This whole thing is interesting to me. I think we're sort of watching a paradigm shift in the way publishers and consumers interact.
Just isolating at the economics of it, why does it being on the disc matter? Everyone who purchased a copy of the game knew what they were getting into. They willingly exchanged money for the game as it was. This unlock was not included in that transaction. Then, the publisher asks people to pay more money for additional content. People decide whether or not they want that content.
However, we have this notion that once we've bought a 'thing' we should have full access to it. I like this idea, personally. I think most of us here do. When they reveal that you bought the disc, and it had the content ready to go and you are locked out, that's evil.
However, if they did the same thing but shipped it without this content on the disc, that would be OK? If they COULD have put it on the disc, but they didn't - does the publisher have an obligation to release the content if it is finished? I think that gets a bit more gray.
What if they finished this the week after the disc shipped? Is that OK?
Is it that we're theoretically 'covering the cost' of the development of the game with our $60 or $50? And then the price of DLC is an incentive for them to continue expanding the game? On the other hand, they delivered a game in a state that you can choose to buy or not. What is hidden in the disc's dead space is of little concern, right?
DLC has caused some interesting ethical and financial quandries. One the one hand, it seems like game prices are going up by degrees. We're paying $60 for a game, PLUS another $5 here and $10 there. Some games, especially multiplayer titles, may cost you upwards of $100 by the time you're finished. Are we getting our money's worth? Are we getting a good deal for our gaming value? At the same time, do publishers have an obligation to tell us up front what we're getting into: ie, you will pay $60 for this game and an estimated $x/interval for DLC in order to have the 'complete' experience.
Not to mention the whole 'project $10' initiative - where there's a code in the box that you can only use once, and it locks used owners out of content that you would otherwise have to pay for as DLC...
Complicating matters is that there's not any competition in the market - if you want a COD:MW2 map, for instance, you're getting it from IW/Activision/MS Live. There's not a competitor that can sell you a similar product at a competitive price.
I think the future is going to be full of more of these practices. And, by and large, the average gamer is going to be oblivious.
I'm surprised that nobody's suggested a netbook yet. I bought a refurb Asus Eee 900a for about $150 (woot has them pretty frequently, although I got mine from mwave) and then maxed out the RAM and SSD for about $50 more, taking it to 2GB RAM and 16GB SSD. It has a 9" display that I have set to turn off when I close the lid, but even with the LCD on max brightness it only draws around 12 watts.
There's a SD card reader built-in that you can install linux from, or use one of the USB ports. You could hook up an external drive or use the SD card slot for additional storage, but since all I'm doing is network services (ssh, http, tinyproxy, etc) the storage isn't much of a concern. Going wired instead of wireless would save some power as well.
Best of all, it has it's own built-in UPS:)
I evaluated taking a consumer NAS device and repurposing it, but the hardware specs you can find in a comparable price range aren't nearly as good (except for the drive, obviously). The SheevaPlug is interesting, but it is nice to have a display and keyboard integrated. It makes for easier setup and debug when something is going wrong. Plus, at the time, they were in short supply.
I think that age does have a certain amount of effect on how excited a console launch gets you. I remember wanting a SNES really, really badly. I was a real ass to my parents that year, but they still got it for me. Since then, though, I've lost some of my passion for it.
I got a N64, but after a year or so had passed. I own a playstation 2, but I got it at a pawn shop. I also have a GC, but they became so cheap so quickly that it wasn't much of an investment.
This time around, I don't think I'm likely to buy until a year or two has passed, and even then I'll probably stick with used. It isn't like the games are going anywhere, they'll still be around by the time I pick up a console. Plus by then there will probably be some better games out.
Needless to say, I buy most of my games used, and I love GameFly. Plenty of gaming experience for my buck.
I even won tickets to Xbox Zero Hour, and I don't care! I would go if they were giving the console away, but I'm not flying from TX to CA so that I can be blessed with the chance to buy a console before launch. What BS.
I feel sad for those people who wait in line the night before. I'm going to get the same gaming experience later on, and pay half price if that. All I have to do is be paitent.
