RockyRan

This is a really good concept that, unfortunately, at the moment is only being used for shitty marketing tie-in products, like some sub-par iPhone game that doesn't really do much.

Don't want to beat a dead horse, but I want to answer Yante's question Wasteland 2 can't be developed like many other indie games because many other indie games don't get Obsidian and Chris Avellone to develop for them. They're not large, established studios like Double Fine that want to make a niche, quirky game with a relatively large budget. Just look at what the devs are asking for. For Double Fine Adventure, $400,000. For Leisure Suit Larry, $500,000. For Wasteland 2, $900,000. Do you believe that this is what it costs many other, un-Kickstarter'd indie games to produce, and that all the games being Kickstarter'd would've been made otherwise? The answer is a resounding no, because the only other place where a developer can get this much money for the creation and distribution of a game is through a publisher, and publishers have made it very clear they don't want these games. Hence, the Kickstarter. These projects are far, far larger than your average indie game that one person coded and published through Steam. The term "indie game" only means it's not backed by an established publisher, that's all. It makes no explicit mention of ambition, budget, or workforce, so looking at a game like Nimbus and saying "well THIS guy managed to fund his game, why can't Brian Fargo?" really is comparing apples to oranges. I think most of your skepticism comes from the fact that the devs will be using their Kickstarter'd products to make money, but that's exactly what backers want them to do. They want to make sure these games are financially viable. The jury's out on whether this type of thing will be a long-term source of unconventional, larger-budget indie games that can't get traditional publisher backing, but honestly this is something most definitely worth at least trying.

Plenty of charities do really dickish things with your money. Plenty more, especially those "send a dollar to an African kid", have 99% of the money you donate taken by the charity itself to cover costs, and the 1% that's left is "lost" by the government that's supposed to funnel the money to its final destination. In short, donating to a random charity isn't inherently more productive, meaningful, spiritually sound, or what have you, than donating to one of these video game Kickstarter campaigns. Hell, I'd wager the Kickstarter campaigns actually get far more shit done than your average charity that uses the vast majority of donated money just for overhead costs and corrupt governments swallowing the rest. You seem to try to discredit the folks who donate to these Kickstarter campaigns with the sole purpose of helping their beneficiaries make money. I'm sorry, but am I simply not allowed to support an independent studio and help them make more profit such that they can continue to develop games that I find to be a welcome addition to the gaming industry? I'm not talking about Activision, who blow money out their ass while giving the finger to consumers. I'm talking about the studio that can't get funding from publishers because they're too idiotic to recognize that not everyone wants to play with guns and tits all day. Would you rather all these Kickstarter projects disappear into the ether rather than have a chance at existing simply because of the possibility that these MIGHT be profitable to the studios development? I think it goes without saying that's actually the whole damn reason why many backers are giving money in the first place. There is absolutely nothing "silly" about supporting a project you like. To suggest otherwise is, in itself, what is truly silly.

A tad overly cynical aren't we? The Double Fine Adventure kickstarter was what, two months ago? Hardly what I'd call a "fad" or a "bubble". Let's wait until any of what you said has any chance of happening before cheering for its failure.

Well, I was pretty excited for this but this news really pulled me back down to earth. For a while there I almost forgot EA was publishing this. Good thing they quickly reminded everyone of that, though

Oh, I know that, but in addition to MSRP there's also the massive price drops that happen mere months, sometimes weeks after the games come out.

Yeah, even without inflation they've gone dirt cheap. That is, if you're not picky about getting games at launch.

I tend to not buy used games either, but I shudder at the thought of what's going to happen 20 years from now, when people can't play fuck all on their "retro" PS4's because there aren't any new games anymore (apart from the $200 collectibles). So glad for retro (like, right now retro) consoles. No online DRM bullshit, they're durable as hell (hardware AND games), and games are easily obtainable. It'll be a sad, sad day when games released tomorrow will "die" much earlier than a game from 1993, purely because of this shift in business attitudes.

Clearly, it was supposed to read: For some strange reason, EA really has a hard time spelling that word correctly.

They said "Nothing like this has ever happened in the almost 10 years the charity has been running, so it kind of threw me for a loop", so suffice to say it goes a little deeper than simply "confused people" as you put it. PA already clarified why specifically under their new ruling RME is bad. They said "Child's Play cannot be a tool to draw attention to a cause.Child's Play must be the Cause". It's pretty clear RME wasn't following this. This is all really simple. RME started doing this, the cause for their participation in the charity is murky at best, and it started burdening PA through no fault of their own. I fail to realize what PA did wrong, they're not obligated in the least to babysit RME or their donors.

