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And the follow up.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/11/14/ea-forum-bans-are-still-affecting-games/

I believe the story in question was EA Forum Bans Can Lock You Out Of Games http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/03/11/ea-forum-bans-can-lock-you-out-of-games/

I'm more going for shotguns

Where have you been? PC gaming is in the middle of a renaissance.

Rock Paper Shotgun's Advent Calendar for 2012 is a good place to start.

I disliked a couple of those, and a few more I didn't play, but the rest are awesome. Add to that list Stealth Bastard, To the Moon, and a handful of decent console ports, twenty other games I'm forgetting right now, and it's been a hell of a year to be a (PC) gamer.

IMO, a real contender for GOTY for 2012 would be a free flash game (no, wait, it doesn't suck! Really!) called Frog Fractions. It may very well represent the end of gaming, the Platonic form of the video game made real. That sentence was only sort-of tongue in cheek. It's great.

When THQ expressed interest in our pay what you want plus charity model and willingness to let us bundle so many top tier titles, we couldn’t believe it at first,” the rep explained to RPS. “But trying to turn up our noses at this epic chance to make gamers happy and help worthy causes like Child’s Play and the American Red Cross could only have been defined as arrogance. We had to try and we were extremely curious to see what would happen.

I agree with the "arrogance" observation. Childs Play & the American Red Cross are real, tangible causes, and as others mentioned, you can cause your entire donation to go to them and none of it to THQ or even HumbeBundle, if you like. The nerd rage against this bundle is completely inappropriate.

From my point of view, as long as they also keep doing the humble indie bundles, I have no problem with them throwing in partnered bundles like this. In fact, I quite enjoy them.

Source of quote: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/11/30/wait-what-the-humble-thq-bundle/

"What has gone up since then?"

I know some developers have kept the flame alive but it's been alarmingly inconsistent and not without a sugar coated middle finger in the EULA and other bullshit. The industry is extremely schizophrenic about modding lets face this fact, in the past you could just mod the damn game. Now there is all sorts of legal bullshit. Consider the legal quagmire starcraft 2 mods have now:

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/01/19/blizzard-vs-the-fan-made-starcraft-mmo/

They were there during game-modding golden years of Quake/duke/doom/etc that has been smothered (Supcom 2 was locked down and made difficult to mod at publisher request). Games like diablo 3 and Starcraft 2 have been increasingly fucked with because of publishers greed.

What has gone up since then? Complexity for one, this affects dev tool chains and narrows the talent pool, but the tools have never been better. How often do game editors get trailers? The guys who made the mods of yore have turned them into franchises. Games like Minecraft (10 million + sold) beg to differ about the modding scene. Look at WOW for crazy addons some of which become folded into the main client. Unreal 3 makes their dev tools extremely accessible and is one of the reasons for its popularity, and its cross platform. Try doing that with Quake, not to mention Quake has been open sourced and hacked to bits.

Just see this article here where the talk about 'engineering' psychological changes via PR campaigns for the acceptance of F2P / online DRM.

To me F2P is a response to piracy. Software as a service isn't new, we've been through this client server model before.

They already did (they're just gog.com now):

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/03/27/good-old-games-gone-relaunches-as-gog-com/

They've had new and newish games for quite some time now.

The best summary is from Rock, Paper, Shotgun:

It's been a while since Microsoft pulled the "oh no, this new version of DirectX couldn't possibly work on earlier versions of Windows" scamgasm, but as the relatively friendly age of Windows 7 is overshadowed by the dawning of the firm's desperate desire to make Windows 8 a cross-platform goliath/software shop, an old habit has returned.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/11/12/old-dog-old-tricks-ms-locks-directx-11-1-to-win-8/

(reposting because /. stupid UTF-8 non-support mangled the quote the first time)

The best summary is from Rock, Paper, Shotgun:

Itâ(TM)s been a while since Microsoft pulled the olâ(TM) âoh no, this new version of DirectX couldnâ(TM)t possibly work on earlier versions of Windowsâ(TM) scamgasm, but as the relatively friendly age of Windows 7 is overshadowed by the dawning of the firmâ(TM)s desperate desire to make Windows 8 a cross-platform goliath/software shop, an old habit has returned.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/11/12/old-dog-old-tricks-ms-locks-directx-11-1-to-win-8/

The only thing tying a lot of people (myself included) to Windows is gaming.

A lot? According to this interview with Ubisoft representatives, only 7% of Ubi's 2011 revenue was generated on PC and 5% of Activision's revenue:
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/09/05/ubisoft-drm-piracy-interview/

That means that >90% of gaming happens on other platforms anyway (consoles, smartphones) and for those users gaming is not what's keeping them on Windows.

