Slashdot Mirror

DOOM fans may have not been big on Doom 3 but it sold very well.

"Since 1996, id powered games have generated worldwide revenues in excess of $2 Billion. id's most recent internally developed title, DOOM 3ï½, extends a proven track record with over 3.5 million units sold and is id's most successful game to date." http://www.shacknews.com/docs/press/010710_id_carmack_emmys.x

They also did focus on one thing at a time until more recently. Raven made Quake 4, Splash Damage made ET:QW, then id fixed Quake 4 before starting on Rage.

You loose the UMD so you loose access to all the cheap used games

http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/59050
For those too lazy to click the link, or limited net access like me, Sony are planning on releasing a tool that will let you copy your UMD disks to the new PSP Go.

http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/41219/Left-4-Dead-DLC-Promised
"Chet Faliszek said that Valve plans to get the DLC rolling much more quickly with Left 4 Dead than it has been able to for Team Fortress 2. Plans already in the works call for new campaigns, weapons, and boss infected (the game's zombie enemies). In addition, there were strong hints at a flamethrower coming not long after launch."

Yes, the valve team promised L4D 1 content, including new special infected AND weapons AND new campaigns. Turns out they saved all that for L4D2 instead. L4D2 will have a new special infected (charger), new weapons, and new campaigns. And no, they didn't add any new campaigns in L4D1, just tweaked versions of the old ones for versus, and a single new mini map for survival (the rest of the survival levels are just portions of the old maps in old campaigns)

That same guy at valve in an interview said they have been working on L4D2 since the launch of L4D1.
http://www.shacknews.com/featuredarticle.x?id=1138
"Shack: When did development on Left 4 Dead 2 start?

Chet Faliszek: Pretty much after Left 4 Dead launched."

Well, when Valve cut the price of Left 4 Dead by half, they saw a 3000% increase in sales. That goes to show that there is a large enough market of people holding out for a better price. (With Steam and its constant sales, a better price is inevitable - especially around the end of the year.

Valve can get away with it because they are only transmitting data. They don't have to worry as much about the physical media, transportation, and other logistics that come into play when they are selling a physical game.

I recalled reading in EGM about how prior to the current generation of consoles they were selling "special editions" of games with cheap plastic trinkets and whatnot for like $70. It was all basically a ploy to see if consumers were willing to pay USD$60 for software, and many of them were. That's one of the reasons why new games often retail for $65.

I have to wonder if slashing the prices of games will work at all when there's the consideration of physical media. It's a risk that I don't think very many game companies would like to take.

Here is an interesting article on the pricing of Valves L4D. Clear proof to me that they need to drop the price of a new game by a good margin. Steam reduces operational costs significantly, and they need to let that be reflected in the per unit cost.

http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/57308

I apologize for that. Here's the proper link.

"I have a beta of StarCraft III (I know a guy)"

OMG StarCraft III?!? That's amazing considering StarCraft II is still in beta

The near future of gaming is easy to predict... More and more publishers will go bankrupt and/or get consolidated with the big ones. In the past 20 years development costs have been increasing exponentially, while revenue hasn't been increasing as fast. It's easy to tell where that leads to.

The cause is mainly that graphics are getting better and better, which means more and more artists are required to make a game. Polyphony Digital, makers of the Gran Turismo series have said a single artist takes 6 months to make a car model for GT5 (for PS3), whereas the same artist took a month doing so for GT3 and GT4 (for PS2), and just a day in GT and GT2 (for PS1).

This has lead to a lot of bankruptcies and consolidation in the gaming industry, with publishers like EA growing a lot. However, we're now at the point that even these big fish are losing money, with EA full of red ink ever since the current generation of consoles started. Take 2 has been posting losses even with its GTA4 multi-million-units cash cow (which has allegedly cost around $100 million to develop. Just open up google finance and check out these companies earnings, they're consistently dismal in the last few quarters/years.

