Yeah, not this news article specifically, but a few months ago Jeff Green from Games for Windows Magazine (formerly Computer Gaming World) wrote a great article basically bitching about all this same stuff. Games for Windows labels - which developers can freely put on their boxes after meeting a few reasonable criteria (vista support, widescreen support, 360 controller support, etc.) - are great. But Games for Windows Live is an absolute failure in every sense of the word.
I completely agree. I have two tuners made by different manufacturers - a Hauppauge card and an HDTV DVICO card. Both work absolutely flawlessly with BeyondTV.
I tried the trials for both BeyondTV and SageTV and went with BeyondTV simply because it seemed to have a better interface. Also, the built-in commercial skipping feature is simply great.
I'll have to agree with this guy. For my microcontrollers class we used the 68HC12 - no doubt similar to the 11 that he used - and it was very good to learn with. Relatively simple to learn the instruction set.
But do you really think they'd suddenly shut down with no warning? With no way to play your games off Steam? Talk about a lawsuit in the works. If the Steam servers ever shut down, no doubt Valve would release a utility or just plain change things around to allow you to play all your games offline with no problem. You're better off worrying about your EA games that you can't play online anymore because they shut down the servers after a year (read: XBox Live games). With Valve's history, there is no reason to believe that they would just go and deliberately screw millions upon millions of customers out of their purchases with no way to get them back.
You think that Steam games are the only ones to have stolen CD keys that prevent other people from playing?
With absolutely any game out there, if you want to update to the latest version you are 100% screwed if someone took your CD key. It sucks, but it's not Steam's fault either. In fact, I don't even have a CD Key for any of my Steam games because I bought them online - making it impossible to steal my CD key.
Solution? Install the game off your original CDs, and get the latest offline patch from before Steam was released. Simple as that. It won't fix your stolen CD key, but you can't do any better with any other game that someone stole a CD key from either.
Your problem isn't Steam's fault, it's the fault of the dickwad with the keygen who stole your CD key. Steam, if it has anything to do with this, prevents the problem from happening in the first place.
And luckily Slashdotters don't make up even a remote portion of all the gamers out there, so developers can focus valuable time on developing for one extremely popular platform instead of three platforms, two of which would give the developers next to nothing in terms of revenue back.
No idea, but there are always people willing to invest in a good product if there's a good idea and smart people behind it. It's just that pretty much, the current game development world is so messed up with such horrible gouging by publishers that *any* alternative is better. Steam is allowing that to change, slowly but surely, and will hopefully become more widespread so that any independent game developer with a good idea can make it.
The Ship and soon-to-be DEFCON are perfect examples. Best $15 I ever spent on a game for The Ship, and $10 for an innovative game like DEFCON seems like a steal.
People who bitch about Steam suck. It's by far one of the best things to happen to the gaming industry. Just read hear for more: Interview with Troika Games
"Why Steam... the reason Steam is so fantastic, is because the game can be developed and distributed without any publisher involvement. Laidback will get to keep the IP, which means that the idea and world the game takes place in will still be ours. Laidback can make a great title, put it up there and people can download it for less than they'd pay in the stores. On top of that, Laid Back will only need to sell a very small number of copies to recoup its cost and keep the company going.
To help everyone better understand, I will explain Publisher funding vs. Developer return process. I'm going to simplify it a lot, but this is more or less how it works.... and it's really quite amazing...
After they agree to fund your game for 6 million, you begin production. They give you 500k a month upon receiving, reviewing, and approving your milestone. They are basically checking every month to make sure the game is actually being made and going in a good direction Fair enough. To keep things easy, let's say the game ships on time and they've given you a clean 6 million bucks.
Ready?.... You get 10% of the royalties of the game! So like if the game sells 1 million units at Electronics Boutique for 50 bucks a piece, you get 5 million dollars coming back at you right?!??!
WRONG
EB bought the game for 40 dollars and sells it for 50. Now the publisher takes away their expenses of producing the full color manual and the pretty box and such which we'll say is 10 bucks (usually more like 7, but let's keep the math easy). So now we are down to 30 bucks, and you get 10% of that... 3 bucks.... but WAIT!!! Your 3 dollars doesn't go into your pocket, your 3 bucks goes to pay back the publisher what you borrowed to make the game. They did give you 6 million dollars. So before the developer see's a check in the mail, you would have to sell 2 million units!!!!! So the developer before the developer gets a check, the publisher gets 30 million dollars coming in.
Crazy huh?
