Interesting; I have a very similiar system (Q9300, 4 GB, nVidia 8800 512 GT), and it ran pretty well on max settings, 1680x1050 in a Window (on 1920x1200 desktop).
Did you update your drivers? If I recall there was a known issue with older nVidia drivers.
The server migration did wonders - they overestimated expansion based on early demand and expanded too quickly, but by allowing people to migrate from lower pop servers to some mid pop servers, things really picked up.
That said, I did get bored and quit after a month, but I get bored of every game after a month or so (even WoW).
I've filed a complaint. I hope more people do the same.
In the last 4 months I've seen my signal strength go from 4 bars to no bars in my home, nearby grocery store, and at the hobby shop I hang out at every other weekend.
I'm on PrePaid, I have no contract, but I've got over a hundred dollars in my account still.
$60 was unheard of? I seem to recall buying $50-70 SNES games (Doom was $50, Chronotrigger was $70).
Lets adjust for inflation... $60 adjusted for inflation from 1992 to today is about $87.50 (lets do it in reverse - a $60 game today is equivalent to a $41 game in 1992). This same argument came up when the new generation of consoles came out... the NES, adjusted for inflation, costs as much as a PS3! Even the SNES was (adjusted) $300 at launch.
Even factoring the cost of the cartridge out, console game makers still have to pay a per-unit licensing fee to Sony/Nintendo/MSFT. Finally, lets not forget that wholesale price of the game is about 60% of retail, so a $10 increase in retail price is only $6 back to the publisher.
I've been programming games for about 13 years now (9 of those years professionally)... so lets take a look at just some of the things that have changed that affect game development costs:
1. Inflation! Cost of games hasn't gone up much but cost of living has.
2. 3D was practically unheard of. Depending on the game, sprites could take a lot of work, but generally there were only a handful artists on hand, and there was a lot of art re-use (tiles, anyone? And how about those 5-frame sprite animations!). Today people expect lots of individual looking 3D characters and backdrops, which require character modellers, background modellers, texture artists, animators...
3. Graphics resolution - HD is at least 1280x720, whereas games made in 1992 for console were 320x240, and PC games were upwards of 640x480. Higher resolution screen requires higher detail models/backdrops and textures. Additionally, in 3D, you aren't just rendering a few parallax 2D planes scrolling by and some sprites, but full on depth.
4. Software complexity - There is a lot more going on these days; much more complex AI, more entities on screen at once (particularly in 3D where you aren't displaying a small contained slice of the world, but a view frustrum).
5. Game complexity - players want ever increasingly complex experiences. Just look at what the top sellers are - the GTA series is a prime example. How many of those players would be satisfied with an updated game that played like the original GTA games now?
Fusion blades work on Mach 3 razors, and the 'powered' blades work fine on the regular non-powered handles.
Friend of mine went from Mach 3 to Fusion, said it gave him a much better shave. Haven't tried it, I'm happy with Mach 3.
Gilette makes the best 3- and 4-blade razors, in my experience - I can use a single Mach 3 razor for several shaves, and I only shave once every 4 days (though I could probably use a shave every other day). I tried Schick's Quattro, that thing clogs halfway through a single shave and is useless.
Granted it's been about 5 years since I did cellphone development, but back then every phone was different and required tweaking or custom support, and each vendor had their own Java API. Some used BREW instead of Java, which is/was an entirely different language (I spent a couple weeks rewriting a game from BREW to Java).
That said, EA might be your best bet, they have a strong cellphone market presence now.
Thanks:-) I've been running AvP MUD for 11 1/2 years now.
Other original EA titles include Dead Space, recently released, with a completely HUD-less style of play and a great take on survival horror. Army of Two came out some time ago and was also an EA original, with a different take on co-op in FPS games, integrating the idea right into core mechanics (back-to-back shooting, dragging wounded partner who can keep shooting, huddling together behind moving cover). Battleforge is coming up and has a new take on RTS. Then there is Spore, MySims (my wife loves the MySims games, plays them nonstop for a while after they come out), and others.