In recent times, Midway has gone bankrupt, troubled Eidos got bought out by Square-Enix and 3D Realms has gone bankrupt. More will follow, THQ being one of the most troubled in the short term.

About the only big companies making money on gaming these days are Nintendo (which took a cautious approach to graphical capabilites in order to keep development costs manageable), Ubisoft, Epic (which makes a lot of its money from engine licensing), Valve (which has Steam) and of course Activision-Blizzard with the WoW cash cow.

Graphical improvements must be toned down for the gaming industry to be viable. Expect the next generation of consoles to take a Wii-like approach towards hardware power, increasing little over the previous generation. Instead the gaming industry will have to generate real innovation, instead of just more polygons and pixels on the screen.

Should that not be "Get the Broussard collectors ready"?

If you read their site you'll see they seemed to do lots of fun stuff along the years.

Of course they've been having fun. They've been playing around for over a decade.

What'll be interesting is to find out how true this is.
http://www.shacknews.com/laryn.x?story=58519

By: mourningstar Crosspost from SA:

Channel_F, a previous employee of 3DR, posted some interesting info:

In my best interest, I'm going to be somewhat candid for now. I will, however, elaborate a bit on some things:

The 2001 trailer was 100% scripted cinematic, and not actual gameplay. They built specific demo maps just to record video from to make a trailer. Everything you see in that trailer was phony.

The typical work flow there went something like this: Designer would be assigned a task (build a new map, rebuild an old map, polish a bit of a map, etc.). Designer would work on said task for two, three weeks, a month, all the while lower management would be looking over it and making sure it was going in a "good general direction." Designer would move on to another task. A month or two later upper management would finally look at the work and say, "It's all wrong, do it again." Rinse, repeat.

Entire maps would be done from the ground up, almost to beta quality, and then thrown out simply because no one would make decisions early on in the process. (Read up on Valve's 'orange box' method of design -- that's how you make games)

Another example of WTF is the fact that there was one part of one map that was being worked on before I started working there. Nineteen months later and the same designer was still working on the same part of that same map... I'm not blaming the designer, it wasn't his fault.

I think the biggest problem that the company had in general is being self-funded. When you're a developer working directly with a publisher and you have milestones to meet it's a whole different ballgame. If you don't meet those milestones, you don't get any money. That right there will keep your project on schedule. If, however, you're funding it yourself, you don't really have anyone to answer to except yourself and you can quickly lose sight of just how much money is going out the door.

Wow, that might be the last time I hear that joke. It's a sad day, indeed.

It's really a non-issue.

...until they start pulling shit like this.

Demand for games is largely (though not completely) inelastic - dropping the price doesn't result in an equivalent increase in sales.

Valve actually found the opposite when they tested the demand curve.

And how would you take it elsewhere? Go through the whole download again? Waste DVDs burning it? With physical media it's easy, just grab it and go.

The same applies to getting a new machine, although I suppose you could copy the files across a local network. What happens if the old machine died? You have to download all of your games all over again. With physical media you can easily install at your leisure.

What if you don't want the game any more and want to sell it? You can't. Again, with physical media this problem doesn't exist.

IIRC, offline mode is only good for a limited amount of time (ie. 30 days). If you don't connect to Steam after that time period, you lose the ability to use offline mode. Also you have to actually be online to activate it (makes a lot of sense, huh?), so if your internet connection goes out or the Steam servers are unreachable, you're SOL. Say goodbye to your games.

Still, people losing their account does happen and people can get locked out at the whim of a single company or employee of the company for any reason, real or bullshit. From their EULA.

13. TERM AND TERMINATION

Either you or Valve has the right to terminate or cancel your Account or a particular Subscription at any time. You understand and agree that the cancellation of your Account or a particular Subscription is your sole right and remedy with respect to any dispute with Valve.

