I'm curious, how would I, as a consumer, revolt against a publisher without simultaneously revolting against the developers? Vivendi is making some very anti-consumer moves here, which ought not be tolerated.
I think far more people are familiar with LOTR than The Watchmen (at least, judging by the responses here in slashdot), and if so, it's going to be a hard sell to convince people to sit through another 8(9?) hour trilogy.
Re:Steam-like online distrubtion is inevitable
on
Review: Half-Life 2
·
· Score: 1
You're right about the VC, of course, having seen that as well. I shouldn't wish for failure on anyone, anyways, but a little foresight would have gone a long ways (with me, anyways).
I have a certain fondness for retail, solely because if I buy something physical, except for HL2 or MMOGs, I know I can install it pretty much any time in the future and still enjoy the game.
On the other hand, I've seen publishers pull all sorts of tricks to mess with developers. I think the relationship between the two is backwards. The publisher should be the developer's customer. This means the developer would have to raise their own money, but in the end, they would probably benefit if their product is of sufficient quality.
Regarding the CD situation, I guess I can be glad that HL2 didn't balk at my installation of CloneCD. I actually had to download a no-CD crack for a purchased copy of CoD: United Offensive just to play it (thanks, publisher Activision!).
Re:Steam-like online distrubtion is inevitable
on
Review: Half-Life 2
·
· Score: 1
The more game developers that go the direct route (which I agree is better than using a publisher), the lower that $25-30 per copy will get to be, and eventually they'll probably only be making $5-10 again. But, at least, they'll be working for themselves. Maybe they'll spin off the distribution side of things and sell it to others... and become a publisher themselves, heh.
On the other hand, while I don't like the publisher-developer relationship I've read about, I do not like Steam. I bought the boxed version (cost less than the online version, granted) of HL2 and waited for hours to be able to play, after it finished installing, simply to log in to Steam. And yet, for some reason, the game *still* requires that the Half-Life 2 CD be in the drive. It's crazy.
I do hope that Steam itself fails miserably, and that some other system that is designed to be consumer-friendly takes its place.
LED christmas lights, at least the ones I've seen, are awful. They don't spend the extra few pennies to put in a few diodes (rectifier) to conver it all to DC, so the lights flicker. It's especially apparent when the lights move -- such as in windy conditions -- but even when they're standing still you can see it.
I think they do it so you can run strands of the cables end to end, but they could easily fix that with a few more pennies of wire carrying the AC end to end if they wanted.
Totally right. The so-called conservative people have co-opted the name "conservative" to mean "morally conservative" instead of "legislatively conservative". It's frustrating. Perhaps we need a more restrictive (to the government of course) bill of rights or something.
Stable, healthy people in a good relationship can handle porn. If your relationship is in trouble and all you can find to blame is porn, its time to open your eyes a little wider.
"The only thing it requires a network connection for is the initial activation, and thats no more odious than Microsoft's current required activation practices, and I bet you've got Windows on your PC."
You are completely wrong here.
Microsoft's activation process allows you 30 days to complete it, and they have a phone system you can call, handled by an automated attendant, which takes care of activation for you if you can't do it online (as was the case with me, didn't have a working NIC driver).
It could not have gone much smoother.
Steam, on the other hand, required that I register the software before I could even play an offline *single* player game. No grace period. No nothing.
Yep. That's what they're not grasping here. The problem is *impossible* to solve, so any effort put towards that is wasted, and will inevitably cause issues for their actual paying customers.
Another example of this is Call of Duty: United Offensive. I have CloneCD installed on my machine so I can play games without pulling out the discs, and can create ISOs and play with them without wasting media, etc. Call of Duty: United Offensive (the expansion pack to a game that worked perfectly, BTW) requires that you uninstall CloneCD entirely (it says disable, which I did, but that wasn't enough) just to play the game.
I bought the game, but I had to get the no-CD crack just to play it.
I've yet to read a point in this thread that would convince me that GWB is not evil for his contributions to/from Haliburton. We may just have different definitions of evil.
I'd dig mass transit if they could do one thing -- visit every stop every 10 or 20 minutes.
