Premades and Precepts

Just another stream-of-consciousness post so my blog doesn’t go another month dormant (which it probably will, since the end-of-year exam period is coming up for me). I haven’t actually been playing TS3 lately, though I have a mod in the works that I’ve been experimenting with. Again, the lack of an EA hood editor (coming up on five months) doesn’t give me much motivation to play with premade templates, apart from making and testing stuff out. I say an EA one because it seems all but certain the community will come up with a solution before The Man does.

Not long ago, the Left 4 Dead 2 “boycott” amicably wound up (I hate to admit it, it seems like an instance where online petitions do work.) Now outrage is brewing and gamers are cracking out the signatures with the news that the PC version of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 will not support dedicated servers – the tried and true model of multiplayer FPS gaming. A brief but amusingly weary summary can be found here. Naturally, this sort of news would not be easy to accept for casual gaming communities, competitive clans, modders and their fans. The developer, Infinity Ward, already indirectly responded to this controversy, rebuking ‘the modders and the tuners’ who want to ‘bifurcate the community’ in favour of a solution that will satisfy the majority of their audience. But is it necessarily good to alienate your most ardent fans in this way? Sound familiar?

Now, neither of these are actually games I play. I rented Call of Duty 2 AGES ago if that counts for anything. It’s just interesting to see that video games will always arouse strong and passionate opinions, and there are circumstances where a game company simply has to make concessions for its own sake. Interesting sort of interaction.

Also interesting how apart from the SecuROM fiasco (for which The Sims was only one game affected) EA seems to be largely immune to its community opinion. Outside of their official forums, is there any meaningful interaction or contact to speak of? I believe this dynamic is no doubt driven by the ‘silent majority’ who help keep Sims games on the bestseller lists constantly. I wish they’d speak up more.

This post is very emo and whiny about pirates getting stuff before honest folk, and the second half is really me railing against oppressive broadband quotas.

Regard this as your forewarning.

Well, it was 99% certain to happen early, but the Sims 3 (weighing in @ 4.94 GB) has leaked.

Edit I: SecuROM is BACK. Run.

Edit II: Whispers that it may be an early leak of the Download Edition (already confirmed to contain SecuROM). Jury is out on whether the disc version will have the Blight. Alternately, may be preview code, due to missing content. Smart to wait until retail version is up. Smarter to buy the freakin’ thing.

I’m angry at this. Two reasons.

(more…)

Yay, no oppressive DRM! Rod Humble tells all. Of course, the copy protection remains, because EA aren’t THAT progressive.

What nefarious schemes will EA implement instead? Here are some ideas for them…

1) Intentionally program the game ‘broken’, and release a day-one patch while restricting its downloading as much as possible to genuine owners. Games for Windows Live, etc. Issue a statement on your official forums; don’t acknowledge what you did but apologise for the issues and then accuse people with broken games of piracy. Hilarity ensues.

2) Create an awesome bonus feature for your game that increases its replayability 500% OR makes the game so much more functional that it’s practically a necessity for all serious players. Restrict the Awesome Bonus with a one-time code packaged with new copies of the game. Gamers will complain: “It’s too Awesome! Why isn’t it in the game itself? I don’t want to download it!” Accuse the complainers of being pirates. Six months later, release the update for $10. Leave it out of the ‘game of the year’ edition just to piss off a few more people. Extra points if Awesome Bonus isn’t ready for three months.

3) Package the game with a proprietary content delivery system which is a mandatory install with the game. Make it impossible, or at least heavily frustrating, to play the game without the PCDS running in memory, chewing up system resources. Accuse anyone who complains of being pirates.