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When you point a finger at someone else, three are pointing back at you.

US Federal Guvmint - ACTA, DMCA, NSA wiretaps, full laundry list available online.
Cisco - Great Firewall of China, 'nuff said.
Visa/Mastercard/Amex - Insecure data practices while raping their customers with fees.
Facebook - In bed with Zynga, whose CEO has admitted he's a scammer and that his games are rife with malware.
Google - Censorship in China (until they got pwned).
Microsoft - No comment needed (with a CEO that looks like Satan, it's not really necessary).

The only reason the *AAs aren't jumping on the bandwagon at this point is that they'd bring to stench of their bad PR all over this legislation and alert the public to what's it's really all about.

"Lord British"? Seriously? I thought Yahtzee was joking.

And now we have people who just know Lord British as "a guy that Yahtzee has once mentioned". *sigh* Where is this world going to?

"Lord British"? Seriously?
I thought Yahtzee was joking.

Apparently, the Wii gun controller the parents actually own is incredibly life-like, which would explain why the mother's explanation may actually have some merit.

"Really? Based on what metric?"

Based on piracy rates. I never said that a game couldn't be a success in the PC game market. I pointed out that, as the Tweakgames article stated, only two things actually had an impact on piracy rates:

1. The popularity of the game. If the game was more popular, the piracy rate was higher.

2. The presence of restrictive and intrusive DRM, which if not broken, actually does have the impact of lowering piracy rates until it is broken.

Nothing else made a difference. If a $20 game was as popular as a $60 game, it had the same level of piracy.

Did you even read the article I linked to?

"The simple fact that PC game developers are still in business and still making money, despite wasting who knows how many millions of dollars every year on failed anti-piracy measures is all it takes to prove otherwise."

Are they?

That's not a glib question. I started computer gaming in 1989 (and yes, I started out as a game pirate - I outgrew it by the age of 17, though). The PC game market is a wasteland today compared even to then. Only about ten years ago console ports were rare - now they're become more and more the norm. Most of the PC game market is concentrated in MMOs now. While there are still some big releases for the PC game market (eg., Starcraft II and Diablo III), most of the non-MMO releases start out on the console market, and the PC version comes out months later.

It's not rocket science to predict the trend. The PC games market that I started out in is long gone. The market from five years ago was far more rich and full than it is today. Yes, there are some big players still there, such as Stardock and Blizzard, but even Bioware is now starting its games on the console before the PC. The PC game makers are in the process of walking away. That's not a prediction - just an observation. It IS happening.

And, taking Stardock as an example, you haven't presented the whole story. Here's picking up after 2008:

March 27, 2009 - Stardock unveils a low customer impact DRM solution named GOO (Game Object Obfuscation). Source: http://www.tomshardware.com/news/stardock-goo-drm-copy-piracy,7390.html

May 1, 2009 - The Escapist, and a few others, report that Stardock has major piracy issues with Demigod (which does have DRM). Of 120,000 games connecting to the servers on the opening weekend, only 18,000 are legitimate. After the team spends a couple of days working on the servers, the CEO declares a victory against the pirates. Source: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/91400-Stardock-CEO-Demigod-Beats-Piracy

Now, that's a far cry from the DRM used by Ubisoft. But, it is important to note that Stardock DID end up implementing a very customer-friendly DRM solution, and got hit badly by piracy issues.

"The only possible metric you can use that would make what you said in any way correct is the one the big corporations use: that every pirated copy is a lost sale. So I guess it "fails utterly" if your metric is that they aren't making near as much money as they "could" be."

And with that, I KNOW you didn't read the article I linked to. That is a complete mischaracterization of the economic argument. You'll find a proper description here: http://www.tweakguides.com/Piracy_3.html

Please read that before you reply.

And even if they seriously plan on doing so at this moment, who says they will remember their promise when they are about to shut them down? Or when they are forced out of business? Taken over by someone who doesn't feel like releasing control over their intellectual property? See this article, which discusses exactly what you mentioned, and several other hollow promises...

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/714-The-Chronicles-of-Riddick-Assault-on-Dark-Athena

Farmville is drivel, but it's not malware. Malware isn't just pointless and stupid and unnecessary.

OK, sure - Farmville isn't malware per se; the comparison was meant to be humorous. But it's more than just a waste of time. Farmville and other games from Zynga are vehicles for fraud, scams, and other such scum behavior. As malware is usually a vehicle for the same sort of scum, the comparison isn't THAT far fetched.

Obligatory re-post of the Zero Punctuation reviewing the first Bioshock:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/4-BioShock

I actually found ZP when this link was posted with the first Bioshock story here on Slashdot, thanks for that!

