deanb

Mass Effect 2 had the characters with the ship modelled around them, the ending coded to take into account both Zaeed and Kasumi being in your party (there's even a video around the web somewhere where the game was beaten with Kasumi in the party before her DLC was even released). So yeah as has been covered many times before, it's pretty hard to believe it wasn't cut content. Mass Effect was perfectly modular, as seen with all the other DLC(and original missions too ¬_¬). Missions could quite easily be plugged in. Oblivion had no issue adding in DLC, the Knights of the Nine and Shivering Isles plonked in quite well. ME2 was a bit like being given a frame with scraps of canvas around it. Oh and you have a handy roll of canvas you're up for selling me. It's not really a black and white of "make the game, think out everything you can have as DLC and put in all the places before-hand just minus the content" or a "shit out an idea and tack it on somewhere". Though of the two I'd rather have a well made complete game, with optional extras on top to expand the game, than a game that feels like swiss cheese. The game should be well made enough that the thought shouldn't even cross my mind that something is missing. (as happened with ME2, Assassins Creed etc. Not so much with Deus Ex cos it made sense you got on boat, woke up on arrival. The Tong mission though is missing.) btw we're veering towards used game stuff here, not anti-piracy. Cut content for DLC is not an anti-piracy tactic because pirated versions tend to come bundled with everything. So which do you want, info on rewarding new purchasers, or info on rewarding actual purchasers full-stop? (Or is that not a typo and you didn't mean pre-owned but pre-order? Which pre-order people are being punished when publishers break up the day one DLC and dish it out between a dozen retailers and regions. "Hey gamers, thanks for loving our game, let us fuck you over as fan service") How to reward actual gamers full stop: Include access to other titles. Such as Portal 2 on PS3 coming with PC version, or iirc Bionic Commando coming with Re-armed (I think a COD title has also done this recently too). "Buy Mass Effect 3, get Baldurs Gate thrown in. See where it all began" kinda deal. It provides content, and next to no expense to the publisher too, without having to effect the main game by finding which content can be offered to "reward gamers" with codes needed to plonk it back in. How to reward pre-order/early buyers: Put the DLC up on store free for a week or something. whatever you do DON'T make it store/region exclusive DLC bull shit if you're really wanting to do DLC for pre-orders. tbh the main incentive to pre-ordering should be it being a damn good game that you don't have to hold out for reviews for. How to punish pirates and used game folks: Just don't fucking bother. If just one iota of your development time is being focused on putting in effort into attempting to piss off pirates or used game folks, then that's time not spent on making the game perfect for the actual gamers who are giving you actual cash. If whatever crazy scheme you're coming up with is partly to deter pirates/used games then just stop. 1. It's pretty much a complete waste of time. 2. it makes you fucking lying out your teeth when you say whatever this new incentive is to "reward the gamers".

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/01/31/wait-what-valves-games-now-on-impulse/ Valves games are on Impulse.

Catwoman was cut content? Daamn. That was a somewhat decent chunk of the game. And it was the only time you go near Poison Ivys house. Something like Sazh phone calls is what I'd have thought'd be content to trim if anything, that'd be much easier to hide. But surely you'd notice that certain parts of the island are inaccessible to you as Batman? GunFlame has it spot on though; reward the gamer, don't attempt to punish the pirate. The pirated version has those annoyances removed(and many features such as the pre-order DRM etc included), whereas the legit version has to suffer through them. Doesn't really send the right signal. "we're going to charge you £39.99 for the worst version of the game, only give you a slither of the content that comes out on release because you didn't spend £160 buying it from all the stores, and then not let you play the game for the first two days properly cos our DRM servers will be going down". Oh and don't have a two month gap between global releases (in fact the current 3 day gap is pretty stupid this day and age. The game is clearly done, it's just arbitrary to not release at the same time)

Pixelvision, a custom steam skin, so not Steams default look at all, versus the blue/black gradient of the somewhat ICS like menu? Kinda grasping at straws aren't we?

You're really not seeing it? Especially in contrast to the rest of the app. (p.s that's a rhetorical question, I know you can see it, you're just being obstinate) Oh and here's the PC client for comparison.

You can't customise APKs though. Skinning wouldn't matter so much as just making it consistent, such as the above holo/ICS example above.

Faiblesse it used to be green for FFS. And you must have a weird version of the desktop client to see those speech bubble icons, the iOS chat scheme, the ICS menu as being "hey it looks like the desktop".

It's you that's arguing that companies maintain their looks for brand recognition. That's not really the case. Steam alone has had 4 UI changes in the past 7 years by my count. And the current UI of the Android app isn't exactly maintaining the look of the current desktop UI. May as well go all out one way or the other, not the current mish mash of older Steam styles, bit of iOS, bit of ICS all hodge podged together. Anyway it's Steam, people know what the fuck it is.

