10 responses so far ↓

• 1 Herr_Alien // Mar 24, 2010 at 3:52 am

  It’s not true, some people do know about you. And we seem to remain quite loyal fans 🙂

  @EA’s DRM
  It also says there that if the connection drops, you’re not booted out of the game. So basically you just need to log in before playing the game. Steam does the same thing. From that point of view, EA learned something.

  Any kind of mechanism that restrains how many distinct computers / distinct people are allowed to play the same copy of the game is DRM. Serial numbers, Securom, Internet based DRM, Steam DRM, they’re all DRMs.

  I loved how Derrick analysed the message from the community manager. You have skilz Derrick 🙂

  @Michael Atkinson steps down:
  He’s acknowledging the will of the people? 😀

  @EA to test a demo strategy:
  Whoa, whoa, whoa, now I have to pay for the demo? No more free demo, but rather a payed demo? Screw that …

  Don, no. I’d rather pay ZERO dollars to see if the game sucks or not, then consider buying it.

  Update: EA says that Pachter is talking out of his ass (nothing new there!).

  He he he …

  @Question of the week:
  This is easy: UT2003 and UT2004. After playing the first UT game, I had ssuch high expectations from the 2003 game. Then … no assault game, no sniper rifle, what did they do to the Flak Cannon?
  The following UT games games never matched the standards given by the first one, despite the much improved graphics.

• 2 Ivan // Mar 24, 2010 at 6:29 pm

  In Regards to the Australian R18+ rating news
  Not getting many games into Australia is not really the case (sometimes does happen). What is happening is that gaming industry is a real growing industry in the Australian market and when a game gets submitted to the Classification board and the game was consider to be Rated higher the MA15+ the game would be refused classification, BUT due to being some much money involved, gaming developers & Publishers were putting a lot pressure on the classification board with appeals which sometimes involved the game to be slightly modified or in a few cases reconsider & given an MA15+ classification. Which in my mind is worse because you have Michael Atkinson the Crusader not letting the R18+ rating come in “To protect the youth from Evil” (This isn’t an exact quote its been combined by two quotes.) But in a result many games which deserve a R18+ rating were being released into Australian with a M or MA15+ rating, meaning R18+ games are more accessible to the inappropriate age group. That’s why its important for Australia to get the R18+ rating not so we cant play Ultra Violet games we already can, But so R18+ games can be categorized as R18+ and for Aussies to have a more correct classification system to support parents in which games are appropriate to be played by their children. Classification is to support parent’s decisions and Aussie Grow Ups are big enough to make the decision for ourselves too.
  Thanks for the podcast you continue to entertain me cuz that’s what ur for =p and just thought you guys needed a bit more of a insight on the issue.
  Cheers

• 3 Ivan // Mar 24, 2010 at 6:43 pm

  wish i paid 70 bucks for a game or 10-20 for a bottle but Nooooo. Xbox games are $100-120 and bottles are $30-60.
  Side note stopped buying Xbox games for now cuz i downloaded steam and buying PC games a real prices.

• 4 Herr_Alien // Mar 25, 2010 at 2:44 am

  @Ivan and R18: I never thought of it like that, good point there …

• 5 Jonah Falcon // Mar 25, 2010 at 3:18 pm

  Atkinson stepped down when he challenged the people that if they thought that he was wrong, just find a candidate who they thought would do a better job.

  They found one and he stepped down rather than lose in an election. Coward.

• 6 Jonah Falcon // Mar 25, 2010 at 3:19 pm

  “Ultra Violet”? To paraphrase Rosanna Rosannadanna, what’s wrong with violets in video games?

• 7 Tristan // Mar 26, 2010 at 4:00 am

  Lots of comments sorry:

  C&C4:
  A positive from EA is they informed customers many months before release that the game requires permanent internet and it does have multiplayer content. Still rather pathetic to use double speak/lie and pretend there is no drm.

  Even more concerning for EA is post release reports the drm works worse than Ubisoft and the game itself has been getting horrible reviews. Even more concerning when your own PR rubbish the system:

  From the twitter feed of Official EA blogger and Editor-in-chief of ea.com, Jeff Green:
  “Booted twice–and progress lost–on my single-player C&C4 game because my DSL connection blinked. DRM fail. We need new solutions,” followed by “Welp. I’ve tried to be open-minded. But my ‘net connection is finicky–and the constant disruption of my C&C4 SP game makes this unplayable.”

  South Australian Attorney-General :
  Kotaku ran a story that when interviewed the newly appointed Attorney-General, John Rau, thinks an R18+ videogame rating is common sense. Even if not official this at least seems promising.

  EA demo strategy:
  Make the customer pay to beta test a portion of a game that may be rubbish, then pay again in full to buy the game, really? Also 3-4 hours of gameplay? How can this be perceived as value for money when paying 10-15 dollars especially if the game is lacking features and will only have a portion of any plot. I don’t know enough about the console scene but on the PC there is a plethora of very cheap or free fully fledged, unique and highly entertaining games. I cannot see this scheme gaining any momentum at all atleast on the PC unless it is $5 or less.

  Maybe doing something like the game Minecraft might be a far superior option to raise extra funds during development and get feedback on what to improve for release. Minecraft which is still in alpha, and approaching beta, offers multiple free modes for anyone to try and a 10 Euro price tag for early buyers, half of what the full game will sell for). This gives you access to the latest development mode of the game, all future updates, and the full game once it is complete. I understand that what works for an indie developer might not be suitable for a major publisher but it is easy to see which option gives value to customers.

  (About Minecraft: A java game developed by a single programmer , Notch, about mining, terraforming, creating forts and creative structures, and fending off zombies and skeleton archers with similarities to Infiniminer. Minecraft has recently been selling around 200 copies every 24 hours. It can be found at Minecraft.net and even the free modes are well worth checking out.)

  QotW: One notable memory was firing up the N64 a couple of years ago and rebooting Perfect Dark. The lack of support for widescreen and higher resolution tvs made it unbearable to play.

• 8 Tristan // Mar 26, 2010 at 4:07 am

  Re Jonah:

  I think your a little off. His stepping down is more than likely due to party pressure and not cowardice as he didn’t announce his stepping down until after he was re-elected (and by a significant margin). As a South Australian, I do not live in the electorate region of Michael Atkinson so I couldn’t vote against him but I am very glad to hear he is stepping down. The main reason he lost popularity with many South Australians is that he introduced laws into parliament that made internet commentary on the upcoming 2010 election illegal unless the commenter provided their real name and postcode. He claimed people posting opposing views to his on message boards were made up people created by the opposition to spread their propaganda. He even cited a commenter using his real name and postcode in a forum as an imaginary person only for the local newspaper to track the person down and expose the paranoia of Atkinson.

  Even more amazingly the insane law Atkinson proposed passed and was supported by the opposition. The government in my state is a total joke with neither major party representing the people.

• 9 squid // Mar 27, 2010 at 11:18 pm

  @QotW – Unfortunately, Mariokart 64. After enjoying the latest versions on DS and Wii, going back to the 64 with it’s dated graphics and bad controls, it’s just not the same…

  @Paid-for demo’s – This would only work if they gave you the $10 (or whatever you paid for the demo) back once you buy the full game. There’s no way I would pay full price for both the demo AND the full game.

  Also, what’s with all the 3D mario hate? 🙁
  I’ve loved all of the 3D Super Mario games so far. The 2D ones, while still great fun, just seem a bit more… arcade-y and shallow than the 3D ones (I guess because there’s more exploration and such in 3D).

• 10 Jonah Falcon // Mar 29, 2010 at 7:52 am

  Wow, talk about HUGE posts this week!

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