true, but I can't exactly feel sorry for take two. They bought this upon themselves, they have deliberately made games that appeal to the shock horror tabloid press in order to generate publicity. I can't say im suprised, or especially upset that their shock tactics marketing has come back to bite them on the ass. They can clearly make great games, the irony is, they dont actually NEED to provoke people. The downside is, they tar all games with the 'violent cop killing simulation' brush. You cant say that take2 has actually improved the image of the games industry, unlike the Sims.
I normally take the side of DRM in these discussions, I sell games online for my own 1 man company, so I have a vested interest (and urgent rent-paying need) to combat piracy and make sure that the content provider gets paid for his/her hard work. But this is a step WAY too far for DRM. I often watch DVDs on my laptop, its a great feature, and its totally insane to prevent me as a consumer from doing this, with DVDs I have BOUGHT. We now are in a situation where:
95% of content providers treat their customers ok
5% of content providers act like jackasses, install rootkits and starforce, sue dead people and schoolkids,add unskippable bits to DVDs,and pull stunts like this.
95% of consumers act perfectly reasonably, pay a fair price for a legal product, and dont download pirated content
5% of consumers act like jackasses, pirating everything on principle, uploading hacked copies, and seeding torrents of movies that they enjoy, without a penny going to the providers of that content. Some even start a political party to try and legitmise such activities.
The extremists at both ends are really fucking up the whole digital entertainment industry for the rest of us. This sucks big time. And anyone 'involved' in the issue enough to lobby about it, is firmly in one of those 5% groups. The chances of reasonable compromsie gets further away each day.
I've decided that the best thing I can do is to try and reign in both sides before we end up with something really bad happening.
message to hardcore pirates : "You are acting like idiots. grow up" message to sony, MPAA,RIAA et al : "You are acting like idiots, grow up"
peter jacksons such an evil swine. I hear he put no effort in to those movies whatsoever. I also hear that those poor sods who did the CGI didnt get paid. he used to laugh and spit at them, as he sat on his pile of free money.
interesting how those guys manage to actually create all that IP in the first place, that people enjoy so much they want to add it as a soundtrack. You know, what with them sitting on their ass all day. Methinks it takes longer for peter jackson to create the LOTR movies, and for Gnarls Barclay(sp?) to write an album than it does for some kid to stick em together and claim he's 'creative'. I give the original IP creators more points for 'creative effort' than 99% of youtubes offerings.
Agreed 100%. and heres a radical idea to make food last longer without GM or anything else:
Dont fly the stuff 10,000 miles before it gets to my dinner plate. I know we can grow tomatoes in the UK, i grow em in the garden, so why the hell do they have to come from Spain or Italy? Local food is a far better idea than high tech food, and thats without worrying about the carbon emmissions of jetting tomatoes everywhere. Plus compromsies are made for this reason, i think its strawberries that are now 95% the same type - is it 'el santa', chosen not for its taste, but its ability to withstand being bumepd about on long haul trips. So we dont get food that tastes good, we get food that travels well. Sod that. Local food FTW.
so wheres the incentive for anyone to try and make new good games that you 'use as a timekill'? you dont think the makers of thsoe games deserve a few bucks? You only have 90 years on this earth, if your prepared to spend a few hours of that short time playing someones game, shouldnt they be paid? even if its not half lfie two. You could say that you pay for a good steak, a nice meal in a five star restaurant, but when your just hungry, you steal some food from mcdonalds. If anything its the makers of those smaller games that 'kill time' that need the cash more than Valve or id do.
Hey google, Thats 24 million dollars each isn't it? I'm a one man company, but you can buy my company (www.positech.co.uk) for just $15 million. Give me a call, or just drop me an email guys. That figure is negotiable too.
I'm from the UK, I remember the IRA bombings, and I'm sure glad it stopped. As I recall, that conflict came to an end through negotiation and diplomacy. I dont recall seeing British helicopter gunships levelling Belfast. If you think that the current 'war on terror' will bring about peace in the way the IRA conflict ended, I'd respectfully suggest that's unlikely. I agree with you, the terrorists should be hunted down and wiped out, but it needs to be a precise and targeted attack. Every bit of 'collateral damage' just ramps up support for the terrorists.
games companies are already moving to console only, or cross-platform starting on consoles. the majority of big new PC IPs are online games. You expect this trend to stop any time soon?
