Dades wrote on Dec 31, 2012, 17:55:

RollinThundr wrote on Dec 31, 2012, 17:38:
Listen, I've heaped my share of criticism EA's way over the years, especially with how they handled the Elevation Partners fiasco and what Bioware became because of it, but for shit like this, that ALL publishers do? C'mon, with all the reasons to hate EA or bash them, this isn't really that valid a reason.

I don't know what crack you're smoking but shutting down functionality of purchased content is about the most valid reason to bitch about companies as I can imagine short of them just taking your money and saying nyah nyah.

- DADES - This is a signature of my name, enjoy!

Creston wrote on Dec 31, 2012, 17:28:

RollinThundr wrote on Dec 31, 2012, 16:55:
Tell that to 2k who likes to shut off game servers within a year when a game doesn't sell. Or not patch a particular console sku at all due to low sales numbers (the PS3 version of NHL2k10). Shit you guys would string EA up by the toes for.

So on the one point you argue that on bluesnews it's nothing but hate hate hate for everything, and then on the other hand you argue that we all love 2K (apparently.)

Which is it? Because I'm not sure the two are compatible.

Creston

Dades wrote on Dec 31, 2012, 16:16:
What a crock of shit, game servers are simple executables and keeping them running requires little management. The hardware has to be maintained for other games as it is, they don't just retire a game and save a bunch of money. A company like EA buys bandwidth in bulk and won't save any money there either. It's pure bullshit to force sales of the next years title.

Treat people like adults and just say it like it is for once instead of the constant marketing shit dribbling from the corporate mouth.

Yeah because shutting down servers of games that came out 2-7 years ago is totally "pushing people to buy the new version" This would be a non story if it weren't EA.

2 years isn't a long time for a game to be out, I own games a dozen years old with working multiplayer. You tried this bullshit before and people pointed out how foolish it was in a dozen different ways, it isn't going to fly now either.

- DADES - This is a signature of my name, enjoy!

NetHead wrote on Dec 31, 2012, 12:06:
EA has been doing this for ages, deliberately timing server shutdowns for games with the release of sequels and the like trying to force people to buy the new game for multiplayer.

Though now they're making even singleplayer require the "okay" from the server with the sole goal of being able to completely stop people playing the game at all once they release the sequel. No doubt with the flawed mentality of not wanting to compete with their own, older, products.

It is not a technical necessity, it's not to fight piracy, it's not to add value or features. It's about control so they can pull the game out from under customers now entirely forcing them to fork out for the new version if they want to keep playing.

This is a good example of what happens when consultants and "number crunchers" get to direct a business instead of people who actually work in and have any passion for an industry.

Normally I have sympathy for people who get ripped off since we are all ignorant about something, though I can't feel sympathy for people supporting such companies with such tactics when they do the inevitable of ripping people off.

Personally I don't pay for a single game that can be remotely deactivated, disabled or crippled whether it's by design a mistake or due to a connection problem, that includes things that require online Steam DRM and I have missed out on no games and have had no problems.

If I'm going to pay for a game, I'm gong to be damn sure I can no only play it while on the move driving around on holiday, but can also fire it up years if not a decade from now without having the added "feature" of DRM doing nothing but causing problems to me as a customer.

Draugr wrote on Dec 28, 2012, 00:01:

Slashman wrote on Dec 27, 2012, 18:28:
In my LAN party days, there were only about 3 women who would set up and play with the rest of the group. Of those 3, there was one who was really good at FPS games and she repeatedly kicked a lot of our butts in UT and Quake(including mine). At the end of the day though, as good as she was, she really wasn't that into gaming for itself, she just had a boyfriend who was hardcore into gaming and she picked it up from him. It was way more about doing something with her boyfriend than anything else.

Basically, I think that's your answer. While as a male, I'm going to respond to scantily clad women and similar attempts to appeal to my base male urges, in the end I'm going to respond way more to great gameplay and the challenge of pushing myself to overcome both human and AI opponents in a game. In general, women will respond way less to those things.

You're anecdote boils down to 'I don't think women really are into games because when I went to LAN parties I think one of the women only played because of her boyfriend, and the other two I don't consider good enough to be real gamers'...Strange how bad players at LAN parties who have penises aren't written off in such a fashion. No one questions them about being 'real gamers' they're just shitty players.

