LAN Only Functionality, and Why

What is LAN Only functionality?

This is were you are able to install the game on a computer without a CD key but the only thing you can do is join a LAN game and adjust settings. This feature was pioneered by Novalogic in the Delta Force franchise.

How does this benefit the developers?

Both of the following scenarios have occurred multiple times in real life.

Scenario 1: I'm at a LAN party and I say, Hey let's play Delta Force, response; don't have it, don't have it, don't have it. No problem you can play LAN only. Install the game, we play, and of a group of 8, 2-3 players get hooked and turn around and buy the game, because they had fun and want to keep playing after the party. Remember this is your target audience they already have a rig to play the game. I'm acting as a sales rep in pushing the game to an audience that either 'A' owns the game or 'B' has not been exposed yet. Thus this offers a very effective way to market to players that would otherwise not buy the game. Delta Force became an icon of the LAN party scene because of this. It helps to break the monopoly of the most popular game getting played because everyone already has that, and allows you to inject your title. This is basically a demo with friends, what better way to sell the title.

I personally got 7 of my friends to buy the full version of Delta Force: Black Hawk Down, from hooking them using LAN only functionality.


Scenario 2: I am at a LAN party, I say hey let's play supreme commander. Response don't have it, don't have it, don't have it. No LAN only, well that's the end of that. Then someone says hey lets play Starcraft, and I die a little inside. The opportunity to sell the game is lost, and because not everyone has it people aren't willing to take the risk on buying it if it is not able to be played by everyone. Thus narrowing your market to existing fans. Potential revenue is lost, as well as the opportunity to turn those new players into sales reps promoting your title.

TA had that functionality as well.
PA will be DRM-free though. If worst comes to worst, you can simply install it on everyone's computer using your install file. (This assumes everybody is a proper, law abiding citizen and uninstalls it when they're done. And everybody here is a proper, law abiding citizen. Right?)

Hmm all Lan-parties I attended so far just were based on the usage of pirated copies in such cases. The Internetconnection usually was used only to make sure everyone had a differen cd-key. So is this really an issue? As far as I remember, PA will not even have any drm, so you will be able to just copy the game's dir and play in lan. Since I'll probably go and buy a dozen smurfs anyway it isnt even unfair to the developers
Pretty simple, as it has always been for the most part.
Funny you mention Starcraft, SC2 is pretty much unplayable in LAN, unless you happen to have a working internetconnection.

Oh and if somebody now blames piracy as bad: I got TA on such a lanparty, it was some randomly copied disc from *somewhere*. Since that day I have spend more than 400€ on TA/SupCom/PAs-Kickstarter. So I guess it was a good thing I got that CD into my hands

I'm asking them to implement a system so we don't have to have piracy. Developing a solution to deal with root cause, rather than treat the symptoms.

Both of you are taking a very liberal interpretation of DRM-free that I am fairly certain the devs do not share. Thus im proposing a reasonable solution, in case you two are wrong.

Not at all. Of course it would be preferable, but it will take time and effort to put in the game. I'm just pointing out that we have a fallback if this functionality is not implemented.

I'd think DRM-Free means only a CD-key, no online activation bull.
DRM-Free doesn't automatically mean "Oh, simply copy over the directory and it works".

SupCom works like that, in fact most games which dont need a CD inserted are like that.
I am pretty sure we will be able to copy PA around pretty much without problems.
I'd guess PA will have a Key associated with it for online play and thats it. There will obviously not be a CD and no DRM pretty much means that no others weird mechanisms will be implemented. I would be quite angry if it had any kind of protection, since putting a protection into the game would cost money. Money that we payed via Kickstarter to develop a game, not to annoy us with DRM.

Multiplayer Spawn install feature ftw.

Piracy aside, there are good reasons to have LAN play. The biggest reason is bandwidth. The game will likely need it, and LANs have it.

Good point, we often forget that a large portion of the country, and many others countries lack broadband.

Or like in the case like Germany, the official statistics are very liberal with the label "broadband" ; from the percentages thrown around, 1mbit probably counts as broadband. (not how I would call it).

But the bandwidth issue is just a justification for LAN servers itself, the issue of a LAN only client type is separate.
I'm not really decided on that myself, while I in general support non-piracy based distribution models, I doubt the extra effort for such a client would be useful compared to some of the workarounds people will search/find anyhow. Aside from that, without any data I can't even speculate if the free play will be balanced by the additional advertisement.

I think it's important to remember that TA LAN parties happened in a different era from the one we're in now:

1. Buying TA and the requisite expansions used to cost a lot of money. PA is currently $20.

2. Getting TA installed used to require multiple CDs, and then whatever mods you wanted to play with. Just getting everyone set up was a clunky process. Nowadays it's reasonable to send many GB to every machine on a LAN in just a few minutes.

3. Maybe I'm just getting older, but I feel like people are more willing to buy software these days. It's so much easier (and often cheaper) than it used to be. If you showed up at a LAN party in 1997 without a game disc, LAN-only mode was a must. Now you're probably only a few seconds and a credit card number from having a legitimate key to the game.

There's probably still a case for LAN-only, but I think it's much less compelling than it was fifteen years ago.

The other thing to keep in mind is that even with excellent broadband, having everyone share an internet connection from the party host's house is still not going to be anywhere near as fast as using a local network.

LAN simply has an order of magnitude more bandwidth than you'll find on non-japanese internet. That gives far more potential for things that a local game can do, as opposed to online.

danielbrauer are you neutrino's alt? Because that is an impressive critique.

Don't confuse 'Being able to play over LAN' (which is NOT the topic of this thread) with 'Having a demo version that can only join legitimate servers on the LAN'

It's obvious and clear that Uber is setting the system up so we can host our own games over LAN.

The question here is, can/will Uber make a demo client that can't do anything other than connect to a local server.

Why would you need the massive bandwidth power of a lan for a game like PA?
If hosting massive games of 40 players is what you want, then you'll run into another problem then bandwidth on a home setup.

On topic.

I'm cool with LAN but I also understand why so many companies leave it out. Games with lan allow pirated copies to play online through VPN's which does mean a certain bunch of people won't commit to buying the game.

I don't plan on going into a lengthy discussion about 1 pirated copy = 1 lost sale and what not but there's definitively a large player base out there who plays pirated games solely over VPN.

And yes even the system you've mentioned with "demo lan" would be wide open for this. There's usually at least one person who would have a legit copy and if you would need to be online to verify said copy then you will run into issues on a lan that do not have internet.

That being said, I do think adding lan of this kind is a good thing for allowing people to play PA at home with ease.

There would be a proper solution which is based on keys, no online verification required:

Owners of a full version key can generate guest keys from inside the application. Those guest keys allow to use every multiplayer game mode, but the "host" who issued the key must be in the same game. A game can not be started if the host is not present. It is not allowed to use two identical full version keys in the same game to prevent people from sharing the full version.

Since no online activation will be present, such a system would be easily circumvented by keys from the internet. I really think there is no point in putting any kind of effort into such a drm-like system. Just make it that people can use the official servers only with a valid key and let them copy the game around freely, just as TA and SupCom do.

I'd love this honestly, would be great to play without having to rely on a constant internet connection.