Aspirations, thoughts, and Operator overloading

View leaked console port trailer

View (currently) the ‘crack in the wall’ teaser

From what I can tell, CD Projekt Red is doing the Blizzard ‘thing’ and teasing fans with what three titles they’re currently working on. The first link is to a user posted video where one of their developers is talking about his work on the console port, the second is a link past their age gate where, at the moment, there are three cracks in the wall.

The user posted video should be considered a leak as forum moderators were frantically removing links to the video as soon as they came across it. Though CD Projekt Red personnel claim that posts are not deleted, posts do indeed go missing. Those who quickly posted the video either found their post(s) deleted or edited to remove the link. In the past I’ve had one or two of my posts be deleted for various reasons. One was because I poked fun at a mod. I guess he didn’t appreciate my humor or realize the policy of not removing posts.

Lastly, here is a forum thread where I’m guessing the devs meant to incite the famed Blizzard fan fervor for their latest announcement. Instead it’s dissolving into conspiracy theories ranging from ‘PC as the target platform’ abandonment to soaking up fix suggestions for the PC version and releasing it on consoles.

Personally, I’m just bummed out that the improvements they’re putting into the console won’t be coming to the PC.

That post was made before they made the official announcement that they have three projects. One of which is the console port, but of the other two no mention has been (officially) made. So, my disappointment is on hold, but the holding the breath thing isn’t much fun either.

Let’s hope Tuesday brings some awesome news, because at this point I’m barely staying optimistic. But for now I am; really. I keep reminding myself of what they did for their first release customers (free EE pack) and hope they’ll do the same again.

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Congrats to CD Projekt for this well earned milestone!

From the article:

“We tried to treat people well, and they’ve treated us well,” said Kacinski, revealing CD Projekt’s shocking, forward-thinking strategy. Gamers have repaid CD Projekt by spreading the word of the game and encouraging others to buy the original copy; pirating would mean being disloyal to a company that has shown gamers nothing but loyalty. An emotional connection with a company and a product is therefore established.

Duh. Treat your customers respectfully and they will in turn do their best to let all of their friends know.

At the end of the article is this treat:

As for the future of The Witcher, CD Projekt “wouldn’t be very smart,” according to Kicinski, if it didn’t revisit the universe. An announcement is possible in the near future. “We for sure will stay in this world [of The Witcher]. We’ve grown very comfortable with it. We still have a lot of cool ideas that didn’t make it into the first Witcher, so there will definitely be something more from The Witcher world.”

Last but not least, check out The Witcher 1st Anniversary Movie

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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.

According to various sources, including the developers, today The Witcher Enhanced Edition is released.

They’ve mentioned that the update pack for the original release will be available on Sept 19th. Pretty awesome of them to do this and make things right with their customers. Hopefully they will forever avoid EA.

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I’ve been looking forward to this game for a long time now and now it’s sooo close to being released.

One of the more interesting features of the game is mentioned in the product description page:

…in an epic, action-packed narrative in which his decisions have a major impact on how the story plays out.

The neat way they do this (according to reviews) is by having the ramifications of your choices show up much later in the storyline. I’m hoping this will add to the replay value.

I also like the mention that there is no true Good and Evil, no Black and White sides in this world. It’s a lot like our own.

With a release date of September 16th, it’s right around the corner.