C. Termination by Valve.

1. In the case of a recurring payment Subscription (e.g., a monthly subscription), in the event that Valve terminates or cancels your Account or a particular Subscription for convenience, Valve may, but is not obligated to, provide a prorated refund of any prepaid Subscription fees paid to Valve.
2. In the case of a one-time purchase of a product license (e.g., purchase of a single game) from Valve, Valve may choose to terminate or cancel your Subscription in its entirety or may terminate or cancel only a portion of the Subscription (e.g., access to the software via Steam) and Valve may, but is not obligated to, provide access (for a limited period of time) to the download of a stand-alone version of the software and content associated with such one-time purchase.
3. In the case of a free Subscription, Valve may choose to terminate or amend the terms of the Subscription as provided in the "Amendments to this Agreement" section above.

And how about their region locking? I travel a lot and have sometimes bought games while in other countries. Or what about people who move, do they suddenly lose their entire library of Steam games?

I can't trust a company on just their word that they will unlock games if they go out of business or stop the service. If they go out of business, what incentive do they have to provide anything? If they stop the service OR go out of business, they may not even be able to provide the ability to unlock games if the specific game developer or publisher doesn't permit them to.

B. LIMITATION OF LIABILITY.

NEITHER VALVE, ITS LICENSORS, NOR THEIR AFFILIATES SHALL BE LIABLE IN ANY WAY FOR LOSS OR DAMAGE OF ANY KIND RESULTING FROM THE USE OR INABILITY TO USE STEAM, YOUR ACCOUNT, YOUR SUBSCRIPTIONS AND THE STEAM SOFTWARE INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, LOSS OF GOODWILL, WORK STOPPAGE, COMPUTER FAILURE OR MALFUNCTION, OR ANY AND ALL OTHER COMMERCIAL DAMAGES OR LOSSES. IN NO EVENT WILL VALVE BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, SPECIAL, PUNITIVE, EXEMPLARY DAMAGES, OR ANY OTHER DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF OR IN ANY WAY CONNECTED WITH STEAM, STEAM SOFTWARE, MERCHANDISE THAT YOU ACQUIRE VIA STEAM, ANY INFORMATION AVAILABLE IN CONNECTION THEREWITH, OR THE DELAY OR INABILITY TO USE MERCHANDISE OR ANY INFORMATION, EVEN IN THE EVENT OF FAULT, TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE), STRICT LIABILITY, BREACH OF CONTRACT, OR BREACH OF VALVE'S WARRANTY AND EVEN IF VALVE HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBIL

Blout is saying that if you canablaize a high profit audio book sale with a low-profit e-book sale then you simply need to charge more for e-books to make the total for the authors come out the same as before.

The problem with this is, not everybody competes in the same market. The number of books available in tape/cd/mp3 form is a small percentage, at best, of the number of books put out each year. Many books either see audiobook release only years after their initial release, or not at all.

Kindle offers you an interesting opportunity: MORE books can be available in a digestible (even if slightly imperfect) audio form, than can be made available with the standard "pay someone to read it to me" setup. Will there still be people willing to buy the other audiobooks? I would hope so. Not everybody will have a Kindle.

Even if it does cannibalize some audiobook sales or transfer some revenue or put some professional audiobook readers out of work, that's the changes that always happen with technological improvement. If you think your property is "too cheap" with Amazon as an ebook? Charge Amazon more for your property. See if people are willing to pay for it or not.

it's okay if the overall price declines. indeed this is great since it may increase sales. But in the end you can't simply lower the price by lowering the author's roylaties.

What if the royalties begin getting spread around more authors? More books available on audio = more authors needing a piece of the pie, theoretically. Ultimately, there is a limit to the discretionary spending of consumers and the number of minutes in a day, and you're competing. Video games compete with DVD movies compete with books compete with audiobooks compete with Ebooks compete with audio CD's compete with radio compete with broadcast TV compete with fast food restaurants compete with nicer restaurants compete with zoos compete with the local symphony compete with Lallappalalalala tour compete with... you get the idea.