I tried to do this in college. I had a friend who I'd worked with before in my home town who did this as a side business as well. This was a few years ago, before the virus/malware boom. He did both hardware upgrades and software troubleshooting, although he did most of his business selling parts. He set me up with accounts from his distributors (backing me with a line of credit) so that I could get a leg up.
These days, you can't sell computers or parts and expect to make any sort of money. Have you been in a small computer shop recently? Usually they are charging quite a bit more than the big online retailers. The online retailers make a killing because they buy direct and they buy in bulk. The smaller 'hometown' chains buy from distributors, who have prices that are only slightly less than the online shops. If you're going to make a profit, it is tiny, say 3% if that.
If you are selling entire computers, you have many competetors, not the least of which is Dell. And they offer a warranty! You don't want to be on call 24/7 for years after a sale, do you? You can't compete on price, and you can't compete on services offered.
The other side of the coin is selling services. Since you mention that you do this for your friends, they are likely to be your first customers. The downside to this is, they're already getting your services for free, or at least less than what you plan to charge. You want some word of mouth advertising, but it is unlikely that you will get any from your friends, who feel like you're gouging them.
In my experience, friends wanted to pay me in food or by exchanging services. Maybe instead of beer money you could just ask for beer?
Don't even get me started on the legal aspects... paying sales tax, for instance. I had the taxing authorities on my back, wanting to take property taxes from me because I listed my parents' house as my place of business. When you're just in it for the fun of it, the business side of things can be intimidating.
I agree to a certain extent. This is a hobby project more than a money savings project.
Already on my machine I've spent $150 in parts (one tuner, a wireless card, power supply, ram), and everything else is stolen from another PC. I'll probably end up dropping $150 on two analog tuner cards alone. (which is not something I can just re-use in another application later)
Meanwhile Time Warner will rent me the box for $10/mo with free hardware upgrades and a whole slew of other options (most of which I won't ever use, but...) via digial cable. I'd have to get two years out of my current setup to break even...
I opted to build my own since Time Warner wanted to give me a SciAtl box with SARA firmware, and OMG is that awful. We had the Passport version at the last place we lived, and it was really good compared to this. My wife is addicted to the DVR features (not watching commercials, timeshifted TV) so not having a box was not as appealing an option as investing a couple hundred bucks in a HTPC.
Plus, it seems like building a HTPC is the 'geek' thing to do this week.;)
I just finished setting up my MythTV box. My wireless card is sitting in a box waiting for me at home. I also considered a number of distros, but decided to stick with Fedora Core since that was what I was familiar with. Turns out there is a pretty good community around MythTV + FC.
Jarod Wilson has a guide together for MythTV + FC3 that makes things fairly painless (aside from drivers and such you may have to special configure yourself...) This site + atrpms.net made the install super painless. He's got the most common operations and pitfalls for all the major hardware combinations, and I found very little that he hadn't thought of.
Install was as simple as pulling one RPM off of atrpms.net and then doing one apt-get install command. Playing with the drivers, etc, was more of a hassle, but the mailing lists were helpful there. The MythTV documentation on mythtv.org is also indespensible.
I agree. Aren't these microbroadcasters on the same level as spammers? By broadcasting whatever they please over top of the expected/indended brodcasts, they interfere with the regular reception on my radio. Maybe I don't want to listen to their band's demo tape for 60 hours in a row. What if I prefer 'top-40' drivel?
Does the fact that larger radio stations are owned by a company and have a license make them evil?
Have you ever played Broken Sword? This was a fairly standard point-n-click PC game that I thought translated very well to the GBA. Inventory management, NPC conversation, etc. were all handled quite well.
I would reccommend it to any adventure gaming fan. I could see something like ScummVM working OK, with some interface changes...
What I would like to see is a Roguelike ported to the GBA. I've thought about taking such a project on... Something like Angband. You'd have to set up the macros ahead of time on the PC... (assuming you play on a flash cart) or perhaps a user-modifiable quicklist of frequently cast spells? Some hacks to the menu system to allow you to scroll through menus instead of pushing a key to select would help too.
What will they call this one? Ira... errr... Desert Str... no, that's been taken... Terrorist Strike? WMD Strike?