Erm 100% of Blizzard's revenue is generated by PC Gamers, so therefore I extrapolate from my dataset that 0% of gaming must be happening on other platforms.

Picking Activision or Ubisoft are bad examples as they primarily produce console games with PC as an afterthought. Fortunately they are not the only game manufacturers, nor are they representative of the gaming industry in general.

You may wish to become better informed.

PC game revenues have been higher for over 2 years now despite selling fewer units. Per unit, PC games sell at a lower price point than console games and make more money. PC gamers play more than console gamers and there's also a lot more people with PC's that can play games than people with consoles.

The only thing tying a lot of people (myself included) to Windows is gaming.

A lot? According to this interview with Ubisoft representatives, only 7% of Ubi's 2011 revenue was generated on PC and 5% of Activision's revenue:
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/09/05/ubisoft-drm-piracy-interview/

That means that >90% of gaming happens on other platforms anyway (consoles, smartphones) and for those users gaming is not what's keeping them on Windows.
From my experience with Windows users, many have a completely irrational attachment to Windows. They use it because they "know" it and they don't want Linux because they "don't know" it, even though their Windows installations are full of crapware and they could be fooled by any random Linux distribution with a Windows-themed splash screen.

These numbers probably stink. Of course everything depends on what and how you measure and define, but... Let's just see the ratio of people who have actually bought a game in a legit way (of course they may have also pirated some).

Opening up my Steam client you get a nice number saying there are 4.3 million people online at the moment. So a quick check on Google and you come up with a number for the US gamer "population" of 125 mill. About as many for the EU since the population is about the same size (I don't consider Asia, here. Maybe that's a big mistake). 30 mill Steam users comes at about 12%. Now if we consider that not all legit gamers are Steam users this number should go way up!

Controllers are fine for beginners, but did you ever notice how even FPS games that exist in XBox & PC, you can pretty much never play against an XBox on a PC of vice versa? It's because PC gamers kick console gamers' ***. It's not the gamers' fault, their input device sucks. link for lazy

Indie PC titles are the next step up from that, but you have to be big enough to get listed on steam to have a chance, and then the next step up from that would be the PSN/XBLA type stores

I suggest you review what Zeboyd said about Steam versus XBLA. Something like they sold more copies of Cthulu Saves the World on Steam in the first week than they did in the first year on Xbox Live Indie Games.

A precursor to MC ran into big trouble when their source was leaked. Notch wants to avoid this:

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/01/20/proto-minecraft-abandoned-due-to-epic-error/

If a game is worth playing, it's worth paying for.
That being said, the pirate versions often remove things that make the paid-for version less playable (DRM, etc). Thankfully things like Steam make this less of an issue, but then things like EA's Origin seem to be a step backwards again by scanning your whole hard drive, etc.

Beyond the issues of not paying+downloading, there's also the issues of legitimacy if you buy the game then download a copy that doesn't have the irritating DRM or what is essentially unadvertised spyware/malware packaged by the game studio. At the moment I would truly love to play Mass Effect 3 on the PC due to better graphics and mouse-control etc, but I won't install anything that requires the spy-fest known as Origin.

I think a problem is games never really go on sale like other products do. And yet the benefits to putting games on sale have been clearly shown:

“The sale is a highly promoted event that has ancillary media like comic books and movies associated with it. We do a 75 percent price reduction, our Counter-Strike experience tells us that our gross revenue would remain constant. Instead what we saw was our gross revenue increased by a factor of 40. Not 40 percent, but a factor of 40. Which is completely not predicted by our previous experience with silent price variation.”

(From http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/10/24/less-is-more-gabe-newell-on-game-pricing/)

People clearly are liking lower price points for their games and everyone wins when games are priced at those levels (at least briefly).

Of course Steam games are regularly, even when not on sale, priced more reasonably than $60 for most titles.

This is typical, and not even anecdotal. There's a certain price point at which people don't care Just look at Steam.

"We do a 75 percent price reduction, our Counter-Strike experience tells us that our gross revenue would remain constant. Instead what we saw was our gross revenue increased by a factor of 40. Not 40 percent, but a factor of 40."
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/10/24/less-is-more-gabe-newell-on-game-pricing/

That means, selling your product at 25% of your original price increases total sales 40 times over, or in other words you sell 160 times what you would have sold.

Indeed, if you earn a buck instead of 10 per book, your net profit is still up. Your profit margin, _per book "copy"_, is lower, but if you consider the fact that an eBook is zero marginal cost, it means that on a company-basis your entire profitability still goes up.