Actually Bioshock was essentially System Shock 2 reskin with a few features removed and the difficulty turned down

At least there is one game reviewer that pulls no punches! Here is Zero Punctuation's Review of Demon Souls.

"I recall when I was 12, all nudity was sexual, precisely because I was never allowed to see any "naughty bits". "

As The Escapist points out, at least that had one benefit: it made the movie Heavy Metal a cult hit.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/escape-to-the-movies

BECAUSE IN MY DAY BOOBIES WERE HARD TO GET A LOOK AT.

Natal and the Milo demo especially are complete BS, but that's not really the indicative bit. I mean, you have a camera that is gathering position information, even if you just assume it's capturing what's directly in front of a set that should be enough to go off of for "character on screen looks at player". Natal is giving you information about player position and distance after all, a little calibration isn't much to assume.

No, the real BS is the content. There is absolutely nothing in the demo to indicate that it's not entirely scripted. No suggestions from the audience, random actions, etc. The entire interaction looks staged and carefully played-out. The implication that Natal brings some magical AI to the 360 and lets you interact with it is blatant ... but this has nothing to do with what Natal is. And there is no magical AI, or we'd already be using it. Motion sensing doesn't add anything to this. What Natal does is cute, but as Yahtzee points out (skip to 1:33), motion sensing for the most part has sucked and will continue to suck as long as there is no real feedback.

Just watch and be enlightened. http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/208-Eve-Online

Same people that brought you Indigo Prophecy. Good idea, and the first half the game was great, then you got to the second half of the game that went snooker loopy. So I'll reserve judgement till I get a chance to play the whole thing.

Not really the new Star Wars movies. Like, Twilight.

I'm afraid it's all to do with the Geek Girl...

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/moviebob/6797-Twilight-of-the-She-Geeks

I have a step 4: see if this guy has reviewed it.

His style is very critical and sarcastic, but I find it usually gives a very good idea of a games strengths and weaknesses. I've bought games that he's trashed, but knowing why he's trashed them and having a different opinion on what style of games are fun. It's especially useful to weed-out the games that are "good concept, buggy as hell"

Fuck, is this Wikipedia? Can't you people use Google? "sony ps3 production cost" gives me this as the fourth link with the... Wikipedia page on the PS3 being the first link.

Citation Needed.

Please provide one example of where EA released an alpha build. Or one example of where EA purchased a game already in development and then immediately diverted funds.

As much as you would like EA to be the big bad wolf knocking over studios left and right, the facts are that almost every studio that has gone down in flames under EA's ownership has done so due to its own people dropping the ball.

If you read any of the ex-Pandemic posts you will see that it was local mismanagement which led to poor quality product, not EA interference.

Likewise if you read the Escapist's article on the acquisition of Origin, one the most important quotes is this:

Garriott: "We doubled the size of the company from 200 to 400 that first year. We went from 5-10 projects to 10-20, and staffed those projects almost entirely with inexperienced people. It won't surprise you to learn those projects were not well managed. That was totally Origin's fault. We failed, and we ended up killing half of those products. That's probably what set up the EA mentality that 'Origin is a bunch of [deleted],' pardon my French."

This is a common pattern. EA buys a studio and gives the studio exactly what it wants, and the studio immediately hires new people and doubles its burn rate, spending tons of cash on payroll. And yet at the same time, the number of quality products at the studio declines. Growing pains, inexperienced management, whatever the cause, the result is the same. EA buys a successful studio, gives them money, the studio stops being successful.

Of course the game will be shipped before the studio says it's 100% done, because the studio is never going to claim that a shitty or buggy game is 100% done. The fact that it is still not a good game after 24 months of very-high-budget development does not mean that EA should pay for another 12 months. It means that the studio failed.

The interesting part of this is that the CEO had EA purchase his old company for a high amount of $$$ and only two years later shut it down while he personally pocketed several million.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/96237-Analyst-Chews-Out-EA-CEO-Over-Pandemic-Closure

Interesting as EA CEO John Riccitiello made a lot of moneyfrom EA buying them in the first place, while EA shareholders are the losers.

Don't forget Unskippable!

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/unskippable/512-Dirge-of-Cerberus

Unskippable is also quite good; not so fast-paced, but theres some fun moments. One good one is Alone in the Dark

Unskippable is also quite good; not so fast-paced, but theres some fun moments. One good one is Alone in the Dark

The only good thing about Escapist Magazine is Zero Punctuation:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/916-Wolfenstein

Yeah, he's that good.

Except Valkyria Chronicles is shit. But don't take my word for it, try Zero Punctuation's.

The only thing the game had going for it is the art style. Which is generic anime. But in HD, I guess.

