I would say a few have been designed this way and even then it's a slippery slope. As revenue starts to slip the temptation is to delve further into pay to win type purchasable. Games that use micro-transactions to sell pets, collectibles, and vanity type items are perfectly fine but very few end it there. Many free to play MMO's become simply ways to grind more purchases from the player base. Mechanics become odious or overly long if you don't purchase a boost. Raids begin to require store bought resources to keep up. Some players begin to use the store as a crutch rather than learn the game and become skillful. Some players begin to expect others to outlay store cash to power through completion. Challenge and achievement are now commodities you can buy with money. Turbine's DDO is a great example of this slippery slope. F2P started as some small bonuses and the ability to buy content in feature packs. Four years later there is a real money auction house where you can pay for the best gear in the game.
I am thoroughly convinced we are 3-5 years away from true digital distribution. Services are getting close but no one has everything available online, yet. Why buy blue ray or any other BS format just to replace it in a few years. I will soon be able to pay a monthly fee and have access to all of the content ever in a click. In the mean time I just pirate.
Your analogy is a little off... They produce one disk with all the versions but openly advertise different features with different versions. DLC is supposed to be additional content produced after the game goes gold/is released. It violates the spirit of what DLC is...it's extra. It's not part of the game held back so they can charge extra for it. To use your Windows example it would be like after installing if you wanted a network two PC's and had to purchase an additional feature pack to do it. Games cost almost 60 buck...game companies are crossing a line trying to milk their customers.
We'll until the early to late 90's Computer Science/Computer Engineering really wasn't it's own field. It was generally a specialty of the EE curriculum.
All documentation sucks now a days. I default to Google for documentation on everything. Microsoft doesn't even really ship docs anymore they just link through to their web documentation. It's just the way of things now. You'll get more and better info from thousands of bloggers and forum posters than you can expect from any doc team.
...been there and done that with Sam Fisher. This particular concept (killing innocents to protect ones cover) was what Splinter Cell:Double Agent was all about.
No!!!!!! The precedent is:
ship a bug, make my system unusable, THEN CHARGE ME TO FIX IT, get sued...see the difference. It's subtle but important. No one would be even talking about this if Sony said mea culpa we'll fix it.
This is about companies refusing to take responsibility and trying to dodge and slime their way out of problems rather than addressing them in an honest forthright manner.
Agreed. It was also much faster than I expected and they extended all the warranties for Red Ring of Death issues. All in all it was a plus customer service experience for me.
I have worked with nice idiots and wanted to kill myself. Sweet woman but absolutely clueless and helpless, made my life hell and my job 3 times harder, it was a 2 person shop and she generated anti-work. I eventually just convinced them to fire me so I could get away.
And on the other-side I have worked with extremely competent A-holes. It's great I don't need to be friends with all my colleagues. I much prefer those who get their work done, on time and correctly. I prefer to get my work done and leave anyway. I try to forget about the office 5 minutes after I am gone.
A good example of this practice done right is Funcom. Anarchy Online (which was created in 2001) still has a large and active player base thanks in part to Funcom partnering with Massive to supply free ad sponsored accounts. These free accounts have limited access to expansion content and have in game ads to sponsor the free play. A large number of free accounts end up converting to pay accounts after playing for a while. This model has managed to keep this game viable for 7 years well past the point many MMO's peter out. I think we will be seeing a lot more of this but just like with product placement in movies it can be done well or it can be done poorly. Fight Night 3 was done very poorly...
I think a majority of the PC issues are related to the fact that this game is a resource beast. It is the fore bringer of the next generation of games that require Core 2, 2 GB of RAM, 8800 and Vista for DX10. This game doesn't cost 45 dollars it costs $1500+ which is ballpark what it cost me in parts for a new gaming rig...
I can't wait to have an impression... I installed it on my PC and quickly realized this was the game that indicated it was time for me to build the new gaming rig I have been pining for...and my excuse to build a Vista box for DX10. This game needs some major hardware to drive it. This game may help revive and push the PC gaming industry but it will also drive hardware sales and Vista sales.
