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.
Showing posts with label Games. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Games. Show all posts
Tuesday, 12 February 2013
Sunday, 10 February 2013
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
Saturday, 9 February 2013
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.
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.
Tuesday, 14 August 2012
Offensive, Sexist, "Girl-friend Mode"
One of the developers of the new open-sandbox shooter RPG game "Borderlands 2" has unintentionally created a bit of an uproar in the gaming news industry by referring to a "new player" friendly female character class in the game as "Girlfriend-mode". Some game news websites erupted into "That's so sexist!" tirades while others, in response to the eruption, told readers to chill out and not get so caught up in hyper sensitive political correctness.
The "that's so sexist" group says that the comment is sexist because it suggests that girls aren't gamers and that they need an "easy" mode in order to play a shooter game while boys do not. But when you look at the context of the original comment, this wasn't really the point. The point was to try and help a more casual gamer get into the game and play along side a more hard-core gamer without being completely confused or trampled by the game's difficulty. It really had little to do with gender, and a lot to do with casual gamers vs non-casual gamers.
Yes, maybe there is a bit of an underlying sexism in the idea or comment, but it's also entirely based in reality. Guys are by far the hardcore gamer demographic. Girls are much more often casual gamers who like simpler less intense game experiences. This is head and shoulders above the way it used to be a decade ago when most women hardly played ANY computer or console games at all. More and more in recent years game developers are realizing that there ARE a lot of women and girls out there who really do like to play games, and that to cater to this demographic is a great way to tap into a very large population group that has sadly often been ignored.
But to then jump all over someone for pointing out the differences between girls and boys when it comes to what they enjoy in video games and call it sexism is political correctness gone haywire. Folks, girls and boys are different!!! Our bodies and brains are different. And that's OK! It's not sexist, otherwise you have to call nature itself sexist for using two genders in the first place. Each gender is different on purpose, in order to present and use differences of physical and mental traits for the betterment of both. It's a combination act of "better together" because the differences between the two genders allows them to be especially good in different areas automatically and to greatly benefit each other because of this. It has nothing to do with who's stronger, who's smarter, or who plays more hardcore games. It's ridiculous to blow up whenever someone points out any sort of differences between the genders, because these differences are entirely natural AND beneficial!
When it comes to games, it's very true that guys dominate the hardcore gaming scene while women dominate that casual gaming scene. It's a simple fact of statistics, demographics, and style. Don't act like it's sexism to the extreme if someone points this out. It's not. It's the reality. Women are perfectly capable of being "hardcore" gamers as well (some are), but both groups by and large have different tastes and preferences for the games they find entertaining. To merge these two somewhat divergent gaming cultures and interests together is not at all an easy task but when it's done right it's a great win for both gamers and the game developers.
"Girlfriend mode" is an attempt by the Borderlands 2 developers to get a guy's more casual gamer girlfriend into a more hardcore guy-focused game. The game has absolutely no problem attracting guys, because of what the game is. But it also wants to bring in girl gamers so that both guys and girls can play the game together and both have a great time doing it. If you're a hardcore gamer and a girl, then play one of the other character classes that aren't intended for "newbies" to the game style. But don't get all hot and bothered because there's an easy mode made with the intend of attracting more casual girl gamers. That's political correctness gone WAY too far. Are we not even allowed to attempt mixed gender gaming? Are we not allowed to mentioned "boys" or "girls" in gaming anymore? Give me a break! We ARE different. Get over it and stop being offended that you weren't born with both sets of genitals instead of just one. Sheesh.
News Article that inspired this blog post: Opinion: Borderlands 2's 'Girlfriend Mode' and casual sexism (Gamasutra, game development news and article website)
Thursday, 26 July 2012
Fun In Oblivion
I just upgraded to a fast new computer this last week and am currently enjoying the wonders of a fast multi-core processor, a 2 Gigabyte NVidia graphics card, and 10 Gigabytes of RAM. It's been years since I bought a new computer so it was definitely time, and the improvements all around are great. Programs load so fast! But to really put my hardware to the test, I needed to play a high graphics intense game. And so, after much frustration installing probably a hundred user made modifications to the 2006 (I think) game Oblivion (which was notoerious for stomping flat computers of its day, even really good ones, on low graphics settings), I ventured into the fun and beauty...
After installing the best graphics mods (modifications) for Oblivion that are out there, I jumped into the game and was in awe. It is truly breath taking to behold... Well, the scenery is beautiful anyway. The people on the other hand, even with the best available mods installed...
Yes, sadly, no amount of exceptional talent and time contributed by Oblivion mod makers are able to improve the typical character in Oblivion beyond this. Their clothes can look awesome. The people in the clothes... Not so much.