And, yes, I've played the demo.

well I'm sure he's had his undies in a wad because Australia banned Left for Dead 2 and the US did not. For a country that was essentially a British prison colony (to non-aboriginals) for over 100 years, you'd think they would be more lax than other countries, but nope... of course, parts of the US were British prison colonies, too, but the number of people sent was vastly dwarfed by the number sent to Australia. Still, coincidence...?

Considering that's almost 5 years of entertainment and actually a good game, is that really so much.

The escapist had an article a few weeks ago making the same point. http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/view-from-the-road/6500-A-View-From-the-Road-The-Subscription-Equation

Once publishers manage to get acceptance for the idea that a game constantly needs to have an online connection...

If you bothered to keep up with gaming news, you'd know that SC2 will now have an offline mode (or something similar) which disables your friends list and achievements, but still allows you to play peer-to-peer.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/94135-StarCraft-II-Will-Have-LAN-After-All-Almost

If it's anything remotely like Steam, that's good enough for me.

I think you might get more sympathy on the Sims forum than here. Then again this IS the Internet. I think you should view this and be ashamed of yourself: Zero Punctuation

EA was doing you a favor.

Even Yahtzee agrees.

just like any "hard" science, social sciences also start with hypotheses based on observations. then, those hypotheses are tested in the field, using rigorous methods developed in the social sciences. while these methods might not be as "exact" as self-labeled hard scientists might be comfortable with, they are no less valid than the procedures carried out by a grunt in a lab.

frankly, hard scientists (computer scientists in particular) are too uncomfortable with science that does not follow rigid binary results. if anything, that just shows a dogmatic, unimaginative approach to science which too many scientists sadly follow.

as for this study, they're right. outside of the fantasy/sci-fi realms, think about what protagonists are out there in mainstream video games today, at least those sold in Western markets. the GTA series is a good example: except for one game in the series (where the black protagonist was a thug gangsta of all things, the rest of the main protagonists were white.

expand that to the larger games market. while there are stand-out exceptions (Mirror's Edge, Beyond Good and Evil, and a slew of Japan-origin games), the majority feature a white, male lead character. it's kind of obvious when you think about it.

and you also have the chicken and the egg problem. some might argue that "diverse" games haven't been made because there's no market for them. but how can there even be a market if gamers of all colors see only 1) games with white male leads and/or; 2) games that reinforce bad stereotypes.

we're talking about the same industry that pulled the "acts of lust" shenanigans at Comic-Con, fer chrissakes.

I'm afraid I found this article quite shallow when it comes down to it, although a lot of that is because last year I wrote a piece on this subject that was published in The Escapist as "The Anatomy of Violence." It covered why some people call first person shooter games "murder simulators," what the psychological underpinnings are behind the theory, and what impact it can have in the real world.

There are two versions - the one The Escapist published was edited down a fair bit, and can be found here: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/issues/issue_153/4960-The-Anatomy-of-Violence

The "extended" version - the one The Escapist didn't edit down - can be found here: http://garwulf.livejournal.com/38455.html

Not to put down the author of this article, but I think mine is really worth looking at here, and adds a lot that is missing (the SLA Marshall link is what makes the "murder simulator" theory make sense, among other things).

They're not going to get much appreciation, because while custom levels are a nice thing to have, they're not high on the list of problems people have with L4D1. There's a good Yahtezeeism from his review of Little Big Planet that drives this point home:

If a game that stands up by itself wants to release level design and modding tools, than Brillo Bananas: good modding communities are the sprinkling of cinnamon on a delicious trifle and hence relying on user made content is like eating heaped spoonfuls of cinnamon right from the jar. I don't want to have to wade through waste-high rendering runoff to get to the good levels, especially when I can do that by just playing the story mode: you know, the levels designed by professional fucking level designers. If I buy a house, I want an architect to design it. If I design it myself, it may have a more personal touch, but it's going to fall over very fast and even if it doesn't the giant fiberglass breasts on the front will be very tacky and the neighbors will complain when the gingerbread garage starts to smell.

L4D1 is not yet "a game that stands up by itself" like HL2 or TF2 are. It was $50 and shipped short of content that was promised by Valve but instead rolled in to L4D2. Most people don't want modding tools at this point, they want enough professionally developed content to finish the game - something that satisfies players' baser needs. Then, if the game were finished, the modding tools would be a great addition to get even more out of the game.

So no, you're not going to find a ton of appreciation for Valve releasing the SDK. User made content is not a replacement for true professional content, particularly content Valve said they were going to give out long, long ago.

Yet Another MMO?

Zero Punctuation did a fair analysis about MMOs in general in this review. At about 2:30.

I never got into these kind of games so I might be biased.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/7.109951

I know there's an observation in this one, at least.

Waiting for Duke Nukem Forever Forever.

