Egypt A Complete Disaster

I've been following the news coming out of Egypt on my blog ever since Mubarak was thrown out of power 2 years during the Arab Spring. I expected, as many conservative writers did, that Egypt would be taken over by hardlined religious Muslims and that Egypt would become like Iran where freedom is practically non-existent. News out of Egypt continues to be on that same troubling path.


World Net Daily (Feb 7, 2013):  'Insulting Quran' Charges Snares 2 More Children

An Egyptian court is forcing two Coptic Christian boys, ages 10 and 9, to stand trial for “insulting the Quran,”

The two boys will stand trial in Beni Suef, the same town where a woman and her seven children were convicted and sentenced in December to 15 years for converting to Christianity.

In Egypt, children are now going to jail for insulting Islam or for converting to Christianity.


Telegraph (Feb 2, 2013):  Cairo Horrified By Pictures Showing Police Beating Naked Man

Television pictures showing a middle-aged man lying stripped naked and being beaten by police before being hurled into their van rocked Egypt yesterday, the latest gruesome twist in the country's descent into public disorder.

Stories of police brutality against protestors and people disagreeing with Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood are all over the place. Rapes, beatings, threats against family. There's no low that the government doesn't seem willing to stoop to in order to try and silence opposition to its rule.


Telegraph (Feb 5, 2013):  Ahmadinejad Visits Egypt, Signaling Realignment

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s historic three-day trip to Egypt, the first in three decades by an Iranian leader, started pleasantly enough on Tuesday. 

Egypt’s president, Mohamed Morsi, greeted Mr. Ahmadinejad with a broad smile during a red-carpet ceremony at a Cairo airport. The two talked about the crisis in Syria and how to improve the relationship between their own countries, which has been in a deep freeze since the Iranian revolution in 1979.

For the first time in three decades, Iran's leader has visited Egypt and been welcomed by Egypt's government. Iran is the terrorist capital of the Middle East and one of the worst countries when it comes to repressing its people and freedom. The fact that Egypt is now buddying up with Iran is not at all a surprise.


Reuters  (Feb 17, 2013):  Alcohol Sale To Be Banned In Egypt's New Suburbs

Two years after the Egyptian revolution that ousted an authoritarian regime, liberals are increasingly concerned that the ruling Islamists are out to curb personal freedoms and build a society in their own image.

Alcohol, prohibited by most Islamic scholars, is one area where the new authorities are introducing controversial change.

Nabil Abbas, the vice president of the New Urban Communities Authorities (NUCA), told Reuters on Sunday that the government would no longer issue licences for the sale of alcohol in new residential settlements on the outskirts of Cairo, Alexandria and other big cities.

Egyptians opposed to the country's Islamist leaders condemned the move as an infringement on personal freedoms.

Freedoms that most people in the world take for granted are being blocked and made illegal in Egypt under the rule of the Muslim Brotherhood. Alcohol is just one prime example. The government is out of control, taking over and dominating the country in every way it can, making hardlined Islam the only law. Christian families that have lived in Egypt since Bible times are fleeing for their lives. The economy, which was heavily dependent on tourism, has taken a dive because people are no longer visiting Egypt out of fear.

This result in Egypt should make us all seriously wonder about how truthful and/or accurate the mainstream media actually is, because they saw the Arab Spring as being a wonderful revolution of freedom, democracy and civil rights. Instead it's turning Egypt into Iran, like the non-mainstream media knew it would. So if CNN and the BBC got this so horribly wrong. What else are their so called experts getting wrong in the news they report?...

Draconian DRM And DLC Strip Mining Modern Games

DRM (Digital Rights Management) and DLC (Downloadable Content) are two systems used in computer and console gaming that are quickly being overrun by corporate greed and destroying the rights of paying customers (gamers).

DRM (Digital Rights Management) makes buyers of software (computer games, programs, etc.) jump through hoops in order to use the product they purchased and restricts freedom in the name of reducing piracy and increasing sales. DRM has never successfully stopped a game from being pirated. Hackers are very smart and very quickly come up with clever ways to remove DRM. Meanwhile, the paying customers are stuck handcuffed by the DRM making their game experience at the very least annoying and at worst completely impossible.

