Constant connectivity comes at a cost for Canadians

We live in an era of constant internet connectivity. Our laptops, mobile devices and soon enough, even our glasses are always online and offer a wealth of knowledge and entertainment. However, this constant connection doesn’t always play out well for Canadians. This is evident in the recent launch of the video game SimCity.

Publisher Electronic Arts, Inc. and development studio Maxis released the game March 5 in North America with multiple issues in tow. The main issue circulated around the game’s requirement for a persistent online connection. The high volume of users attempting to download the game and connect to the server caused network outages, preventing consumers from playing the game at all. This, along with a negative response from players, led some publications such as CNET and PCGamesN to refer to the launch as “disastrous,” comparing it to the launch of Diablo III by Blizzard Entertainment. Both games adopt the constant connection model.

The obvious question is, “Why use such a model if it doesn’t work?” While the answer varies from company to company, a few reasons are consistent. Piracy has been a concern for most people who create media in a digital form. To combat this, digital rights management was developed. DRM, in its simplest form, allows a piece of digital media to be played by anyone who has bought the rights to do so. Some video game developers have expanded this standard and have designed their games to constantly authenticate to a home server.

Maxis general manager Lucy Bradshaw addressed the concerns about the game’s always-connected nature and further explained the server-dependent design on EA’s blog March 15.

“So, could we have built a subset offline mode? Yes, but we rejected that idea because it didn’t fit with our vision,” said Bradshaw. “We did not focus on the ‘single city in isolation’ that we have delivered in past SimCities. We recognize that there are fans — people who love the original SimCity — who want that. But we’re also hearing from thousands of people who are playing across regions, trading, communicating and loving the Always-Connected functionality.”

Debates about this design model aside, Windsorites must factor their own internet service provider as well. Service providers in Canada on a whole do not offer unlimited download caps like other counties do. Most will range from 15 to 300 GB of available bandwidth per month with most Windsorites receiving an average of 60 GB. Playing through an always connected game such as SimCity could potentially consume much of this data. Factor in other entertainment streams such as Netflix or YouTube and suddenly it is easy to rack up additional bandwidth and overage charges.

Canadians are behind the curve of the digital revolution. Evidently the system is flawed but media developers are moving to an online forum. Whether it is for video games or to sit and watch your favourite TV show, Canadian telecom companies need to work to get the consumer up to speed. Developers on the other hand, must realize that not everyone worldwide has access to the same technology. While an online-only model is the direction media consumption is going it is a sandbox that isn’t welcoming for everyone.