Forget nuclear, have you not considreed energy efficiency? I reckon 90% of people I know use incandescent lightbulbs, probably 90% leave their PC monitor on at work overnight, 90% of them drive to the local shops rather than walk, 90% of them probably have the TV on standby over night (plus the phone charger, the video, the DVD, the set top box, the hi-fi and the home PC). Energy efficiency is never mentioned, but we can save energy AND our own hard earned cash this way.I never understand why businesses dont invest in tech that auto shutdowns everyones PCs and monitors after 7PM. And why does my PC have such a ludricous power supply anyway, especially when im just surfing, do I really need it all?
So you dont love every single song on every album you bought. how is this different in the digital age? I'm sure that albums had hits and duds for as long as albums have existed. Yet these days you keep hearing again and again "all albums have one hit song, and the rest is filler. its a con. therefore I pirate music". This sounds like a flimsy excuse to me. Nobody is forcing you to buy whole albums, buy the singles you like, or borrow a friends CD to see if you like it. Besides, music is pretty cheap. I dont understand why people think its fine to spend £10 on a meal that satsifies them for maybe 6 hours, but if they spend that £10 on music / games / software / anything digital, they expect to get enjoyment out of it for thirty years. So you bought an album you dont listen to as much as when you first bought it. Big deal. I think 99.9% of the planet can say the same.
its like sony are trying to make a documentary on how to ruin your products chances and annoy your customers. It keeps getting worse and worse. Youd have to be insane to be betting your business on the PS3 being a success.
Every month (or less) another company puts out one of these hilarious *studies* that tells us that "actually, gamers really love advertising in games, they think its cool". Its always nothing more than manipulative bullshit to pimp the stock price of the game-ads companies, and sucker more publishers into stuffing their games full of burger king billboards.
Gamers might think that these are simple deals when you get some money towards dev costs in exchange for the odd billboard. this is NOT the case. I've worked directly on this stuff in a previous job. The advertisers pay BIG money, just to have their billboards in a game, but they are NOT happy to be silent partners. Those same advertisers have very strong views on where those ads are placed, whether or not there is any way to skip them, and what content goes in the games alongside their ad. They are also keen to have a say in the game design, even putting forward their own game design ideas on how their 'product' can be better integrated into the game.
When I'm at the cinema I see people laughing at those motorola ads with the marketing guys coming up with stupid ideas to ruin films with mobile phone ads. The thing is, I've seen those kinds of people behave EXACTLY like that in the games biz. Those ads arent comedy, their a fucking documentary. Games with ads in have often had to make serious compromises in content, design and gameplay to fit in with the advertisers demands. Gamers need to vote with their feet. Do not buy games with ads in.
you are so right. I am clearly lam3 and just am in aw3 of y0ur l33t skillz. I play games for fun. Newsflash --> you do not get a ferrari and naked chicks once you hit the level cap in a MMO game.
It's this attitude that totally wrecked MMORPG games. there is fuck all role playing, there is fuck all exploring, fuck all entertainment, fuck all GAME. All we have are endless parades of people doing *whatever it takes* to score the points to get to the next level, and then the next level, and so on. Every MMO i've played has been like this. Its weird. Its even polluted FPS games with high scores like BF2. Ever played a BF2 game where everyone is a medic?
"I need to get my next medic badge dude". "yeah fine, how about we play in a way that we all have fun, and play as a team huh"? "shut up n00b"
I hope one day someone will make an online game that doesn't rack scores, or give a fuck about them. they can count me in.
This is a bran dnew thing, saw one in the store at the weekend, looks pretty sturdy, im sure there are downsides, but you can now walk into your high st UK store and order a wind turbine. I can imagine them dropping in price big time over the next 5 years.
first of all, who gives a crap about my grammar? secondly
"Denying compatibility with *every* device the user owns"
who says this is your right? where on the box does it say "runs on everything"? If I buy a game for PC it wont run on Mac. if I buy a CD it wont play on my ipod. if I buy a book, I cant put the book in the DVD. This is nothing new. Feel free to only buy open source stuff that works everywhere. this is your right, nobody has remoevd this right. the vast majority of content is made by corporations and individuals who support some form of DRM. if you want to opt out of all this, you are free to do so. Just keep your money in your wallet.
Im no expert, but Im pretty sure that some of us backwards non-americans also invented stuff that goes beyond the 'goat cart and windmill'. The computer was invented in the UK, for example.