DLC (Downloadable Content) is extra content (levels, weapons, armour, costumes, maps, buildings, characters, quests, etc.) that a player can buy on top of buying the original game in order to add extra bits and pieces to the experience. Extra content can be a win/win for both the company that made the game as well as the customers. The company can create extra content and sell it for a couple dollars a month or more after the game has come out, extending a game's longevity and adding more content to expand a player's experience. The player gets more content and the game company makes more money.


DRM Death Squad

The most popular form of DRM these days (when it comes to games) is locking each copy of a game to a single user so that the game can never be traded, sold, given away, or even installed on additional hardware (more than one computer). This is done by requiring the customer to register an online account with the company that made the game (or the online store that the company goes through). Unless the customer registers online (giving a user name, a password, and an active authenticated email address [at the very least]), the game either will not install or will not play. Once the account is activated, the game must then be able to regularly contact that game company's servers to authenticate itself (prove that you are the proper legal owner of the game) every time you start the game and even while you're busy playing the game. If at any point the communication fails (your internet goes down or the company's servers go down), your game automatically stops working and kicks you out.

I have purchased a few games over the years with DRM that frustratingly handicapped the game I bought. In one case, the game stuttered and skipped so bad that it was almost unplayable. I figured out that it was because the game was constantly verifying itself online, even though the game was single player. I got so annoyed and fed up with the awful performance that I finally just downloaded a pirated version of the game so I could play it. It worked perfectly. Another game I bought was constantly locking up and freezing on me. It did this exactly 10 minutes in every single time. Turns out, it was trying to "phone home" to the game publisher to verify that I was the rightful owner. It was failing because I had turned my internet off temporarily (which I often do when playing single player games). Another game I bought wouldn't even install. The game was 3 years old, and though it was a single player game, the game required me to register online and keep an open internet connection. Problem was, the company had disbanded since then and it was impossible to register with them because the company no longer existed. The game I paid for, was 100% useless.

Imagine this kind of system on anything else you purchase. Your DVD player has to be online and every 10 minutes it must verify that you are the rightful owner of each and every DVD you play. Or you have to register your email address, user name and password in order to start using that brand new toilet, car, stereo system, or lightbulb. Or each and ever time you start up your car, it must first authenticate itself and all of its parts online with the manufacturers before you can drive anywhere.

The whole point of all this is to handcuff and lock paying customers directly to the company that created and published the game. If anything goes wrong anywhere in the process for whatever reason, the game you paid for simply stops working and you're out of luck. There is no freedom to simply play what you bought. You are tied down and hobbled by draconian DRM. You have effectively given up your rights as a paying customer. You purchased the game, but only get to play that game so long as the company who made it allows you to do so.


DLC Strip Mining

DLC (Downloadable Content) "strip mining" is basically cutting features and chunks from a game in order to sell it later as "extra content" for more money. This can be levels, maps, characters, equipment, game play features, quests, costumes, and all kinds of other content that has been intentionally excluded from the game in order to make customers buy it on top of the game's full price tag. There are some absolutely horrendous examples of this going on lately. Some of the worst is when the content already exists on the DVD of the game that you bought, but you can't access that content without paying extra to have it unlocked. That's right. You bought the game, and this content is already on the disc, but you can't use it unless you pay more. Capcom is notorious for this. Another example of horrible DLC is when your game gives you a quest or mission, but then you can't play that quest or mission because it was cut from the game and requires you to pay extra for it.

One last example comes from Diablo 3. The game has an online auction house where you have to pay real world money to buy and sell digital items in the game (weapons, armour, etc.). Blizzard, the company that made the game, will automatically take a percentage cut of the money for each and every transaction. But what's REALLY bad about this is that players have realized that the whole last section of the game is impossible to play without buying high powered items from the auction house. So you cannot play and beat the full game without spending more real world money at the auction house. The monsters are intentionally made too powerful for you to defeat unless you pay for better gear.


Example In The Extreme:  New SimCity

The new SimCity game (due out this year, 2013) is a prime example of BOTH these systems ramped up to their full powerful maximums.