Uh-huh. You so sure on that?

That's not exactly common. Especially from a big name. What would Steam being a big name have to do with it? The Steam PC client supports skinning and has done for many years, it's not an unreasonable expectation that the app might too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhkDdayA4iA

iirc didn't he just pull that figure out his ass? And incentives are rather damn nice. I'll point to Witcher 2 once more. Continuous updates, pre-order DLC thrown in for everyone, there's not really much of a "standard edition" as even the base edition has a fair few goodies thrown in, oh and DRM free. The £40 price point is definitely something that could be tweaked in games. No way are games all on the same damn pedestal, and it's certainly unfair to be taking chunks out and reducing the games value, both inherent and trade-in, while still expecting to maintain the same initial price point. Not that it matters much to me. I've not bought a console game for aagggeeess now, just renting them for £2.50 a pop, a far cry from the £40 they'd like to charge. (Though did keep me out of UC3's MP, but no way am I paying £6 for that)

Nope.

So someone made a consistent and actually Android-orientated interface. Pretty swish. Oh yeah it's a mock-up atm, but one can hope.

Skipping/skipping rope = jump rope

By Terry Pratchetts daughter (iirc she was brought in towards the end of the project, as seems to be standard with a fair few games)

It is a rather amazing marketing ploy, worked well for the Souls games too. Only the hardest of the hardcore can play this, you want to be hardcore don't you? Not one of those panzy new-age Angry Birds gamers are you? Well show you're hardcore with our game where we've added extra HP to the enemies and called it "1999 mode" to play on gamers heavy nostalgia factor. Cos we all love a bit of FFVIII.

Yeah that's a huge flaw. I don't know why it does that, it works fine with web browsers, desktops netbooks etc without needing to sign in with your Steam Guard PIN each time you sign out. Also I'm unsure on the iOS client, but the Android one is pretty higgledy-piggedly on the UI front. Valve have never been very good with interfaces but in Steam Mobile it shows, especially since it's their first app project. Steam Mobile combines mainly the Steam style, with an ICS-like menu and then odd random bits that don't fit at all, such as the oddly teal Sign Out button hidden in the settings screen and the very stand-out chat window which looks fuck all like Steam. Anyway threw a few thoughts here for those that haven't seen: http://pressxordie.com/2012/01/27/a-tour-of-steam-mobile-beta/ I'd mainly like the addition of remote installs, but that'd require a change of the Steam client as well as doing something with windows (since UAC, which I know not all of us have on, will pop up wanting to stop you installing stuff, Steam can't over-ride this. That's the point of UAC). Also they could probably utilise smartphone stuff like long-presses and swipes too(like a swipe across to open the menu maybe?). Oh and they NEED to fix the tiny text on the checkout.

Hmm Brutal Legend, I'd forgotten about that, may have to put it on my LoveFilm list.

What they're talking of is NFC. I assume whatever site you got the info from garbled the info and was trying to point out that it's the same tech entering Smartphones now for payments and such. What it can do is have say, stuff like that Skylanders with the action figures unlocking content. (Or two Wii U tablets able to shunt Miis over to each other, or maybe future 3DS builds to share content between 3DS n Wii U (unless 3DS has NFC in already. I'm not 100% filled in with 3DS tech. There's that Streetpass that could be NFC?) The digital distribution of games was another point, and part of "Nintendo Network", but it's "We may do this" sort of thing. They've spoken of potential issues with storage (since 3DS is on SD card, and I think same with Wii U, or does it have a HDD we know of?)

That is E3 stuff. (Videos are 8th and 10th of June respective. E3 was 7-9th June)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdHyNNT-W_U See this is how ours come (note the bottom) Tekken Wii U as linked in last post And Ghost Recon Online (which is a game that is PC and Wii U) They have pretty much finalised hardware, they have games running and working on the Wii U. There's very little reason to use PS3 or 360 footage as if it was Wii U game play. (there is however plenty of reasons not to; e.g having the wrong buttons show up. Though I'm sure they could ask SE for help on that )

Wohohoh, let's go back a notch. So what you're suggesting is not that they show off games that are considered high-end PC titles running on the Wii U in order to show "hey look we can run it like this too", but instead to actually just straight up show off a bunch of PC gaming footage instead? Heck why not do this with PS3 and 360 versions? Hey run PC version of PvZ when advertising the DS version! Doesn't matter what platform you're actually advertising, jsut show off whichever version of the game looks best. Maybe the reason I missed the point you were getting at is because what you're suggesting is (at least in UK/EU) really really fucking illegal. And you're a damn lawyer. You can't show off footage from one platform and imply it's running on your console. That's why Square got in trouble for showing off the PS3 version of FFXIII under the implication it was the 360 version. So you show off the game running on your platform, .