Month: December 2008

On Gaming Piracy…

Posted by DarkJedi – December 21, 2008

I just read this rather long, but somewhat serious, article on Piracy in regards to computer games… Naturally a business guy like that would end up with a conclusion sounding like this: Don’t do piracy and it’s okay to do DRM as long you behave!

Well, frankly I don’t quite agree! I hate piracy as much as the next guy. No, I don’t find it to be an “okay demonstration against some big business, who is doing you wrong!”. People that pirate are just freeloaders! They do not understand the massive commitment and work it requires to make a game these days – even a poor game (which the market is apparently filled with). I don’t like demos myself. They always leave all kinds of crap on my computer and I hate those regular re-installs. I can, to some degree, understand those people that claim that too many titles these days are utter crap, wasted money, or just not enough bang for the money (like Mirror’s Edge with only 6 hours of gameplay) and therefore try out the pirate version before shelling out good cash. However, guys that use this excuse over and over and never actually buy anything as they keep claiming that there are no good titles: Shut the fuck up! If there were no good titles how come you spend 20 hours plus every week gaming?!… I hate those guys! Stop complaining about game quality when you don’t support good games! Stop complaining about poor performance, too many bugs, poor service when you are using a pirate version, riddled with malware and virusses! Buy good games … it’s that easy!

Games are often good value for money – especially compared to movies, where you get 1,5 – 2,5 hours of entertainment for the approx. same price where the games often deliver 20 – 40 hours of gameplay and a more immersive and often better social experience!

However, the one area where I hate the conclusion of that article is on DRM… I refuse to accept that crappy DRM schemes on my computer! I am not a pirate, i am not a thief… I have 60 plus original titles on my PC alone, not counting my console games… I refuse to receive a copy of a game that denies me much more than the pirate version, which is available for free! Instead offer some free extra stuff and good online parts for us paying customers – NOT CRAPPY DRM-schemes! Hint: they don’t work and they are a nightmare to support! Just give it up and let the market decide! Then it will be easier for the companies to expose the ever growing freeloaders! Yes, I know… companies like EA will still make a lot of poor value titles or easy follow ups on public franchises without any proper content or gameplay, but then don’t buy them … And don’t go for the pirate version of a game you claim is poor!

I hate those double standards… It is easy to shout your moralistic view all over the internet and find a common voice… It is a bit more difficult to live by those beliefs! And believe me when I say that you fucking freeloaders don’t make it anymore easy on those of us that actually pay for good games and don’t pirate! So grow up and smell the free market! Vote with your wallet, not your sorry cry-baby voice!

Now, another reason I personally hate DRM is something that is rarely mentioned in the internet article, but matters a lot for me. I take backup of my games. I hate having to have the physical disc laying around everywhere. In the fully digital distribution age this will not be a problem, but we are not there yet, so it is! Therefore I make backups on my NAS, which is a nice way to access my games when I want to play them. A nice solution, I like to think. The problem is with titles that contain DRM that I have to go to shady sites on the Internet to get noCD patches to get them to work without a DVD in the drive. Why should I be punished for being a faithful customer compared to the pirate? Why shall I be forced onto shady sites to get noCD patches to be able to make backups? How come the industry themselves aren’t offering my this as a faithful, paying customer? There is a reason I complete stopped buying games with DRM… They do not supply me with the options I need. This is a digital age – I should be able to handle my product in a digitally flexible manner!

So, instead of pirating games because you don’t want to pay for the honest work of men and women in the gaming inudstry stop playing games. If you want to change the industry start paying for games, but only those that do it right!

If companies, like EA, doesn’t listen to you then… well… they’ll find out in the one language that company can understand – MONEY!

The Console War : The Xmas Sales…

Posted by DarkJedi – December 12, 2008

Sales numbers have just come out for November, which often points towards the tendencies for the vital christmas sales. To say the least they are a bit surprising. Nintendo is simply mashing the competition in a manner no one would have predicted if they had listened to Sony’s spin & marketing department years back. The Wii was suppose to be an overnight hit and then gone because of Sony’s grand powerhouse of a console. The numbers, years after, however, proved quite the opposite. Nintendo is selling almost double that of Sony and Microsoft combined and their DS is smashing the PSP to bits at the same time… At the same time Microsoft is showing that their, by now, old next-gen console is not slowing its pace, but rather speeding up – compared to Sony at least. Left in the dust is Sony and while their marketing department can claim a small raise in sales it is nothing compared to their competitors.

Nintendo, however, in spite of their great sales is left with a major problem – attachment rate is extremely poor for the Wii… Only first-party titles sells okay – the rest is rubbish … Apart from one third-party developer, Ubisoft, who is apparently doing it right! Since the Wii is the best selling console one should think that developer studios would focus more on this platform, but this has not been the case – apart from a load of showelware… which doesn’t yield good sales for the publisher or a good console-reputation for Nintendo either!

To sum it up: Another formidable christmas season for Nintendo, though they still need third-party developers in the same class as Ubisoft to earn real money on their console over time. Microsoft is boosting their sales and are doing remarkably well. Sony is still crawling around in their low sales trying to spin a good story out of their poor-performing next-gen “wonder” of a console!

The Console War : Sony, where did the pixels go?

Posted by DarkJedi – December 4, 2008

Hi there, Sony… Remember not that far back? All your marketing people were out and critizising Microsoft as having made a product that wasn’t next-gen compared your mighty PlayStation 3, claiming that your Cell would revolutionize the world? Yeah, well… guess what?! The world hasn’t been revolutionized. The Cell isn’t great at graphics – missing the vital power in floating point calculations and not supported by enough dedicated graphical memory… Remember that Intel and AMD has been trying for years to get a CPU to do graphics only half as fast as dedicated graphics processing units, the GPU’s. Yeah, so you threw in a badly integrated Nvidia graphics processing unit when you suddenly realized that the Cell cannot yield any miracles – even though you marketed your console as having great graphics because of this wonderous little processor! That Nvidia GPU was already half a generation behind the one that Microsoft threw inside their XBox 360 from ATi/AMD and the result can still be seen today… Most games are made for the XBox 360 because the Cell and its confusing architecture isn’t cost-effective as a development platform for developers that are used to more conventional way of development, as one would expect. The result: What the PlayStation 3 has to offer in comparisson to the XBox 360, apart from a few exclusives, is cheap ports that quickly shows the lack of real GPU processing power on Sony’s miracle machine…

Guess one shouldn’t listen to marketing :)

DRM : Is the gaming industry growing up?

Posted by DarkJedi – December 3, 2008

Even though I do not expect an old-timer company like Electronic Arts (EA) to see this coming before the rest of the industry have done it for years it actually appears that the gaming industry is slowly moving towards an adult perception of Digital Rights Management, DRM. The views of the customers are often completely left out of this debate. Every time a customer speaks up he is automatically called a pirate by the backwater companies that act like some sort of Mafia from the old USSR – not a company who lives in a free market world. The difference between the different approaches by companies in the gaming industry is becoming apparent. Companies like Valve is famous for their grown up opinions on this issue, while EA is known for their backward perception of the world. In an article by Ars Technica this difference is clearly shown… Worth a read :)