It has come to light that the game will not only require a constant internet connection, but that your saved games are actually run and stored on the servers of Electronic Arts (the company that is publishing the game). So if you lose your connection to their online servers for some reason, you lose your progress on the game. When customers heard about this a number of them were rightfully outraged, saying things like, "Hey, Electronic Arts! Our own computers have a wonderful little device called a hard drive that's absolutely perfect for storing saved games on and it requires no internet connection at all to work." Games have been able to save to your system/hardware since before the 1980s, but because of EA's super powered DRM, the new SimCity will not allow that.

And how about DLC? Turns out, the new SimCity game is "nickle and dime-ing" tons of content that used to be included in previous SimCity games. For example, the land space for your cities in the new game is severely limited, only equivalent to a few city blocks. Previous SimCity games, even as far back as the 1990s, let you build huge sprawling cities. No more. Why? Because EA (Electronic Arts) wants to sell you that extra land space as DLC. And that's only the tip of the iceberg. There are tons of features that used to be included in SimCity games that have been cut and made DLC so players have to pay extra for them.

This is corporate greed and power tripping in the extreme! I've been a fan of the SimCity games since the 1990s, but what I'm learning about the new SimCity is infuriating me and I will NOT be buying it.

Game Piracy Saves A Failed Game

Pirates aren't so bad after all. ;-)

A funny thing happened when a tiny little puzzle game called Gerblins got pirated online. Non-pirated downloads of the game shot up!

The little game, upon release, was a catastrophe. Absolutely no one bought it. Then, after months of no sales at all, the game suddenly out of the blue began getting downloads. What happened? The game got pirated and uploaded to Torrent websites. People started downloading it and playing it for free. The people who made the game saw this and thought, "Well, at least SOMEONE is playing our game," and decided to not make a fuss about it. Within no time at all, the game went from no one downloading it at official market websites to thousands of people downloading it at official online stores.

What happened? Market awareness and user experience. People played it, liked it, told their friends about it, and began downloading it from the official marketplaces. People discovered that it was actually pretty fun, all thanks to it being pirated online. Pirating literally saved their dead game, all because it expanded the availability of that game and opened the doors to more players.

Gamasutra:  How Piracy Saved Our Dying Mobile Game

No Used Games For New Consoles = Sales Suicide

It is coming to light that Microsoft and Sony's new game consoles (probably coming out by the end of this year, 2013) may no longer play used games. All games will be locked to one system and one online user account.


The "Evil Used Games Market"

The console game industry in the past 2 years has shrunk dramatically. People are just not buying many games anymore. They're spending their money on the rare few that really interest them and not bothering with the rest. Because of this, tons of game companies have had to close up shop in the last 2 years because no one bought their game that they spent millions of dollars making.

Here's an idea... Make a good unique game! Not the hundredth rip off of Call of Duty! Make a game that people really want and that's worth the price of admission ($60), and people will buy it.

Game publishing companies have been working over time pumping the idea that what's killing them is the re-sale market where people buy and sell games used. They argue that instead of buying a game new for $60, people are just waiting and buying it for a cheaper price used. I do not argue with that logic, because I have no doubt that some people do think that way. Heck, I've often thought, "That game looks like it might be good, but there's no way I'm paying $50 or $60 for it. If it comes down to $40 or less I might get it." Whether used or new on discount, I'd buy it for the cheaper price, but not the new price, because I just don't want that game bad enough. To me it's not worth the high price tag, especially when so many of the games these days contain 10 hours or less of actual game play while others for the same price easily provide 30+ hours of fun.

Most game publishers hate the used game (re-sale) market. Why? Because a person can buy their games for cheap and not a penny of the money spent on the used game goes back to the game publisher. You can buy a game for $60 new, then sell it to someone else (or a used games store) and the game publisher gets no money from that re-sale. Of course, in reality, tons of things you purchase can be re-sold (used underwear anyone?... ew). Tools, bicycles, books, clothes, furniture, televisions, stereo systems, kitchen appliances, cars, car parts, clocks, paintings, pictures, instruments, toys and on and on the list goes. And you never have to pay the original manufacturers or inventors a dime for the previously used/enjoyed product. But game publishers hate the used games market and are doing everything they can to crush it.

