Aspirations, thoughts, and Operator overloading

Check out these awesome pumpkin carvings. Talk about talent!

The following is what I sent in to Bethesda this morning in regard to Fallout 3 containing SecuROM.

I didn’t send hate their way, just a tip from an honest game buyer. I figure it will probably end up being deleted without being read, but one can hope that somebody will take it to heart.

With the time and effort placed into quality games these days (one can hope this is one of them), it just doesn’t make a lot of sense to me to place any obstacles in the path of customers. The ‘common sense’ factor of using DRM will be argued from numerous sides until it either infects everything digital or is defeated forever (lovely thought, but far from realistic right now).

I’m hoping that their other customers are also as candid, but it sounds like they’re getting slammed and there is little surprise there. After all, if you treat your customers like criminals …

I’m sure by now you have been bombarded with hate mail, some praise and unending supply of tech support requests.

I thought I’d take the opportunity to send some feedback of my own. I can only hope it doesn’t get nuked by a spam filter or my views disregarded as “whining” as I believe they can be beneficial to you.

I’m a PC gamer by choice and while I might by a console game I doubt I’ll ever buy one of yours for the console.

The reason is that your mod community is so huge. It’s amazing to see how loyal your fans are to stay with your games for so long after they have been published.

Granted I think you ought to offer better patch support. Case in point is the collection of “Unofficial official” patches for Oblivion. TONS of issues fixed ranging from fixed quests to graphical anomalies.

What does this have to do with Fallout 3?

Years ago, SecuROM was known and very much disliked, but now it is reviled. Say the word around a gamer and the conversation will be shifting in a new direction pretty quick.

Just the association itself is damning.

I’d recommend that you either patch it out with your first patch, or at the very least give heavy consideration during planning for your next game to not include it.

I’d personally recommend taking a hard look at StarDock’s Impulse Platform. While Steam is a good choice (for many), the retail release of your PC version contains SecuROM and that is what you’re getting trashed for in the gaming community.

As others have said, using SecuROM is doing nothing to stop “piracy” and is only bothering legit customers. I’m not in the gaming business so I can only imagine the pressures and obligations you have to fulfill, but from the side of the buyer you’re going to find that legit customers come down to one of only a hand full of choices:

* Buy it and deal with the DRM – retail
* Buy it from Steam
* Decide the aggravation isn’t worth it and just “pirate” it.
* Skip it altogether and lead a crusade against your questionable choices thereby damaging your brand.

Your most outspoken critics will not be the “pirates” (I keep quoting that word because it cheapens the issue of real piracy, where people lose their life), but disenchanted customers who are fed up with the way publishers and developers are treating them.

You may not deserve some of the flak you’re getting, but you brought it on yourself by using SecuROM. If you’re going to insist on using DRM, you would have been much better of by choosing a different implementation as you’re just going to catch the carry over from EA, Ubisoft and others as they cross the line into activation territory.

Ah yes, one other popular option amongst paying customers:

* Wait until the game has been out a long while and buy a copy dirt cheap, used.

Your biggest supporters (1st and 2nd quarter sales, collectors/special editions) will show up late to your releases.

I was heavily considering the purchase of this title, but I’ll wait and see what you guys do. I’m a legit buyer, otherwise I wouldn’t waste my time writing this or leaving feedback on Amazon or other message boards. If I were just wanting to play the game and not give back/reward the developers/be a good person – I’d just grab an illegal copy. But that’s not what I’m going to do.

I’m going to wait with the likelihood of just skipping it altogether. That’s not a threat, it’s just honest feedback.

Again I’m sure you’ll be wading through piles of negative feedback, but I have to say you brought it on yourselves.

The good news though is you still have time to create good will with the community.

Sometimes it’s just the result of loss of sleep, other times it’s a rainy day (which it is) and worse case it’s the sign of depression sneaking up.