The last game only had a DRM check on first play. See http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/11/10/oh-but-some-good-ass-rev-news-drm/

Rage actually looks better on 360 than PS3, purely because the PS3 just doesn't have enough RAM to hold the art assets to render a single scene at a time

Xbox 360 has 512 MB of RAM and integrated graphics. PS3 has 256 MB of RAM and 256 MB of dedicated VRAM. Why again doesn't the PS3 have enough RAM?

John Carmack has said so, and I trust him. Something about the PS3 only giving you access to some of it.

Games usually try to target console first, and then just port to PC

Why is this the case, as opposed to aiming higher with PC exclusives?

It would be nice if game companies targeted PC, but other than genres that demand it (RTS, turn based, etc.) the PC gets largely ignored. I think the reasons are twofold: they believe that they can target the console, port to pc, and get away with it, still selling the game and making everybody happy, even if PC gamers could do better, and because of the belief that on PC there is rampant piracy whereas on console there is not. The second point is pretty wrong, and studios are slowly realizing it. Console piracy is pretty huge, but largely ignored. Its not too hard to burn a downloaded game to a disc and then use a modchip or a swap disc to get your disc to play region-free. Especially with consoles with integrated harddrives, you can flash the OS and play games right off the drive, no need to burn a disc! This is seen as more difficult than pirating PC games, so PC piracy is seen as a bigger issue.

Many have realized that the old business models are failing, and that is the real problem. Valve is trying out all kinds of things on steam, TF2 is free now, but actually makes them more money than it used to. What? They put games on sale, and they expect the sale to make 2x the normal income and instead it makes 40x the normal income. We just do not understand the market behavior of games and the best business model for games yet. We're still discovering. http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/10/24/less-is-more-gabe-newell-on-game-pricing/

and they're not about to redo the entire game's graphic design for a port.

They already do for ports to Wii and ports to DS.

A game that is also on Wii or Gameboy is NOT a port. Try playing both games; they're fundamentally different. Its a marketing ploy that they use the same name and they advertise "on 360, ps3, wii and DS" but thats a damn lie. "ports" to DS will usually completely rethink the game, new gameplay that fits for a more casual experience in shorter bursts, and better fits the controls that you have on a DS instead of a 360 controller. The wii is the same, games are different completely, use completely different engines. Why don't they do that for PC? Make a completely different game, new engine? It comes down to money. They must not think its worth the investment.

Making a wii or DS "port/version" of a game is going to be cheaper than the main, AAA version of the game meant for 360. The graphics are going to be simpler, the game is going to take less time to develop. On the PC, however, it would be the other way around. You would have MORE work to do, you'd need a more impressive engine with higher quality models than the 360 version, and for what feels like less sales and profit. So they feel the DS port is worth the cost, but a proper high quality PC port would not.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/08/12/id-not-licensing-id-tech-5/

Bethesda is starting to depress me between this, the state of Brink and Rage, and they aren't really targeting pc anymore either.

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/298610/skyrim-looks-the-same-when-playing-on-pc-and-console-bethesda/

No extra love for the people that made them what they are. (And with them buying id, well you can put it all together...) Though one could argue mods, though they claim mods will work for consoles I seriously doubt it will work correctly.

Sort of depressing. I've been playing since Arena. I suffered through the quest-items-stuck-in-walls Daggerfall, the interesting openness and towns of Morrowind, to the bland homogeneity of Oblivion. It's a shame there are not many PC purist companies left. Things are starting to get a little too cookie cutter and the bugs just get worse and worse. Meanwhile one of the omega developers of an entire genre got sucked into a company that's losing touch with it's roots. Sad, sad times...

Seriously. This isn't them getting a cease and desist for using a word, this is them being forced to defend their "Elder Scrolls" trademark because Mojang was seeking the trademark for "Scrolls." This isn't evil lawyers, this isn't evil companies, it's dumb systems. RPS has a good article on it here: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/08/08/bethesda-and-notchs-scrolls-off-explained/

Blame the consoles. Since everything nowadays is a port, the consoles have been holding the minimum specs waay down for quite a while. The next generation if and when it arrives should be interesting for the PC world too

True, however you can't blame them for wanting to make money as easily as possible and the returns from the console are apparently better. I remember seeing Deus Ex 2 and how small the areas were... and the general console creep in many level designs. Next generation stuff: Battlefield 3, Rage, Skyrim to name a few.

While these titles do have console ports, Battlefield 3 is developed specifically with a focus on the PC and uses the new Frostbyte 2 engine. Rage features the new Id Tech 5 (although not as quite as impressive as it was shown few years ago). Skyrim uses what they've dubbed the "Creation Engine". All of these titles are superior on the PC.