Nuclear Strike was the last one I can remember, and it wasn't that great. (really, really crappy FMV sequences between the missions, as I recall) All they do is swap the color scheme, add a few new sprites, and change the missions to something plausably newsworthy.
If they don't just recycle the old games, they'll probably change them so much that it won't be anything like the original, and we'll accuse them of just cashing in on the brand.
You're thinking people won't buy into this? Already they're paying for the CD to install the game, a monthly fee to play it, plus shelling out extra bucks for expansion packs...
There is a guy I work with who has two dark age of camelot accounts that he plays side-by-side so that he can team up with himself. I asked if he thought that was spending too much money, but he said that it didn't matter to him, he has plenty of disposable income and an extra monthly subscription fee wasn't too much to pay for, considering his interest in the game.
I can see the hardcore gamers like him paying extra for new content or the ability to advance. I think it would even be a good idea to make the whole payment scheme built around a system like this. If you're a casual player, and you don't want to be a level-1000 badass, you pay a lower fee per month. (emphasis on lower: like $5 or something) If you want the latest, greatest items and access to the most dangerous dungeons, chances are you are willing to devote more money.
Makes sense from the server point of view as well, since the level 1000 player probably plays far more often than the level 5 player.
I have also used Troubleshooter, and it is quite useful. I used to work for a school district, and we took surplus government systems (486's mostly) and fixed them to supply systems for the classrooms. Troubleshooter worked great at determining which parts of the hardware were working and which weren't.
I think after we used Troubleshooter, we used Eurosoft PC Check. Back then, (2000-2001 timeframe) it supported all of the available hardware. (besides the 486's, we also used it on systems up to P2, I think...) It presents a simple DOS-like menu with a number of options for showing data about the hardware in the system, along with a large suite of different test programs for hardware. It was quite complete, for a 3.5" floppy disk! We didn't use anything but that, I'm not sure what all comes in the package.
I would reccommend either of those packages. However, since I never purchased either (both were provided to me) I can't speak for the companies, prices, return polices, etc.
Slashdot Mirror
This whole thing is interesting to me. I think we're sort of watching a paradigm shift in the way publishers and consumers interact.
Just isolating at the economics of it, why does it being on the disc matter? Everyone who purchased a copy of the game knew what they were getting into. They willingly exchanged money for the game as it was. This unlock was not included in that transaction. Then, the publisher asks people to pay more money for additional content. People decide whether or not they want that content.
However, we have this notion that once we've bought a 'thing' we should have full access to it. I like this idea, personally. I think most of us here do. When they reveal that you bought the disc, and it had the content ready to go and you are locked out, that's evil.
However, if they did the same thing but shipped it without this content on the disc, that would be OK? If they COULD have put it on the disc, but they didn't - does the publisher have an obligation to release the content if it is finished? I think that gets a bit more gray.
What if they finished this the week after the disc shipped? Is that OK?
Is it that we're theoretically 'covering the cost' of the development of the game with our $60 or $50? And then the price of DLC is an incentive for them to continue expanding the game? On the other hand, they delivered a game in a state that you can choose to buy or not. What is hidden in the disc's dead space is of little concern, right?
DLC has caused some interesting ethical and financial quandries. One the one hand, it seems like game prices are going up by degrees. We're paying $60 for a game, PLUS another $5 here and $10 there. Some games, especially multiplayer titles, may cost you upwards of $100 by the time you're finished. Are we getting our money's worth? Are we getting a good deal for our gaming value? At the same time, do publishers have an obligation to tell us up front what we're getting into: ie, you will pay $60 for this game and an estimated $x/interval for DLC in order to have the 'complete' experience.
Not to mention the whole 'project $10' initiative - where there's a code in the box that you can only use once, and it locks used owners out of content that you would otherwise have to pay for as DLC...
Complicating matters is that there's not any competition in the market - if you want a COD:MW2 map, for instance, you're getting it from IW/Activision/MS Live. There's not a competitor that can sell you a similar product at a competitive price.
I think the future is going to be full of more of these practices. And, by and large, the average gamer is going to be oblivious.
Ah, such fond memories of the Oregon Trail... among other things!
