deanb

Wasn't much wrong with it. Just underwhelimg and over priced.

It's like £13 for it on PS3 in Gamestation.

Pretty much. EA feel that it's adds value to a new customer. But as a consumer Multi-Pass and Project $10 DLC just makes it feel like something was taken out then popped back in just cos EA reckons I've been a good boy. There's no added value, no incentive. It's the usual tactic of most of the games industry, perfectly crystallized by DRM: The games publishers know only how to punish than to reward. And even basic understanding of headology tells you that you catch more flys with honey.

So if say some designers at Black Box, a company different to that which you work for, were to produce a crappy pale imitation of a GTA clone, or if the marketing dept was to fail to generate hyper and differentiate said clone with GTA, and this resulting game and marketing effort was to bomb. Then you as someone working directly for EA in a entirely different department, would find your salary lower than usual? And vice versa (i.e EA was successfully sued for...copyright infringement/not paying royalties/something else) then the folks over at DICE would find their pay packets lighter too? Just I'd have thought it would be related to the ability to keep EA out of legal troubles and to successfully bat off any cases that come their way.

So it does just ultimately boil down to "waah wahh, we want more money". And as consumers it's just a case of waiting and watching to see what crazy money making scheme EA will tack on this week. I dunno, as a consumer I just feel violated. I am a piggy bank that's just waiting to be raped dry by the publishers. That's just not really a feeling a consumer should have. Just waiting for Online Pass to just become universal, new and used (Hey it's a service EA provide, why should only used people be charged extra for it?). "Pre-order from Gamestop to get Adept and Infiltrator class!" (Front cover only does show Sentinel/Engineer). War Tour: Enlist for just $25 get early access, faster XP gain, and priority server access. God it's kinda sad I can even come up with these. And this isn't even the really dirty shit EA could pull. Say storing your Shepard online, then charging a monthly fee for this service (Or a $5 import fee to import your old shepard). Putting in Micro-transactions on BF3. Slicing off pretty much all side-quests. They are after all unneeded to get to the end of the game. And maybe other things. I don't work for a games publishers so I don't know all the little snippets extra you can charge for. I guess demo-demos too (I hear capcom tried that) $1 to play the demo. It's not a high price. I'm sure people would pay. Fuck then you can start charging for the "EA Insider account". $20 a year for access to trailers before anyone else. (aka a few hours, probably less if you're at work at the time). Collectors editions that comes with...real manuals. Just like the old days. God anything that isn't the box and disc and beyond the beginning. middle. and end of the game is pretty much fair game. And as ACII showed even the middle is up for grabs too to the highest bidders. TN as someone who works directly for EA and not to on any of the studios and not in any marketing or content creation role is your income and financial situation really tied to the performance of the games? If SWTOR was to bomb miserably would EA really go after the legal dept?

No I think they should charge substantially less. It has been covered before but: PC has no license fees (which is why 95% of PC titles are £30 to consoles £40) And on top of this EA/MS/Sony aren't hosting any of the servers and there's no Used costs to recoup meaning it should also get the $10 Online Pass sliced off too. Or is there some other reason that means the PC version costs £40? EA are charging several people for a single persons service. I kinda assumed EA would maybe plan on making a profit through selling the game the first time around, not expect to make their profit through Gamestop selling it used. If the used market dried up does that mean EA won't make any profit? Its games are sold at a loss and the profit comes from Online Pass?

I didn't say I was tricked into buying the game. I said if I saw something on the lego box I'd expect it in the box (legos not really having much else to go on). I don't at all use a games cover for what I expect from a game. (especially as a large amount of my purchases are digital). Is it your personal stance that if the game cover only has Shepard on you'll feel huge amounts of surprise if the game actually comes with more content than just Shepard? It just seems kind of stupid to base an entire games content off what is on the front cover. If the world was to truly work like that we'd have some clusterfucks of covers. However I will base it on what the game alludes to many times, this implication that part of the game is missing. Kinda like Fallout New Vegas making many references to "the burned man" and lo and behold it becoming DLC. I haven't actually finished yet so I assumed I'd meet him some point later in the game with the Ceasers Legion quests. So that kinda sucks too. Another one is, dunno if you've seen the Saints Row Third gameplay trailer but they showed off a few things that later that week were highlighted to be pre-order DLC. That sucks too. And as Yante said the missing chapters on ACII as well. So it's not just EA who fuck up their handling of DLC. Reading your reply to Yante seems to imply option 1: EA are just greedy buggers? Oh another point too. Why if PC has no used market and the servers are provided by the community is BF3 £40 on PC?

