Net Neutrality is serious business.  But what is it?  Is it anti-competitive behavior? Network Management? Blocking websites, devices, or applications?  It’s actually all these things and more.  In fact the phrase Net Neutrality is so overly complex, two individuals could discuss the issue with two completely different ideas of what it is that they are talking about.  But one of the biggest problems with Net Neutrality is that most of what is discussed are potential violations, not the actual principles.  On top of this is the problem with journalists that have forgotten what they taught in J-School….find the facts, report them, let the readership decide.  This particular point has become a troubling issue within the realm of video game journalism.

Gaming At Risk With Regulation!

Looking at a particular facet of the puzzle that is Net Neutrality is the aspect of Network Management.  Essentially this is the ability for network engineers to manage packet transfer on the Internet in the most efficient manner necessary so that everything gets where it’s supposed to go and time-sensitive content is not disrupted.  Along with VoIP, video games are the primary applications that are most likely to suffer if the FCC passes rules that prevent network management and prioritization of time-sensitive content.  The video ‘gamer’ will inevitably be one of the worst affected with the passage of such rules.  Generally speaking, as a gamer myself, I’m well aware of the importance society places on my hobby.  But nonetheless, it is a billion dollar industry that could suffer dramatically from regulation by turning individuals off from gaming by ruining their experience.

Why The Bias?

It should seem then that video game journalists and game players alike would inevitably strongly advocate keeping the government out of the business of deciding how the networks they game on should be run.  But the evidence of such an assumption is simply not there.  In fact, if you visit most video game websites the articles and comments will be filled with outspoken fervor for the government to take the reigns of control over the Internet.  And we have already seen where the ECA stands on the issue.  In researching for this topic, I only came across one single story dealing with the recent FCC v. Comcast ruling that attempted to represent the free market stand point over at Gamasutra.  Though, it was only one paragraph in the entire story.  Additionally this was the only story in which a sizable amount of the commentors represented free market thinking, and one individual, Bart Stewart, even calling out the author on potential bias in the story, saying,

I’m also a little troubled by the presentation of the information in this news article — Chris, it felt like you’d chosen sides, leaving me wondering if we’re getting a full and fair examination of the possible consequences of the court’s ruling.

I counted one paragraph presenting some arguments against net neutrality, versus six to ten paragraphs (depending on how you count Augustino’s comments) from supporters of net neutrality. That same one paragraph characterized some people as “opponents” of one possible rule (net neutrality), rather than as positive proponents of a different rule (tiered service) — a subtle form of bias, but bias nonetheless.

Why use the somewhat loaded word “claim” to describe the ISP position that ISPs who impose truly burdensome restrictions would be punished by the (relatively) free market, particularly if the transparency promoted by Dan Scherlis (with which I agree) is demanded by consumers?

The ISP’s argument that throttling a few bandwidth hogs so that the vast majority of Internet users — including online gamers — can enjoy better service is not an extreme or unreasonable view. It was mentioned, and that’s to the author’s credit… but could no spokespersons be found who could articulate that argument as comments from several pro-net neutrality advocates were found?

Why Would ISP’s Block Gaming Traffic?

The concern with Net Neutrality regulation from the point of view of the video game journalist seems to lie with Internet Service Providers suddenly and without reason throttling video game traffic or blocking games or systems from their networks.  This concern seems to be growing more audible with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia essentially now stating that Comcast had a right to block BitTorrent traffic in the cases of heavy bandwidth usage.  So amongst video game journalist, the obvious conclusion is that if they can block BitTorrent traffic, they can and will block gaming traffic.

This is admittedly entirely a guess, as I have yet to acquire the ability to read minds, but I would assume the reasoning amongst game journalists that ISP’s would block gaming traffic is that they assume game traffic takes up massive amounts of bandwidth.  This would make sense to most people who weren’t more familiar with how gaming applications work.  Modern games have incredible CGI and graphics that would bring shame to the most mouth dropping cinematic visuals from 10 years ago.  They have huge environments and big budget audio and take up tens of Gigs of storage on their DVD or Blu-Ray media.  An honest mistake would be to assume that when playing these games online that all of that data or even a portion of it is being in some way transferred across the Internet.  The assumption would be entirely false as our own George Ou has pointed out in the past,

Online gaming is also one of the most commonly misunderstood technologies in the policy world and even many engineers who understand networking get this wrong because they haven’t actually studied online gaming.  The common mistake is that online gaming is a bandwidth and usage heavy application and that couldn’t be further from the truth. While there are occasional times when gamers may need to download a large update every few weeks or few months, it’s more of a matter of convenience that the updates arrive quickly rather than an absolute necessity as far as supporting the actual game play.

The assumption is that video games are a “video” application, but the “video” component only travels from the video display adapter to the computer monitor.  The part that traverses the network is merely the few bits of real-time vector information that contain positioning data and what the characters are doing.  This tiny bit of information is sent between 30 to 60 times per second and it works out to be about 0.030 Mbps to 0.100 Mbps whenever I have done actual measurements.  So while we’re debating how many Mbps broadband should be, the amount of bandwidth needed by online gaming effectively disappears as rounding error.