Either you put out your product in the most digestible, most consumer-desired form, or you suffer the consequences. And if you price reasonably, you can massively increase your sales and make more money than if you're a tight-fisted asshole.

The kind that people do care about, like the Sony Rootkit or Spore's DRM. That's the kind they take notice and take exception to.

Considering Spore is still on the top ten best sellers list and most non-geeks think "root kit" has something to do with hair removal or coloring, I'd have to disagree with you here.

• Subscription based models like MMOs
• Sell a different service
• Trust that pirates will still buy your game
• Move entirely to consoles
• Move to arcades only
• Tie your games to hardware
• Ask fans for donations
• Offer tiers for pricing giving away more scarce goods
• Offer incentives to buy

However, what you are really asking is for someone who is complaining to do the job of the business department of the video game companies. It is their job to figure out how to make money, not the legal departments, not their customers. It wouldn't matter if piracy were never an issue, sitting around hoping that the previous generation's business model will work for you is the most certain way to be a dying company.

I would suggest that any game company that resorts to DRM really needs to fire their business people. It fails miserably in its intended purpose, pisses off paying customers, and costs more money (thus less profit) to implement. It is an abject failure, yet some brain dead idiots think they'll get it right "this time."

I recently had a discussion with a friend who works at Id. He says that their new engine has virtually identical quality on both the PS3 and 360, which fixes one huge issue with the Unreal engine that so many companies have been using. So, hopefully, as more games come out using Id tech, there will be greater parity between the consoles. For Id's latest game, the DVD capacity vs Bluray capacity supposedly hurts the 360 graphics relative to the PS3.

sony already said ps4 may use the same tech.
they may revise the architecture though as it's clearly not meant for games.

"Piracy has pushed id as being multiplatform" stated Hollenshead [id's CEO] (source)

Oh Noze! A company that grossed over ONE MILLION DOLLARS PER EMPLOYEE PER YEAR for many years in the 90's quit innovating had to start selling to a wider audience to maintain their profit ratio.

Their fucking kids must make Ethiopians look soooo fat.

(note: I always bought their stuff because I respect the hell out of Carmack. But, your argument sucks.)

Why do people always drag in these asinine "but, technically, it isn't stealing! Here's what stealing is, and I'll be quoting from Webster's 4th revision of the 1986 dictionary" arguments? Redefining the terms does not change what the activity is: obtaining something in a way that is against the wishes of the people creating it, and violating their contract of sale. Don't hide behind a veil of semantics to try to justify this. The item that you are pirating has some sort of price that has been set on the market. What you think it should be is entirely irrelevant: you are not paying that price because you want it for free. The creators of the work are not receiving the compensation that they asked for.

I have but one question for the pirates: how does this not make you an asshole? Can you see past your own self-entitlement complex and realize that your actions have an effect on other people? That the world isn't something you exploit to get ahead?

Also, as for your gaming industry comment, well, I'll quote a few people:

"It's crazy how the ratio between sales to piracy is probably 1 to 15 to 1 to 20 right now." - Cevat Yerli (source)

"Piracy has pushed id as being multiplatform" stated Hollenshead [id's CEO] (source)

Comments made by Epic's Capps carried a similar tone. "PC gaming is really falling apart," he revealed. "It killed us to make Unreal Tournament 3 cross-platform, but Epic had to do it," adding "the market that would buy a $600 video card knows how Bittorrent works." (source)

Really, the most hilarious thing is that I know there is some subset of people out there who see their own piracy as acceptable, yet are infuriated by GPL violations.

Why do people always drag in these asinine "but, technically, it isn't stealing! Here's what stealing is, and I'll be quoting from Webster's 4th revision of the 1986 dictionary" arguments? Redefining the terms does not change what the activity is: obtaining something in a way that is against the wishes of the people creating it, and violating their contract of sale. Don't hide behind a veil of semantics to try to justify this. The item that you are pirating has some sort of price that has been set on the market. What you think it should be is entirely irrelevant: you are not paying that price because you want it for free. The creators of the work are not receiving the compensation that they asked for.