1,2,4 and 5 I agree on, Im not sure what you mean about 4. The thing is, people who want to adjust the current (silly) copyright rules need to be much more vocal about what aspects of copyright they want changed, and not lump themselves in with the idiots who want to abolish it. The worst case of this to date is someone starting a party called the 'pirate party'. How can those people vaguely expect governments or corporations to listen to a word of what they have to say. Someone should set up a proper, mature 'consumer rights' group that is open and vocal about its support for the principle of copyright, but keen to prevent its excesses as you describe. Then, rather than arguing against them, I'm mroe than happy to be a paid up member.
eh? If you dont want it, dont buy it. its not complex. Who is FORCING you to buy anything? People need food, water and shelter, they do not NEED a flipping DVD player or HDTV. Feel free to stick to VHS, it has not been outlawed. If companies invest billions in new technology like DVD, you dont think they have the right to protect that investment? I dont notice you developing your own rival to DVD that allows copying. You want the benefits of big corporate investment, and dont want to pay for it.
Its because of people freely copying copyrighted material that its neccesary to legislate to prevent people doing so. If your annoyed about this, blame the pirates, not the manufacturers. Also, it sounds like you agree that the person who distributes the product against the terms of the purchase agreement should be prosecuted yes? which means that people sharing files on p2p that are copyrighted should be prosecuted? and people like the pirate bay who host links to known copyrighted works should also be prosecuted? In that, we agree.
Ok its really easy. if i spend MY time making MY product which I sell, then it should be possible to sell it on the terms that I dictate. This isnt food or shelter, its software, music and TV programs. If you dont like it, dont buy it. Thats called capitalism and the free market. If you dont, there are plenty of non-capitalist countries you may prefer...
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true, but I can't exactly feel sorry for take two. They bought this upon themselves, they have deliberately made games that appeal to the shock horror tabloid press in order to generate publicity. I can't say im suprised, or especially upset that their shock tactics marketing has come back to bite them on the ass. They can clearly make great games, the irony is, they dont actually NEED to provoke people. The downside is, they tar all games with the 'violent cop killing simulation' brush. You cant say that take2 has actually improved the image of the games industry, unlike the Sims.
I normally take the side of DRM in these discussions, I sell games online for my own 1 man company, so I have a vested interest (and urgent rent-paying need) to combat piracy and make sure that the content provider gets paid for his/her hard work.
But this is a step WAY too far for DRM.
I often watch DVDs on my laptop, its a great feature, and its totally insane to prevent me as a consumer from doing this, with DVDs I have BOUGHT.
We now are in a situation where:
95% of content providers treat their customers ok
5% of content providers act like jackasses, install rootkits and starforce, sue dead people and schoolkids,add unskippable bits to DVDs,and pull stunts like this.
95% of consumers act perfectly reasonably, pay a fair price for a legal product, and dont download pirated content
5% of consumers act like jackasses, pirating everything on principle, uploading hacked copies, and seeding torrents of movies that they enjoy, without a penny going to the providers of that content. Some even start a political party to try and legitmise such activities.
The extremists at both ends are really fucking up the whole digital entertainment industry for the rest of us. This sucks big time. And anyone 'involved' in the issue enough to lobby about it, is firmly in one of those 5% groups. The chances of reasonable compromsie gets further away each day.
I've decided that the best thing I can do is to try and reign in both sides before we end up with something really bad happening.
message to hardcore pirates : "You are acting like idiots. grow up"
message to sony, MPAA,RIAA et al : "You are acting like idiots, grow up"
peter jacksons such an evil swine. I hear he put no effort in to those movies whatsoever. I also hear that those poor sods who did the CGI didnt get paid. he used to laugh and spit at them, as he sat on his pile of free money.
interesting how those guys manage to actually create all that IP in the first place, that people enjoy so much they want to add it as a soundtrack. You know, what with them sitting on their ass all day.
Methinks it takes longer for peter jackson to create the LOTR movies, and for Gnarls Barclay(sp?) to write an album than it does for some kid to stick em together and claim he's 'creative'.
I give the original IP creators more points for 'creative effort' than 99% of youtubes offerings.
Agreed 100%. and heres a radical idea to make food last longer without GM or anything else:
Dont fly the stuff 10,000 miles before it gets to my dinner plate. I know we can grow tomatoes in the UK, i grow em in the garden, so why the hell do they have to come from Spain or Italy?