So why choose Steam? I have chosen Steam because if you buy Valves engine to make your game with, you get to keep 100% of what you sell on Steam. That's right 100%. So using our math from above, if I can sell the game on Steam for 30 bucks and cost 6 million to make, I'll be seeing a check after the game sells 200k units instead of 2 million. AND the check I get for the units I sell will be 10 times more than it would be from a publisher AND after all this wonderfulness, you guys all get the game for 30 bucks instead of 50....
It's an all around winner.
If Troika was able to sell the games they made through Steam and sold only a 1/4 of the units they did, they'd be thriving today and everyone would have really cool RPG's to play. The more people who download, install, and actively use Steam the better. It's really small developers only hope to get their games out to people.
As far as the game being in a boxed version, it's possible... but I would wait until the game is close to completion before I entertained the idea of a publisher putting it on the shelf. If the game is done and there is a lot of buzz around it, then the developer holds all the cards could get a better deal out of it. Valve would also have their concerns as well and I would want to make sure the wonderful world of Steam would take TOP priority. "
haha, those comments are awesome. That's your mod? I really enjoy the two episodes released so far and can't wait for the third. Any idea when that will be?
Considering that the Wii's CPU is only a 5W chip to begin with, it's prett much impossible for it to be any worse when it's in "always connected" mode.
I've never bought a single copy of Windows thinking that "oh gee, this one has WinFS in it!" or "awesome, WinFS is coming out for this one!""
Why would anyone think that in the first place? Microsoft never falsly advertised a product to include WinFS that then went on to be sold...without WinFS.
Final Fantasy 6 was released as FF3 in the US on the Super Nintendo. Yes, it was rereleased on PSX, but with no upgrades - just a FMV cutscene at the beginning and end of the game I believe (I never played that version)
Even though there was a generation of 2d PSX games that came after it, with a lot more power to create even more beautiful 2d games, every time I play Final Fantasy 6 (3 in the US), I simply can't get over how gorgeous it looks. Amazing music, amazing graphics, amazing story, and tons of diversity. But mainly, Squaresoft designed such an amazing look and two completely unique worlds for this game.
Plenty of 2d games are more impressive technologically, but I have a feeling that if FF6 were ever updated with higher-resolution graphics, with the exact same source art, it would be simply incredible.
In very very recent interviews, I'm talking about ones done a mere week ago with Valve, they consistently mentioned December 2006 as the release date. Considering that its development started around the same time as Episode One, I really thought that Episode Two would make it by then.
Is PC Gamer the only source of this Spring 2007 release date? I know this is Valve we're talking about, but I'm still thinking it could be a miscommunication, and Valve still thinks it's coming out at the end of 2006.
That is exactly what the game is if you don't stop and pay attention to the details. Just like any good story, the true meat of the material is gathered from reading between the lines. If you want a story shoved in your face go play any other game with cutscenes all over the place. Half-Life 2's story is pretty much nonlinear and optional. If you don't care about the story, you can just rush right through and not talk to anyone or listen to what anyone has to say. If you want to know about the story, you need to work for it. Talk to the Vortigaunts, talk to Alyx and Dr. Kliner, read the writing on the wall, look at posters, listen to the Dr. Breen talk on the monitor.
It's there if you want it, and it's not the developer's fault if you wanted a story and rushed through too quickly to pick it up.
One note that I didn't see mentioned is that because, at least at Valve, each episode is being designed by a different team, every single episode will have much more consistant awesome quality than a single 10-15+ hour game. They need this in order to keep people buying the episodes, but at the same time it's because they don't need to worry about pacing nearly as much.
Half-Life 2 Episode One was incredible, and the commentary added a huge amount of insight to their development philosophies. Not to mention they talked about a lot of redesigns that areas went through for sake of keeping that quality gameplay in tact. Alyx could have been an extremely annoying companion, but because the "cabal" was focused on only 4-6 hours of gameplay, they could do everything that they needed to make her addition enjoyable instead of a burden.
As for reusing textures - they created a whole new material and texture set for this game, which was noted in the commentary. They painstakenly detailed every part of the city, and oher areas, to make it recognizable, but different because of its tremendous destruction.
And finally, with episodic content they can keep on top of technology much better thanks to a 6-12 month development cycle instead of 4-6 year. The episode 2 trailer at the end looks incredible, keep it up Valve!
The story is very subtle and not at all in-your-face. It's an absolutely amazing story considering there wasn't a single cutscene, and if you pay attention to all of the details in the world you'll be amazed at just how rich the gameworld is.
Don't believe me? Check this out: http://members.shaw.ca/halflifestory/
Not at all pulled out of his @$$, but rather a thourough analysis of everything.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, not this news article specifically, but a few months ago Jeff Green from Games for Windows Magazine (formerly Computer Gaming World) wrote a great article basically bitching about all this same stuff. Games for Windows labels - which developers can freely put on their boxes after meeting a few reasonable criteria (vista support, widescreen support, 360 controller support, etc.) - are great. But Games for Windows Live is an absolute failure in every sense of the word.