Because the normandy was obviously all modelled to accommodate 12 party members yet the standard game only allows you to acquire 10. Also are you're telling me That in Mass Effect 3 I can expect to be getting a party of 3 only if I buy DLC? Cos there's nothing but Shepard on the box. And you bet I rage on at extended movies. Cos god damn. Triple-Play Blu-Rays tend to be the same price as your average Blu-Ray sitting in the £13 range. A fair few do chat, other interactive goodies. I've not messed with them too much, kinda bummed my DKR was too late to do the live watch with Christopher Nolan. Does that mean your comment on games publishers getting royalties was also tongue in cheek? Surely it's a tad hypocritical to hate on used sales, yet supply that market with product as well? And to hate on used sales from Gamestop as a company yet give them store exclusives? (which is of course the bestest thing that consumers love in pre-orders.) As for the Dragon Age DLC being value for money as I pointed out a few weeks back it was cheaper to buy the Ultimate edition than to buy the never-dropped-in-price DLC. (DLC alone comes to £33 or so). and the Dragon Age DLC meshed in so well Penny Arcade dedicated a strip to it. Sure with both Mass Effect and Dragon Age once you buy the DLC is fits in without much of a hitch. But unless you have it the games like to make nudges that you're missing out. And DLC can be ine, but when it keeps it price even years later then it starts to lose it's edge. (Especially then you do have a GOTY-type edition out too which is a big "Fuck you consumer for buying this game early on instead of holding out 9 months to get all the DLC included") Also I note you skipped over the parts where everyone going new seemingly puts EA in the financial shitter. I had another thought on that too since I remember you going on about Gamestop should reduce used sales in response to EA's Project $10. What exactly is EA's plan once Gamestop actually do that? (If that is indeed the aim) Because you guys will have purposefully created a competing product that is 75% the cost of a new product. Someone goes in store and instead of a $60 new or a $55 used it's a $60 new or a $45 used. That's a decent enough price drop and would surely encourage used sales? Does that mean you'll move on to Project $20, then Project $30 and so on so forth?

Not ignoring that it costs something to run. I'm just curious on why it costs $10 more to host a used player? I buy the game new for $60, I play BF3 MP to death until BF4 comes out two years later. (Which is shown to be the case with MP games like BF3) Yante buys the game for $60 plays MP for a month then trades it in to buy MW3. Saturnine then buys this used bF3 copy and pays $10 to play online until BF3 comes out. Both have had the MP service used the same amount but the second copy of BF3 brought in $10 extra. Just to scale this up (cos I went to get some tea and my mind sparked): If 1000 (not scaling too high) copies of BF3 are sold for new at launch for $60. It can be assumed $10 of this cost goes toward funding the multiplayer servers (since that's the charge for online to used players) So that's $10,000 in the kitty to pay for Multiplayer. If all of these new users keep hold of the game and play the MP until BF4 thats $10,000 to fund 2 years or so of online for 1000 people. If however those 1000 people trade in the game 1 month in and 1000 people buy the used copies and a $10 online pass that means there is $20,000 in the kitty to fund the same amount, 1000 people, for 2 years until BF4. Which leads to two conclusions: 1. EA are greedy scumbags and the charge for Online Pass isn't needed at all since used players cost no more than a new user. (As you've pointed out in the pirate thread a few times one game can't be used at the same time by two people) 2. Without used game sales EA can't actually afford to run their MP servers. In order to make up the same $20,000 the Used sales bring in to support MP you'd need to sell double the New copies, but that also means supporting double the players too. Zaeed wasn't "at a later date" it came out the same time as the launch of the rest of the game. Dragon Age has done the same too. The content was all ready n tied up for launch but instead of being in the game it was up as DLC. Oh and we're left moaning that there's a couple of rooms in the Normandy obviously added in to accommodate 2 party members, yet you can get to the end of the game and they're not filled in. I'd be a bit miffed if I bought a lego car and the picture had a spoiler on but there was none in my box. You have timed limited access to the game before launch. And coming out before the main game is usually the point of the demo. And the early access is of little use to those outside of the US since all it does it bring it in step with the US launch. So instead of doing a $25 early access scheme, why not just bring the global launch dates 3 days earlier instead? Well once again we come across the bit of maths up top. If the used market was to stop does that mean that EA would no longer be able to afford to support these games with patches and multiplayer since the only income they have is the initial new purchase? Also Blu-Ray have online components btw (and most give you 3 versions of the film lately aswell). Because that would be easy to sort out. And a 5-10 year limit in gaming means this used sale charge spanning entire generations and in some cases out living the life of studios. And how would these fees be collected and distributed?

