deanb

Yeah I've noticed of late many posts are things they've just pulled from #speakup. Videos, pictures, those "speakuponkotaku" posts, and other things. If they wanted material like that I'm sure they'd be able to write a few editorial pieces similar to what Beefy wrote or others. And as Faiblesse said not many of them are that great. But tie it to a attention grabbing headline and it at least spurs on comments which = page hits for them too. It'll be amusing to see if #spekup is taken down from the new Kotaku and it's result upon Kotakus articles. Fluff is fine and all, but when Fluff starts to outweigh actual gaming articles then something is up. For example most of todays posts are just #clips. Actual news content for todays front page is pretty low.

Hey, I'm not Yant. How dare you?! Hah sorry. I was just working backwards on the reply. I'll of jsut seen Yantes name n attribute your answer to him

hehehe. Btw on the news of COD, and I find this to be really well worth keeping an eye on for gamers in general: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/107163-Gaming-Advocacy-Group-Reports-Black-Ops-to-UK-Government Gamers Voiceare reporting COD Blops to UK Office of Fair Trading. Specifically the PS3 n PC versions. OFT can basically have Blops and all future COD pulled from UK shelves. This for Activision is potentially pretty serious should OFT act on the complaint. It's also got the potential to be great for future releases. If it's know the UK, one of the largest gaming markets out there and I believe 2nd largest for COD, is taking overly buggy games off the shelves, then expect studios to start taking QA a bit more seriously in the future and to not release the game n patch later mentality.

Yeah I guess there are some games that are worth... £0.00p Which tbh the devs are dong that themselves. Many flash games are free of varying quality. Iphone n Android games in a similar boat. And now you van get this like Battlefield or Lord of the Rings online etc without opening your wallet. There's no direct value of "you enjoy this, therefore it's equal to 20 pseudo bucks". It's actually a fascinating process, games publishers are actively devaluing their games. Bonus of course is that F2P games can't be pirated. I got Angry Birds for free on Android, I don't think I'd be up for paying it for iPhone. In fact when it's free to Android, I can see why iPhone owners might begrudge paying too. Which I expect similar to happen with Portal 2 btw. PS3 buyers get PS3 and PC version at no extra cost, but Pc only buyers are expected to shell out?

Stop it Yante. Please god don't become Kotaku.

I'm not sure if you're posting that as a serious answer or if you've got the grid refrence wrong cos Yante got that one just before you as

On the whole money issue I just don't believe it's the case that piracy affects developers. The most pirated game of the year was Black Ops. The most best selling was also black ops. If piracy truly did eat into game sales as much as publishers suggest Blops should of been one of the worst selling games of the year. Also on the list Starcraft II, aka 2nd best selling PC game of the year. The figures don't really add up to reflect publishers theories. And on top of this several studios a year close down, but I can't really think of any where mass piracy has resulted in that. Free Radical close down cos they took a gamble and made a shit game. Not cos Haze was heavily pirated. Bizzare also had a string of bad hits. Game studios close because they make bad games that I feel most folks wouldn't even bother pirating anyway. Piracy is almost correlated to sales, so if you have high piracy, you're also more than likely going to have high amounts of sales. If the developer makes a good game, people will want it. And yes inevitably some of those people are going to pirate it. I think it's overly negative to concentrate not on how much you sold but to concentrate on how much was pirated. Piracy figures are shitty anyway. Some folks will end up grabbing multi-torrents, either trying to find a working game or because they're retarded. Some people have RSS feeds set into their torrent client to grab pretty much any game that'll come out, regardless of if they'll ever play them. And they're the ones that throw things in limbo. That's an automated process. The person is just someone wanting games, not a specific game. And it's wrong to assume every game they grab is something someone would find value in. Also (I can't at this moment be arsed to look up the respective articles) folks who pirate tend to also be heavy spenders too. You're an enthusiast, which is why you pirate so many games, it also means you're quit likely to be heavily investing in games. It's wrong to assume a pirate pirates everything they get and buys nothing. Would EA or whoever much rather have: 1million versions of my mum: Buys maybe 2-3 games a year for her Wii (and like most Wii owners that means right from Nintendo or Ubisoft), but doesn't pirate a thing. Or would they have a million versions of me?: Buys a few dozen games a year, multiple platforms and companies. Pirates a fair bit too. They hate piracy, but do they hate it more than their love of my cold hard cash? Hey I could probably quit the whole piracy thing but I guarantee you my purchases will drop right down with it. Oh btw I do agree that if you've pirated something and played it through to the end it must of meant something to you. But if you pirate it, play for a couple hours n find you hate it and delete the game, then it clearly had no value to you. If you like it and buy it, the devs get a sale they may not have had. It's why I feel a bit ifffy with MoH. Cos obviously I liked it. But I don't feel enough to buy it for the then £40, and tbh I'm not sure if I'd buy it when it hits £5 cos theres zero chance I'd ever play it again.

http://www.physorg.c...sion-video.html Cold Fusion reaction between Nickel and Hydrogen to make Copper. Runs at 400W. Dunno if it's fake or not, but they reckon they're going into production in a few months. Oh and working cold fusion, especially for small scale stuff like that, is HUGE. Even working regular fusion is big news if possible. As of yet, only managed to pump out seconds at a time at most.