If Bandwidth Isn’t the Problem, Then What Are the Other Concerns?

Michael Fahey at Kotaku suggested that a major concern is access premiums, in a piece on the FCC v. Comcast decision.

Millions of people play World of Warcraft in the United States alone. What happens when an ISP decides that World of Warcraft players need to pay a little extra for the constant connection to the game?

Ironically, Michael, in Europe TeliaSonera customers receive prioritized treatment for all  their games.  Game developers pay for prioritized treatment and a small premium, around 30 cents per month in the most expensive scenario, is charged to the customer as part of a bundled service.  All gaming traffic is prioritized and those users receive the best possible experience while playing their games.  One of TeliaSonera’s biggest customers is Blizzard for their game World of Warcraft.

Would you pay an extra few cents a month to get prioritized treatment for your games?  I sure would.  I grow tired of bullet lag due to someone down the street torrenting the latest version of Twilight.  But let’s ask the question in another way: “Why would an ISP specifically target a small percentage of people for a price increase?“  The short answer is that they wouldn’t.  To do so would quite frankly be incredibly dumb.  As Ou put it, “Why would an ISP go raise the price say $10 for people who played video games when they could just raise the price of their entire customer base $1 and make the same amount of money?”  The point is, to block certain applications or devices like video games and require the customer to pay a fee to use them would raise red flags, turn on bells and whistles and flashing lights.  The FCC would go crazy and so would Congress.  There would be massive pressure on the ISP because this would be a violation of Net Neutrality principles.  However, if the ISP raised the price on all customers across the board, there is no violation, it’s just a business move that may upset its customers, but it isn’t a violation of any principles.

The people that are running these companies aren’t dumb.  Which is an entirely different issue.  But seriously, how ironic is it that one side in this debate paints ISP’s out to be these evil, conniving, brilliant but shadowy minds, but then when it comes to the examples they give about what the ISP may do to violate Net Neutrality principles it’s something that would be completely illogical and blatantly stupid.  You can’t have it both ways!

Let me provide one last example of this.  Fahey continued his piece stating that,

It may sound ridiculous to some, but there are already restrictions in place. Comcast now restricts its standard users to 250GB of bandwidth a month. While that’s not a problem right now for most gamers, PC games are getting larger every day, and consoles are already starting to allow users to download full games directly to their hard drive. If a company like Comcast were to suddenly start breaking that 250GB into segments based on use, we could be in trouble.

Look, first of all if you are a Comcast customer and you break the 250GB barrier in a month, on the one hand they aren’t really going to turn off your connection.  They are going to call you and ask you politely to stop taking advantage of the connection.  The cap is a soft cap and it was created to deter people that were drinking bandwidth like it was coming out of an open bar every single consecutive month.  Secondly, if they did in fact turn off your connection for the rest of the month because you went over that barrier, then that is a contract stipulation you agreed to and you’re going to have to abide by it.  You can’t sign contracts and not meet the requirements you agreed to.  I mean, they don’t owe you anything outside of the terms.  What’s so hard to understand about that?  If you went to McDonald’s and bought a medium fry and ate all the fries, you wouldn’t walk up to the counter and say, “Hey, I really wanted more fry’s today, and I only paid for a medium, but you guys should go ahead and give me the extra fries from a large because I’m hungry.”

And this thing about Comcast potentially “breaking that 250GB into segments based on use”.  What does that even mean?  That’s potentially the most ridiculous thing I’ve read in six months…

So What’s The Deal?

The bottom line here is that video game journalists have bought into not only the lie of regulation being a positive thing, but they have bought into the goals of the small gaming developer.  Small gaming developers don’t want to go out and be forced to pay premiums for high quality access to their servers running their games.  If everything is treated equal, then it benefits them because they aren’t forced to go make deals with ISPs or Content Delivery Networks.  On the other hand, the bigger companies want premium services because they want to deliver their content and run their games on the best possible connections available.  This is why Valve’s Steam service, Xbox Live, Playstation Network, EA Sports, Activision (World of Warcraft), all have deals set up with Limelight Networks, a CDN that uses its own fiber to send gaming content directly to the end user, bypassing the congestion of the public Internet.

What is so ironic is that all these game journalists that sit around begging for government intrusion and don’t want premium services and prioritized access go home every night to their PS3 or Xbox 360 and use Playstation Network or Xbox Live delivering prioritized content and services to them via Limelight.  They don’t realize that this type of service could be terminated depending on what the FCC determines is “reasonable network management” in their Net Neutrality Notice of Proposed Rulemaking.

More confusing is the absolutely polar opposite position game journalists took against government and FCC intrusion when the subject of censorship of certain subject matter in video games like sex, nudity, and violence has been brought up.  How is it that an individual thinks that government intrusion will be terrible in one area, but that it will be OK in another?

Since I’m getting the feeling that someone just pulled out their Dave Chappelle “Wrap It Up Box”, I’ll close with this simple request to gaming journalist.  Please stop writing your feelings about Net Neutrality and gaming.  Do some research, get both sides of the issue, and report them accordingly.