for the game, only to find I have to queue for an hour to play it, or heaven forbid, I am faced with the possibility of not being able to play it at all online. Straight back to the store it would be going, I can tell you. It is also a dangerous way to go if they do underestimate the amount of users who will want to play on their servers because that’s just another easy way of driving people away from the game and returning it, never to come back, even if they do sort it out eventually.

I can’t help thinking however that IW and more to the point Activision have thought about all of this. After all, brains far cleverer than mine are employed at both companies and they simply must be on to something with these changes. Why else would they move away from the traditional ideas, especially if they are telling us that piracy is only a small reason for the moves?

I am also sure that just like Quake Live, which uses what sounds like a similar system, it will allow for leagues to run tournaments for the game. It just won’t be in the same way as before and might just give Activision/IW the control they want over who can run them.

We can only sit here and pray that we are all hopelessly wrong and that IW are right, but that’s difficult knowing what we know and knowing how often these things tend to work out (or not work out). We haven’t really got much of a track record in patience either, so if IW have misjudged this and fall over on day one with all of the changes they have announced implemented; I think we might all be hopping back in to COD4 quicker than you can say “tweet update”.