Well, its been a while since I’ve written. Alot has changed over the course of the past year. I’ve shoved my foot in my mouth buy purchasing an Xbox. I figured might as well jump on the bandwagon, play some neat games, and give Microsoft the chance to rape my wallet. Nothing really has piqued my interested lately other than the whole PC-Infinity Ward-MW2-Dedicated Server hoopla. After ingesting so many forum posts and troll topics that I’ve finally decided to comment on the whole situation. I find this debate especially close to my heart since the purchase of my Xbox 2 months ago.
Let’s debrief for a minute. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, one of the most anticipated titles of 2009 was released to a firestorm of controversy earlier this month. PC gamers felt like they were getting hosed by IW/Activision because of several factors.
1. Dedicated Servers
2. Matchmaking Service
3. Price
I feel that the PC gamers pissed off at IW/Activision have a right to be. Infinity Ward is starting a new service with the launch of the game. IWNet is supposed to be the end-all-cure-all for PC gaming. It’s supposedly going to streamline the gaming experience and make it easier on everyone. Everyone except the competitive gamers. PCG’ers are used to having complete control over the games that they play. Take counter-strike for instance. Just one game, but if you were to look at a server list there are about 100 different mods running on the servers allowing them to tweak game modes and damage to a level that seems fun for the server administrator and his/her friends. However, IW sees this as a way to cheat the system. That type of modding allows for unbalanced games, and an “unwanted” game experience. Here, I do have to agree with IW. Some of the COD4 modded servers with 32-64 players is just absolutely ridiculous. It’s not fun, you die as soon as you spawn. However, whoever is hosting/paying for the server has the right to do whatever. For this reason, the completive gamers went up in arms because this wouldn’t allow them to change game settings needed to play competitively.
So, continuing the story of “Activision Knows Best” we move on to Matchmaking with IWnet. With the dedicated server removed from the equation, IWnet implements a P2P matchmaking service that will automatically find the “best host” with the “best connection” to all players and then will start the game. That sounds great and all, but what happens if you’re playing a game with friends and a dipshit decides to crash your party. How do you get rid of him? What if he is cheating? Well you’re shit out of luck, should have started a private game. Apparently MW2 has no way to kick disruptive or cheating players from games. So when that haxor shows up the only way to get rid of him is to start a new game.
Finally, we move on to the price point of the SKU. The going rate for a “next gen” title is $60 bucks. Alright, we used to pay that kind of dough for an SNES game back in the day. But $60 for a PC Game? I don’t think so. The most common association to why console games are about $10 more expensive than the same game on the PC would be due to licensing fees. But that doesn’t make sense for a PC game, where there are no fees to make a game. That 10 bucks is going right into Activision’s coffers. So, not only do PC gamers have “less” than they are used to, but also have to pay more. I think that’s fucked up.