It's even worse. According to RockPaperShotgun you cannot even pause the game (to answer the door, take a dump, etc.) and when you quite, there's a cooling off period: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/09/22/how-diablo-iiis-drm-will-affect-you/

>This is a Tech Demo for the engine.

Oh, then it makes perfect sense that they aren't going to be licensing the engine to anyone!

Please note, these are not what GamersGate is doing which is an F2P for single player games that are ad supported:
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/06/14/gamesgate-explain-freegames/

This is regular F2P mmo's where the payoff for having people play for free is the community is bigger (small community and empty worlds can kill an mmo in a heartbeat). The games just seem to be promoted on steam now, not that much of a story to be honest.

Thank god she's not voiced by Ellen McLane.

Though her name is wildly mispelled (even in Valve's own credits!), the correct spelling is Ellen McLain

Original article instead of some idiot's shitty photo blog: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/03/22/dailly-news-gtas-original-design-document/

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/03/22/dailly-news-gtas-original-design-document/

(it is also linked in the comments of the currently linked article)

Nope. EA has removed the ban and said it was a bug in their system.

People are building CPU's in Minecraft, so it's just a matter of time before we see calculators arising inside multiplayer games. And thus the cycle will be complete and we'll all be left wondering: why??

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/11/17/get-the-minecraft-cpu-map/

It depends why they're flagging it. In general they don't go so far as to completely yank the license, but they do take away a lot of your rights if they flag the account. And yes, VAC isn't perfect. Valve Apologise For VAC Goof

Most of the time when I've heard of them pulling all the licenses it's because somebody was buying games on the second hand market, and rather than provide a mechanism to verify that that purchase is legit, they make you add the key and yank the whole account.

Here you go: Valve Apologise For VAC Goof They don't generally completely pull the license for such infractions, but they do make it impossible to transfer those games to other accounts.

A few days ago, Fox News published an article which was thoroughly torn to shreds for being misleading and just plain wrong. That image is from the Fox article, and is an artists rendition of a scene from the game. I presume it was created so as to avoid showing an actual scene from the game.

Desktop Dungeons got cloned ( Rock Paper Shotgun story on it ) and people were forming lynch mobs, but because it's Tetris the principles involved are different. Apparently.

it's not just the posts which are innacurate

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2011/01/world-of-starcraft-modder-shut-down-pleads-for-blizzard-approval.ars

Ryan Winzen put together an impressive video demo of a game he called World of StarCraft, using StarCraft 2's modding tools. The video was passed around the various gaming blogs yesterday, and unfortunately it caught the eye of Activision Blizzard, who sent a cease and desist notice to YouTube, causing the video's deletion.

and it wasn't sent to the modder, it was sent to YT:
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/01/19/blizzard-vs-the-fan-made-starcraft-mmo/

Here’s what lead modder Ryan got from YouTube a few hours ago:

ATTENTION
We have received copyright complaint(s) regarding material you posted, as follows:

from Activision Games Inc about World of Starcraft Pre-Alpha Trailer – CreationArtist25
Video ID: RU1dSXU_Bk0
from Activision Games Inc about World of Starcraft Character Selection Screen – CreationArtist25
Video ID: 37dp_5E5NvQ
from Activision Games Inc about Starcraft 2 ATB Battle System MOD – ‘POWER OVERWHELMING’ – CreationArtist25
Video ID: BTl7YWYFnP8
Please note: Repeat incidents of copyright infringement will result in the deletion of your account and all videos you have uploaded. Please delete any videos for which you do not own the necessary rights, and refrain from uploading infringing videos.

blizz's statement from the modders site (which i expect will be getting a new domain name shortly)
http://worldofstarcraft.org/

Full statement:

“Earlier this week, a player-made StarCraft II mod called World of StarCraft and described as a “StarCraft MMO” was featured on a number of prominent gaming news sites, catching the attention of gamers as well as our own. With the name so closely resembling that of World of Warcraft, we wanted to discuss the title of the mod with the developer, and as part of our routine procedure, we contacted YouTube to request the video be removed while that discussion took place. We were also curious about the project and wanted to discuss with the developer what the mod entailed.

It was never our intention to stop development on the mod or discourage the community from expressing their creativity through the StarCraft II editor. As always, we actively encourage development of custom maps and mods for StarCraft II, as we’ve done with our strategy games in the past. That’s why we release an editor with our RTS games, and why we feature top player-created content in the custom game search. It’s also why we held a contest to spotlight the best community-crafted StarCraft II mods at last year’s BlizzCon, and why we’ll continue to improve Battle.net to better showcase player-created content.