All of these are new properties that introduce new gameplay concepts. But in the end, EA is a publicly traded company, and has to answer to stock investors. Most of those investors are not gamers, and they don't care if EA is making sequel after sequel, or original titles, as long as they're making money. Sequels of successful franchises almost always sell better than new original properties - it takes a while to build up steam. Even a game like Bioshock can't be viewed as truly 'original' property, as it had the history of System Shock to kickstart public interest which built up and spread. I'd bet Fallout 3 and Elders Scrolls 4 wouldn't have been as successful if they were an original title. Same with Supreme Commander (Total Annihilation), and a lot of other 'original' titles.
And again, I must stress that the DRM is a lot less harmful than people are making it out to be - SecuRom is NOT like Starforce at all. There is a fairly vocal minority who have a vested interested in demonizing any DRM and will gladly make up lies; the blogosphere (idiotsphere, as I prefer to call it) will gladly pick up these rumors and spread them without any concern for the truth or validity because it's ALWAYS OK to repeat what you read on the internet as fact, right? I'm no fan of SecuRom, but unlike them I'm armed with some of the facts. I may not agree with it, but that doesn't mean I need to spread lies.
It's worth noting that Rock Band is only distributed by EA - MTV is still technically the publisher. Bioshock is not an EA game at all, it's published by Take2.
Ever since Riccitiello took the helm, there has been a real shift towards new IP and ideas - other new franchises/games that have come out include Boom Blox. The problem there is that such development is always very risky, financially, so it is even more critical that any sequels that come out are still as successful as before to help offset any losses. Mirrors Edge looks to be great, but it could just as easily fail just for the reason that it is something different.
Me, I'm waiting for a sequel to SSX, for the 360. SSX3 was one of my favorites.
As for the DRM, it's actually very low impact, and doesn't install a service if installed on an admin enabled account. The service is only needed for non-admin accounts to run self decrypting executables. The registry entries are isolated to a software-specific area. The 5 installs is only on separate machines, and they've made strides to allow you to de-register (also you can call tech support and they'll fix it up for you pretty quick).
Probably not - some people are just more sensitive to it than others. It's not something you can really adapt to. Everyone has differing motion sickness threshold (I don't think anybody is truly immune, there will be some level that will make a person sick). Some people can't watch or play any FPS (this is pretty rare); a not insignificant number of people get motion sick from Unreal Engine games but not others. Mirror's Edge tends to push it to the extreme, combining a moving, swaying camera and blurring. My wife has played Fallout 3, Unreal 2, Battlefield 2, and others, and watches me play Fallout 3, but she got sick to her stomache in a few minutes.
If you're going to try to use a company's financials to prove a point, you should at least have a basic understanding of those financials, and use USEFUL numbers (here's a useful hint: in this market, stock value is hardly a useful indicator of a company's success)
It's worth noting that the service is ONLY installed if you are installing the game from a non-Admin-enabled account. If the user has admin rights (even with UAC enabled), it does not install the service. The service is necessary to decrypt the executable as non-admin accounts can't run self-decrypting executables like that, and so require a Ring 3 service, which does have permission to do so, to run it.
The original support post offered that as an option for people who didnt want to call in, but it still said people could call in and get a replacement code if they wanted.
That's hardly cavalier, that was offering TWO support options.
Sounds like your server is slow and/or poorly configured.
We use Perforce very heavily where I work, with multiple branches and a couple hundred users on the same server, and a 100 file sync is done in 10-15 seconds. Only time I would need to head out to lunch is if I was doing a fresh sync on an entire (10 GB) project.
None of the people associated with Interplay today were around during the heyday. The only folks there are the people (mainly person) who ran the company into the ground in it's last couple years and looted it.
Well, them, and now Christopher Taylor.
The only link to Interplay's past is it's name and the remnants of it's IP catalog.
You're talking about the same government that has more senators interested in passing laws to restrict game availability or have government oversight of their ratings.
Re:If EA is reading this
on
Review: Spore
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
No, it doesn't. I've worked with Securom (though I argued against it), there are no drivers installed. The service is solely to handle launching of the executable on non-admin accounts because of the encrypted executables.
