Darkest Secrets of Video Gaming Industry

Video games are a controversial medium to say the least.  It seems somebody is always trying to get the whole industry shut down for one reason or another.  Let’s take a look at some of the fodder these rabid anti-digitarians have fed on in the past.

SecuRom The Anti-Pirating Software


The video game industry makes a boatload of cash every year when greedy gamers drop the green for those gotta have titles but some unscrupulous little Pwnrs are either too lazy to get the cash in the first place or too cheap to part with after the fact.  As a result, the video game industry also loses a boatload of cash every year when games are pirated via torrent sites and the like.  So it makes sense that game developers would try to create some sort of secret code that would prevent people from being able to do so.  That’s what SecuRom is . . . sort of.  The software has come under some serious criticism in the past because it fails to uninstall from your target machine even after the game it was installed with is removed from the system.  That sounds a bit like malware to me and it’s tricky at the least but they “fixed” the problem (albeit after they were “caught”) so why grumble? 
Because the software is still being used to limit the number of machines any given game can be installed upon.  Bioshock got 2 “Activations” Mass Effect got 3 and Spore (incidentally the most illegally downloaded game in 2008) received only 2. 
Gamers revolted saying that their purchase price should allow them free reign to install as they wish (which it should) and game developers conceded by allowing gamers to contact them to receive more activations.  The whole thing’s a clunky system that really needs an overhaul.  I understand the reasoning but the implementation is far too awkward to ever work in the real world.

Eve Online: The Real Life Emulator?


One of the most brilliant aspects of the online multiplayer software EVE is that the game allows players to pretty much do anything they want.  They can forge secret societies and pull off spectacular political assassinations, form terrorist groups and orchestrate stunning secret attacks, and even steal from each other.  This hit the front pages of the world media outlets when Xabian, the Investment Manager for the In-Game banking institution Dynasty Bank absconded with 80 Billion ISK (The game’s currency).  Doesn’t sound like a big deal but you equate that sum to the real world equivalent that real life players have spent “making” that amount of in-game currency you’re looking at over $3,000. 
Despite that fact, the games creators are reluctant to get involved with the in-game economy and maintain that players actually relish the true open world freedom that the game allows.


Night Trap Promotes Rape and Murder?


This is an oldy but a goody.  I can still remember hearing about this game and thinking about how perverted a game designer had to be to create such a thing.  The 1992 title for the Sega CD featured Dana Plato (yes that Dana Plato) as a member of an elite team of peace keepers that had defend scantily clad women from vampire like creatures.  Unfortunately, congress and the angry mothers of America never really played the game and all they saw were snippets of women being abducted and “drained”—which only occurred when the player failed to spring the traps hidden away in the target household at the right moment.  Sounds kind of tame when you look at modern titles (and even VHS releases of the day—shall I mention Hell Comes to Frogtown?) but this game, and the uproar it caused,  is almost single handedly responsible for the birth of the ESRB.  Crazy!


Any Game made by Mystique


The Swedish game developer cashed in on Atari’s failure to regulate third party titles for its 2600 home gaming console and used the new digital medium to produce porn.  That’s right, with grade A stinkers like Custer’s Revenge, Bachelor Party, and Beat ‘Em & Eat ‘Em (don’t even Google it—really) this game developer found interesting and exciting new ways to disgust an entire nation.  Of course nobody paid attention to the fact that gamers totally ignored the games or that critics reviled them for the simplistic exploitations that they really were.  Everybody heard nudity and sex and went crazy.  Thankfully Mystique went under partially due to the fact that most retailers wouldn’t even sell its titles or the fact that the retailers who did often cut them behind the counter and out of site.  It just amazes me that the games sold at all in an age before the internet—how did people find out about them?


Xbox 360’s Red Rings Prove a Sticky Wicket for Microsoft


Shortly after Xbox took over the world, gamers began experiencing dramatic hardware failures denoted by three red lights around the machine’s power ring.  Microsoft tried to treat the issue as a series of isolated events but soon the number of Red Rings of Death (as the digital disease came to be known) grew to undeniable proportions.  What did Microsoft do?  They denied there was a problem.  Gamers were angry and turned to the internet for vindication and the public uproar became so great that Microsoft finally had to fess up that their miracle boxes were flawed.  They offered gamers free repairs or replacements on any box that “caught” the deadly red rings (of which I had two!) but refused to explain what was happening and why leaving the internet to speculate (correctly) that a flaw in the internal design caused certain parts to overheat. 
In the end, Microsoft redesigned the Xbox’s innards and hopefully put an end to this horrible condition.  Why won’t they let us know what went wrong and just what are they hiding?  We may never know.


Atari vs. Nintendo Corporate Conspiracy and Piracy in the Pre-Digital Age


Nintendo learned from the mistakes Atari made before it and refused to let the home console market get swamped by crap titles produced by third party developers looking to make a quick buck.  They installed coded chips in both their consoles and their cartridges called 10 Codes that prevented any bootleg games from being played. 
Atari wasn’t happy with the 5 games per year limit that Nintendo placed on third party developers but couldn’t find out how the secret little chips worked so Atari went to the U.S. Patten office and asked to see the specs.  That’s right, they just asked nicely and were allowed to see top secret internal diagrams and blueprints for the competition’s machinery—wow!

Long story short, Atari started marketing bootleg games that played on Nintendo’s systems.  But who is the real villain here?  Yes Atari did steal Nintendo’s technology but on the other hand Nintendo was operating an unfair monopoly.  It wasn’t just about the 5 games per year limit either.  Nintendo forced third party developers to buy everything from the hardware to the cartridge packing materials from them and were never too shy about “adjusting” prices to fit their fiscal need.  So is Atari just a bunch of sticky-fingered filchers or an underdog hero to the modern gamer?  Considering everybody has pretty much forgotten about this secret war, I’d say that it just doesn’t matter anymore. 

Unfortunately, most of the juicy “Secrets” of the gaming industry will forever remain secrets.  They will forever be the fodder of conspiracy theorist and pundits alike.  Keep your eyes peeled and you just may be the first to spot the next “hot coffee” incident!