Like many players in the community, we’re looking forward to seeing the continued development of this mod, and as part of our ongoing discussion, we’ve extended an offer to the developer to visit the Blizzard campus and meet with the StarCraft II development team. As always, we appreciate all of the efforts of the talented and enthusiastic mod-making community, and we look forward to seeing and playing what they create using the StarCraft II editor in the future.”

If you cheat, you would just get locked out of the anti-cheating enabled servers (VAC protected). You wouldn't lose access to games, although, there are two titles where this is a bit of a gray area.

I meant other problems, not cheating, for example:
http://rockpapershotgun.com/rpsforum/topic.php?id=3394

The crux of it is, if the payment you make via Paypal for anything you buy on Steam doesn't go through for any reason, routine or not, Steam will think you've stolen the game and your account will be banned, along with all the games you've purchased on it. And according to this man's account of events, Steam are not very open to allowing you to rectify the situation.

So if it turns out that I do not have enough money in my "internet-enabled" card I can lose my games, nice.

In reality, you licensed them.

How nice of the content creators - when it's piracy they all talk about it like I stole a physical item ("You wouldn't steal a car..."), but when I buy something it turns out that I only licensed it and actually do not have it.

No, their entire marketing plan was to hide as much of the game as possible until release, and then ban everyone from reviewing it until a week after it came out.

Oh, THAT game! Yeah, I'm not buying that game. That game could be about all the things I geek out about having sex with each other, and I wouldn't buy it if the publisher had so little faith in their product that they were trying to prevent people from talking about it.

Being ashamed of your product is never a good sell.

No, their entire marketing plan was to hide as much of the game as possible until release, and then ban everyone from reviewing it until a week after it came out.

Seems like it was a ridiculously mismanaged project, there's a good series of articles on a former employee's blog here: Where Realtime Worlds Went Wrong

Games, by definition, have to make war fun.

Do they?
By most accounts, Pathologic is a bleak, depressing game--yet some people find it quite compelling anyway, if they can look past its flaws (most notably an incomprehensible translation from Russian to English). From page 2 of the review "Butchering Pathologic":

A couple of years ago I had an argument with a friend, one of those differences of opinion that leaves you fuming and coming up with witty ripostes for days afterwards. I was saying that a good game doesn't have to be fun. She was saying that was ridiculous.

My argument, though I botched my explanation at the time, is that games have incredible untapped potential in the field of negative emotions. Just as the lowest common denominator of any art form appeals to 'positive' emotions, whether it's humour, arousal or excitement, so it is that our young games industry is obsessed with the idea of 'fun'.

I think this is one of the core reasons that the games industry hasn't had its Casablanca or Citizen Kane- we're still in the era of musicals and slapstick comedy. No games developer's going to try and make its audience feel sad, or lonely, or pathetic, at least not for long stretches. You might get games that dip their toes into that water from time to time, but by and large developers are keen to keep you smiling.

But that debate is just a big, ugly thorn bush that I've run through too many times already with nothing to show for it. The point is that Pathologic fearlessly wields desperation, brutality, hopelessness, exhaustion, cruelty, even ignorance and pain, and, if you can stomach it, the result is phenomenal.

Pathologic could not ever be described as fun. Tramping back and forth across town, trying to stem the torrent of deaths while aching to know what's going on /is not fun./ This is not a game. There isn't a word for it really, which is probably why the developers, Ice-pick Lodge, call Pathologic "an exercise in decision making" on their translated English website.

And this is coming from a rave review that opens with:

I'm going to explain, right now, why a Russian FPS/RPG called Pathologic is the single best and most important game that you've never played.

Okay, so it contradicts itself on whether Pathologic is a "game" or "not a game". But that's because there's a largely unexplored gray area in between, where something can play like a game--and be as rewarding as a game--without being "fun".

(If you want to read the full review of Pathologic, since there doesn't seem to be a good way to navigate between the pages: part 1, part 2, part 3)

Games, by definition, have to make war fun.

Do they?
By most accounts, Pathologic is a bleak, depressing game--yet some people find it quite compelling anyway, if they can look past its flaws (most notably an incomprehensible translation from Russian to English). From page 2 of the review "Butchering Pathologic":

A couple of years ago I had an argument with a friend, one of those differences of opinion that leaves you fuming and coming up with witty ripostes for days afterwards. I was saying that a good game doesn't have to be fun. She was saying that was ridiculous.