Please provide a link to your source that claims it does.
Securom is NOT Starforce. Yes, it limits installs, it installs a ring 3 service if installed on non-admin accounts, and a version was incompatible with Process Explorer (since fixed by a newer version of PE). However, people keep making up all these extra evil things it does, and it's all hearsay and rumors, with not a single solid source or citation.
And they raised, and eventually eliminated the install limits (though apparently not for a year, since it was a strong seller for a while).
Re:If EA is reading this
on
Review: Spore
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
So you'll live up to the expectation and act like a criminal. Yeah, really bright.
Let's try an analogy:
That's like walking into a store you've never been, and the owner keeps an eagle eye on you because he doesnt recognize you and suspects you might try to steal something, so in return you steal a candy bar.
Yes, software piracy is not physical theft, but your attitude is a good mirror of the situation I just described. Rather than simply saying "I won't buy it," threatening to pirate it is actually ENFORCING and ENCOURAGING the decision for further, stronger DRM.
The DRM isn't nearly as bad as people make out (it is NOT a root kit - it installs a Ring 3 service, which is the least privileged, but only if you aren't running under an admin account), and I would not be surprised if EA ups or eliminates the install limit a month or two after release.
It does have one advantage: I don't need the CD to play.
Hopefully the backlash makes EA change it's mind regarding Securom, but attitudes like yours are the least helpful of all.
Slashdot Mirror
Interesting; I have a very similiar system (Q9300, 4 GB, nVidia 8800 512 GT), and it ran pretty well on max settings, 1680x1050 in a Window (on 1920x1200 desktop).
Did you update your drivers? If I recall there was a known issue with older nVidia drivers.
The server migration did wonders - they overestimated expansion based on early demand and expanded too quickly, but by allowing people to migrate from lower pop servers to some mid pop servers, things really picked up.
That said, I did get bored and quit after a month, but I get bored of every game after a month or so (even WoW).
I've filed a complaint. I hope more people do the same.
In the last 4 months I've seen my signal strength go from 4 bars to no bars in my home, nearby grocery store, and at the hobby shop I hang out at every other weekend.
I'm on PrePaid, I have no contract, but I've got over a hundred dollars in my account still.
$60 was unheard of? I seem to recall buying $50-70 SNES games (Doom was $50, Chronotrigger was $70).
Lets adjust for inflation... $60 adjusted for inflation from 1992 to today is about $87.50 (lets do it in reverse - a $60 game today is equivalent to a $41 game in 1992). This same argument came up when the new generation of consoles came out... the NES, adjusted for inflation, costs as much as a PS3! Even the SNES was (adjusted) $300 at launch.
Even factoring the cost of the cartridge out, console game makers still have to pay a per-unit licensing fee to Sony/Nintendo/MSFT. Finally, lets not forget that wholesale price of the game is about 60% of retail, so a $10 increase in retail price is only $6 back to the publisher.
I've been programming games for about 13 years now (9 of those years professionally)... so lets take a look at just some of the things that have changed that affect game development costs:
1. Inflation! Cost of games hasn't gone up much but cost of living has.
2. 3D was practically unheard of. Depending on the game, sprites could take a lot of work, but generally there were only a handful artists on hand, and there was a lot of art re-use (tiles, anyone? And how about those 5-frame sprite animations!). Today people expect lots of individual looking 3D characters and backdrops, which require character modellers, background modellers, texture artists, animators...
3. Graphics resolution - HD is at least 1280x720, whereas games made in 1992 for console were 320x240, and PC games were upwards of 640x480. Higher resolution screen requires higher detail models/backdrops and textures. Additionally, in 3D, you aren't just rendering a few parallax 2D planes scrolling by and some sprites, but full on depth.
4. Software complexity - There is a lot more going on these days; much more complex AI, more entities on screen at once (particularly in 3D where you aren't displaying a small contained slice of the world, but a view frustrum).
