Modern Warfare 2 Declared
The PC iteration of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 will not feature support for dedicated servers.
In a webcast [Saturday], Robert Bowling revealed the existence of IWNet, a matchmaking service Infinity Ward will operate beginning with Modern Warfare 2. But it ends dedicated servers, and fundamentally changes the culture of the game’s PC community.
Bowling, the Infinity Ward community manager, said IWNet makes multiplayer more accessible to the PC community on Modern Warfare 2, replacing the need for dedicated servers that are hosted and managed by players. But the hardcore PC crowd to whom he was talking, on BASHandSlash.com’s webcast, did not take the news in a completely positive light.
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Here’s the score: by building up its own matchmaking service riding shotgun with Steam, “you can get in and play with players your same rank,” Bowling said. However, “You’re completely reliant on IWNet and there is no dedicated server or server list. You rely on IW Net for matchmaking and your games, but you still have your private matches.”
I dismissed Starcraft II’s lack of a true LAN component. Long ago, CD-Keys established a doctrine of “one copy per computer” (hence why I’m opposed to the decision of “one username per account”). I scoffed at the Left 4 Dead 2 Boycott, a community rejecting the sequel to a game they thoroughly enjoyed. This is not one of those situations.
Game developers want to kill retailers. They want a society that accepts digital distribution as the standard. Following this, they will attempt to kill the video game console. OnLive represents the endgame for this industry. They do not want video games to be a manufactured good. They want them to be a service.
Beyond the latency issues that plague first-person shooter matchmaking, beyond the fatal blow to the competitive gaming community, beyond the restrictions on modmaking that creates an artificial market for “premium content” and its developer-held monopoly, the elimination of dedicated servers is a step towards “service”.
Similar situations have proven roadblocks, torn asunder by protest piracy. The reality is that Infinity Ward is backed by Activision. They undoubtedly had a say in this decision. That is, a company powerful enough, headed by a big enough asshole, to risk setting precedent that would create their vision for video gaming.
Why not? As vocal as computer games have proven, their money is competing against the console gaming juggernaut. And in the eyes of that console gaming community, computer gamers are the boy that cried wolf. They cried about SecuROM. They cried about StarForce. They cried about Spore. They cried about Left 4 Dead. They cried about Starcraft II. In the eyes of the console gaming community, we’re just a bunch of nerds and we need to stop whining.
In the meantime, make some popcorn. Three weeks until the release of Modern Warfare 2, and this is only the beginning of a battle that may prove one of the most important moments in video game history.
October 20th, 2009 at 7:58 am
“They cried about Starcraft II. In the eyes of the console gaming community, we’re just a bunch of nerds and we need to stop whining.”
“Three weeks until the release of Modern Warfare 2, and this is only the beginning of a battle that may prove one of the most important moments in video game history.”
nerd
October 20th, 2009 at 8:59 am
But guise, FPS are so much better on consoles. Playing on a PC takes no skill, it’s just point and click. The real talent involves using unwieldy thumbsticks to move and shoot like a drunken sod. Plus, why are PC gamers holding on to something so unnecessary? You should be happy that IW and Activision care enough about the industry to innovate for it. /sarcasm
October 20th, 2009 at 11:30 am
@grmnasasin0227:
The equivalent of playing a FPS with thumbsticks instead of mouse is like the difference of playing SC at velocity 3 instead of 7.
@article:
“video game history”?? More like “AAA video game industry history”. There’s a bunch of people that will play the good big games released years ago (SC, CS, Quake, W3, UT2004… etc, etc) or Indies.
I’m in that group, and I couldn’t care less about what limiting features the big developers implement. In fact, I’m laughing and loving this.
The worse the new games get, the more people joins me. In fact, I’ve gotten recently 3 people to start playing SC (people with computers capable of playing Crysis at Very High @ 1650×1080)
and they have only been playing it since 3 weeks ago.
October 20th, 2009 at 1:17 pm
was the /sarcasm really necessary?
October 20th, 2009 at 2:35 pm
I’ve seen plenty of dumbasses reply to this blog, and I figured I’d clarify ahead of time.
October 20th, 2009 at 3:29 pm
Damn, I read only the first phrase of grmnasasin0227, so I thought he was really defending thumbsticks.
October 20th, 2009 at 4:25 pm
I rest my case.
October 20th, 2009 at 5:07 pm
=/
October 20th, 2009 at 7:02 pm
Oh well
October 22nd, 2009 at 6:33 am
Why do you defend retailers? All they do is slap on an increased price without actually doing anything. Now since we cant download food, we will just have to put up with supermarkets but since we can distribute games online why don’t we?
October 22nd, 2009 at 7:23 am
Because it offers no benefit to the consumer. Games won’t get cheaper if they cut out the distributor, it’ll just increase the profit margin for the developer.
October 23rd, 2009 at 10:27 pm
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/10/23/
October 25th, 2009 at 2:35 am
Bigger profits = more room for companies to cut each others prices down and more money for future game development.
Theoretically.
Considering games cost twice as much in Australia for no reason though, this will probably not be the case. I suppose it means there should be more competition.
With COD4, as long as they don’t screw up the match making system and make the private servers meet all the needs of the competitive community they should be fine. If they screw up the match making though it will crash and burn.
Hopefully they won’t make such a stupid mistake.