Fascinating to read an article about its early days.
Wikipedia has a bit of history as well, if the name MECC takes you on a walk down memory lane...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MECC
I'm surprised that nobody's suggested a netbook yet. I bought a refurb Asus Eee 900a for about $150 (woot has them pretty frequently, although I got mine from mwave) and then maxed out the RAM and SSD for about $50 more, taking it to 2GB RAM and 16GB SSD. It has a 9" display that I have set to turn off when I close the lid, but even with the LCD on max brightness it only draws around 12 watts.
There's a SD card reader built-in that you can install linux from, or use one of the USB ports. You could hook up an external drive or use the SD card slot for additional storage, but since all I'm doing is network services (ssh, http, tinyproxy, etc) the storage isn't much of a concern. Going wired instead of wireless would save some power as well.
Best of all, it has it's own built-in UPS :)
I evaluated taking a consumer NAS device and repurposing it, but the hardware specs you can find in a comparable price range aren't nearly as good (except for the drive, obviously). The SheevaPlug is interesting, but it is nice to have a display and keyboard integrated. It makes for easier setup and debug when something is going wrong. Plus, at the time, they were in short supply.
I think that age does have a certain amount of effect on how excited a console launch gets you. I remember wanting a SNES really, really badly. I was a real ass to my parents that year, but they still got it for me. Since then, though, I've lost some of my passion for it.
I got a N64, but after a year or so had passed. I own a playstation 2, but I got it at a pawn shop. I also have a GC, but they became so cheap so quickly that it wasn't much of an investment.
This time around, I don't think I'm likely to buy until a year or two has passed, and even then I'll probably stick with used. It isn't like the games are going anywhere, they'll still be around by the time I pick up a console. Plus by then there will probably be some better games out.
Needless to say, I buy most of my games used, and I love GameFly. Plenty of gaming experience for my buck.
I even won tickets to Xbox Zero Hour, and I don't care! I would go if they were giving the console away, but I'm not flying from TX to CA so that I can be blessed with the chance to buy a console before launch. What BS.
I feel sad for those people who wait in line the night before. I'm going to get the same gaming experience later on, and pay half price if that. All I have to do is be paitent.
I tried to do this in college. I had a friend who I'd worked with before in my home town who did this as a side business as well. This was a few years ago, before the virus/malware boom. He did both hardware upgrades and software troubleshooting, although he did most of his business selling parts. He set me up with accounts from his distributors (backing me with a line of credit) so that I could get a leg up.
These days, you can't sell computers or parts and expect to make any sort of money. Have you been in a small computer shop recently? Usually they are charging quite a bit more than the big online retailers. The online retailers make a killing because they buy direct and they buy in bulk. The smaller 'hometown' chains buy from distributors, who have prices that are only slightly less than the online shops. If you're going to make a profit, it is tiny, say 3% if that.
If you are selling entire computers, you have many competetors, not the least of which is Dell. And they offer a warranty! You don't want to be on call 24/7 for years after a sale, do you? You can't compete on price, and you can't compete on services offered.
The other side of the coin is selling services. Since you mention that you do this for your friends, they are likely to be your first customers. The downside to this is, they're already getting your services for free, or at least less than what you plan to charge. You want some word of mouth advertising, but it is unlikely that you will get any from your friends, who feel like you're gouging them.
In my experience, friends wanted to pay me in food or by exchanging services. Maybe instead of beer money you could just ask for beer?
Don't even get me started on the legal aspects... paying sales tax, for instance. I had the taxing authorities on my back, wanting to take property taxes from me because I listed my parents' house as my place of business. When you're just in it for the fun of it, the business side of things can be intimidating.
I agree to a certain extent. This is a hobby project more than a money savings project.
;)
Already on my machine I've spent $150 in parts (one tuner, a wireless card, power supply, ram), and everything else is stolen from another PC. I'll probably end up dropping $150 on two analog tuner cards alone. (which is not something I can just re-use in another application later)
Meanwhile Time Warner will rent me the box for $10/mo with free hardware upgrades and a whole slew of other options (most of which I won't ever use, but...) via digial cable. I'd have to get two years out of my current setup to break even...
