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Spore screenshot

VideoGamer.com: What's your feeling on the DRM outcry following the release of Spore. Is three authentications per user unreasonable?

RS: I have a household, there are six of us, we have seven PCs, my son has two machines of his own, a gaming notebook and a gaming desktop. Certainly it would be nice not to have to buy multiple copies of the game for my household. But on the other hand even free games, like the Nexon games and others, they don't allow you to take a single log in and log in simultaneously on multiple machines. The music services on the internet require unique log ins, iTunes has a limit to the number of PCs that can access the content. You have to set a limit somewhere. I'm not saying EA picked the right number. Personally for my household I wish it was five. I bought two copies of the game because I knew going in that it was three.

I think a bigger issue is the backlash against the actual company who's DRM solution was used. When I read the Amazon posts and the complaints that people lobbied to make their point, what I read was people are fed up with SecuROM and its potential to wreak a little havoc on a system. That's probably a bigger issue in my mind. I think people can tolerate the limitations within reason. Steam makes it easy. You can authorise and de-authorise machines. iTunes makes it easy to de-authorise and authorise machines. Perhaps the approach that EA took where you have to actually get on the phone and talk to someone about that machine you tried to install it on. Here's my example: On my youngest daughter's machine it installed all the way through, went to play and she didn't have the right graphics. The next thing I'm doing is taking a look at her entire system and saying, 'OK this machine has a Pentium 4, has a four-year-old graphics card, let's reconsider whether this is the right machine for her to be playing this on anyway'. And I went ahead and built her a new one, a new hard drive and everything. So now I'm looking at it going, 'OK how many did I install it on? OK it looks like I installed it on five machines already, this is my sixth one. If I go to a seventh machine, God forbid I want to put it on one of my computers or something, then we're out of luck and I've got to get on the phone'. That's an inconvenience and that's something that EA probably should have had some background on from a consumer experience perspective before they made that decision.

VideoGamer.com: What do you think of LucasArts right now given that they're not doing PC versions of a lot of their games, like Star Wars: The Force Unleashed and Fracture?

RS: LucasArts hasn't made a good PC game in a long time. That's my opinion. They make some pretty good games for the Wii, you know those little sticks you wave in the air, that seems like a natural fit for a lightsaber game, sure. But I think the last good PC game they made was probably Jedi Knight 2, and even their strategy games weren't that great. So I can understand why they would make that call. They're not really creating product within LucasArts themselves. They're going at it job shopping their IP. That may be a little controversial for me to say that, but that's what I see happening. There's no development team necessarily within LucasArts any more, they've basically turned into an intellectual property machine and supporting the PC, why should they? It really doesn't fit their property.

VideoGamer.com: We ran an interview with Cameron Suey, the producer of the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions of Force Unleashed, and he said they weren't doing a PC version because of scalability issues, that the game would require a high end PC and not enough people own one to justify the release. What do you think about his explanation?

RS: That's not an educated answer. In the last several years there have been at least 100 million PCs sold that have the capabilities or better of an Xbox 360. It's ridiculous to say that there's not enough audience for that game potentially and that it falls into this enthusiast extreme category when ported over to the PC. That's an uneducated response. And the PCGA has research available to members to show that if you're making a decision on a game and you have that belief that there's just not a large enough audience, let us show you that there's a huge audience that has the capabilities that are being described there. You can make a run at that audience without having to sacrifice anything on your game at all.

VideoGamer.com: Is it such an uneducated answer to be perhaps not the actual true reason?

RS: I think you probably got plenty of feedback and opinions from your readers and my personal opinion is if they're making games for the Wii, Xbox and PS3 they're scaling their experience to meet all three of those platforms. They're good on the Wii, better on the Xbox 360 and the best on the PS3. There's no argument that they could give not to be able to support good better and best on the PC.

VideoGamer.com: Has Vista hindered or helped PC gaming?