I have but one question for the pirates: how does this not make you an asshole? Can you see past your own self-entitlement complex and realize that your actions have an effect on other people? That the world isn't something you exploit to get ahead?

Also, as for your gaming industry comment, well, I'll quote a few people:

"It's crazy how the ratio between sales to piracy is probably 1 to 15 to 1 to 20 right now." - Cevat Yerli (source)

"Piracy has pushed id as being multiplatform" stated Hollenshead [id's CEO] (source)

Comments made by Epic's Capps carried a similar tone. "PC gaming is really falling apart," he revealed. "It killed us to make Unreal Tournament 3 cross-platform, but Epic had to do it," adding "the market that would buy a $600 video card knows how Bittorrent works." (source)

Really, the most hilarious thing is that I know there is some subset of people out there who see their own piracy as acceptable, yet are infuriated by GPL violations.

Why do people always drag in these asinine "but, technically, it isn't stealing! Here's what stealing is, and I'll be quoting from Webster's 4th revision of the 1986 dictionary" arguments? Redefining the terms does not change what the activity is: obtaining something in a way that is against the wishes of the people creating it, and violating their contract of sale. Don't hide behind a veil of semantics to try to justify this. The item that you are pirating has some sort of price that has been set on the market. What you think it should be is entirely irrelevant: you are not paying that price because you want it for free. The creators of the work are not receiving the compensation that they asked for.

I have but one question for the pirates: how does this not make you an asshole? Can you see past your own self-entitlement complex and realize that your actions have an effect on other people? That the world isn't something you exploit to get ahead?

Also, as for your gaming industry comment, well, I'll quote a few people:

"It's crazy how the ratio between sales to piracy is probably 1 to 15 to 1 to 20 right now." - Cevat Yerli (source)

"Piracy has pushed id as being multiplatform" stated Hollenshead [id's CEO] (source)

Comments made by Epic's Capps carried a similar tone. "PC gaming is really falling apart," he revealed. "It killed us to make Unreal Tournament 3 cross-platform, but Epic had to do it," adding "the market that would buy a $600 video card knows how Bittorrent works." (source)

Really, the most hilarious thing is that I know there is some subset of people out there who see their own piracy as acceptable, yet are infuriated by GPL violations.

Don't forget about Left 4 Dead, which had 95% more preorders ( http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/55618 ) than the Orange Box. Granted, it is not a PC exclusive. There were also quite a few good indie games this year, I think they may be gaining popularity: World of Goo, Audiosurf, Multiwinia and Braid are good examples of this within 2008.

If only they could've optimized this game a bit... It's absurd for a game to propose graphic options 'not supported by today's latest graphic cards'. Maxxing on Medium Quality at 1600x1200 simply doesn't look right. Restricting enjoyable experience in such way to a minority of spend-happy gamers with highend rigs: the new restricitng in this digital age? Even Crysis runs much better than this. IF it runs runs a dog on everyone's rigs, not even pirates will manage to run it, let alone 'enjoy' having pirated it. StarDock at least had their concept right (good games that look good, without either requiring powerful systems or being overpriced. Oh, and little to no digital restrictions too). http://www.shacknews.com/featuredarticle.x?id=1026

Shacknews has a trailer for it. It looks like a rendered trailer, not ingame.

Spore and GTA IV are not multiplayer games

Sort of wrong on the first one (more of a community-based DLC), definitely wrong on the second.

How DRM affects Spore in terms of "getting online" I don't know, the game holds no interest for me. DRM preventing people from playing online multiplayer in GTA IV (legitimately OR illegitimately) will cause some consternation, I guarantee. I don't play online multiplayer in those kinds of games (getting virtually teabagged and having homophobic profanity hurled at me by 12 year olds just isn't my thing), but I know it's a pretty big component for many people.

I'd add Bethesda to that list as well.
I was pretty salty when I found SecuROM on my system after I installed Fallout 3.
Especially after this announcement.