I opted to build my own since Time Warner wanted to give me a SciAtl box with SARA firmware, and OMG is that awful. We had the Passport version at the last place we lived, and it was really good compared to this. My wife is addicted to the DVR features (not watching commercials, timeshifted TV) so not having a box was not as appealing an option as investing a couple hundred bucks in a HTPC.
Plus, it seems like building a HTPC is the 'geek' thing to do this week.
If you're a Knoppix fan, there is KnoppMyth:
:)
http://www.mysettopbox.tv/knoppmyth.html
Although it isn't a LiveCD, you have to install it. I'm still preferential to FC3 though
I just finished setting up my MythTV box. My wireless card is sitting in a box waiting for me at home. I also considered a number of distros, but decided to stick with Fedora Core since that was what I was familiar with. Turns out there is a pretty good community around MythTV + FC.
Jarod Wilson has a guide together for MythTV + FC3 that makes things fairly painless (aside from drivers and such you may have to special configure yourself...) This site + atrpms.net made the install super painless. He's got the most common operations and pitfalls for all the major hardware combinations, and I found very little that he hadn't thought of.
Install was as simple as pulling one RPM off of atrpms.net and then doing one apt-get install command. Playing with the drivers, etc, was more of a hassle, but the mailing lists were helpful there. The MythTV documentation on mythtv.org is also indespensible.
http://wilsonet.com/mythtv/fcmyth.php
http://www.roadsend.com/home/index.php?pageID=faq
$400 for the license, which is only good for one year. After that, it won't compile until you renew.
Doesn't seem worth it for the casual hobbyist...
Does the fact that larger radio stations are owned by a company and have a license make them evil?
Have you ever played Broken Sword? This was a fairly standard point-n-click PC game that I thought translated very well to the GBA. Inventory management, NPC conversation, etc. were all handled quite well. I would reccommend it to any adventure gaming fan. I could see something like ScummVM working OK, with some interface changes... What I would like to see is a Roguelike ported to the GBA. I've thought about taking such a project on... Something like Angband. You'd have to set up the macros ahead of time on the PC... (assuming you play on a flash cart) or perhaps a user-modifiable quicklist of frequently cast spells? Some hacks to the menu system to allow you to scroll through menus instead of pushing a key to select would help too.
Nuclear Strike was the last one I can remember, and it wasn't that great. (really, really crappy FMV sequences between the missions, as I recall) All they do is swap the color scheme, add a few new sprites, and change the missions to something plausably newsworthy.
If they don't just recycle the old games, they'll probably change them so much that it won't be anything like the original, and we'll accuse them of just cashing in on the brand.
There is a guy I work with who has two dark age of camelot accounts that he plays side-by-side so that he can team up with himself. I asked if he thought that was spending too much money, but he said that it didn't matter to him, he has plenty of disposable income and an extra monthly subscription fee wasn't too much to pay for, considering his interest in the game.
I can see the hardcore gamers like him paying extra for new content or the ability to advance. I think it would even be a good idea to make the whole payment scheme built around a system like this. If you're a casual player, and you don't want to be a level-1000 badass, you pay a lower fee per month. (emphasis on lower: like $5 or something) If you want the latest, greatest items and access to the most dangerous dungeons, chances are you are willing to devote more money.
Makes sense from the server point of view as well, since the level 1000 player probably plays far more often than the level 5 player.
I have also used Troubleshooter, and it is quite useful. I used to work for a school district, and we took surplus government systems (486's mostly) and fixed them to supply systems for the classrooms. Troubleshooter worked great at determining which parts of the hardware were working and which weren't. I think after we used Troubleshooter, we used Eurosoft PC Check. Back then, (2000-2001 timeframe) it supported all of the available hardware. (besides the 486's, we also used it on systems up to P2, I think...) It presents a simple DOS-like menu with a number of options for showing data about the hardware in the system, along with a large suite of different test programs for hardware. It was quite complete, for a 3.5" floppy disk! We didn't use anything but that, I'm not sure what all comes in the package. I would reccommend either of those packages. However, since I never purchased either (both were provided to me) I can't speak for the companies, prices, return polices, etc.