Yeah, that's a lot of money, but it would sure make a hell of a difference in convenience, and it might actually, for once, outpace a cars convenience then.
Little sucks more than waiting for a bus that only comes by once an hour.
Yeah really, come on, how evil could they be? They pay twice what you're making and all they have to do is convince the government to give them the citizen's tax dollars to do it. That right there is the definition of "non-evil".
Well, if others didn't like the shows I like, I wouldn't go and ask them to pay for them anyways. That's the system now and my choices are either "all" or "none" (basically), which isn't really fair to them.
OK, so I guess the news story is more about the overreaction by the county regulators than about the mistakes that occasionally happen when digging underground. That makes more sense.
"Steam is a great example of how a product can be distributed and not need the dreaded middle-man. The dreaded middle-man is the distributor. Vivendi. Next time around, maybe the won't even have a mega-corp involved, maybe they'll release it directly to consumers."
Remove the word "great" and I'll agree with you wholeheartedly.
Third: Yeah. Many games say internet connection required. They mean for multiplayer. As I said in the last Half Life 2 article, nothing on the box stated: "These CDs will be useful for nothing more than frisbees unless Valves servers are up and operational."
Sixth: Nope, the CD is required. I just tried it yesterday.
Ninth: There will be, and they will be easier to use than the software everyone else paid for.
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I'm curious, how would I, as a consumer, revolt against a publisher without simultaneously revolting against the developers? Vivendi is making some very anti-consumer moves here, which ought not be tolerated.
I think far more people are familiar with LOTR than The Watchmen (at least, judging by the responses here in slashdot), and if so, it's going to be a hard sell to convince people to sit through another 8(9?) hour trilogy.
You're right about the VC, of course, having seen that as well. I shouldn't wish for failure on anyone, anyways, but a little foresight would have gone a long ways (with me, anyways).
I have a certain fondness for retail, solely because if I buy something physical, except for HL2 or MMOGs, I know I can install it pretty much any time in the future and still enjoy the game.
On the other hand, I've seen publishers pull all sorts of tricks to mess with developers. I think the relationship between the two is backwards. The publisher should be the developer's customer. This means the developer would have to raise their own money, but in the end, they would probably benefit if their product is of sufficient quality.
Regarding the CD situation, I guess I can be glad that HL2 didn't balk at my installation of CloneCD. I actually had to download a no-CD crack for a purchased copy of CoD: United Offensive just to play it (thanks, publisher Activision!).
Perhaps you mean the hacker copied the code?
The more game developers that go the direct route (which I agree is better than using a publisher), the lower that $25-30 per copy will get to be, and eventually they'll probably only be making $5-10 again. But, at least, they'll be working for themselves. Maybe they'll spin off the distribution side of things and sell it to others... and become a publisher themselves, heh.
On the other hand, while I don't like the publisher-developer relationship I've read about, I do not like Steam. I bought the boxed version (cost less than the online version, granted) of HL2 and waited for hours to be able to play, after it finished installing, simply to log in to Steam. And yet, for some reason, the game *still* requires that the Half-Life 2 CD be in the drive. It's crazy.
I do hope that Steam itself fails miserably, and that some other system that is designed to be consumer-friendly takes its place.
"Also forget the fact that your governments funnel tax money into teaching religion in public schools, something that Americans frown upon."
..." yada yada.
Yeah, no republican would ever want to put prayer in school or the ten commandments anywhere near a school, would they.
"Tell the world you have more freedom than Americans
If that's all you can come up with as an argument that America is somehow more "free", heh, open your eyes man.
"8. Compare Bush to Hitler even though Saddam Hussein was the one doing the gassing."
Dead by gassing or by bullets/depleted uranium, does it really matter how?
Huge, all except his head, which is, as we know, his vulnerable spot.
Yeah, that'd be even better. Just fashion a different kind of plug (or use the standard plugs you find on any random DC appliance).