Slashdot Mirror
I would say a few have been designed this way and even then it's a slippery slope. As revenue starts to slip the temptation is to delve further into pay to win type purchasable. Games that use micro-transactions to sell pets, collectibles, and vanity type items are perfectly fine but very few end it there. Many free to play MMO's become simply ways to grind more purchases from the player base. Mechanics become odious or overly long if you don't purchase a boost. Raids begin to require store bought resources to keep up. Some players begin to use the store as a crutch rather than learn the game and become skillful. Some players begin to expect others to outlay store cash to power through completion. Challenge and achievement are now commodities you can buy with money. Turbine's DDO is a great example of this slippery slope. F2P started as some small bonuses and the ability to buy content in feature packs. Four years later there is a real money auction house where you can pay for the best gear in the game.
I am thoroughly convinced we are 3-5 years away from true digital distribution. Services are getting close but no one has everything available online, yet. Why buy blue ray or any other BS format just to replace it in a few years. I will soon be able to pay a monthly fee and have access to all of the content ever in a click. In the mean time I just pirate.
Exposing the Software Engineer was a Total Fail but Apple should have prepared for this contingency and built in a self destruct.
Your analogy is a little off... They produce one disk with all the versions but openly advertise different features with different versions. DLC is supposed to be additional content produced after the game goes gold/is released. It violates the spirit of what DLC is...it's extra. It's not part of the game held back so they can charge extra for it. To use your Windows example it would be like after installing if you wanted a network two PC's and had to purchase an additional feature pack to do it. Games cost almost 60 buck...game companies are crossing a line trying to milk their customers.
Dick-over Legitimate Customers
We'll until the early to late 90's Computer Science/Computer Engineering really wasn't it's own field. It was generally a specialty of the EE curriculum.
All documentation sucks now a days. I default to Google for documentation on everything. Microsoft doesn't even really ship docs anymore they just link through to their web documentation. It's just the way of things now. You'll get more and better info from thousands of bloggers and forum posters than you can expect from any doc team.
...been there and done that with Sam Fisher. This particular concept (killing innocents to protect ones cover) was what Splinter Cell:Double Agent was all about.
No!!!!!! The precedent is: ship a bug, make my system unusable, THEN CHARGE ME TO FIX IT, get sued ...see the difference. It's subtle but important. No one would be even talking about this if Sony said mea culpa we'll fix it.
This is about companies refusing to take responsibility and trying to dodge and slime their way out of problems rather than addressing them in an honest forthright manner.
Agreed. It was also much faster than I expected and they extended all the warranties for Red Ring of Death issues. All in all it was a plus customer service experience for me.
I have worked with nice idiots and wanted to kill myself. Sweet woman but absolutely clueless and helpless, made my life hell and my job 3 times harder, it was a 2 person shop and she generated anti-work. I eventually just convinced them to fire me so I could get away. And on the other-side I have worked with extremely competent A-holes. It's great I don't need to be friends with all my colleagues. I much prefer those who get their work done, on time and correctly. I prefer to get my work done and leave anyway. I try to forget about the office 5 minutes after I am gone.
A good example of this practice done right is Funcom. Anarchy Online (which was created in 2001) still has a large and active player base thanks in part to Funcom partnering with Massive to supply free ad sponsored accounts. These free accounts have limited access to expansion content and have in game ads to sponsor the free play. A large number of free accounts end up converting to pay accounts after playing for a while. This model has managed to keep this game viable for 7 years well past the point many MMO's peter out. I think we will be seeing a lot more of this but just like with product placement in movies it can be done well or it can be done poorly. Fight Night 3 was done very poorly...
I think a majority of the PC issues are related to the fact that this game is a resource beast. It is the fore bringer of the next generation of games that require Core 2, 2 GB of RAM, 8800 and Vista for DX10. This game doesn't cost 45 dollars it costs $1500+ which is ballpark what it cost me in parts for a new gaming rig...
I can't wait to have an impression... I installed it on my PC and quickly realized this was the game that indicated it was time for me to build the new gaming rig I have been pining for...and my excuse to build a Vista box for DX10. This game needs some major hardware to drive it. This game may help revive and push the PC gaming industry but it will also drive hardware sales and Vista sales.