My argument, though I botched my explanation at the time, is that games have incredible untapped potential in the field of negative emotions. Just as the lowest common denominator of any art form appeals to 'positive' emotions, whether it's humour, arousal or excitement, so it is that our young games industry is obsessed with the idea of 'fun'.

I think this is one of the core reasons that the games industry hasn't had its Casablanca or Citizen Kane- we're still in the era of musicals and slapstick comedy. No games developer's going to try and make its audience feel sad, or lonely, or pathetic, at least not for long stretches. You might get games that dip their toes into that water from time to time, but by and large developers are keen to keep you smiling.

But that debate is just a big, ugly thorn bush that I've run through too many times already with nothing to show for it. The point is that Pathologic fearlessly wields desperation, brutality, hopelessness, exhaustion, cruelty, even ignorance and pain, and, if you can stomach it, the result is phenomenal.

Pathologic could not ever be described as fun. Tramping back and forth across town, trying to stem the torrent of deaths while aching to know what's going on /is not fun./ This is not a game. There isn't a word for it really, which is probably why the developers, Ice-pick Lodge, call Pathologic "an exercise in decision making" on their translated English website.

And this is coming from a rave review that opens with:

I'm going to explain, right now, why a Russian FPS/RPG called Pathologic is the single best and most important game that you've never played.

Okay, so it contradicts itself on whether Pathologic is a "game" or "not a game". But that's because there's a largely unexplored gray area in between, where something can play like a game--and be as rewarding as a game--without being "fun".

(If you want to read the full review of Pathologic, since there doesn't seem to be a good way to navigate between the pages: part 1, part 2, part 3)

Games, by definition, have to make war fun.

Do they?
By most accounts, Pathologic is a bleak, depressing game--yet some people find it quite compelling anyway, if they can look past its flaws (most notably an incomprehensible translation from Russian to English). From page 2 of the review "Butchering Pathologic":

A couple of years ago I had an argument with a friend, one of those differences of opinion that leaves you fuming and coming up with witty ripostes for days afterwards. I was saying that a good game doesn't have to be fun. She was saying that was ridiculous.

My argument, though I botched my explanation at the time, is that games have incredible untapped potential in the field of negative emotions. Just as the lowest common denominator of any art form appeals to 'positive' emotions, whether it's humour, arousal or excitement, so it is that our young games industry is obsessed with the idea of 'fun'.

I think this is one of the core reasons that the games industry hasn't had its Casablanca or Citizen Kane- we're still in the era of musicals and slapstick comedy. No games developer's going to try and make its audience feel sad, or lonely, or pathetic, at least not for long stretches. You might get games that dip their toes into that water from time to time, but by and large developers are keen to keep you smiling.

But that debate is just a big, ugly thorn bush that I've run through too many times already with nothing to show for it. The point is that Pathologic fearlessly wields desperation, brutality, hopelessness, exhaustion, cruelty, even ignorance and pain, and, if you can stomach it, the result is phenomenal.

Pathologic could not ever be described as fun. Tramping back and forth across town, trying to stem the torrent of deaths while aching to know what's going on /is not fun./ This is not a game. There isn't a word for it really, which is probably why the developers, Ice-pick Lodge, call Pathologic "an exercise in decision making" on their translated English website.

And this is coming from a rave review that opens with:

I'm going to explain, right now, why a Russian FPS/RPG called Pathologic is the single best and most important game that you've never played.

Okay, so it contradicts itself on whether Pathologic is a "game" or "not a game". But that's because there's a largely unexplored gray area in between, where something can play like a game--and be as rewarding as a game--without being "fun".

(If you want to read the full review of Pathologic, since there doesn't seem to be a good way to navigate between the pages: part 1, part 2, part 3)

Games, by definition, have to make war fun.

Do they?
By most accounts, Pathologic is a bleak, depressing game--yet some people find it quite compelling anyway, if they can look past its flaws (most notably an incomprehensible translation from Russian to English). From page 2 of the review "Butchering Pathologic":

A couple of years ago I had an argument with a friend, one of those differences of opinion that leaves you fuming and coming up with witty ripostes for days afterwards. I was saying that a good game doesn't have to be fun. She was saying that was ridiculous.

My argument, though I botched my explanation at the time, is that games have incredible untapped potential in the field of negative emotions. Just as the lowest common denominator of any art form appeals to 'positive' emotions, whether it's humour, arousal or excitement, so it is that our young games industry is obsessed with the idea of 'fun'.

I think this is one of the core reasons that the games industry hasn't had its Casablanca or Citizen Kane- we're still in the era of musicals and slapstick comedy. No games developer's going to try and make its audience feel sad, or lonely, or pathetic, at least not for long stretches. You might get games that dip their toes into that water from time to time, but by and large developers are keen to keep you smiling.

