PC PC GAMES

Great article over at EuroGamer about Piracy, real and imagined damages and the a special look at UBI and the damage they have caused by insisting on punishing customers. It looks like customers did vote with their wallets and my assesment of “Driver: SF” and it’s lack of sales wasn’t far from the truth.

Notable quotes:

“Ubisoft told me that their PC game sales are down 90 per cent…”

“[There's] no public data to suggest that DRM works,” says Pachter, “but the fact that more companies are imposing it strongly suggests that they believe it works.”

“Consumers are right to complain about DRM, since it impacts both legitimate and illegitimate users,” reckons Pachter. “The problem is that the companies think it limits piracy, and an industrious and determined hacker can work around DRM, while a normal, legitimate user must deal with a hassle. I’m not sure where to come down on this, as I respect the companies’ right to protect their intellectual property, while acknowledging the legitimate consumer’s complaint about the problems created with DRM.”

“There’s good DRM and what we call bad DRM,” explains Svensson. “There’s a huge breadth of parameters and technologies available, and no one technology is bad – it’s the implementation that can be bad, the communication around the implementation that can be bad. What we try and do – and we haven’t always been successful in this – is never hurt the legitimate user. If the legitimate user is ever going to have a more negative experience than a pirate, you’ve done something wrong.

Of utmost importance, says Svensson, is “being upfront with fans”. And he himself has been on the receiving end of fan backlash before.

“If I were a console evangelist I’d totally play up piracy on the PC,” Ployhar says. “But I have to stop and wonder how in the world they can continue to make that argument when a few years from now most games are likely going to be free-to-play anyway.

 

 

BF3Blog has word that some servers have popped up for the Battlefield 3 beta allowing 128-player games. The servers are apparently running the Operation Metro map, but rather than offering the 32-player rush mode like the official servers, they are running a hacked version of conquest mode, allowing 128 players rather then the intended 64. The bad news is that this is, rather unsurprisingly, a “considerably” laggy experience, and worse, they pass along Electronic Arts’ warning that playing on hacked servers may compromise your EA account, and may earn you a ban, which can cause you to lose access to your other EA games.

… the happier I am that I already purchased it.

So Driver came out 2 days ago. The Fascinator didn’t mind the UBI DRM  and purchased the game, I asked him about first impressions. He loves it and has fun with it.

That made me think, how many people did cave? How much of a succes is Driver. It was high on my purchase list and if it wasn’t for UBI and the DRM i would have already purchased it since the MultiPlayer options seem fun and something different.

So I checked the top 20 of the Steam sales chart… Driver is not there…. ouch!

Checking the forum shows too that there are quite a few people that are not buying it. Worse yet highlighted is quite a few times that “From Dust” DRM servers by UBI keep having problems and not letting people play. But people seem to have issues with the Driver servers as well:

“Ubisoft Services are unavailable at the moment. Please try again later.”
anyone else getting this message right now trying to log into the game? i was playing for the past couple of hours and decided to restart steam since i got a prompt for it and to my surprise this was the error i got for it.

The last indicator that the sales for Driver must be BAD… only 13 threads in the forum. Shame! The game “Worms Ultimate Mayhem” has 90 and is more or less a content pack. Nuclear Dawn released a day earlier and has 714 and is quite active.

I hope they get the message!

Head over here: http://www.humblebundle.com/

Name your price on Frozen Synaps and possible other games as well. Sweet!!!

Streaming on Livestream has gotten a little simpler and my hardware seems to take it easier these days. So I will have it on more often and you will be able not just to see my cluttered desktop but also some of the games I play. Check it out and feel free to chat or join me on TS:

So big news today.  Gordon Freeman will return in Renegade Ops, have his own ride and even some special weapons. Did SEGA delay the game to patch some HL items into the game? Whatever the reason for the delay it seems at least we have a firm day for release now. Expect to release your Sandlions Oct. 14!

It’s about to release… so have the rumors. You can still buy the 4 pack super cheap (4 for the price of 2!!!). Make some friends happy. It sure looks like its going to be some mindless fun!

Blizzard hardly ever says when they release a game. But the buzz must have been intense after the BETA release and people expecting to play before Christmas just got their dreams crushed!

“With every game we make, the temptation is always very strong to launch as soon as possible. However, we didn’t put so many years of work into Diablo III to release a game that was almost ready,” said Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. “The beta test is going very well, and we look forward to making the most of the extra time we’re taking to deliver an experience that lives up to our vision for the game and the expectations of our players. Next year is going to be an incredibly busy one for Blizzard, and we hope an incredibly fun one for Blizzard gamers.”

It is real funny to me how even many technology podcasts over the last couple years had “experts” saying that the race is over, stick a fork in it and just accept that the PC as a gaming platform is dead. Things are so much “easier” on the consoles and the market is so much bigger.

The reality is as so often far from the truth. PC gaming is alive and healthy. Thanks in no small part to STEAM and what they accomplished over the last couple years.

