deanb

As I pointed out to Duke before, they're pretty serious. Where there's a market, there's business to fill that gap, no matter how weird it may seem.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2012-06-14-warren-spector-the-ultraviolence-has-to-stop So thought I'd use this is a spring board for something on my mind. I kinda touched it a bit of it in the Watch_Dogs thread, Basically the whole "let's shoot n tear up n grind up n chainsaw through the game" is starting to get super dull element to an awful lot of games. And it's starting to get a bit extreme too (to the point where Crystal Dynamics are having to make a statement Lara isn't gonna get raped). It sort of feels like it's an alternative to upping the ante on graphics, just now it's upping the violence, whose game has the best method of cutting the foes in half. And the shorthand of using a gun in games, like the Watchdogs example where it was all pretty neat mechanics, then out comes the gun at the end. I guess it's why when titles like Rayman Origins comes out it gets so much praise. Or like the comments other day a few guys on here had for the Lego titles, which are great with just sort of silly violence, nice enjoyable experience for all. It's hard to stand by the industry, and parts of the media that bash on "latest report shows games cause violence" while there's plenty of uber-violent games going around and being hyped up n celebrated instead of much questioning into "is this where we want to go, is this the legacy we want". ramble ramble ramble (it's late, I'll probably refine my thoughts some more later)

I'm sure Win 8 will look much the same once the taskbar is loaded up with a bunch of icons.

Also the game has shifted from "June 2012" to "Summer 2012" on Steam. edit: Video sez late July/early August.

I'm reading and responding to all of them, not just trimming them down to to bits I feel like responding to. Will Blizzard restore everyone else's accounts, or just the ones that got hacked into due to not picking up Blizzards $6 keychain? You know, if the games weren't so heavily tied into online restrictions and worked locally they'd be much more resilient to hacking. You don't hear of people having their Assassins Creed hacked into. Just this one simple choice has had so many negative repercussions to the games customers.

Wales is part of the Kingdom of England. The Act of Union 1707 didn't combine the countries England and Scotland, it combined the Kingdoms of England and Scotland. So Wales is represented, just by the St Georges Cross.

There will most likely be some themes in there to add it back. Stardock look ready to provide a variety of fixes to Win 8 for users used to the look for the past half decade or so.

People still spend money on their account for those free to play games, and all of that is removed when the account is banned. But a large part are the dudes playing for free. And they still don't cost £45 a pop. It sucks, but they're still F2P titles, when you can show people being banned completely from COD that'd be a more fitting comparison. My point was that the "not as feature complete" thing is completely irrelevant because each game has so many features that the other does not. You're reading weird things I never said into my words. Most games with a singleplayer mode has all the features of a singleplayer mode, i.e not having network lag, server downtime, crtical flaws where MP features can lead to your singlepalyer game being removed etc. Those kind of features tend to be pretty standard on most games. The bother here isn't that Diablo III doesn't have hats, or 360 controller support. Those aren't the kind of "incomplete features" we're discussing. I'm quite frankly not that worried. If we start seeing Blizzard randomly ban a bunch of legitimate users, then I will be. I sincerely doubt that will happen any time soon though. Won't be long until they do. Oh wow. Are you serious? Wow. Why the fuck would they do that, again? Dude you said yourself your friend was banned incorrectly, so yes I'm serious. You think when banning on the scale of thousands at a time their system is done by hand with some blizzard dev sat watching to check you're not cheating then hitting the "ban" button when it looks like you are. No it'll be some automated system like Warden that'll be scanning your files, RAM etc and if something doesn't match up to their database they'll ban you. edit: Turns out it is Warden. For those at home; you know how there was a bit of bother with Origin scanning your HDD? Well Warden is definitely doing that, and your running programs in RAM too. It's cheat-centric anti-virus that you didn't choose to install basically. EFF classifies it as Spyware. Why is it beyond ridiculous? ...Because you're making an analogy between banning hackers and slaughtering Jewish people. That's why it's beyond ridiculous. Sorry I went for an obvious phrase, how unfortunate that it seems to invalidated the rest of the paragraph of my point. Well that's particular problem with the game is particularly Blizzards fault and their paying customers shouldn't have to bear the brunt of that particular bad decision. People shouldn't be needing to get the developers sanction to tweak the game just to make the a bit darker so they don't get their game taken off them. When did that become okay? "God the FOV in this game sucks! Bethesda am I allowed to tweak the ini?" "Blurgh, I hate having to spend all this time levelling my pokemon, Gamefreak can I battle MissingNo?". Sod that. I love moddable games as much as the next guy but I'm not going to be the guy who gets all Angry Internet Man because not every game is that. It is far more practical and fitting in some games than others. You not being the guy to be Angry Internet Man? Come now. As for being fitting, I'd say it's pretty fitting "oh I'm stuck at this point, let's tweak the file n get better armour/more money/higher stats" etc. It's an ARPG, modding, tweaking, "cheating", etc is part of the genre. This isn't a case of "I like my chest high walls in Gears, why can't Splinter Cell have chest high walls too?", it's a case of basic features like, owning a game, and having working singleplayer.