But that debate is just a big, ugly thorn bush that I've run through too many times already with nothing to show for it. The point is that Pathologic fearlessly wields desperation, brutality, hopelessness, exhaustion, cruelty, even ignorance and pain, and, if you can stomach it, the result is phenomenal.

Pathologic could not ever be described as fun. Tramping back and forth across town, trying to stem the torrent of deaths while aching to know what's going on /is not fun./ This is not a game. There isn't a word for it really, which is probably why the developers, Ice-pick Lodge, call Pathologic "an exercise in decision making" on their translated English website.

And this is coming from a rave review that opens with:

I'm going to explain, right now, why a Russian FPS/RPG called Pathologic is the single best and most important game that you've never played.

Okay, so it contradicts itself on whether Pathologic is a "game" or "not a game". But that's because there's a largely unexplored gray area in between, where something can play like a game--and be as rewarding as a game--without being "fun".

(If you want to read the full review of Pathologic, since there doesn't seem to be a good way to navigate between the pages: part 1, part 2, part 3)

Starcraft wasn't a success because of its single-player missions, the new single-player missions weren't what sold most copies of the Starcraft: Brood War expansion.

That's not necesarily true. You might find this interesting. I think it is quite possible that less than half of people who bought Starcraft (ie, gave Blizzard money) actually played the multiplayer (at least within the first few years of it's release). Of course the multiplayer is what kept the game alive for so long, especially in Korea. I imagine a good RTS like Company of Heroes has a similar number of single players as Demigod did (only 23% even attempted it).

People assume that FPSs and RTSs are mostly played for the multiplayer, but this really isn't true. I think the average PC gamer will run from Starcraft II multiplayer. The campaign is definitely something that consumers are interested in. If you don't want to invest a lot of time, SCII multiplayer is going to be pretty scary. Who wants to spend hours every night getting pounded on by SC veterans? OTOH, how about having some fun pounding on on the PC player?

Having played the beta, my short review of APB is: drive here, shoot stuff, repeat. Oops! Seems like I broke the embargo on reviews which was initially set at 10 freakin' days after release! To their credit (I guess), they rolled that back to merely release day.

A more nuanced look at the game shows they have in fact done some things quite nicely. The "All Points Bulletin" mechanic works very nicely. You'll be doing a mission when up pops up a notification that a comparable group from the opposing faction has been sent to stop you. It changes the dynamic of the mission and gives you a jolt of adrenaline as you listen out for the roar of the car engine signifying your would-be assassins drawing close. However, these adversarial matchups aren't without their problems. Say 50% of the time they work and you get a comparable strength team sent against you, resulting in a pitched battle that culminates in either narrow victory or defeat. Perfect! Well, the other 50% of the time you get a team that is woefully underpowered, say one wee neophyte against our group of four. Or massively overpowered, so you "call for backup", which works maybe 10% of the time. Perhaps the opposition are a full map away and have no way of intercepting you in time. Or they are already at the objective and virtually impossible to budge. The latter gets irritating as there are a few excellent camping spots should you get a VIP 'escort' mission. Oh, and I lied about the proportions. Things go right about 25% of the time rather than 50%.

Despite these problems, the gameplay is fun if you have a good group that you are in touch with through some kind of voice comms. The problem is that there is very little variety. Perhaps I've been spoiled by Saints Row 2 in this regard, but there seem to be about 3 basic types of mission which leads to the game getting boring quickly - pitched battles or not.

There is also a HUGE amount of customisation, if you're into that sort of thing. I won't say more about this as I'm not buying a game to play dress up...

...Which brings me to my next point: pricing. Pinning down the pricing details wasn't easy, although I did eventually find it on Kotaku or similar. I'll quote from RPS again:

You can purchase a retail version of APB either in-store or via digital download at standard retail price (SRP $49.99/£34.99/€49.99). The game includes 50 hours of action game play out of the box plus unlimited time in APB’s social districts customising, socialising and trading on the marketplace.

Once your game time is up, you have flexibility to top up your action game time from as little as $6.99 (£5.59, €6.29) for an additional 20 hours, while more frequent players can switch to a 30-day unlimited package for only $9.99 (£7.99, €8.99) with discounts available for 90 and 180 days.

The retail package also contains a bonus 100 RTW points towards your next purchases.