This, however, could absolutely DESTROY the console game industry as we know it!


How To Kill Used Games

So how would the up and coming game consoles by Microsoft and Sony prevent used games from working on their systems? There's a number of ways, but the most likely way is to lock the game directly to the first system it gets played on. From that point on, the game won't work on any other system (any other internal serial number or online user account). Each game basically has one license and that license is locked to you and can NEVER be transferred to anyone else. The game will regularly check that you are the authenticated owner of the game by verifying itself against your signed in online account and your machine's ID. If it doesn't pass the check, the game won't play.


Consumer Creep And Awareness

The biggest reason why killing the used games market will seriously cripple the console game industry is all a matter of marketing and brand awareness. The saturation level or consumer awareness of these games will greatly evaporate if used games disappear. Out of sight, out of mind, as the saying goes. To put it simply, the more people that play your game, and like it, the more they'll spread the word and show it off, and the more other people will hear about it and think about picking it up (new or used). Used games account for a big piece of that pie. Kill used games, and you kill all the post-release viral-like consumer creep of interest.

Gangnam Style, a music video and song by a rapper in South Korea, has made the singer (Psy) world famous and has made him and his record label tens of millions of dollars that they never would have seen if the song and video hadn't gone "viral". How did that happen? Everyone could watch the video free on YouTube, and they LOVED it. Massive success! But what if there was no such thing as YouTube and there was no way to access the video except directly from the music studio or Psy's own website?...


Future Sales

Imagine a game company puts out a game and it does ok, selling enough to make a little profit when all is said and done. The company decides to make a sequel. If the first game was well received and popular, the next game (if done well) will probably be popular as well, maybe even more popular than the first. That potential increase, however, is a drop in the bucket compared to the potential increase you'd have if your first game was out there available on the used games market. Because chances are good that the people that played your first game and enjoyed it used, will rush to buy your next game brand new and at full price. Destroy the used games market, and these customers absolutely vanish.

And what about the people that buy new games with the money they recuperated by selling their other purchased games? The psychological barriers to buying a new game increase dramatically if the player can't re-sell his purchase. This customer is more than likely going to buy half as many games as he would have if he could re-sell them. He might even buy only 2/3 the games since his risk vs reward has escalated so high and he can't recuperate any of his spent money by re-selling. The game companies will have then effectively taken a regular customer who might buy many new games a month and squashed him down to buying 1 or 2 (on average) a month, or less.

With no used games market for buying used games or selling my old games, I'd be reduced to buying 1 or 2 console games every few months. In which case, I'd seriously consider not buying a game console (and I'm a gamer!), because the value just wouldn't be there for me anymore. Not at hundreds of dollars for the system, and $60 plus tax for each and every new game. As it is, a number of games I would have bought over the past two years I never bothered with because of this whole "punish used game sales" mentality locking out content from used games. And I am NOT alone in this. A number of hugely successful games have come out with well reviewed sequels that contained new restrictions (some harsh) on used games and the games absolutely tanked.


The Bottom Line

The more difficult you make it for people to purchase and enjoy your product, the less people will consider it, buy it, play it, talk about it and buy future products your company puts out, period. You become everyone's enemy, the greedy corporation, the "bad guy" who thinks consumers are all cheats and liars deserving of punishment. You disrespect your consumer base, you make it a pain for people to legally purchase and use your product, and you kill customer satisfaction. In such a case, your game better be freakin' amazing or else no one is ever going to bother with it. In fact, people won't even think about it because no one is bothering to play it in the first place.

The game industry is going the way of the movie industry. People are becoming much more careful about the entertainment they spend their money on. Movie attendance, despite a huge population boost in the last few decades, is actually WAY down, and only the big popular few movies get a good (great) turn out anymore, while the rest get almost nothing. This is how the game industry is going, fast, and blocking used games will push this trend over the edge at lightning speed. Adapt for the better, or the open market will destroy you.

Microsoft and Sony... If you want to kill your consoles and the entire industry they're based upon, then by all means, ban used games. My prediction, if the new consoles block used games, is that the entire industry will shrink up to 30-40% (or more, from where it is right now) in 5 years or less. It'll literally implode.