And how can we forget the many pleasures (and frustrations) of Oblivion's numerous glitches and unusual oddities!
Poor wild mountain goat. It was mindlessly chomping grass and suddenly was set upon by a traveling city guard. After coming across this unusual battle of life and death, the soldier mercilessly pummeling the helpless goat into submission, the goat finally succumbed to its injuries, and swallowed its own head. Note the horn sticking out of the top. That's where it's head is hiding. The goat probably couldn't stand the endless taunts from the armour clad soldier as the warrior shouted, "You're pathetic! Is that the best you've got!?" and so it did the only thing it could to escape. Mutate.
But the fun doesn't stop there!
This wolf was an easy kill when it attacked me in the wild. However, the not so easy part was getting the wolf's pelt off the body as it tumbled endlessly down the mountain and refused to stop even as I went barreling down the hill after it. This is when I learned to be below a monster on a hill when you kill it, that way it lands on top of you and you break its fall so that gravity can't laugh in your face as your hard earned trophy falls down the mountainside for the next twenty minutes with you chasing after it like a desperate idiot. :-) Live and learn.
Meanwhile, something has gone very wrong with the sky...
And I don't seem to be the only one that's noticed... Though this person was standing in the same spot for three days without moving. Maybe he knew the shattered sky was coming and was waiting in breathless anticipation.
When the sky decides to do crazy things like this, it's probably a good idea to save your game, because chances are that Oblivion is going to realize it's done something bad and will fix itself by ending it's existence completely and crashing you back to your Windows Desktop. "You want the sky fixed? Do ya? Really? *crash*"
Despite the many bugs (some major and many not so major), the game is beautiful with all the great mods added to it by talented people around the world who have too much time on their hands making a good looking game look incredible. It's a lot of effort to get it working right, but it sure is pretty.
 |
| I'm the king of the world!... Don't mind my rusty set of armour. I'm only Level 1. |
After installing the best graphics mods (modifications) for Oblivion that are out there, I jumped into the game and was in awe. It is truly breath taking to behold... Well, the scenery is beautiful anyway. The people on the other hand, even with the best available mods installed...
 |
| "Hello Rona! Wait... You're a woman?" |
Yes, sadly, no amount of exceptional talent and time contributed by Oblivion mod makers are able to improve the typical character in Oblivion beyond this. Their clothes can look awesome. The people in the clothes... Not so much.
And how can we forget the many pleasures (and frustrations) of Oblivion's numerous glitches and unusual oddities!
 |
| No 3D goat should have to suffer the indignity of consuming its own head. |
Poor wild mountain goat. It was mindlessly chomping grass and suddenly was set upon by a traveling city guard. After coming across this unusual battle of life and death, the soldier mercilessly pummeling the helpless goat into submission, the goat finally succumbed to its injuries, and swallowed its own head. Note the horn sticking out of the top. That's where it's head is hiding. The goat probably couldn't stand the endless taunts from the armour clad soldier as the warrior shouted, "You're pathetic! Is that the best you've got!?" and so it did the only thing it could to escape. Mutate.
But the fun doesn't stop there!
 |
| Bring it on wolfy! |
This wolf was an easy kill when it attacked me in the wild. However, the not so easy part was getting the wolf's pelt off the body as it tumbled endlessly down the mountain and refused to stop even as I went barreling down the hill after it. This is when I learned to be below a monster on a hill when you kill it, that way it lands on top of you and you break its fall so that gravity can't laugh in your face as your hard earned trophy falls down the mountainside for the next twenty minutes with you chasing after it like a desperate idiot. :-) Live and learn.
Meanwhile, something has gone very wrong with the sky...
 |
| Shhhh. Don't tell NASA. The sky is really made of giant triangles. |
And I don't seem to be the only one that's noticed... Though this person was standing in the same spot for three days without moving. Maybe he knew the shattered sky was coming and was waiting in breathless anticipation.
 |
| I don't think it's supposed to do that... |
Despite the many bugs (some major and many not so major), the game is beautiful with all the great mods added to it by talented people around the world who have too much time on their hands making a good looking game look incredible. It's a lot of effort to get it working right, but it sure is pretty.
Wednesday, 16 May 2012
Diablo 3 Copy Protection And Server Hell
The much anticipated game Diablo 3 was just released yesterday at midnight and though many people have managed to play it, there's also a great number of people that have not, despite having purchased the game at midnight launch parties or pre-ordered the game through various online vendors (the game hit a record for pre-orders on Amazon.com). Some customers are extremely ticked off, and it all comes down to the copy protection (or DRM, Digital Rights Management) built into the blockbuster game.