This discussion here wasn't sparked by what Iwata said earlier is it? (just noticed a lack of linkage) http://www.nintendow....com/news/30741 (There's more links around on web, just look up for recent news for "Iwata online") Friend codes are still gonna be part of their online process. Those things were loved by all. Nintendo pretty much going "We're 6 years behind in all this, may as well stay that way", which is of course sound business thinking. I understand PSN/XBL isn't necessarily how they want to be doing online, but it's not like they're the only mature online systems out there to emulate.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18440979 An Australian retailer has introduced a "IE7 tax" of 6.8% to purchases made through IE as it costs them more to develop the site to work with Internet Explorer. Logic is pretty sound I guess, though feels more like PR stunt.

http://pctechtalk.com/_/software-news/windows-8-pre-rtm-no-aero-desktop-leaked-r58

Yup, CNN had the Wii U down as a controller for the Wii. And showing it off running all the games the Wii does, with working with Wiimotes n Wii Fit n all that just makes them seem like sequels, not next-gen games. The price, once announced( they fucked up by not showing it other week), will no doubt settle that misconception. But the Wii audience is an audience that will likely be fine with the Wii for many years. My mum has a Wii n a PS2. Wii gets mainly used for Wii Fit, which still works as it did the day it was bought, so no need for another, and a PS2 for Singstar. These aren't gamers that will be like "ooh, new version of Arkham City!". Even the allure of nintendo oldies like Zelda n Metroid n such don't really do much for this audience as the nostalgia factor isn't there. Nintendo = Mario and Mii's for this audience. About the only thing going for them is getting the latest toy for the kids. Though these kids that were 6 when the Wii came out will now be going on 13, old enough to be wanting to play COD with their school friends on the next Xbox. (or 6 years later, 6 feet deeper for some Wii buyers)

Smog. London has smog.

There are MANY games in which you just get banned completely. Heroes of Newerth, League of Legends, Tribes: Ascend to name three current titles off the top of my head. Ah yes, the free-2-play games that you never own in the first place. And rather than having to go out n splash another £45 on a copy you just make a new account. Not really the best rebuke there. Are we really doing this? Ok then, TF2 doesn't have an auction house, or a real money auction house, so it's obviously less feature complete. Or we can avoid that whole discussion altogether because it's quite meaningless. You spend real money on the game, and on top of that can also purchase user made items and trade them (with purchased games too). Why does an auction house give a game special abilites to remove peoples access from their paid games? TF2 having hats doesn't really give Valve any special privelages to dick around customers. I'm quite frankly not that worried. If we start seeing Blizzard randomly ban a bunch of legitimate users, then I will be. I sincerely doubt that will happen any time soon though. Won't be long until they do. Especially attempting to ban people by the thousands, and in a game that's sold as many copies as it has there's bound to be people that won't to get by a bit easier and do a google search, find some cheat for infinite cash, or better items, or turning the game off while saving etc, and get kicked from the game. Little timmy, spending his pocket money on his game and getting banned from it by the big bad Blizzard. I shouldn't have to point out why this is beyond ridiculous. Why is it beyond ridiculous? We know the games industry is all one long giant simon says game. Activision say jump and make $1billion off it, the rest of the industry jumps too. Blizzard make a game that comes with an incomplete singleplayer campaign and still shift a few million units, and get to completely remove access to that game for customers without complaint, then rest of the industry hops along merrily. Which is a shame because UbiDRM was starting to look so unappealing to other publishers, then Blizzard repackage it, make it even worse (at least Assassins Creed ran locally), and make it look all the more appealing again. I like games, I like owning my games, I like tinkering with my games. What Blizzard are currently marketing to the rest of the industry kinda runs counter to the things I like doing. I pointed out in my previous post why it isn't quite as cut and dry as just cheating themselves, in this particular game. Well that's particular problem with the game is particularly Blizzards fault and their paying customers shouldn't have to bear the brunt of that particular bad decision. People shouldn't be needing to get the developers sanction to tweak the game just to make the a bit darker so they don't get their game taken off them. When did that become okay? "God the FOV in this game sucks! Bethesda am I allowed to tweak the ini?" "Blurgh, I hate having to spend all this time levelling my pokemon, Gamefreak can I battle MissingNo?". Sod that.