It may very well be a bit of all. Life goes on …

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After reading all of the sucky news the past month or two about all of the fantastically hyped (accurate?) games that continue to be published ridden with DRM, I stumbled across this article again and wanted to post a link to it here.

CD Projekt also recently launched its own digital distribution service called Good Old Games, offering classic games from years past patched to run on current systems and completely free of copy protection.

Sounds pretty awesome. But …

I’m a huge proponent of hard media that can be resold as it supports second hand markets (eBay, Amazon Marketplace, brick and mortar game shops, etc). I’ve bought used books (and new ones, this one lately) for as long as I can remember. I made a regular habit of buying used dvds from pawn shops (I am on a limited budget after all) and plan on doing the same for Blu-Ray in the future.

With all of that said, I am of the understanding that “Good Old Games” will feature modifications to the original games to make them run on modern OSes (XP or Vista?).

All of this sounds fantastic.

But … how does that factor in to the second hand aspect? Up until recently we’ve been ‘quite’ accustomed to physical goods. …, Atari, Nintendo NES … Playstation 2 used hard physical media without a need or the option for non-physical means of providing the content.

Now that we have other options, many are jumping for joy and leaping into it. Often with mixed results.

Maybe if I was from the current generation (i.e., born after 1988) this wouldn’t be an issue, but I’ve come to rely on a game being available to install whenever I feel like it – from hard media. I just rummaged through my collection a few hours ago and came across Baldur’s Gate, Total Annihilation: Kingdoms, Blood and many others from the same time frame.

If I want to play Blood, I can fire up DOSBox, install the game, and I’m off playing. That is soon to be 12 years after it was published!

From what I can tell GoGs is going to allow people that missed out on those older games or lost their original media to purchase and enjoy them.

I’m still left with a big question: What if I want to resell my purchase?

I don’t know the answer to that one …

I thought it was going to go well, then the news started coming in.

First I heard about Starcraft being pushed back, then lately I heard Blizzard was going to charge $150 USD for it.

I was looking forward to Sacred 2, but that fell through once I realized they were using activations.

Then there was Stalker: Clear Sky. Yep, same issue.

I was holding off on Crysis: Warhead until Crytek issued the Crysis 1.3 patch they withheld from customers, but now they’ve guaranteed that some gamers will never purchase it.

Then I got REALLY psyched about Far Cry 2, but just found out today that Far Cry 2 will also be using activations. I canceled my pre-order in a hurry.

It’s surprising just how stupid publishers can be sometimes. I’m just really hoping THQ doesn’t screw up the publishing of Dawn of War 2. It’s sounding like it’s going to be really awesome but I’d hate to have to pass on it too.

In the end though I’m afraid the people protesting will do little good as untold amounts of people will just blindly fork money over without paying attention to these sorts of issues.

Too bad, they could be making a difference instead.

Edit:

I do have The Witcher to look forward to (bought it to support the devs & their stance on Piracy), so I’m not totally feeling the backhand from the publishers. Though with that said I’m not crazy about them using Tages for their cd check.

Check out Blizzard’s latest logo change for Diablo 3.

Unique, eh?

The latest news on the Starcraft 2 front is that they decided to break one game into three and charge you approximately $50 for each one.

Simply ludicrous.

If that was not enough, the geniuses at Blizzard want the action “fast paced” and and are removing units from multiplayer to keep players from “turtling” their way through a match. Another stupid move.

If my opponent wants to “turtle” then I can just hit those areas with an area-of-effect attack and get him to come out that way.

This is just nuts. Way to milk the customer. I mean, what the hell!? Is everyone just freaking evil these days!?

We have swarms of greedy publishers shoving SecuROM down our throats and then we have other developers/publishers milking a franchise like this. Agh! The frustration just keeps on … mounting …

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Coming Oct 22nd.

I’ve already pre-ordered, but with the DRM used still unconfirmed, I may have to end up returning it.