The game requires that you always be connected and signed in to the game company's online servers to play, even if you're playing the game by yourself, single-player. Back in the "good old days", if you bought a single player computer game, you could take it home, install it, and then play it. Now, you have to jump through all kinds of hoops in order to prove that the game is a real purchased copy of the game before (and while) you play, otherwise the game locks you out.
I ran into this very same problem just last week when I bought a cheap computer game and spent days messing around with it and my computer system to try and get the stupid thing to work. My final fix was to do EXACTLY what the game company was trying to stop. I downloaded a hack that blocked all the copy protection and constant (as you play) online server verifications. The game then ran like a dream, instead of stuttering all over the place and freezing up every 10 minutes. The problem? Excessive copy protection and constant online authentication.
Diablo 3's user review average score on Metacritic is currently running at 3.6 out of 10. That's horrible. Many people were super excited about Diablo 3 coming out and when they went to play this greatly anticipated game that they'd purchased, they were locked out of the game by the now infamous "Error 37".
Diablo 3 User Reviews at Metacritic: 3.6 / 10
Metacritic Diablo 3 User Reviews
At VentureBeat someone created a Day 1 game review. The reviewer's final conclusion?
VentureBeat: World exclusive Diablo III review!!!!
Overall, I am impressed by the production values and execution of Diablo III’s main menu. It’s admittedly a very slick menu...
Yup, the main menu title screen was as far as the reviewer got. Thanks to Error 37.
It's been so bad that "Error 37" has actually been trending high on Twitter all day and internet meme websites are filling with Error 37 jokes. IGN: Diablo 3's Best Error 37 Jokes
GamesRadar has this to say about it all...
GamesRadar: Diablo III error 37 causing a great wailing and gnashing of teeth as players worldwide fail to log in.
What's galling in this case though is that the log-in failures currently being suffered by a large number of aspiring players block the single-player game as well as multiplayer. Yay online authentication.
Consider the online DRM arguement well-and-truly cracked open once again. Can of worms, ACTIVATE!
Over at IGN, their "review in progress" of the game was off to a rough start.
IGN: Diablo III Review in Progress
Diablo III has all the launch problems of a major MMO. Blizzard’s action-RPG requires you to connect to their proprietary gaming network, Battle.net, if you want to play, but since its launch it’s been an aggravating slog to log on. It’s annoying enough that you can’t play without an Internet connection, but it’s even worse that the company that runs the biggest MMO in the world, and who no doubt had a good idea of how well Diablo III was selling, couldn't make the first day run smoother. Even now, at the time this is being written, the whole system has been shut down for server maintenance. Thankfully I’m playing it from my office, since I can only imagine how irate people who took the day off to enjoy one of the biggest game launches all year must be feeling right now.UPDATE:
Even when I managed to successfully log in and Diablo III running things didn’t go well as far as user experience is concerned. Regularly my friends and I would have multiple minutes go by between messages we sent one another, only to have an error code pop up and a wall of text spam through the chat. Or there was the point when early on in Act I my game simply crashed, prior to which half the world disappeared along with my character’s spell effects. The best part? After forcing my way out of Diablo III I logged back in only to find that my items and progress from the previous few minutes had disappeared. Goodbye, shiny new helmet. This didn’t bother me too much since I was so early in the campaign that I hadn’t found anything special, but if I lost a rare or special item due to their server issues you could bet I’d be on the phone with someone in customer service. Items can now net real money, so its inexcusable to lose them due to problems with Blizzard's servers.
Here's a few more meme pics related to the problem. :-)
Thursday, 12 April 2012
Oh No! It's Intelligent Design, Educational, AND FUN!
For the past half year or so I've had some ideas floating around in my head for a fun little educational strategy game based on creating a functional living cell. Well it turns out that someone with actual game design experience and education has beaten me to the punch.
While reading an article about a small company that recently released a strategy tower defense RPG flash game, I noticed that the writer mentioned another game he had developed and released called CellCraft. I was immediately interested as it sounded EXACTLY like what I had been thinking about doing for a game. I looked it up and sure enough it did a lot of what I'd had in mind. It taught the Player about the parts and workings of a living cell. Good for the developer! I was a little disappointed that someone else had come up with a fun little game based on the same kind of idea, but I was also happy to see that such an idea had been put to good use already.
While reading an article about a small company that recently released a strategy tower defense RPG flash game, I noticed that the writer mentioned another game he had developed and released called CellCraft. I was immediately interested as it sounded EXACTLY like what I had been thinking about doing for a game. I looked it up and sure enough it did a lot of what I'd had in mind. It taught the Player about the parts and workings of a living cell. Good for the developer! I was a little disappointed that someone else had come up with a fun little game based on the same kind of idea, but I was also happy to see that such an idea had been put to good use already.