“In just five days, our Steam revenue had already surpassed our annual revenue on XBLIG,” he reports. While he prefers not to give exact figures, he estimates his five-day Steam earnings to be over $100,000 — “which, as you can imagine, really impressed us, and has motivated us to make PC games much more of a priority than Xbox.”

Jay seemed frustrated by a lack of confidence in our games platform of choice, but admitted that Blizzard might have benefited from a less crowded marketplace: “It’s unfortunate that the illusion that the PC is dying has been propagating for so long and that people have bought into it. On the other hand I’d say Blizzard has done quite well off of that – the fact that people have the illusion that PC is not a place where you can make money. It’s made it even easier for us to do really well.”

Do not get dead island in steam as of yet. There have been many conflicted reports of dead island on steam being the wrong version. The people that have gotten the game have experienced no clipping, frequent crashes, bad optimization, obvious 360 controls, losing quests resulting in losing saves 5-7 hours in and losing all drive to play the game for a while, etc. Now as we mourn lost hours, let us enjoy the trailer that made us want to play it.

BlackThunders input

The Good:

The Island (or the part I explored) is completely open world. Most building can be explored and plenty of loot can be found. This is a neat departure from something like L4D that is a very controlled ”corridor” experience.
I had fun venturing out and “finding” stuff. There is plenty to find and weapons get better all the time. I do miss getting my hand on some firearms, 5 hours in I have yet to see one.

I even found a bunker, think WW2 left over with a high tech door. No way in yet, but I will… I hope.

The feel of the world and the screams in the background are satisfyingly eerie. I keep thinking, was that a bird or a person screaming for help? Just as you’d wish a Zombie movie should make you feel.

Puzzles can be fun or a great source of frustration. Luckily the balance here seems to be just right, at least for me. I am never (or hardly ever) look for an item too long or can’t figure out where to look for it.

You find fast travel between major hubs fairly quick and while looting the same bag on the way from point a to point b again and again sounds like a great source of income the travel could get annoying without that.

The trowing mechanic is satisfying, if stabbing a zombie in the head can be called that. The hand to hand battles with 2-4 bad guys at the same time has the feel of danger but can be managed. Messing up gets you either a close up fight with a zombie or thrown to the ground which has a scary feeling.

Experience points and work benches… I love it. You get points and get to spend them. Deux Ex had them and so did Borderlands. As a matter of fact if you spent points in Borderlands you know they layout almost perfectly.

The Weird:

As you venture along you get the occasional “BillyBob20″ is close, would you like to join? So, lets get this straight. This is a unique twist on joining someones game in progress on the fly. And if I get the idea right it means they are similar far in progression as I am. Cool, but why wouldn’t you give me the choice of restricting that view to people on my steam list?

Jumps and sprints are cool and I made some that saved me time (from one beach house to another). But I can’t jump a simple guard rail?

Inventory space. OK, I get it. I can’t carry 20 lead pipes and 15 paddles, but having to discard some sweet upgraded weapons from early on is a little sad.

Respawning Zombies. Yes, we need them in a game like this. But as example, walking between some cottages on a footpath intersection they spawn in the same pose in the SAME exact location every time. The woman sits on the left under the sign, across from her on the path is the dude and opposite of him is the guy next to the bush. Same goes for the streets you travel. They will be back… the way you first saw them, again and again…

The Bad:

PC player purchased this game to Beta test this week.

I just lost 5 hours of progress and have to start from the beginning. I am kind scared playing again. You do this once to me it already feels VERY VERY bad. But I sure don’t want to do it again and again.

The UI is in serious need of help. My mouse is not just on the screen twice (One windows cursor one in game cursor) off set by half a screen. But it also feels like molasses without the ability to speed it up for the UI. In game the speed slider works.

I had a bug that would not let me finish the first major quest and I had to reload the game for it to work.

I got a NVIDIA card in the system I play with right now so my issues seem limited. Ati seems to be the big loser here. (XBOX had a NVIDIA at its core and I think that explains it.

This version screams bad console port.

Looking at the STEAM Forums for the game is scary!
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?s=3f0d99e87328ac2d13a0fc2ceeb0163e&f=1171

It is very obvious that they released the game WAY to early and a real BETA might have done wonders. Whatever the pressure on the publisher or developer was, this is how you can break not just your game but also the good will of want to be fans.

I want to like it, there is much to like it here! Lets hope they get it fixed!

The Beta for D3 seems imminent. It will be released in September for sure, possibly as early as September 12th. More information can be found over at http://www.diablofans.com.

It is weird that it takes a magazine to take up the banner, but they did good!

Free to play, skill based shooter, in an MMO like setting. Sounds great! Supposedly the BETA went live, so if you have not yet go sign up on their page: www.firefallthegame.com

Hopefully this link works for you guys.  Received it in my email.

Rift Birthday Special Link

Good until Sept 2nd!

As the release date for both creeps closer, i have to wonder. which one should i get?
Should i get the anticipated Diablo 3 with its $59.99 price tag, always online drm, auction house, no modding support, or lan?

Or should i get the anticipated Torchlight 2 with its $20 price tag, offline mode, modding support, lan, multilayer, but not as good graphics than Diablo 3?