5. Game complexity - players want ever increasingly complex experiences. Just look at what the top sellers are - the GTA series is a prime example. How many of those players would be satisfied with an updated game that played like the original GTA games now?
Fusion blades work on Mach 3 razors, and the 'powered' blades work fine on the regular non-powered handles.
Friend of mine went from Mach 3 to Fusion, said it gave him a much better shave. Haven't tried it, I'm happy with Mach 3.
Gilette makes the best 3- and 4-blade razors, in my experience - I can use a single Mach 3 razor for several shaves, and I only shave once every 4 days (though I could probably use a shave every other day). I tried Schick's Quattro, that thing clogs halfway through a single shave and is useless.
Many women use razor blades too. They have a hell of a lot more surface area to shave.
They get better quality/longer lasting blades, too :-(
Ok Mr. High and Mighty Musician....
Most of us just want to have fun playing a game and listening to music. Do we want to be musicians? No! Do we think we are musicians? Nope.
Tell me, do you also criticize people who sing karaoke if they don't go out and become professional singers?
Granted it's been about 5 years since I did cellphone development, but back then every phone was different and required tweaking or custom support, and each vendor had their own Java API. Some used BREW instead of Java, which is/was an entirely different language (I spent a couple weeks rewriting a game from BREW to Java).
That said, EA might be your best bet, they have a strong cellphone market presence now.
Thanks :-) I've been running AvP MUD for 11 1/2 years now.
Other original EA titles include Dead Space, recently released, with a completely HUD-less style of play and a great take on survival horror. Army of Two came out some time ago and was also an EA original, with a different take on co-op in FPS games, integrating the idea right into core mechanics (back-to-back shooting, dragging wounded partner who can keep shooting, huddling together behind moving cover). Battleforge is coming up and has a new take on RTS. Then there is Spore, MySims (my wife loves the MySims games, plays them nonstop for a while after they come out), and others.
All of these are new properties that introduce new gameplay concepts. But in the end, EA is a publicly traded company, and has to answer to stock investors. Most of those investors are not gamers, and they don't care if EA is making sequel after sequel, or original titles, as long as they're making money. Sequels of successful franchises almost always sell better than new original properties - it takes a while to build up steam. Even a game like Bioshock can't be viewed as truly 'original' property, as it had the history of System Shock to kickstart public interest which built up and spread. I'd bet Fallout 3 and Elders Scrolls 4 wouldn't have been as successful if they were an original title. Same with Supreme Commander (Total Annihilation), and a lot of other 'original' titles.
And again, I must stress that the DRM is a lot less harmful than people are making it out to be - SecuRom is NOT like Starforce at all. There is a fairly vocal minority who have a vested interested in demonizing any DRM and will gladly make up lies; the blogosphere (idiotsphere, as I prefer to call it) will gladly pick up these rumors and spread them without any concern for the truth or validity because it's ALWAYS OK to repeat what you read on the internet as fact, right? I'm no fan of SecuRom, but unlike them I'm armed with some of the facts. I may not agree with it, but that doesn't mean I need to spread lies.
Ok, I'm rambling, I should go to sleep.
It's worth noting that Rock Band is only distributed by EA - MTV is still technically the publisher. Bioshock is not an EA game at all, it's published by Take2.
Ever since Riccitiello took the helm, there has been a real shift towards new IP and ideas - other new franchises/games that have come out include Boom Blox. The problem there is that such development is always very risky, financially, so it is even more critical that any sequels that come out are still as successful as before to help offset any losses. Mirrors Edge looks to be great, but it could just as easily fail just for the reason that it is something different.
Me, I'm waiting for a sequel to SSX, for the 360. SSX3 was one of my favorites.
As for the DRM, it's actually very low impact, and doesn't install a service if installed on an admin enabled account. The service is only needed for non-admin accounts to run self decrypting executables. The registry entries are isolated to a software-specific area. The 5 installs is only on separate machines, and they've made strides to allow you to de-register (also you can call tech support and they'll fix it up for you pretty quick).
