Raving Rant: We Must Dissent - Editorial

Raving Army goes on a colossal tear about the supposed dangers of DirectX 10 and the "code monkeys in Redmond" and uses some pretty impressive vocabulary along the way.

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Raving Rant:

We Must Dissent

One of the most powerful short cutscenes from the game Alpha Centauri involved the clip played when you successfully completed the secret project known as "The Self-Aware Colony." It showed a shadowy figure running through oppressive looking streets, then tagging a wall with the phrase "We Must Dissent!" while a multitude of voices randomly whisper the same phrase. We never actually see the tagger full on, nor do we see precisely what happens to him. In the Self-Aware Colony that the tagger was running through, we see only flashes and a buzzing sound, then a scorched outline of a human on one wall next to the almost completed message. The wall then cleans itself off and there is no indication that the tagger or his message ever existed. The phrase was also the title of one of many fictional books that are quoted throughout Alpha Centauri. Recently, it's been playing in my mind every time I read a new article about how Microsoft is helping gamers.

My fellow gamers, we must dissent.

As has been noted by various magazines, Microsoft has made a questionable (a few have suggested boneheaded) decision to release Halo 2 only for Vista , and not for WinXP. And while there are a few souls out there with the programming wherewithal to cobble together an unofficial patch to let XP users run the game, it's not enough to enable network multiplayer, and such coders are quite likely upcoming targets for the hordes of lawyers Microsoft employs in their neverending struggle to justify basically indefensible positions. To turn a phrase from the movie The Departed, nobody is more full of crap than a lawyer except for a lawyer working for Microsoft.

We must dissent.

I will not deny that Vista needs games just as much as any other operating system that's fresh out of the gate, or even six months out of the gate. However, PC gamers have spent years and most likely several thousand dollars over the course of those years building up libraries that work on WinXP. And the latest word on

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the street is that backwards compatibility in Vista for all those programs you have for XP starts at "lousy," and goes downhill from there. When Fortune 500 companies aren't upgrading to the newest Microsoft OS in droves, it suggests that they have some pretty serious concerns. After all, if they don't trust it to handle sensitive data like bank records, why

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should we as gamers trust it to handle something "simple" like our games?

We must dissent.

One angle which I think has been overlooked is the presence of DirectX 10. Like Halo 2, it's Vista only. That in and of itself is enough to irritate some gamers. But what I think has been overlooked about DirectX 10 has been the way nVidia and ATI have been falling over themselves coming out with video cards that are specifically optimized for DirectX. It seems to confirm vague concerns I had when Microsoft announced DirectX oh so many years back. I disliked the idea of an API package like DirectX that was controlled by a single entity, especially when that entity was Microsoft.

Admittedly, I didn't much care for the partisan bloodletting that was going on at the time between the big video card manufacturers of the day, either. To my mind, if the package remained platform neutral and actually made games easier to develop, then I saw it as a boon. In the hands of a monopolist, even only an accused monopolist at that time, the logical conclusion of such an API package would ultimately be hardware manufacturers serving the interests of Microsoft rather than looking to innovate independently. With DirectX 10, those concerns have been realized. True, you could take a brand new PCI-E video card, throw it in a Linux machine, and still get a pretty damned good picture. You might not even notice that you weren't getting all the bells and whistles that come about because of that DirectX optimization. That isn't the point. In order to get the most value from your shiny new card, you need to be running DirectX 10, which means you have to be running Vista .

We must dissent!

Show me any prior version of DirectX running on any other operating system, and I'll show you a guy who's using a wrapper to make it happen. Prior to the release of DirectX 9.0c, it was possible to use a wrapper to use DirectX 9.0 in environments other than Windows. With the release of 9.0c, the ability to emulate the environment sufficiently for DirectX to function went out the window, no pun intended. Now, it may be possible that somebody out there has managed to figure out how to correct their emulation so that DirectX 9.0c is no longer the obstinate version it proved to be. If they have, good on you, and spread the word. If not, well, tomorrow's another day.

We MUST dissent!