All it was was an infinity symbol spinning while Duke randomly spouted phrases like "Come Get Some!" "It's time to kick ass and chew Bubblegum and I'm all out of Bubblegum" and "Who want some Wang" (The last one slipped in by accident. Really.)

The wait is over, here is someone who has played and reviewed the game . You only need the latest XPSWii7000 console with built in holo deck to play it and it's only $10 per level.

"he would have probably asked for a refund even if it was only ten cents. Price paid is kind of irrelevant."

i dunno. I would have agreed with you a few months ago, but after spending $10 on the amazing Plants vs Zombies i'm looking at all the other $49.95 games and thinking "why aren't you 5 times better? I did spend 5x more after all".

Well, you haven't proved it yet, because you were trying to prove that DynamicBits hadn't played it, not me. ;)

As for me, I've seen Yahtzee's review, and according to him it's worth playing, despite its faults (mostly story, apparently). I may buy it sometime when it's on sale on Steam.

As said before:

huge levels are a must, none of the console BS.

Garrett's style and the humor in 1&2 (esp 2's arguing archers)

3's grfx, I suppose would be good, and the lockpicking from 3 (toss up between time freeze, slow, or IRT)

Whatever BS that was in 3 where the person stiffened before being "boffed on the bonce" (whacked on the head),
sheesh, made a mildly playable game insufferably stupid.

Two words: Rope Arrows!

Back to basics and proven games that ppl liked about the first two.

Or, best summation:
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/544-Thief-The-Dark-Project

Apparently, there was talk of making Thief 4 take place present day (under the impression that they had done enough with the steampunk fantasy genre). There was even some concept art done (sorry for no link) of a catburgler/hoodiewearing Garrett.

Alternately, he could be replaced with a gentleman thief wearing a trilby.

I agree as far as the majority of games go, but there are some games that do try to use games as a medium for provoking thought and representing ideas, sometimes while still be interesting to play. Chris Crawford's Balance of Power (1985) is a pretty good example, I think, a game about Cold-War brinksmanship that wasn't just a wargame, but also aimed to illustrate some features of the Cold War and brinksmanship through its gameplay.

More recently, there's been a collection of much smaller games, usually Flash on the web, trying to say something about serious issues. They're mostly smaller because the current niche with the most legs seems to be games that respond in a timely fashion to current events. So, for example, in the wake of the 2006 E Coli spinach scare, an indie game studio came out with Bacteria Salad, a farm-simulation game that makes some points about the tradeoffs in small vs. large farms. And in the wake of the Kerry "don't tase me, bro" incident, another indie designer made a game about how people do, or could, respond to police brutality.

The book Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames (2007) has some decent coverage of the subject, about half an overview of games that already do include some actual expressive content, and half a manifesto of sorts that more games ought to, if the medium wants to have an impact in society besides entertainment.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/91526-3D-Realms-Shutting-Down
Deep Silver and Apogee Software have issued the following statement: "Deep Silver and Apogee Software are not affected by the situation at 3D Realms. Development on the Duke Nukem Trilogy is continuing as planned."

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/22-The-Witcher

Just how are they going to port this without removing half of it? The game was complex already and now they want to get it onto a Console? I think porting Excel or Access would be simpler.

Still, if you do enjoy these games and can put up with some harsh language and heavy sarcasm watching ZeroPunctuation reviews of game is sometimes more enjoyable than the game itself, (especially minute six of his halo wars review)

The DS isn't exactly free from piracy either and we don't see Nintendo complain about that thing.

Yeah... exactly.

I agree, I do enjoy spectating certain types of games. Street Fighter tourneys might be one of them. I'm looking forward to this indie documentary http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/90660-I-Got-Next-A-Street-Fighter-Documentary SF is interesting to watch because you get to see how pros play, learn new combos, styles of fighting, etc. It's 1 on 1, and all the action takes place on one screen. i think it's hard to spectate FPS games, or team based games, where different screen "see" different angles of the same action

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/346-Fable-2

Yes, yes you did.

What they could have done is pretend the game is set in South Africa. Then you can shoot as many white people with hilarious accents as you want, which is of course perfectly acceptable behavior.

They were actually honored by the Washington Legislature twice, once from the Senate and once from the House. Of course I suspect that this has far more to do with PAX bringing in 50k+ visitors than it does with anything else, but hey, an honor is an honor.

And I think The Escapist put it best: Jack Thompson's brain is dangerously close to exploding.

While AI is only a small but important part of a game, the AI of FEAR is one of its main selling points. For me this was the primary unique feature that made me buy the first game in the series. I agree with you that the horror sequences feel out of sync with the rest of the game, as explained well by Zero Punctuation. I think it would have felt more natural if there were no such scripted parts in the game. Anyway its a good this these wasnt mentioned in the article.