An additional benefit to this evolutionary model is the ability for you to convert your own customisations and rewards to tradable products to give to friends or clan-mates or to place on the Marketplace to earn more RTW points (convertible to game time) or in-game cash. Check back later for more details

The problem is, you are paying full retail price plus a decent fraction of 10 of your local denomination (£/$/€) monthly, for what? Progression seems limited - you can gain prestige with local NPC types to do more missions, but your character doesn't seem to get much stronger as with more traditional MMOs. It's not even like EVE where you can claim a small section of the virtual world for your particular gang. Frankly, I'm not sure it is worth paying for a glorified matchmaking service, but that is a judgment call each individual gamer needs to m

Having played the beta, my short review of APB is: drive here, shoot stuff, repeat. Oops! Seems like I broke the embargo on reviews which was initially set at 10 freakin' days after release! To their credit (I guess), they rolled that back to merely release day.

A more nuanced look at the game shows they have in fact done some things quite nicely. The "All Points Bulletin" mechanic works very nicely. You'll be doing a mission when up pops up a notification that a comparable group from the opposing faction has been sent to stop you. It changes the dynamic of the mission and gives you a jolt of adrenaline as you listen out for the roar of the car engine signifying your would-be assassins drawing close. However, these adversarial matchups aren't without their problems. Say 50% of the time they work and you get a comparable strength team sent against you, resulting in a pitched battle that culminates in either narrow victory or defeat. Perfect! Well, the other 50% of the time you get a team that is woefully underpowered, say one wee neophyte against our group of four. Or massively overpowered, so you "call for backup", which works maybe 10% of the time. Perhaps the opposition are a full map away and have no way of intercepting you in time. Or they are already at the objective and virtually impossible to budge. The latter gets irritating as there are a few excellent camping spots should you get a VIP 'escort' mission. Oh, and I lied about the proportions. Things go right about 25% of the time rather than 50%.

Despite these problems, the gameplay is fun if you have a good group that you are in touch with through some kind of voice comms. The problem is that there is very little variety. Perhaps I've been spoiled by Saints Row 2 in this regard, but there seem to be about 3 basic types of mission which leads to the game getting boring quickly - pitched battles or not.

There is also a HUGE amount of customisation, if you're into that sort of thing. I won't say more about this as I'm not buying a game to play dress up...

...Which brings me to my next point: pricing. Pinning down the pricing details wasn't easy, although I did eventually find it on Kotaku or similar. I'll quote from RPS again:

You can purchase a retail version of APB either in-store or via digital download at standard retail price (SRP $49.99/£34.99/€49.99). The game includes 50 hours of action game play out of the box plus unlimited time in APB’s social districts customising, socialising and trading on the marketplace.

Once your game time is up, you have flexibility to top up your action game time from as little as $6.99 (£5.59, €6.29) for an additional 20 hours, while more frequent players can switch to a 30-day unlimited package for only $9.99 (£7.99, €8.99) with discounts available for 90 and 180 days.

The retail package also contains a bonus 100 RTW points towards your next purchases.

An additional benefit to this evolutionary model is the ability for you to convert your own customisations and rewards to tradable products to give to friends or clan-mates or to place on the Marketplace to earn more RTW points (convertible to game time) or in-game cash. Check back later for more details

The problem is, you are paying full retail price plus a decent fraction of 10 of your local denomination (£/$/€) monthly, for what? Progression seems limited - you can gain prestige with local NPC types to do more missions, but your character doesn't seem to get much stronger as with more traditional MMOs. It's not even like EVE where you can claim a small section of the virtual world for your particular gang. Frankly, I'm not sure it is worth paying for a glorified matchmaking service, but that is a judgment call each individual gamer needs to m

Or, according to the interview with Gabe Newell available on Rock, Paper, Shotgun:

RPS: I have a friend (an idiot) who is determined that in six months Valve will be owned by either Microsoft or EA

Gabe: Tell him that I’m not interested in buying either one of them.

Asked and answered.

a bunch of maps put together in your free time, no matter how awesome, are not likely going to do well against another applicant who has paid experience. "Look at this cool map I made for X game" is not nearly as eye catching on a resume as "Worked on X game, Y game, Z game...." even minor jobs look better when you have been paid for it.

Counter-example - I found myself with a job at some company called 'Valve' after releasing a couple of maps put together in my free time. I didn't even apply for said job, they found (and interviewed) me...

Previous games industry experience: zero.

University degree: physics.

An earlier report mentioned it would chew through 1.5 Mb/s; the figure you quote is probably more realistic. But even using the smaller figure, if you had a cap of, say, 30 GB/month, you'd eat through it in 44 hours.

Or at 5 Mb/s, 13 hours. Enjoy your half-hour of gameplay per day!