Probably not - some people are just more sensitive to it than others. It's not something you can really adapt to. Everyone has differing motion sickness threshold (I don't think anybody is truly immune, there will be some level that will make a person sick). Some people can't watch or play any FPS (this is pretty rare); a not insignificant number of people get motion sick from Unreal Engine games but not others. Mirror's Edge tends to push it to the extreme, combining a moving, swaying camera and blurring. My wife has played Fallout 3, Unreal 2, Battlefield 2, and others, and watches me play Fallout 3, but she got sick to her stomache in a few minutes.
As are other game company's stock. Yet revenues are up - EA's last quarter was up 40% year over year from FY08 and 15% from FY07.
http://www.nasdaq.com/aspx/revenueepssummary.aspx?symbol=ERTS&selected=ERTS
If you're going to try to use a company's financials to prove a point, you should at least have a basic understanding of those financials, and use USEFUL numbers (here's a useful hint: in this market, stock value is hardly a useful indicator of a company's success)
It's worth noting that the service is ONLY installed if you are installing the game from a non-Admin-enabled account. If the user has admin rights (even with UAC enabled), it does not install the service. The service is necessary to decrypt the executable as non-admin accounts can't run self-decrypting executables like that, and so require a Ring 3 service, which does have permission to do so, to run it.
As for the registry keys, they're harmless.
The original support post offered that as an option for people who didnt want to call in, but it still said people could call in and get a replacement code if they wanted.
That's hardly cavalier, that was offering TWO support options.
Some. Stop by so we can chat there, rather than exchanging messages on /. :-P
You need to come play and whip some of these Marine noobs into shape again, teach them how to kick Alien ass.
avpmud.com 4000
11 1/2 years old
Sounds like your server is slow and/or poorly configured.
We use Perforce very heavily where I work, with multiple branches and a couple hundred users on the same server, and a 100 file sync is done in 10-15 seconds. Only time I would need to head out to lunch is if I was doing a fresh sync on an entire (10 GB) project.
None of the people associated with Interplay today were around during the heyday. The only folks there are the people (mainly person) who ran the company into the ground in it's last couple years and looted it.
Well, them, and now Christopher Taylor.
The only link to Interplay's past is it's name and the remnants of it's IP catalog.
... it just keeps sucking down more money in repairs!
Sorry, couldn't resist.
(To the humor-impaired, that was only a joke, not a criticism)
As has been mentioned, Bioshock used the same DRM that Spore used, and used a year before Spore came out. I believe GTA4 for PC will use it as well.
Reinstalling to the same hardware doesn't count as one of the installs.
You're talking about the same government that has more senators interested in passing laws to restrict game availability or have government oversight of their ratings.
No, it doesn't. I've worked with Securom (though I argued against it), there are no drivers installed. The service is solely to handle launching of the executable on non-admin accounts because of the encrypted executables.
Please provide a link to your source that claims it does.
Securom is NOT Starforce. Yes, it limits installs, it installs a ring 3 service if installed on non-admin accounts, and a version was incompatible with Process Explorer (since fixed by a newer version of PE). However, people keep making up all these extra evil things it does, and it's all hearsay and rumors, with not a single solid source or citation.
And they raised, and eventually eliminated the install limits (though apparently not for a year, since it was a strong seller for a while).
So you'll live up to the expectation and act like a criminal. Yeah, really bright.
Let's try an analogy:
That's like walking into a store you've never been, and the owner keeps an eagle eye on you because he doesnt recognize you and suspects you might try to steal something, so in return you steal a candy bar.
Yes, software piracy is not physical theft, but your attitude is a good mirror of the situation I just described. Rather than simply saying "I won't buy it," threatening to pirate it is actually ENFORCING and ENCOURAGING the decision for further, stronger DRM.
The DRM isn't nearly as bad as people make out (it is NOT a root kit - it installs a Ring 3 service, which is the least privileged, but only if you aren't running under an admin account), and I would not be surprised if EA ups or eliminates the install limit a month or two after release.
It does have one advantage: I don't need the CD to play.
Hopefully the backlash makes EA change it's mind regarding Securom, but attitudes like yours are the least helpful of all.