I don't think you understand the kind of trouble this was giving PA. They were getting random calls about people thinking there's some kind of "goal". They were getting a bunch of calls from PayPal for people who wanted to withdraw their donations when things were clarified. They had to start dispelling rumors that CP and RME were one and the same. They really shouldn't be the ones clarifying shit. They're not the ones who started the association, why should they be going around wasting their time trying to clarify to every half-wit that the effort and charity are two separate things? They got plenty of shit to worry about, they don't need to be babysitting RME's fallout. They owe RME nothing and it's obviously starting to become a burden for them. Again, CP was getting quite a bit of grief over it, as per their words. Whether or not you want to believe that is your prerogative, but that's what they said and that's what I'm assuming is true. Regardless of what RME's intentions were, donating to CP was certainly not their end goal. It was part of their goal, to say "we're not just angry nerds, we can put money were our mouths are".However, as non-offensive as they might try to be about it, the simple fact of the matter is that they're only doing this to legitimize their own agenda in the end. Otherwise, why would they even do the donations in the first place? Compound the fact that PA was starting to catch a lot of grief over this and it's a no-brainer as to why they just put a stop to it. They really aren't obligated to babysit arbitrary efforts that really have nothing to do with their charity. That doesn't mean they want to bring in their charity into it. I'm sure there's a lot of shit each individual employee wants to further on their own, but PA is PA and CP is CP. Just because they support RME doesn't mean they should automatically support what's going on here. They're not obligated to and, as one sharp-chinned fellow once said, "they never asked for this".

That's really not why PA doesn't want to be associated with the effort. PA doesn't want to be associated with this for two reasons: 1. Way too many people are getting confused as to how/why these donations are even happening. PA is getting a ton of mail/calls by people who think that donating directly contributes to the possibility of being an ending. For a charity that has been running for 10+ years, it's kind of WTF-worthy to be randomly called and asked about some random effort that has nothing to do with the charity as if they had some kind of agreement beforehand. At the very least it starts to put a hindrance on the charity's operations with this random bullshit. 2. They're feeling like they're being used as tools to further someone else's agenda, which is absolutely not kosher regardless of what agenda it might be. With the way a lot of these donators are acting, to some people there's an implicit association between Child's Play (a charity) and RME (an unrelated effort). I'm not going to be cynical and say that RME did this with every intention of cashing in on the attention that such an association would get. I think the reasoning just went along the lines of "to prove we're not heartless asshole gamers who just spew venom for fun, we're donating money to a nice charity", but even as non-cynical as I'm trying to get, you can't detach the idea that the idea to donate to Child's Play was a way of helping their agenda. And like I said, using an unrelated charity to further one's agenda is pretty shitty. PA was getting dragged into something it wanted to be no part of. They want people to donate to the charity because they want to donate to the charity. They don't want people to donate to the charity en masse to prove to someone else about something else, because even inadvertently it reduces the charity to a means to an end. They want the charity to speak for itself, not to serve as someone's megaphone.

I used to LOVE expansion packs. Hell, I still like them very much. Shivering Isles is amazing and I REALLY hope Beth does that again for Skyrim (though I think they said they'd do more along stuff like New Vegas, to which I say "blegh". Reeks more of tiny DLC-ish things rather than one BIG expansion that truly feels like, well, an EXPANSION). I loved the idea of a modular model for a game where you just attach a chunk of the game, you boot it up and holy shit look at ALL this new content! Made the game feel more dynamic. DLC, though, like stupid microtransactions with one tiny level, skin, map, weapon, a couple of missions, characters, shit like that, makes me think of the devs as lazy. I mean, take a DLC-heavy game and wait maybe five months to release it all in one big pack and you probably have as much content as an expansion, but come on now. A real, proper expansion takes up a lot more effort from the devs where they have to actually make a new chunk of game seamlessly integrating in to the actual experience. Again, think of Shivering Isles. They could've made like 30 little "DLC LOL" shits that cost like $5 apiece, like some stupid "plant pack" that puts the foliage from the expansion into the game, another "monster pack", they charge like $0.50 for each new weapon. You'd eventually have as much content but you're not getting a complete, cohesive package that had someone go "yep, that shit goes in here, then you come in and find this here, then let's tweak this weapon/spell/whatever to fit the theme of this new dungeon we're working on", etc. Throwing a bunch of random shit together takes almost zero effort in comparison. Expansion packs just generally give me a vibe that some dev somewhere actually gave a shit and planned it out, rather than had a manager sit them down and model a weapon 'cause "WE'RE SELLING THIS SHIT NEXT WEEK FOR A BUCK FIFTY", you know. Certainly feels that way when I'm buying an expansion. I mean, how long does anyone use a weapon/skin and 20 minutes later goes, "welp, that's that, time to move on"? Whereas with a proper expansion these little tidbits you sample here and there as part of a larger experience you've stamped onto the game? I think generally expansion packs give a better overall experience to the end consumer.