RS: My opinion isn't as important as probably what the majority of the gaming audience might say. I think there are some great things about Vista but I think there are some things about Vista that cause problems for gamers in particular, and I think those need to get dealt with. I think Microsoft is aware of them. PCGA policy is not to comment on other members' products when doing interviews like this but on the whole I'm going to give you a squishy answer here. My answer is there are some great things about it and there are some not so great things about it. The better answer is what do consumers think than what does Randy Stude the president of the PCGA think of it.

VideoGamer.com: I'll phrase it differently. What would the PCGA like to see from the next Microsoft operating system in terms of gaming?

RS: Personally I'd love to see it where I can take a disc, put it in the drive and be playing in a matter of a few minutes rather than having laborious multi tens of minutes install and potentially having to deal with patching drivers what have you. That experience to me is something that irritates PC gamers and really tries the patience of anyone with any operating system. That's certainly not all Microsoft's issue. There are challenges from the game developers and publishers perspective. But if I spend the time to download a game from a game service or if I take the effort to go to the retail store to buy a disc, I shouldn't be looking at a from start to finish a multiple hour endeavour just to get that game to start running on my machine. I download a game, why can't I download and play the game? Why do I have to download, install, update and then play the game? I think those are things that Microsoft as an important leader in gaming on its operating system and in the overall PC gaming development advocacy role that they play, should really be pushing the industry forward on to deliver an experience that's more real time than what we get with the typical PC game title.

VideoGamer.com: How do you see the PC gaming market in five or ten years?

RS: The first thing that every potential developer needs to be aware of when they're making games, this is a huge audience, way larger by orders of magnitude than the console audience. PC gamers have proven if you release a point in time product that is a very satisfactory gaming experience, they'll buy it, they'll play it, and they'll play it, and they'll play it... what I'm basically saying is that PC gaming is alive and well.

What happens is people develop these love affairs within PC gaming that they don't within consoles, and it's because the title quality is so solid. My son is playing more Warcraft 3 than anything else right now. He's given up playing World of Warcraft because he's waiting for the Wrath update. He jumps in and out of Team Fortress 2, but Warcraft 3 I see him playing for hours and hours. And I ask him, 'are other people playing that or is it just you, are you just geeking out?'. And he says, 'no Dad, there are thousands and thousands and thousands of people playing on thousands of servers all over the world'. Just last week a new map came out and everyone's all hyped and excited about it. Here's a game that sold to my son once and he's been playing it for years. And that's a habit you have with PC gaming that console does not enjoy.

You look at even the best console games, their gameplay doesn't last beyond a release window. There's a release window mentality with console gaming that's only rivalled by the movie industry. When is the next DVD coming out? When is the next console game coming out? You play it for 30 days and then you stop because the experience is pretty much worn out. With PC gaming they play and play. There's still people playing the original Fallout and Fallout 2. And if Fallout 3 doesn't deliver on a good experience, they'll keep playing those titles because they'll reject the new version. Just ask people who waited for Unreal Tournament 3. There's more people playing Unreal Tournament 2004 right now than Unreal Tournament 3. Go look at the servers. It's not because of piracy, it's not because the game doesn't look great, it's not because systems can't play the game, it's because the experience with the 2004 version, gamers just like it. And if you're not monetising that experience, if you're not in it for the long run when you launch a title on PC you're probably missing the opportunity. Blizzard gets it. Funcom gets it. The guys at Sony Online get it. You build relationships with PC gamers, not titles to sell to them.

You asked me a question on what do I see coming. I see more transportability in the PC gaming experience. I see handhelds, I see notebooks, I see the trend across the globe shifting to mobility. This year it's a fact that more notebooks will ship than desktops. That needs to be factored into the gameplay experience. What is coming that is going to take advantage of all of these folks running around with notebooks and wanting to play games on these notebooks.

VideoGamer.com: Many thanks Randy.

What do you think of Randy's outspoken views on PC gaming? Let us know in the comments section below.

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