HAHAHa. We were just talking about Catchpharse the other day. "Say what you see" First puzzle Second one (Also moving this to playground)

Yeah I've kind of done that with Medal of Honor. I pirated it to see what it was like. Since at the time I was also going through the recent CODs, and I wanted to see how the story held up as such regarding the taliban stuff. The game was enjoyable, but I accidentally completed it. It was frigging short. Now normally in the situation of enjoying a game enough to finish it, I'd buy it. But for £40? No way was MoH worth that. Also replay value was pretty crappy so I wasn't really even gonna buy it should it drop of £5. (not much interested in the MP). Quite the opposite though was Borderlands, which I pirated, played a bit of , got bored after a few hours and got rid of it. Few months later it's on sale in a 4 pack, so Housemates, Ethan and I grabbed it. Dunno for Ethan, but we played it through to the end and even some of the DLC. Game pricing I'd say is an important factor in Piracy. Some games are just priced out of their actual value. But one thing Steams really helped with is their constant sales, and amount of games priced to suit every pocket you hear loads everywhere on how folks stopped/reduced their piracy because of Steam. Games are priced to suit you, it bundles in a ton of great features on top. It'z how things should be. It's why Piracy is more an issue for consoles: Game prices don't really fluctuate at all. Pretty much 99% of new releases are £40. You can set your watch by it. Of course the main issue for consoles is used games sales. It's something that's quite weird that piracy is so vilified but it's actually used sales that are more damaging. PC revenue went up last year. Console revenue dropped a whopping 25%. Used sales don't really effect PC. If I pirate a game, I can either not buy it, or I can buy it. Most likely I won't buy it because it's crappy in which case they wouldn't of got my cash anyway. If I buy it the pub/dev gets my lovely juicy cash. 50:50. Now if I'm on console, I can either not buy a game, or buy it. Now if I'm gonna buy a game, I can buy it new, or save a few quid and buy it used. Now I'm buying the game cos I like it. But only one of those options gets the dev any cash. If a PC gamer likes a game enough to buy it, the dev gets the cash. If a console person likes a game, it's not always the case the dev will get anything from that.

I'd say it's a motherboard issue. Though it's a kind of expensive guess to go on. However if it's something wrong with installing software, it may be worth giving the OS a re-install. Might just be a tad broken.

As n when I have time I am going to have a looksy at the piracy rate on games with demos and games without. See if it comes up with anything. An issue with the letter thing as well is many developers just brush off the idea of making a demo. Some because the games so shitty it'd turn off potential customers, some because they feel they can't make a demo (like the Fallout games where they could of easily put up a closed section), and for many making a demo is more hard work n cash to do than slapping on some DRM. If you equate a demo with piracy prevention then they end up pricing up it's pros n cons against other piracy prevention, and while a demo may or may not get results (even for DRM it's not that measurable), they do know DRM is just easier.

http://www.1up.com/d...ure?cId=3183101 It's an entire pre-made list of 2010's worst on show. Also this was pretty funny: Becomes (Oh I'm only up to that point btw, there may be "better" ones later on) edit: getting further on some of these aren't so much terrible, as just silly or stuff. Some are pretty bad mind. The Tractor simulator one's actually a pretty okay one. I'd say it may even be "Fantastic Boxart". It tells you what the games about and is eye catching (not many cases have Tractors on them)

http://www.escapistm...its/2653-Piracy Extra Credits touches on Piracy. I was watching and thinking "Ah, but he's not mentioned Demos yet" then he did and just suggested writing a letter. :/

Well see it's mostly Steam Euro users have the issue with. As Excel stated he can get them much cheaper elsewhere. If you can get them much cheaper elsewhere then it's most likely not purely the publishers setting that price. There are still many many things about Steam's operations that are yet to be uncovered. The whole Euro thing with Steam is retarded anyway. Steams the top dog in PC DD, DD in PC now accounts for over half the market. PC gaming is huge in Europe, some countries like Germany eclipsing console gaming, yet they're being bled dry on Steam prices. It's fucking retarded. Unless it's becuase they know that they're more likely to get PC gamers using the Euro so put in the markup to increase profits in that area?

Oh more than likely. Most folks don't tend to be dashing along while under studio lights, so at the very least it's gonna get that sapped out of it. Oh and for comparison here's old recent spiderman

Wooh Excel! You're gonna have to get Masterdex on. He's signed up, just not okayed himself.

Currently on Uncharted 2 again. Just left the Tibetan village. It's passing by quite a bit faster than it did the first time. I'm sure of it.

$500K is actually quite a lot btw. Though if it's self funded, not too bad (though even self-funded that's a huge amount)

Wait it's actually real? 1. why on earth make it seem like a viral 2. how on earth do films like this get funding when many others don't.

Just to check but folks know this is a viral right? The fact the movie comes out 1st April should set most folks off. Still kinda funny.

I believe that Trekkies refers to the hardcore fanatics, and trekkers to the passing fan.

I can't think Pennsylvania will be too happy.