I completely agree. I have two tuners made by different manufacturers - a Hauppauge card and an HDTV DVICO card. Both work absolutely flawlessly with BeyondTV.
I tried the trials for both BeyondTV and SageTV and went with BeyondTV simply because it seemed to have a better interface. Also, the built-in commercial skipping feature is simply great.
I'll have to agree with this guy. For my microcontrollers class we used the 68HC12 - no doubt similar to the 11 that he used - and it was very good to learn with. Relatively simple to learn the instruction set.
how about getting back to me when there's a 5 year span between episode 1 and episode 2, thanks/\.
But do you really think they'd suddenly shut down with no warning? With no way to play your games off Steam? Talk about a lawsuit in the works. If the Steam servers ever shut down, no doubt Valve would release a utility or just plain change things around to allow you to play all your games offline with no problem. You're better off worrying about your EA games that you can't play online anymore because they shut down the servers after a year (read: XBox Live games). With Valve's history, there is no reason to believe that they would just go and deliberately screw millions upon millions of customers out of their purchases with no way to get them back.
You think that Steam games are the only ones to have stolen CD keys that prevent other people from playing?
With absolutely any game out there, if you want to update to the latest version you are 100% screwed if someone took your CD key. It sucks, but it's not Steam's fault either. In fact, I don't even have a CD Key for any of my Steam games because I bought them online - making it impossible to steal my CD key.
Solution? Install the game off your original CDs, and get the latest offline patch from before Steam was released. Simple as that. It won't fix your stolen CD key, but you can't do any better with any other game that someone stole a CD key from either.
Your problem isn't Steam's fault, it's the fault of the dickwad with the keygen who stole your CD key. Steam, if it has anything to do with this, prevents the problem from happening in the first place.
And luckily Slashdotters don't make up even a remote portion of all the gamers out there, so developers can focus valuable time on developing for one extremely popular platform instead of three platforms, two of which would give the developers next to nothing in terms of revenue back.
No idea, but there are always people willing to invest in a good product if there's a good idea and smart people behind it. It's just that pretty much, the current game development world is so messed up with such horrible gouging by publishers that *any* alternative is better. Steam is allowing that to change, slowly but surely, and will hopefully become more widespread so that any independent game developer with a good idea can make it.
The Ship and soon-to-be DEFCON are perfect examples. Best $15 I ever spent on a game for The Ship, and $10 for an innovative game like DEFCON seems like a steal.
People who bitch about Steam suck. It's by far one of the best things to happen to the gaming industry. Just read hear for more:
Interview with Troika Games
"Why Steam... the reason Steam is so fantastic, is because the game can be developed and distributed without any publisher involvement. Laidback will get to keep the IP, which means that the idea and world the game takes place in will still be ours. Laidback can make a great title, put it up there and people can download it for less than they'd pay in the stores. On top of that, Laid Back will only need to sell a very small number of copies to recoup its cost and keep the company going.
To help everyone better understand, I will explain Publisher funding vs. Developer return process. I'm going to simplify it a lot, but this is more or less how it works.... and it's really quite amazing...
After they agree to fund your game for 6 million, you begin production. They give you 500k a month upon receiving, reviewing, and approving your milestone. They are basically checking every month to make sure the game is actually being made and going in a good direction Fair enough. To keep things easy, let's say the game ships on time and they've given you a clean 6 million bucks.
Ready?.... You get 10% of the royalties of the game! So like if the game sells 1 million units at Electronics Boutique for 50 bucks a piece, you get 5 million dollars coming back at you right?!??!
WRONG
EB bought the game for 40 dollars and sells it for 50. Now the publisher takes away their expenses of producing the full color manual and the pretty box and such which we'll say is 10 bucks (usually more like 7, but let's keep the math easy). So now we are down to 30 bucks, and you get 10% of that... 3 bucks.... but WAIT!!! Your 3 dollars doesn't go into your pocket, your 3 bucks goes to pay back the publisher what you borrowed to make the game. They did give you 6 million dollars. So before the developer see's a check in the mail, you would have to sell 2 million units!!!!! So the developer before the developer gets a check, the publisher gets 30 million dollars coming in.
Crazy huh?
So why choose Steam? I have chosen Steam because if you buy Valves engine to make your game with, you get to keep 100% of what you sell on Steam. That's right 100%. So using our math from above, if I can sell the game on Steam for 30 bucks and cost 6 million to make, I'll be seeing a check after the game sells 200k units instead of 2 million. AND the check I get for the units I sell will be 10 times more than it would be from a publisher AND after all this wonderfulness, you guys all get the game for 30 bucks instead of 50....