Slashdot: I see this community as a generally more well spoken crowd then the rest. Yeah, yeah, there's plenty of immaturity and other nonsense. I still think overall the discussion here comes up with more interesting discussion than elsewhere.

A link posted below seems to say that this policy isn't true, but in fact it sounds like it just won't be automatic. The EA market speak actually doesn't seem to say very much to the contrary.

Anyway, anyone who thinks this is as appalling as I do can easily make an account on EA and post what you think there. E-mailing wouldn't hurt either. I doubt it will change much, but at least we can drive away other customers and let EA know that there's more people than a small crowd of Spore customers dissatisfied with the company.

I have posted the following on the EA forum, I hope others from here post there as well.

---EA employee "Apoc" quote snip---

EA: Your policies are utterly ridiculous and detached from the real world. I have registered on this forum to express my disgust for your company and what I have seen you do to video games over the years. For me, this decision was the climax of detestable behaviour. I react so strongly not because of this policy decision, but because of the vile company I have seen you become as videogames matured.

This is the difference between a forum and a game, for the EA support representatives who have failed their primary occupation of supporting customers. The forum, as I see it, is a privilege provided by EA, although not a very attractive privilege in my opinion. EA provides the service for free, and in return has control over their space. This is understandable, and a basic principle under which most forums operate. A game, on the other hand, is a possession owned by a customer. After the customer pays EA, it is theirs to do what they want. EA has demonstrated they have strayed from reality with strict DRM regarding this point, but I digress. My point is that you have absolutely no right to ban me from my game. This mentality is sickening, and to me represents a company so far from their customers that they are doomed to a slow death.

Forum use does not intersect a purchase; they are on vastly different planes. While repeatedly disruptive behaviour in an online game can understandably conflict with other customers' best wishes, to associate this with forum use is a demonstration in stupidity.

You, EA, have lost me as a customer. When my roommate bought Dead Space, I thought it was a neat game. I thought this even though I had a hard time in seeing past the DRM in the PC version and in other EA games. No more can I see past your flaws. You have become a gross pus on the videogame community; an infection needing termination. I am smarter than you though. I know ahead of time the consequence of my actions. You are a large multinational company and my personal conviction against your games will have no effect, nor will this message. I write this for my own satisfaction, and in the hope that other disenchanted customers will display similar outcries.

My true hope is that customers affected negatively by this and other EA mistakes will band together in a class action lawsuit. Our words and money only say so much, there has always been the consumers who are unaware or indifferent to your policies. They will still give you a profit, I am not naive. A lawsuit, however, can hurt you. You deserve one now for unfair business practices. I have no idea if it will happen, it's only a wish.

http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/55656

Posting in EA Forums is enabled by an EA Nucleus account -- but access to the forums and access to the games are separate. Players who have been banned from EA Forums are not automatically banned from online access to their other EA games. Players can be banned if they breach the Terms of Service or Code of Conduct in a forum, game or service. Each forum, game and service is managed independently by customer support representatives responsible for that specific forum, game or service.

http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/55656

It might have something to do with the fact that in their survey(see page 30 of the pdf 72% of people said they wanted Stardock to keep working on Windows programs, and only 4% asked them to work on MacOS.

http://www.shacknews.com/images/image-o-matic.x?/images/sshots/Screenshot/10698/10698_48c7161254f4d.jpg

http://i35.tinypic.com/256fu4g.jpg

You say that WoW is DRM free but it has just as much DRM as Spore, even more so really, because your account is authenticated every time you log in. For those of you that complain about Spores DRM; any MMO Sends much more info to the publisher than Spore ever will. Yes I know that they have to connect to the servers because of the nature of the game but never the less they are connecting. Also, people are so concerned with the "What if there activation servers go down" what do you think will happen should WoW's servers go down (not that they will any time soon.)

To answer the OP's question. Any games from Stardock are DRM free such as Sins of a Solar Empire, Or Galactic Civilizations II.