LED christmas lights, at least the ones I've seen, are awful. They don't spend the extra few pennies to put in a few diodes (rectifier) to conver it all to DC, so the lights flicker. It's especially apparent when the lights move -- such as in windy conditions -- but even when they're standing still you can see it.
I think they do it so you can run strands of the cables end to end, but they could easily fix that with a few more pennies of wire carrying the AC end to end if they wanted.
Heh, methinks they're a tad embarassed of it:
:)
403
Totally right. The so-called conservative people have co-opted the name "conservative" to mean "morally conservative" instead of "legislatively conservative". It's frustrating. Perhaps we need a more restrictive (to the government of course) bill of rights or something.
Stable, healthy people in a good relationship can handle porn. If your relationship is in trouble and all you can find to blame is porn, its time to open your eyes a little wider.
That's a lie. But I wouldn't expect much more from someone pimping an iPod scam in their signature.
I purchased the game, I did not get any such message, and I tried to register for about 4 hours.
FWIW, the Foe entry isn't for disagreeing, it's for the iPod thing.
"The only thing it requires a network connection for is the initial activation, and thats no more odious than Microsoft's current required activation practices, and I bet you've got Windows on your PC."
You are completely wrong here.
Microsoft's activation process allows you 30 days to complete it, and they have a phone system you can call, handled by an automated attendant, which takes care of activation for you if you can't do it online (as was the case with me, didn't have a working NIC driver).
It could not have gone much smoother.
Steam, on the other hand, required that I register the software before I could even play an offline *single* player game. No grace period. No nothing.
Yep. That's what they're not grasping here. The problem is *impossible* to solve, so any effort put towards that is wasted, and will inevitably cause issues for their actual paying customers.
Another example of this is Call of Duty: United Offensive. I have CloneCD installed on my machine so I can play games without pulling out the discs, and can create ISOs and play with them without wasting media, etc. Call of Duty: United Offensive (the expansion pack to a game that worked perfectly, BTW) requires that you uninstall CloneCD entirely (it says disable, which I did, but that wasn't enough) just to play the game.
I bought the game, but I had to get the no-CD crack just to play it.
I've yet to read a point in this thread that would convince me that GWB is not evil for his contributions to/from Haliburton. We may just have different definitions of evil.
I'd dig mass transit if they could do one thing -- visit every stop every 10 or 20 minutes.
Yeah, that's a lot of money, but it would sure make a hell of a difference in convenience, and it might actually, for once, outpace a cars convenience then.
Little sucks more than waiting for a bus that only comes by once an hour.
Unfortunately, the solution is not self driving cars, but removal of driving privileges. Unfortunate, because we'll probably never see it happen.
Yeah really, come on, how evil could they be? They pay twice what you're making and all they have to do is convince the government to give them the citizen's tax dollars to do it. That right there is the definition of "non-evil".
Well, if others didn't like the shows I like, I wouldn't go and ask them to pay for them anyways. That's the system now and my choices are either "all" or "none" (basically), which isn't really fair to them.
OK, so I guess the news story is more about the overreaction by the county regulators than about the mistakes that occasionally happen when digging underground. That makes more sense.
"Have other people not had that experience?"
Nope, not here, and nobody I know got that. That would have been enough to appease my concerns.
I did buy the CD box, though, so I guess I am less important to Valve.
"Steam is a great example of how a product can be distributed and not need the dreaded middle-man. The dreaded middle-man is the distributor. Vivendi. Next time around, maybe the won't even have a mega-corp involved, maybe they'll release it directly to consumers."
Remove the word "great" and I'll agree with you wholeheartedly.
"While I agree with you that it's a pain.. Why blame Valve? Isn't this just a reaction to rampant piracy in the community?"
Why not blame Valve for taking the wrong approach (by annoying paying customers) to solving what is, in fact, unsolvable?
Third: Yeah. Many games say internet connection required. They mean for multiplayer. As I said in the last Half Life 2 article, nothing on the box stated: "These CDs will be useful for nothing more than frisbees unless Valves servers are up and operational."
Sixth: Nope, the CD is required. I just tried it yesterday.
Ninth: There will be, and they will be easier to use than the software everyone else paid for.