Businesses don't shut down overnight, you know. There's no "BIG EVIL BUTTON" being pushed and thousands of people rally outside their headquarters later that day and they dramatically declare bankruptcy as soft piano music plays in the background. Businesses go under when they start losing their acumen and attention to detail over the "little" things, compounding mistakes that peeve consumers and begin to nibble away first at satisfaction ratings, then over the years begin to lose business. It's a normalization of unwanted behavior that eventually accrues over a long period of time that starts deteriorating the business. If it really were as obvious as "Project $10 introduced: sales down by 80% two hours later", no company would ever go out of business. But alas, business is never that simple. Saying "they're not bankrupt now, so they're doing nothing wrong, so stfu" is just as shortsighted as the original "it's just business" quip. Neither statement really takes into account any of the real factors that tend to bring down large publishers. Suggesting that they're just fine simply because their entire consumer base didn't implode is quite silly.

Most people aren't informed. Which is why it works. Yes, the cost is going to be small, but it's still a cost. It sucks, but that's business. Anyways, online pass isn't a ploy to get more money out of consumers, it's an attempt to divert the money they're already spending in the publishers direction. It's meant to be anti-used game sales. We never hear numbers on it though, so who knows how effective it is. "It's a business" isn't a valid reason. In fact, it almost never is in any situation in which that phrase comes up. A business involves providing a satisfactory experience to consumers, and with a lack of that delivery comes less customers, and ultimately less business. It's not about giving charity to customers, it's about not explicitly pissing them off and pulling stunts like this, well, pisses them off. It's nonsensical and entirely shortsighted to blindly reduce costs, consumer satisfaction be damned, because eventually one of those things you reduce might end up costing you more in the long run than what you initially saved because of the people you've managed to turn away. With the MMA shutdown especially there's now a larger distrust against the Online Pass fad, and it'll make more than a couple of people rethink buying a game that uses one. Is the public outcry and the fact that they looked like assholes worth saving a couple of bucks, relatively speaking? Not to me, but it's EA. One day they'll piss off enough people that it'll truly affect their bottom line.

So a couple of developments have brought up an interesting point that online passes are complete bullcrap. Exhibit #1 (to be used in tandem with previous but eerily similar stories): http://www.joystiq.com/2012/03/20/ninja-gaiden-3-users-report-trouble-redeeming-online-passes/ See also: Akrham City, Twisted Metal, etc. Basically, publishers are quick to jump on the "Online Pass" fad but apparently have trouble actually implementing it, resulting in a hindered experience for people who bought it new. Considering the fact this is at least the third time in recent memory that this has happened, it appears that certain publishers just don't care if they end up punishing customers who buy their games new at launch for full price. This is supposed to convince people of buying new how? Another little tidbit: http://www.joystiq.com/2012/03/19/online-pass-game-included-in-latest-ea-server-shutdowns/ It appears that EA, after leading the parade of the online pass fad, has no qualms in shutting down the servers of a game that sported the program. A game that released barely over a year ago, and one that purportedly accounts for less than 1% of EA's total online activity. Aside from the fact that EA's logic is entirely self defeating (if it were truly 1%, keeping the servers up would be microscopic in cost, negating the need to shut down the servers in the first place), it shows that the online pass is really nothing but a ploy to squeeze more dollars out of the consumer, considering how EA's games are consistently still the ones that have the shortest online "up-time" of the entire industry.

I actually wasn't even thinking about SFxT. I had that Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike PSN/XBLA re-release in mind, where they literally did charge money for palette-swaps

I've been hearing more and more people mistakenly using the word "DLC" to mean "anything downloadable". Anything from Episodes from Liberty City/Shivering Isles-style expansion packs to entire games downloadable from PSN/XBLA. I don't even know why, considering how shitty Capcom palette-swap, already-on-disc-but-pay-to-unlock costume "DLC" is being unfairly lumped with Shivering Isles.

What I really love is the fact that if a city's thriving, you'll SEE it. In every other SimCity, your only visual feedback of a thriving city is static nice-looking buildings, with a shitty city having a bunch of static abandoned ones. With this you'll be able to see varying degrees of city activity, making the difference between a city bustling with activities and a rundown bum town that's dead in the water. They're not arbitrary animations either, each of these looks like it has explicit implications in how well that particular building is doing. Fuck. Yesh. All this info without looking at a single spreadsheet. This is an amazing idea to keep the complexity of previous Sim City titles without alienating people who aren't that hardcore on it.

HHNNNNGGG I NEED THIS GAME.