You should also check out this, it made me want to run out and buy more of there games just because of the way they do business.

In another news: Gordon Freeman has been spotted in CERN test chamber.

I am not in any way a Star Wars nerd anymore, take note of that.

I saw a link to the trailer on a website I frequent back in May this year, I didn't even know a SW animated movie was coming out and honestly didn't care.
However, I'm open to try a movie of any kind, animated, puppets, I don't care if it's good - I like pixar movies, I once liked Star Wars, I even tried the final fantasy movie.

When the link was posted, within minutes people mocked it and laughed, it's got nothing to do with being untrue to the Star Wars franchise, if anything that may make some hardcore Star Wars fans 'forgive it' - I just saw a trailer for an absoloutely laughable looking kids film, not what I'm interested in, when "Jabba's son has been kidnapped!" is a plot element they feel worthy enough to put in a movie, I figure it's not going places.
http://www.shacknews.com/laryn.x?id=16928277#itemanchor_16928277

Here is something of note which I figure most of you will agree with and sadly hollywood will never read, nor understand.
Ever since the 3 new movies, Star Wars has been forever tarnished, changing from a great story and universe I am interested in, to something I look at in my mind as simply a 'franchise' or a product.
It's a fascinating transition and one I'm sure marketing people would love to know more about, maybe it's to do with my age or cynicism? Ultimately from my perspective the entire universe is now un-interesting to me, they've caused themselves a massive dis-service as I do not salivate at the thought of any Star Wars products, I don't even fondly remember the originals as I simply can't watch them in the same way.
Yes they are still good but deep down I know that whole universe is diluted.
I had the same feeling from the Matrix sequels, I have no interest even in the first film now.

Just to clarify my stance, I was never ever a huge SW nerd, but I was I guess a light fan (I'm 30 btw) so I saw ROTJ in the cinema, too young for ANH and don't recall empire.
I was never a major hardcore fan, I never purchased the toys or anything but I did like the universe, I did really love the movies and I would've purchased them on DVD for example.
Even the changes to the old 3 movies, made it feel like a product (A New hope 1.01, buy it now!)

Anyhow people go check out the new movie, word on the st is JABBAS SON HAS BEEN KIDNAPPED (oh noes!) :/

The sad thing is 4, 3, and 1 will leave you burned out before you ever start anything and 2 is off the whims of someones free time, which means it will more then likely never manifest itself.

Most people on here are saying ideas are a dime a dozen and while true, good ideas are worth a heck of a lot more then that and they are out there. Such is the reason why Call of Duty 52 is one of the best sellers as is age old games like World of Warcraft.

The industry is starving due to a lack of original content and at the same time they're smothering the very people who can help revitalize it, which are the gamers. Heck, if you want evidence that gamers are starved, the $10 purchasable version of the Spore Creature Creator topped US game sales. http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/53387 (sorry for a lack of a embeded link)

I have a few very good ideas as well and a decent amount of time playing any game and I come up with revisements and changes for various parts of the game ranging from gameplay mechanics, to restructuring the GUI, to a TC. I'm sure most hardcore gamers are like this, yet there is no way to actually get these ideas to the developers or to a big company. You can post in a suggestion forum, but that almost always fails completely as they're usually just there as a ornament to make the gamers feel like they have some sort of power over what they're playing. Occasionally game developers listen, but it's only to whoever screams the loudest and the longest - reads majority rule.

This is sad in my opinion. People with great ideas shouldn't need to make tech demos, draw up fancy concept art, and then dance infront of people in order for big companies to profit off of them. Ideally speaking good ideas are very easy to recognize just by discussing the concept, no dressing up is needed. Companies should be paying you for your ideas, especially those from the people they're selling the product to! That's why customer feedback is so important for developing new products, looking at sales is only part of the bigger picture.