Local food is a far better idea than high tech food, and thats without worrying about the carbon emmissions of jetting tomatoes everywhere.
Plus compromsies are made for this reason, i think its strawberries that are now 95% the same type - is it 'el santa', chosen not for its taste, but its ability to withstand being bumepd about on long haul trips. So we dont get food that tastes good, we get food that travels well.
Sod that. Local food FTW.
so wheres the incentive for anyone to try and make new good games that you 'use as a timekill'? you dont think the makers of thsoe games deserve a few bucks? You only have 90 years on this earth, if your prepared to spend a few hours of that short time playing someones game, shouldnt they be paid? even if its not half lfie two.
You could say that you pay for a good steak, a nice meal in a five star restaurant, but when your just hungry, you steal some food from mcdonalds.
If anything its the makers of those smaller games that 'kill time' that need the cash more than Valve or id do.
Interesting tactics. Saddam and Stalin would be proud.
Hey google, Thats 24 million dollars each isn't it? I'm a one man company, but you can buy my company (www.positech.co.uk) for just $15 million.
Give me a call, or just drop me an email guys. That figure is negotiable too.
I'm from the UK, I remember the IRA bombings, and I'm sure glad it stopped. As I recall, that conflict came to an end through negotiation and diplomacy. I dont recall seeing British helicopter gunships levelling Belfast. If you think that the current 'war on terror' will bring about peace in the way the IRA conflict ended, I'd respectfully suggest that's unlikely.
I agree with you, the terrorists should be hunted down and wiped out, but it needs to be a precise and targeted attack. Every bit of 'collateral damage' just ramps up support for the terrorists.
games companies are already moving to console only, or cross-platform starting on consoles. the majority of big new PC IPs are online games. You expect this trend to stop any time soon?
well the alternative is that in the future, there will be no more games, because everyone just pirates them.
you choose.
Forget nuclear, have you not considreed energy efficiency? I reckon 90% of people I know use incandescent lightbulbs, probably 90% leave their PC monitor on at work overnight, 90% of them drive to the local shops rather than walk, 90% of them probably have the TV on standby over night (plus the phone charger, the video, the DVD, the set top box, the hi-fi and the home PC).
Energy efficiency is never mentioned, but we can save energy AND our own hard earned cash this way.I never understand why businesses dont invest in tech that auto shutdowns everyones PCs and monitors after 7PM.
And why does my PC have such a ludricous power supply anyway, especially when im just surfing, do I really need it all?
except dream theater. (if you like that kinda thing). Octavarium doesnt really get going for 12 minutes :D
So you dont love every single song on every album you bought. how is this different in the digital age? I'm sure that albums had hits and duds for as long as albums have existed. Yet these days you keep hearing again and again "all albums have one hit song, and the rest is filler. its a con. therefore I pirate music".
This sounds like a flimsy excuse to me.
Nobody is forcing you to buy whole albums, buy the singles you like, or borrow a friends CD to see if you like it. Besides, music is pretty cheap. I dont understand why people think its fine to spend £10 on a meal that satsifies them for maybe 6 hours, but if they spend that £10 on music / games / software / anything digital, they expect to get enjoyment out of it for thirty years. So you bought an album you dont listen to as much as when you first bought it. Big deal. I think 99.9% of the planet can say the same.
its like sony are trying to make a documentary on how to ruin your products chances and annoy your customers. It keeps getting worse and worse. Youd have to be insane to be betting your business on the PS3 being a success.
Every month (or less) another company puts out one of these hilarious *studies* that tells us that "actually, gamers really love advertising in games, they think its cool". Its always nothing more than manipulative bullshit to pimp the stock price of the game-ads companies, and sucker more publishers into stuffing their games full of burger king billboards.
Gamers might think that these are simple deals when you get some money towards dev costs in exchange for the odd billboard. this is NOT the case. I've worked directly on this stuff in a previous job.
The advertisers pay BIG money, just to have their billboards in a game, but they are NOT happy to be silent partners. Those same advertisers have very strong views on where those ads are placed, whether or not there is any way to skip them, and what content goes in the games alongside their ad. They are also keen to have a say in the game design, even putting forward their own game design ideas on how their 'product' can be better integrated into the game.