The underlying meaning of this game concept, however, is what initially poked my interest. The game was going to show the Player just how incredible the biology of a single cell was. How a single cell did all kinds of different things based on all kinds of different parts and chemicals in order to survive and accomplish what it needs to. What does all that marvellous structure and functional detail say about the incredible complexity of life? That it can't have happened by accident! It's SO detailed, SO interconnected and SO full of rich specific information and instructions to build and use all kinds of molecule-sized parts that the only way to describe it is to say that it is an astoundingly sophisticated self-sustaining miniscule biological machine. And where do machines come from? An intelligent designer and manufacturer, a creator.
This underlying theme was not at all lost on evolutionist educators who were at first impressed with the game and how it could teach the Player all about the different parts and functions of a single living cell... And then they realized the horrific truth. Neo-Darwinist evolution was mostly absent from the game and instead, the Player of the game was essentially an Intelligent Designer, an alien biologist (a platypus, in fact) constructing a living cell. Evolutionists and atheists immediately wrote articles attacking the game and stating that it was in no way educational or beneficial to any student who might play it because it promoted “Creationism”.
Game reviews for CellCraft were very good and a lot of people were raving about the fact that the game was educational AND fun! People were saying how much the game taught them about cell biology and that they had a great time playing it too, a rarity in educational software.
“Where CellCraft excels is in the depth of the scientific material presented throughout the game.” “… a challenging and informative educational game with creative and satisfying gameplay mechanics.”
“Played Cellcraft this morning, which turned out to be one of the best science education games I’ve seen in a while.”
(http://www.meme-hazard.org/blog/2011/06/12/game-review-cellcraft/)
“Now that I've played this highly educational, yet highly fun, game, I would ask they create more games like this.”
So people without any sort of political bent in the debate between Neo-Darwinist evolution and creationism or Intelligent Design clearly thought the game was an outstanding and fun way to learn basic cell biology. Everyone was raving about its educational merits. Atheists, however, were NOT impressed.
PZ Myers, an atheist evolutionist who quite regularly takes on the issues of intelligent design vs evolution (from the pro-evolution and anti-creation perspective) wrote about the game under a blog post titled, "CellCraft, a subversive little game".
"... as a tool for teaching anyone about biology, it sucks. It is not an educational game, it is a miseducational game. I hope no one is planning on using it in their classroom."
The credits for the game include this damning few lines of text.
"Also thanks to Dr. Jed Macosko at Wake Forest University and Dr. David Dewitt at Liberty University for providing lots of support and biological guidance."
Evolutionists discovered that two of the science contributors to the game were scientists that support the Intelligent Design belief that all life was Intelligent Designed and planted on earth by an Intelligent Designer (Creator). This belief basically states that life is far too sophisticated, complex and full of detailed specified instruction and information (like a massive computer program and intricate city all contained in a single cell) for it to have simply happened by the accidental chance combination of available chemicals of the universe. The atheists and evolutionists had their smoking gun.
As PZ Myers states,
"Those two are notorious creationists and advocates for intelligent design creationism. Yep. It's a creationist game."
Yes, it's true, the game does not promote Neo-Darwinist evolution. It instead places the Player as the intelligent director and builder of a living cell and their parts. You, as the Player, simply collect the needed chemicals to build the parts and when you have enough of those chemicals, your part is build and added to the cell, giving it a new important feature. The game is structured and plays like a game should, while also providing a lot of information on cell biology that most people would have no clue about.
The atheists are mad because a couple of the scientists that the game’s science was double checked with believe in Intelligent Design, and the game itself does not contain much (if any) explicit references to evolution. They can’t complain about the actual science in the game, but that doesn’t matter. What irks them is the lack of evolution and the fact that the game does an admirable job of showing just how amazing and complex a single living cell is. That complexity can’t help beg the question, “How could this have ever ‘just happened’ by chance?” though such a question is never implied or asked in the game itself.
One furious atheist commenter online said about the game (slightly censored by myself)…
“motherf***ing insidious b*st*rds.well, it's obvious not ALL of them are complete morons, though it's still the case that all of them are sleazy, underhanded, b*st*rds.”
Thankfully there are also many level headed and rational people out there (evolutionists and atheists included) that have posted comments in relation to the game in a much more positive light
“I don't care who makes the game, if I find it educationally useful.”
Some angry atheists freaked out because the game doesn’t directly preach evolution. In fact, it doesn’t directly preach ANYTHING! But it shows you just how desperate evolution must become in order to survive. Unless it is constantly pointed at, taught, included or spoken of as absolute truth, the incredible realities of life all around us testify to their magnificent and brilliant Creator, God.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)