(It would be a bit more kick-ass if we had Wales on the flag) Wouldn't it look like this?

FFUUUU. I read that n thought "well that's what I wrote..". Scrolled up, turns out in the end I didn't. (it's where I had started with the whole "It's in his genes. Same way Wolverine has claws come out his fists, we have brollys")

He's also a brit, it's in his genes.

This is quite the norm in online games and I don't see the problem with the practice. 1. Not so. Even games that are entirely multiplayer you're still not having your product removed from you. Take for example CS:S/TF2. You can cheat/hack whatever and be VAC banned. But all that means is you can no longer play on VAC protected servers, you're free to play on non-VAC servers with other cheaters or there's bot modes included. A multiplayer FPS based on a mod is more feature complete than the campaign mode of Diablo III. 2. I'm sure you'll change your tune once you get your games taken off you. "The came for the jews but I did not speak.." It's a cheat that easily popped in my head as I made frequent use of it. There was something else in Civilization as well iirc, you had to check a box to enable cheats though. With Fallout 3 I'd use the console to bypass locks, make the dog immortal etc. If people wish to make a game easier for themselves then I see zero reason why the developer should be there to slap them on the wrist for that. I see no reason why Blizzard should be so controlling. in their game, as many of us here can agree with in their terrible run of decisions in making Diablo III n the after effects of that. Be fun to see how far the rabbit hole goes. (Well not fun, cos it'll suck for the rest of us that don't like this form of control in our games)

I wouldn't mind. I think I'm signed up several times, though yet to see anything come through.

People are having their legally purchased products completely removed from them, it's not really hard to present that as a bad thing. And if I was also someone who had purchased this game I'd be getting a bit wary that Blizzard are perfectly happy to just turn off your access to the entire game. Oh you're using a "mod" that makes the game a bit darker? Oh well that's cheating, naughty person, no Diablo III for you. The car thing at least you only lose access to driving on the roads because you broke the law. This is being locked out of your car because you decided to play music from your iPod instead of using the in-built cd-player. Maybe I'm just a bit odd in thinking that you should be able to use your products how you want to? Many many many other games from developers supposedly much less skilled than Blizzard many to make actual fully functioning singleplayer modes, so why can't Blizzard? They've done it in the past, it's not like some technical impossibility. And it wouldn't need to draw away dev time for patches if they'd have made it all work properly in the first place. As my gran always says "If it's worth doing it's worth doing right". She'd certainly be surprised that given 13 years of time you'd still mange to fuck it up n not finish it all in time.T

Is this saturdays the last? But there has only been 10 episodes. TLA was like 20+ a pop.

There wasn't any online system that was kinda expected to be in place back in the N64 days. And only mobile game to compete with was Snake. Nintendo has a problem unlike the other two in that they only sell video game systems, any losses there are losses for the whole company, but MS n Sony at least can subsidise any losses made on the gaming front (and expand into other areas) with their other depts, which also include mobile depts too.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-06-13-an-entire-top-end-dust-514-load-out-costs-around-USD0-24-in-real-money For those following along at home, if you die 250 times in top end gear, that'll cost you $60.

Impatience is only a "bad thing" when the digital stores don't deal with it. Releasing 19hrs into the day does somewhat defeat the point of being day-n-date with physical release. Especially when there's no reason to release that late except arbitary "cos that's how we do it" reasons.

Lego Batman with the wee one. Nice to have a co-op partner, she's actually better than I thought she would be.