Earlier today, a creative director at Microsoft Studios, Adam Orth, took to Twitter (@adam_orth) to loudly proclaim his views on the 'drama around having an "always-on" console'. As you might not be surprised to know, people got pissy at him very quickly, and the entire shitstorm has had the end result of him hiding his Twitter account to attempt to stop the avalanche of grumpy gamers tweeting nasty things at him.
I'm grumpy too. See, I'm an Australian — our country has extremely poor broadband coverage — and I've seen first-hand the effects of always-online DRM crippling games that are sold over here. If I had a direct line to Mr. Adam "I Don't Get It" Orth, here's what I'd say.
—
Adam, mate.
This whole "not getting it" thing – it's not working for you. I'm not sure what your official responsibilities at Microsoft Studios are, but I'm definitely sure they don't extend to "pissing off thousands of potential customers". I understand, that in your sheltered little West-coast bubble, everyone you know might have a constant Internet connection. Heck, they might have two. That, however, doesn't mean that you can extend that reasoning to the rest of the world. For example, I live in a little country called Australia. We only have around 23,000,000 residents, making us far less important to publishers than, say, America is, but that doesn't stop us being loudly vocal about all the times that you big gaming companies have screwed us over.
How has this happened, you ask?
Let's look at some hard numbers. According to the Australian Bureau of Stats, as of 2011, only 75% of Australians had internet access, whether that be via ADSL, 3G, or even dialup. Can you imagine how many potential customers you're alienating by saying that their consoles must be connected to the internet 24/7? I know – and don't accuse me of confirmation bias – at least six people who don't even bother using their consoles online, since their internet connections are either nonexistent, or too patchy to have a consistent gameplay experience.
That's right: in our little rinky-dink country, even if you have a broadband or mobile connection, you're not guaranteed to have it constantly. Hell, in my old house, my broadband connection would cut out at least ten times per day, simply because of the poor infrastructure in my area. In a hypothetical situation where I had just shelled out $800 for the newest gaming console (since everything gaming-related is more expensive here than in the US), and I couldn't even turn it on because my internet was out, would you tell me to "deal with it"? I'd hazard a guess at "yes", because your Amero-centric views are tellingly similar to those of the gaming industry as a whole.
I need to make this clear: Adam, I don't think you're an asshole. I understand that you're just trying to do your job. I even understand that maybe, just maybe, you might have been having a bad day before you posted those tweets (and, even if you weren't, I'd put money on the fact that you are now). However, that doesn't make it okay for you to dismiss the hundreds of thousands of avid gamers across the world (and particularly in Australasia) who rabidly consume games but don't have a stable internet connection.
I mean, seriously now, is it even necessary in the first place? If I want to go over to my mate's place and play Call of Duty with him, we're not going to need to bloody well connect to a Microsoft server to play it, are we? No – we turn on the over-priced hunk of plastic, put in the disk, and enjoy blowing each other's heads off in various brutal manners.
To wrap this up, I'll explain what I've said in easy-to-understand terms, in case you're incapable of understanding what life is like for people who don't live in America:
(1) always-on DRM is bad.
(2) Not everyone has a constant internet connection like you do. Also, infrastructure in the Asia-Pacific region exists in a general state of suckiness.
(3) You were a dick on Twitter and you kinda deserved the backlash.
(4) I like making numbered lists.
<3,
Damon
