Fragmatica

Well, it’s official.  The Xbox 1 is about to die.  This April 15th (Tax Day for all of us Yankees!), Microsoft will be shutting down the online servers for all Xbox 1 multiplayer games.  Halo 2, Counter-Strike, Battlefield 2: Modern Combat, Star Wars: Battlefront 2, and a host of other servers will be closing.  While it’s true that die-hard Xboxers will still be able to play local and single-player games, this shutdown indicates the end of the Xbox 1.  After all, most gamers still playing Xbox 1 games have their favorite single-player campaigns down by heart with the only challenge coming from small online community.  Given the communities which have formed over yeas of camping and corpse-humping, is Microsoft crossing any boundaries with this announcement?Where does a video game company’s obligation to its consumers end?  Traditionally, responsibility has ended with the prdouction and release of a well-made game.  The PC, however, introduced the concept of expansion packs and downloadable content, which extended the developer’s job.  Now, with online multiplayer being a major part of the gaming experience, developers and publishers are expected to maintain and even improve online gameplay well after the initial release date.  Where’s the limit?

Consider, for perhaps the best example, Blizzard’s support of Diablo II.  Despite the game being a decade old, Blizzard still maintains the free Diablo II Battle.net servers.  Even with monthly sales too weak to offset the cost of maintaining online play and major decreases in community numbers over the past few years, the servers still chug along.  At this point, we can only assume that Blizzard is keeping up the servers in honor of the diehard fan and countless man-hours that have made the game (and Blizzard) what it is today.  Even after all this dedication, though, we can hardly expect Blizzard to continue to maintain the game after the release of Diablo III.

When is it ok, then, for a company to take its games offline?  After all, we can’t expect a game to remain online indefinitely, especially when, like Halo 2, it belongs to a last-gen console and has only a handful of active participants.  At the same time, is it morally wrong for a company to deprive its customers of a service they paid for through the original purchase of the game?  What about when MMOs go offline despite a core group of players still willing to pay a monthly fee?  How do we differentiate between a reasonable decision and a cut-throat business move that harms consumers?

Quite frankly, there’s no easy answer.  Games drop offline according to an internal decision-making process unique to each service provider.  Unfortunately, the public isn’t necessarily privy to this process and consumers have little say despite their investment of both time and money.  While there’s no doubt that a great deal of deliberation went into the decision to take the remaining Xbox 1 games offline, from an outside perspective, the choice seems arbitrary.  Microsoft did its best to lessen the blow by releasing an open press release from Marc Whitten, but it’s no doubt the news still felt like a slap in the face to the community.

With online multiplayer becoming a huge part of the gaming experience and MMOs taking over a big sector of the gaming industry, it seems its time for service providers to make some changes to the way they treat their customers.  For some gamers, these Xbox 1 titles have become an integral part of their gaming and social experience.  Taking that experience away with no more than a sixty day warning and a form letter seems almost cruel.  While it’s well within Microsoft’s legal right to do so, it feels like a breach of the consumer’s trust.  Is this the way the producer-consumer relationship has to work in the gaming industry or is there an alternative?

I would like to suggest that service providers like Microsoft consider a more transparent model.  Imagine if Microsoft were to publicly release the criteria used to determine whether a title continues to receive Xbox Live support.  Each year, Microsoft could publicly review its games according to these preset standards.  While this process would allow for no more public involvement than the internal prcoess used today, it would include the Xbox community in a way that a generic press release simply can’t.

This seems even more reasonable when we consider MMOs.  Can you imagine if Blizzard gave a sixty day warning before shutting down the World of Warcraft servers?  Pandamonium.  Suicides.  Blizzard executives waking up next to severed orc heads.  It would be chaos because that community has invested an almost unfathomable amount of time and emotional energy into that world.  To a lesser degree, the same is true for other MMOs.  Video game service providers don’t just have control over what we play, but over who we communicate with and the relationships we form with the online community.

Yes, allowing consumers to see behind the scenes of a company’s major decision-making process is unorthodox, but the gaming industry is itself unorthodox.  It’s a whole new form of entertainment that simply can’t afford to play by the same rules as others in the entertainment sector.  Microsoft’s choice to drop online support for Xbox 1 titles is understandable and not entirely unexpected, but its closed-door approach feels inexcusably mercenary and, quite frankly, corporate.  For an industry that’s based on direct support from a loyal community, this is a dangerous way to to treat consumers.

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As always, I’d love to hear what you have to say. What do you think about Microsoft’s announcement?  How can Microsoft and other service providers make changes like this easier on consumers?  Let me know at thefragmatica [at] gmail [dot] com or post a comment below!  Keep a closer eye on me by following me on Twitter, and hit me up on Xbox Live (XBL: Broken Luck) if you’re looking for a co-op partner. Don’t forget to subscribe to the site and follow Fragmatica on Twitter and become our fan on Facebook for even more site related updates.