Well odd turn of events means I'm joining a IRL game of D&D next Tuesday. So gonna see how that all pans out.

Oh god the end was sooo bad. Oh in other slightly related news Pitchford is PIISSSSSSEEEEDDDD. Supposedly it was meant to have a big reveal at PAX Prime then on Game Informer, but Eurogamer broke the news the other day forcing Gearbox's hand.

I played most online with Tom n Ben. (in same house, but hoorah for those kinda systems. Gamespy is fun ¬_¬) We played most, though they'd already played it before so I was kinda dragged through it. We played most of the DLC except Moxxies thing kinda burnt us out it was a bit shitty so we didn't get to General Knoxx and Claptrap thing wasn't out then. It was pretty fun, enemy variation could have done some work, as well as their port skills. I'll keep an eye out.

D4, D6, D8, D10, D12, D20 In a shiny transparent red shade too. Also turns out there's a games shop recently opened in town 2 weeks ago. Set up for D&D, Magic, Warmachine, warhammer etc. Seemed quite good and the guy running it seems like a nice bloke.

So in battlefield games multiplayer is "at best it an optional extra"? Is this EA's official stance on the matter? That in a broadband enabled world and where games like COD rise high and with a decent chunk rarely touching the campaign of these games, multiplayer is just an optional extra? To go with the analogy a car seat is pretty optional too. A car doesn't need to be able to carry passengers. It is however expected. And it starts to feel a bit shitty that the car manufacturers feel that it is perfectly okay to start taking them out just cos the used car salesman won't pay them royalties. I'm pretty sure things like having Garrus in was also planned during the full game too. If you're able to plan and develop these things while making the rest of the game, then what exactly is the reason for putting in all the mesh work like extra room around the ship and the option to have them in the suicide missions and just not including the characters? Other than to have them sold as extra costs to the main game later on. The whole thing of "we make the DLC while making the main game so it meshes well" isn't a defence for the practice it just makes it worse. If it's made, if it's all set up to just slot right into the game. Then why the fuck isn't it in the game? From my understanding the demo/early access (semantics) stops the day the game comes out. So if you are waiting on Play.com then you'll be in the same position of not being able to play on launch whether you have or haven't got Season Ticket. And yeah I got the implied nature of Moores quote in them caring more for those who pay the extra for the Season Ticket. Can you tell me exactly why EA should be getting "royalties" for used sales? I am largely amused by how special the games industry seems to think it is and how normal rules don't apply. I bought this a couple weeks back. Now games publishers would have me believe that buying this second hand means I shouldn't really expect to get the "Special Edition" features. But not only do I get those special edition remixes, I also get the rest of the album (as expected), a booklet with art work and biographies, and some fetching artwork in the case too. (And I can rip the CD to my Phone too. Modern marvel eh) I don't really see the music industry bitching about not getting royalties on used sales, or fucking over your albums so only buying new can get you stuff. (just owning the disc gets you access to the special features on those multimedia discs you see around now n then) And it's a CD too so it's as good and digital quality as the day it was printed unlike cars and just like games.

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2011/08/03/september-cover-revealed_3a00_-borderlands-2-75830-3458572.aspx So a sequel is on the way.

But when you buy a used car you get the passenger seats with it too. And I'm pretty sure games don't come with a warranty for you guys to take away. Also Sky is a shitty shitty example. Sky IS a service. That's more of an analogy of saying buy a console, have to buy games to play anything on it. Unless EA have some skewed view of what buying a game entails. The charging for demos would be the "Season Ticket" for "the people that we really care about the most," that EA Sports have recently announced. $25 a year nets you a 3-day demo of EA sports games. As for taking stuff out we've gone over ME2 last year with the magical ship with 2 doors that never open unless you have the DLC. Despite it being in the base game. So sorry if I don't believe you on the whole "DLC isn't bits removed from the game" line. I'm pretty sure it wasn't Gamestop who came up with Project $10. And I doubt that even if Gamestop were to cede to EA's demands that EA would stop with Project $10 and all the affiliated schemes.