I'm suprised big companies like EA or Blizzard haven't introduced some sort of pitch your idea to the big whigs, where you submit your ideas to them in whatever form it takes on, with the oportunity to help co-develop a title with a experienced lead designer. Of course this gives them all the rights to the IP and there would have to be all sorts of legal work in the background, but the general idea is there.

Employing a small force of people to screen through all the crap in the drop box is a small sum compared to almost all the rights on a brand new IP. It isn't that hard to turn a ear to the people buying your products, other parts of the industry (automotive?) have been doing it for decades now.

Chances are if one gamer likes it, if his friends, who are also gamers like it, a good majority of other gamers will also like it.

Who best to know what they want besides the people who are buyng the product?

Speaking from experience I can tell you that an "opt-in" program would never collect enough data to be useful.

Valve would disagree.

http://www.steampowered.com/status/survey.html
http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/52707

1,728,662 Steam users have voluntarily agreed to participate in their semi-annual hardware survey by having detailed specification of their PC hardware cataloged.

given that Blizzard rakes in millions a year

http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/51055

"Vivendi subsidiary Blizzard Entertainment posted revenues of $814 million euros (US $1.2B) last year, up 58 percent over 2006."
...
"In comparison, other Vivendi companies, including Sierra Entertainment, Sierra Online, and Vivendi Games Mobile, only brought in a total of $204 million euros (US $301M) in revenue."

That is of course during the time when The Burning Crusade was released.

Actually we know that Atari did NOT go after a couple of reviews that gave a decent score. Just RTFA at shacknews.

And the 'pirated version' angle is just some claptrap justification they're using, this really just is about stopping the low-score reviews from helping people stay clear of this, I gather, turkey of a game.

By the way, by saying it's pirated, aren't they saying that their snazzy SecuROM Activation Scheme is a total bust?

There should be a +10 funny mod rating for comments like that! Anyway isn't "UK car industry" an oxomoron?

Still I find it kinda ironic considering the UK car show Top Gear is popular with the global pirates. Mind you back on topic I also thought it was very ironic to see this BBC article a few days ago (slashdot always current...) after also reading about those thieving muppets: Steve Bovis, Tim Croucher and Laurence Francis who stole a few bits for the lame: limbo of the lost.

Mind you they are now apparently denying it... yeah right. oh yeah "lame" wasn't a typo on game. Maybe they should be called Loders as in "free loaders" rather than coders which clearly they are not. Fortunately there is still real talent CURRENTLY in the UK.

Perhaps you missed this announcement?

This was a snippet from one level inside hoover dam, for a few mins. there are large outdoor environments, too, and tons of stuff not seen here. I wasn't even sure they were going to show game footage as the original deal was to just film jason playing the game, and a reaction. They cut in a few scenese [sic] here and there. Much much more to see and come.

Question: what engine is it using? Not bashing at all, just curious.

Broussard: Unreal. I believe we branched off somewhere around the Unreal 2 time when they added static meshes. Since then we've redone the rendering 100% and it's a fully modern engine.

10 seconds of searching in google turned up multiple results for this item. I'd try either Ars Technica or Shacknews

Well not really. Epic and ID have both said publically that the reason they've moved towards cross-platform (console) gaming is that they have a serious piracy problem on the PC platform. So presumably, their simple systems don't work so well. Ditto for games like Crysis.

To be fair, anyone who gets into a ring with another person set on a competition of combat prowess, for what ever reason, should be there to fight. Charity or not, they are fighting.

Creative already got bad rep back when id software was finishing doom 3.
Link: http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/32824

'Real' news indeed.

The standards of what's deemed newsworthy in the US are completely off. This case, a milestone in the RIAA's war against file-sharers, isn't newsworthy, but a pop-psychologist making blatantly erroneous statements out of ignorance is? Doesn't seem right.

Nopers, still vaporware. http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/51163

Seriously people, 3D Realms told us time, and time again. They will announce it on their site when it's real. Stop falling for this.

That being said, this still made my heart skip a beat.. or four