Here’s hoping they’re not following the lead of EA & others.

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Talk about a talent wasted…

I bought this several months back, about the time I bought The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, but was saving it until I could play with friends. I have several games installed that I either haven’t spent much time playing or only really play multi-player. So I decided I’d go through and remove games/apps that I don’t use so my backups would be more manageable.

I nuked the last FEAR expansion as I haven’t beat the first one, I nuked Quake 4 as I already beat it, etc, etc.

Then I got to Titan Quest. I wouldn’t have bought it had I not heard good things about it, but I wanted to see if this was something I was going to shelve for another handful of months or something I’d keep installed for a while.

Here is how the description on Amazon.com reads:

* Includes all patches on disc
* Epic adventuring in the ancient world
* Stunning 3D graphics, with an amazing level of detail and realism
* Addictive, fast-action gameplay
* Custom, definable character classes and modifiable skills

Depending on the person, all of those could be true. It’s unfortunate for any game to be compared to it’s predecessors, but that’s the reality: you have to offer something new, something fresh or at least something just as good to keep the ‘buzz’ going after coming off of a great series.

With that said, how does Titan Quest stack up to other Diablo clones? I won’t try to review it in depth as there are far better reviews already out there.

What’s different

First off the story is different. As you’d expect, it’s a different game. Instead of a dark medieval fantasy story revolving around heaven and hell with demons and angels, the setting is of ancient mythical Greece. The Titans and the Greek gods.

As such, the various weapons & armor, storyline and bestiary match the setting.

The skill trees are varied enough which let you create your own custom class and you’re allowed to choose between male and female characters. The story begins in Greece so you begin the game as a Greek. No real surprise there.

Until you level up for the first time, everyone’s character plays the same. After that the skill trees open up and you get to pick how you advance: stats and skills are fully customizable.

The graphics are noticeably crisp and the water looks pretty good. I have yet to see a game where the water looked truly real (Crysis does pretty good in this area), but for what it is I liked the effects (ripples, reflections, etc).

When you or another being move through plant life it reacts accordingly. Spell casting effects are nice and impact effects are also well done.

I have to admit I was a little disappointed that fields didn’t catch fire when I ran through them with a lit torch, but that’s asking a bit much.

If you’ve never read a review of Titan Quest and you skill your first monster wielding some wicked cool looking weapon, you may be expecting a Diablo style loot drop: a random item from a loot table based on your character lvl, difficulty lvl and monster type. Guess again!

Whatever you see the monster holding or wearing becomes yours for the taking! That is very cool.

Later on as you near a cave you may notice there is no doorway to click on or portal to take you inside. You uh, just walk inside.

What’s the same

This is a hack-and-slash game directly inspired from Diablo 1 & 2. If you had someone play Diablo 1 on your left, and someone play Diablo 2 on your right while you played Titan Quest in the middle, it would be obvious they fit in the same genre.

The interface is similar and fighting is pretty much point and click. It does get a little more complex than that when dealing with crowds, but for the most part it’s the same.

What’s to dislike

There is a lot more I could say about what I like, but I’ll mention what I didn’t like so much about Titan Quest. This really has more to do with the company and less with the game.

One is the copy protection choice.

By choosing to have the game exhibit random “bugs” during use of an unauthorized copy (even for legitimate backups), Iron Lore received a lot of bad press from users of illegal copies which is believed to have seriously hurt their sales and reputation.

By using that bonehead method of “protection” they inconvenienced customers and earned a lot of bad press. I specifically mention the customers as I believe that many of the bugs that needed to be fixed were likely due to working around the copy protection.

Two is their response. No remorse for including the DRM at all.

Summary

This game is playing great so far (about 3 hrs in), and when it’s all said and done I can honestly see this game lasting 80+ hours as me and friends coop our way through another great adventure.

It’s a shame Iron Lore had to go and make the choices they did. It would have been great to have them around to make a TQ2.