Well old style controllers can still be made. You can pick up NES USB pads if you want. There's also rendering technologies developed to allow LCD screens to replicate the look of the old CRTs (which aren't "480p" everywhere btw, ours were 576i and at 50hz instead of your 60hz. So that changes stuff too). At the moment games ran in emulators display pixel perfect, but this means they're usually too crisp. So there's that which is cool. http://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/2009/05/05/crt-emulation-on-stella-emulator/1 It's going to be a big issue. And I think with a dozen console manufactures come and gone before the current 3 it's going to be hard to get the technology to be able to proeprly replicate some of the old consoles. Emulations is going to be the way it continues whole scale, but not everything is emulated so well. And not every single game is available. And it'll get worse after this gen since not everything is on the disc to be ripped and stored as a ROM. DLC is going to make things hard for future generations. But we're also in an age where people are realising that archiving games is something to be done so I'd hope that publishers would help out with these initiatives. There's also some effort to bring back back-catalogs too. I can go to HMV and pick up films from 1930's(maybe before too). But picking up games from before 2005 can be pretty damn hard.

Hasn't the whole "no other industry requires a used sales person to toss money the creators way" thing being thrown out many times before? If that's what EA is waiting on then I'm waiting for the day when all Gamestop sell is a disc with the intro logos on and you have to download the rest of the game with the single-use key that comes on a slip of paper that bio-degrades after 3 months. I get EA isn't happy with the setup but surely there's way around it that won't piss off the consumer so much? It doesn't really feel great to know that even though you're hte one actually buying the damn games you're ignored by the publishers in their spat with trying to annoy Gamestop n Co. Have EA looked into making cheaper games like what THQ are doing? Have EA looked into not charging for demos? Have you guys looked into not giving any store exclusive DLC to Gamestop n co if you're pissed off with them? Just seems it might be worth a crack into adding value instead of taking features away. I know it's pretty fucking damn easy for publishers these days to take stuff we already used to have as part of the game and charge extra. You know like those demos. And multiplayer. And levels/maps. It was a nice age before all this. okay example: Buy Portal 2 new on PS3 and you get the PC version free. (I know that EA published the PS3 version but I have a feeling given how EA deals with every other buy new "incentive" that it was most likely Valves idea) You get the full PS3 game you've paid for. All the levels, no store specific bull shit, no stripped out multiplayer. But if you buy new, you get an entire copy of the game on another platform thrown in free of charge. Buy BF3 new get BF:1943 for free? Get EA points to spend on your favourite EA downloadable titles? 10 points per full game, 3 points per downloadable game; 100 points gets you ME3 on Origin! Hey it's not as cheap a thing to do as taking parts of the game n slicing them out, but it provides incentive to new game buyers, and with the bonus of making us feel loved. Rather than just being treat like we're at least not dirty dirty used-game buying scum.

I wouldn't be surprised if you don't need to take it out of context.

https://twitter.com/#!/johnpatricklowr/status/98284898976145409 btw whatever happened with the whole Portal 2 DLC. My source said it would be out like June/July and it's now August and not a peep has been mentioned.

I assume that's the "let's"? See Mr Hot_Heart I'm doing my lessons and homework good.

Well just for the numbers: TF2 32 man server ran at a cost of $20/month. Which means, should the person be playing 24/7 with zero breaks whatsover (in reality a 32 man server can accommodate a few thousand people in that month) that works out to: $20/32 = $0.62/person-per-month $10 Project Ten Dollar fee = 16 months of playtime. Though as I said in reality you're going to have many people on throughout the day so that $20 serves way more than 32 people. Still even if it was just one server to 32 people it still covers nearly a year and a half which is about how long it'll run anyway. On the PC side of things it's dedicated servers meaning community paid. Though given there's no such thing as used sales on PC I doubt it'll have online pass.

Technically they are making a new user for storing your soldier. Though that's minimal, like a few KB's of data. I get a few GB's for free from Dropbox. Space is hardly an issue.