When I'm at the cinema I see people laughing at those motorola ads with the marketing guys coming up with stupid ideas to ruin films with mobile phone ads. The thing is, I've seen those kinds of people behave EXACTLY like that in the games biz. Those ads arent comedy, their a fucking documentary. Games with ads in have often had to make serious compromises in content, design and gameplay to fit in with the advertisers demands.
Gamers need to vote with their feet. Do not buy games with ads in.
actually lucas himself is not known for mega bucks movies
attack of clones 120 million
revenge of the sith 113 million
king kong 207 million
alexander 155 million
final fantasy 137 million
pirates of the carribean 143 million
pearl harbour 132 million
its not like he's spending more than anyone else, especially considering the intense special effects.
you are so right. I am clearly lam3 and just am in aw3 of y0ur l33t skillz.
I play games for fun. Newsflash --> you do not get a ferrari and naked chicks once you hit the level cap in a MMO game.
It's this attitude that totally wrecked MMORPG games. there is fuck all role playing, there is fuck all exploring, fuck all entertainment, fuck all GAME. All we have are endless parades of people doing *whatever it takes* to score the points to get to the next level, and then the next level, and so on. Every MMO i've played has been like this. Its weird. Its even polluted FPS games with high scores like BF2. Ever played a BF2 game where everyone is a medic?
"I need to get my next medic badge dude".
"yeah fine, how about we play in a way that we all have fun, and play as a team huh"?
"shut up n00b"
I hope one day someone will make an online game that doesn't rack scores, or give a fuck about them. they can count me in.
And i think you get 30% off through grants:d etail&fh_secondid=9330400&fh_location=%2F%2Fcatalo g01%2Fen_GB%2Fcategories%3C8530236%2Fcategories%3C 9050001&fh_eds=%C3%9F&fh_refview=lister&ts=1159984 743563
http://www.diy.com/diy/jsp/bq/nav/nav.jsp?action=
This is a bran dnew thing, saw one in the store at the weekend, looks pretty sturdy, im sure there are downsides, but you can now walk into your high st UK store and order a wind turbine. I can imagine them dropping in price big time over the next 5 years.
first of all, who gives a crap about my grammar?
secondly
"Denying compatibility with *every* device the user owns"
who says this is your right? where on the box does it say "runs on everything"? If I buy a game for PC it wont run on Mac. if I buy a CD it wont play on my ipod. if I buy a book, I cant put the book in the DVD. This is nothing new.
Feel free to only buy open source stuff that works everywhere. this is your right, nobody has remoevd this right. the vast majority of content is made by corporations and individuals who support some form of DRM. if you want to opt out of all this, you are free to do so. Just keep your money in your wallet.
Im no expert, but Im pretty sure that some of us backwards non-americans also invented stuff that goes beyond the 'goat cart and windmill'. The computer was invented in the UK, for example.
1,2,4 and 5 I agree on, Im not sure what you mean about 4. The thing is, people who want to adjust the current (silly) copyright rules need to be much more vocal about what aspects of copyright they want changed, and not lump themselves in with the idiots who want to abolish it. The worst case of this to date is someone starting a party called the 'pirate party'. How can those people vaguely expect governments or corporations to listen to a word of what they have to say.
Someone should set up a proper, mature 'consumer rights' group that is open and vocal about its support for the principle of copyright, but keen to prevent its excesses as you describe. Then, rather than arguing against them, I'm mroe than happy to be a paid up member.
eh?
If you dont want it, dont buy it. its not complex. Who is FORCING you to buy anything? People need food, water and shelter, they do not NEED a flipping DVD player or HDTV. Feel free to stick to VHS, it has not been outlawed. If companies invest billions in new technology like DVD, you dont think they have the right to protect that investment? I dont notice you developing your own rival to DVD that allows copying. You want the benefits of big corporate investment, and dont want to pay for it.
Its because of people freely copying copyrighted material that its neccesary to legislate to prevent people doing so. If your annoyed about this, blame the pirates, not the manufacturers. Also, it sounds like you agree that the person who distributes the product against the terms of the purchase agreement should be prosecuted yes? which means that people sharing files on p2p that are copyrighted should be prosecuted? and people like the pirate bay who host links to known copyrighted works should also be prosecuted?
In that, we agree.
Ok its really easy. if i spend MY time making MY product which I sell, then it should be possible to sell it on the terms that I dictate. This isnt food or shelter, its software, music and TV programs. If you dont like it, dont buy it. Thats called capitalism and the free market. If you dont, there are plenty of non-capitalist countries you may prefer...