Nearly every Microsoft press release regarding gaming the last several months has held the same basic theme: We're going to make you make us your one-stop shop for gaming. DirectX 10, Windows Live! (the PC counterpart to Xbox Live!), Vista , it all boils down to Microsoft owning your box. It's never explicitly stated. It is an insidious encroachment; a bit-by-bit creeping that would never register if each statement was taken on its own. Glossed over by pronouncements of how great your life will be once you submit.

"Windows Live will be great! You'll be able to play against Xbox players!" Yeah, for $50 a year.

"DirectX 10 will make your games look and sound and play so much better than DirectX 9!" Yeah, if I shell out $400 for an operating system that six months after launch still hasn't received any serious attention from anybody outside of the paid fanboys and sycophants kept on hand to create buzz.

" Vista will make full use of your video card's 3D capabilities!" I don't need it to make full use of my video card's 3D capabilities! I just need the damned thing to run in a genuinely stable fashion! I need it to have a sufficient balance between backwards compatibility and genuinely useful innovations to make it worth my while to upgrade!

Pestering me every time I click the mouse button about whether or not I really want to do something isn't useful, it's aggravating. Having the "ability" to flip through open programs like they were pictures in a scrapbook isn't useful, it's a bit of utterly useless visual fluff. The operating system and your applications should not be like a set of conjoined septuplets. The operating system should run in the background with minimal intrusion into the workings of the application. The fewer resources the OS uses, the more resources there are for the app. The operating system needs to stay the hell out of the way of the application.

WE MUST DISSENT!

But what choice do we as gamers have? Go strictly console? Abandon our PCs and move over to Mac? Brave the wild and woolly frontiers of Linux or FreeBSD? If the history of computers is any guide, there is hope to be found. It will not, however, be the hope that is found when the cavalry comes over the hill. It is the hope that comes from small steps, from the gradual erosion of megalithic structures into smaller chunks, from the iterative process.

For now, we will probably be resigned to suffering with hardware that has untapped potential and software that will not run except in an older version of Windows. If we are to build a better future, and ultimately a better environment for our games, it must come about gradually.

I'm not saying there isn't room for lightning strokes that can change the face of the gaming landscape. Those would be great. But there will probably be a lot of slogging and hard times in between those strokes of brilliance. The good news is that the groundwork is already laid down, to an extent.

Consider the model of the mod community for a game such as StarCraft or Neverwinter Nights. The basic tools and functions have been stretched far beyond what the original developers thought possible. DirectX was supposed to create an API which made game development easier, and that basic philosophy is still sound. Yes, you may point out that there are open-source projects like Allegro, OpenGL, Blender, and others out there which are practically littering the Internet right now, any one of which could eventually evolve into a decent challenger against DirectX. I'm well aware of these projects. I'm also aware of their greatest shortcoming: accessibility.

Looking at the documentation for one of those projects is enough to make a tax form seem like "Dick & Jane." The talent that has gone into those projects is tremendous. The talent now needs to look at making the tools not only powerful, but simple to use. Simple enough that anybody could be pulled off the street, plunked down in front of a computer, and be able to create a simple level for a game in less than half an hour. Simple enough that that same person off the street could create a simple game in less than a day. Get your tools refined to that level of simplicity. Let people figure out how to do the really tricky stuff at their own pace, but give them the chance to just play around with the tools. Make games with those tools. Make the games not only fun but make them your statement, your proof that you have created a game that can compete, and beat, any game Microsoft seeks to rein in with their increasingly proprietary software. Sell your games, release the tools for free out into the wild with every copy sold, and grow your community like a garden. Don't mock the community member who can't quite wrap their head around an idea. Give them some guidance. Don't stand there smirking and believing yourself superior because you've created these tools. Right now, your tools are not well known, which means you're a big fish in an exceedingly small pond. But the ocean is right next door, and there's a lot more potential there.

Defy DirectX. Show the code monkeys in Redmond what they could have had if they'd decided to open their code instead of set it on the path of exclusion and homogeny. Give the people tools they can use without Microsoft's "help" and PC gaming will finally have the freedom of choice they've been denied.

We Must Dissent!

- RavingArmy

(December 11, 2007)


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