tempest in a teacup

Yes, this is with regards to that Modern Warfare 2 controversy.

A lot of the people pooh-poohing the concerns of the PC gamers who have spoken out against IW’s move to exclude modding and dedicated servers from the game. I figured I would add my voice to the cacophony that has already risen in opposition to this move, but also perhaps explain why dedicated servers matter for multiplayer games.

There are two ways to organize Internet multiplayer games on a PC:

1. Listen servers, where one player ‘hosts’ the game and the others connect to him
2. Dedicated servers, where games are hosted on a server machine that all players connect to

It goes without saying that dedicated servers offer players a fairer and more robust multiplayer experience, for a number of reasons. The server doesn’t have to contend for resources with the host’s client game software, the host doesn’t get an advantage in terms of ping (his commands have to make the exact same round trip to the server as everyone else’ commands) and of course the server doesn’t go away as soon as the host decides he’s bored. On top of that dedicated servers are connected to the Internet by connections that are better equipped to handle the network traffic caused by dozens of players connecting and playing at the same time, as opposed to your garden-variety ‘broadband’ that most gamers have.

I can speak from personal experience too – I’ve hosted and connected to listen servers for Left 4 Dead, and the experience wasn’t as smooth as when I connected to a dedicated server to play (and when I hosted games the people playing on my server certainly complained about it).

And let’s not forget that having a place to go when you want to get your game on helps gaming communities to form. You might scoff at this notion, but a friends list isn’t really a good substitution for having a regular server that’s configured just to your tastes, where the regulars are people you have fun playing with. It’s a supplement, but not a replacement.

And lest you think this is a vestige of PC gaming, there are console games that use dedicated servers as well. Warhawk, for one.

So yeah, not having dedicated servers is a big deal for any predominantly multiplayer game. Some people are saying to ‘wait and see’ to see what Infinity Ward has up their sleeve with their new matchmaking service, but as long as it’s based on listen servers I don’t see how it can replace what they’ve taken away.

Just some thoughts I’ve been meaning to pen down for a while. They’re rather long, so I’ve hidden them behind a jump.

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I’m not sure at what point I stopped celebrating my birthday. It might have been when I started college and realised that it occurred smack bang in the middle of Fall midterms. Whatever it is, at some point in the last…seven years or so I just lost interest in celebrating my birthday.

To anyone wondering what the relevance of my above statement is, I turned 25 on Sunday. And to mark the occasion, I, uh, worked on some slides for a presentation I have to give at work, and ordered some Chinese food.

Yeah…I’m not sure what’s up with me either.

On which I discover that I still can’t aim with a thumbstick to save my life.

I’ve been playing the Uncharted 2 multiplayer demo recently, and while I enjoyed the first game, I don’t know that the mechanics necessarily work for multiplayer. For one, the camera doesn’t stay behind you, so you’re forced to keep rotating the camera to keep it facing in your movement direction. While this isn’t ideal, it would at least be nice to have a quick ‘centre the camera behind you’ button – maybe R3 or something.

On top of that it seems like you die in very few hits – by the time I can rotate the camera to see someone shooting at me from behind, I’m at low health and get dropped by his next shot. So my complete lack of aiming skill is amplified by these two other problems I have with the interface.

Maybe the console shooter vibe doesn’t really resonate with me too well – I do well enough when I play Quake Live and TF2 but when you slow the game down and make everyone only capable of taking a few hits before dying somehow my abilities just go down the toilet.

I’ll probably keep playing it for a bit, though, if only to see if I can get used to the interface quirks.