It's an all around winner.
If Troika was able to sell the games they made through Steam and sold only a 1/4 of the units they did, they'd be thriving today and everyone would have really cool RPG's to play. The more people who download, install, and actively use Steam the better. It's really small developers only hope to get their games out to people.
As far as the game being in a boxed version, it's possible... but I would wait until the game is close to completion before I entertained the idea of a publisher putting it on the shelf. If the game is done and there is a lot of buzz around it, then the developer holds all the cards could get a better deal out of it. Valve would also have their concerns as well and I would want to make sure the wonderful world of Steam would take TOP priority. "
haha, those comments are awesome. That's your mod? I really enjoy the two episodes released so far and can't wait for the third. Any idea when that will be?
Considering that the Wii's CPU is only a 5W chip to begin with, it's prett much impossible for it to be any worse when it's in "always connected" mode.
Becuase your rights were deprived, thus meeting the definition, correct?
I've never bought a single copy of Windows thinking that "oh gee, this one has WinFS in it!" or "awesome, WinFS is coming out for this one!"" Why would anyone think that in the first place? Microsoft never falsly advertised a product to include WinFS that then went on to be sold...without WinFS.
Fraud? So you lost a lot of money due to this whole WinFS thing? Did it kill your children or something?
Go play FEAR, then tell me that AI hasn't improved at all.
Final Fantasy 6 was released as FF3 in the US on the Super Nintendo. Yes, it was rereleased on PSX, but with no upgrades - just a FMV cutscene at the beginning and end of the game I believe (I never played that version)
Even though there was a generation of 2d PSX games that came after it, with a lot more power to create even more beautiful 2d games, every time I play Final Fantasy 6 (3 in the US), I simply can't get over how gorgeous it looks. Amazing music, amazing graphics, amazing story, and tons of diversity. But mainly, Squaresoft designed such an amazing look and two completely unique worlds for this game.
Plenty of 2d games are more impressive technologically, but I have a feeling that if FF6 were ever updated with higher-resolution graphics, with the exact same source art, it would be simply incredible.
In very very recent interviews, I'm talking about ones done a mere week ago with Valve, they consistently mentioned December 2006 as the release date. Considering that its development started around the same time as Episode One, I really thought that Episode Two would make it by then.
Is PC Gamer the only source of this Spring 2007 release date? I know this is Valve we're talking about, but I'm still thinking it could be a miscommunication, and Valve still thinks it's coming out at the end of 2006.
That is exactly what the game is if you don't stop and pay attention to the details. Just like any good story, the true meat of the material is gathered from reading between the lines. If you want a story shoved in your face go play any other game with cutscenes all over the place. Half-Life 2's story is pretty much nonlinear and optional. If you don't care about the story, you can just rush right through and not talk to anyone or listen to what anyone has to say. If you want to know about the story, you need to work for it. Talk to the Vortigaunts, talk to Alyx and Dr. Kliner, read the writing on the wall, look at posters, listen to the Dr. Breen talk on the monitor.
It's there if you want it, and it's not the developer's fault if you wanted a story and rushed through too quickly to pick it up.
One note that I didn't see mentioned is that because, at least at Valve, each episode is being designed by a different team, every single episode will have much more consistant awesome quality than a single 10-15+ hour game. They need this in order to keep people buying the episodes, but at the same time it's because they don't need to worry about pacing nearly as much. Half-Life 2 Episode One was incredible, and the commentary added a huge amount of insight to their development philosophies. Not to mention they talked about a lot of redesigns that areas went through for sake of keeping that quality gameplay in tact. Alyx could have been an extremely annoying companion, but because the "cabal" was focused on only 4-6 hours of gameplay, they could do everything that they needed to make her addition enjoyable instead of a burden. As for reusing textures - they created a whole new material and texture set for this game, which was noted in the commentary. They painstakenly detailed every part of the city, and oher areas, to make it recognizable, but different because of its tremendous destruction. And finally, with episodic content they can keep on top of technology much better thanks to a 6-12 month development cycle instead of 4-6 year. The episode 2 trailer at the end looks incredible, keep it up Valve!
The story is very subtle and not at all in-your-face. It's an absolutely amazing story considering there wasn't a single cutscene, and if you pay attention to all of the details in the world you'll be amazed at just how rich the gameworld is. Don't believe me? Check this out: http://members.shaw.ca/halflifestory/ Not at all pulled out of his @$$, but rather a thourough analysis of everything.