I think it's silly to take an anecdote as evidence alone, which you're basically doing. The very fact that your anecdote has 3 women in it kind of proves the point that there are women who play these kind of games. Certainly it is a male dominated hobby, but they aren't just conjured up or only there to play because of a man as you and others seem to imply. I mean there were three examples in your story, but you focused on the woman who was there because of her boyfriend, the only one of the three that reinforced your argument.
If I told a story about how there were no black people at the LAN parties I attended growing up, and therefore it leads me to believe that black people aren't into video games (or aren't into the same video games as white people,) I think you'd consider that pretty absurd. This is what you're asking us to do with your anecdote.

There are also probably more female players that play the kind of games you say they don't than you'd think. You play hundreds of faceless people when you play online, some of those people are going to be women. Obviously you'd be none the wiser unless you asked.

The reason I question articles like this is because the women in them seem to have such a narrow focus in gaming. Halo and CoD on XBox Live. Never anything else mentioned. What are they expecting to get from a bunch of immature, teenaged brats? Why even put yourself into that environment? I don't even want to go there as a male.

Because some people would prefer things to change, and do what they can to affect it instead of just keeping their head down. The consolation prize I guess, is people like yourself who don't want to play halo because of toxic environment can reap the benefits. As you said you don't play these games for the very reasons she is talking about them anyway, so if this is really where the focus is I don't see why you would be concerned.

Draugr wrote on Dec 27, 2012, 15:30:

Julio wrote on Dec 27, 2012, 05:07:
If the feminazis want gaming their way, put their money where their mouths are and only buy games that show women as better than men, and they can virtually bobbitt all the men they want.

If you chant straw-man really loudly maybe a real man made of straw will appear!

Bludd wrote on Dec 27, 2012, 10:02:
Holy shit there's a lot of crap in this thread, and a lot of it proves TFA's point.

Which is what makes this thread so amusing.
In a depressing way. :S

Cutter wrote on Dec 26, 2012, 17:08:

SlimRam wrote on Dec 26, 2012, 16:55:
*Jumps off my soapbox and yells at my woman, "MAKE ME A SAMMICH!!"

Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell no!

Burrito of Peace wrote on Dec 26, 2012, 13:43:

Overon wrote on Dec 26, 2012, 13:06:
...I just prefer if what they did was less what they do now and more of what some written books do, challenging people's fixes beliefs.

When challenging people's fixed beliefs doesn't involve risking 20-100 million dollars, risk angering shareholders, risk angering distribution partners and risk, more importantly, angering your fickle customer base who gives you billions of dollars every year, then you'll see games become sociological reform platforms.

Granted, I am sure someone can dig up an indie game somewhere that does this, but that doesn't grab the attention or sales that Call of Black Halo Duty Ops XLVI: War Gear Edition does. Such is the nature of the business and no one is going to change that business so long as it IS a business.

Creston wrote on Dec 25, 2012, 14:02:
As usual, Valve ignores the massive load during Xmas sales and lets everyone try to connect to their hideously overloaded servers...

I guess making a billion+ dollars in revenues isn't enough for anyone to wheel their desk over and put some extra capacity in place, Gabe?

Creston

entr0py wrote on Dec 23, 2012, 01:17:

RollinThundr wrote on Dec 23, 2012, 00:39:

Verno wrote on Dec 23, 2012, 00:27:

entr0py wrote on Dec 23, 2012, 00:03:
You don't know that Steam, Origin and GFWL all have offline modes? I believe Steam has some requirement whereby every couple of months you have to authenticate or offline mode stops working. But that is pretty friendly to people with laptops or crappy connections. Still bones people with no internet access at all though.

Yep exactly. The comparison between something like Steam and an individual game like Simcity is completely flawed anyway. One is a service to sell games, the other is an actual game. There is a pretty big feature gap between them. Digital distro services have to implement DRM as per publisher requirements, publishers on the other hand get to choose what goes into their games.

EA chose this path because they like under pinning their games with online connectivity now as it gives a convenient excuse to retire unsuccessful ones that aren't generating an ongoing revenue stream. Look at the rather pitiful list of online features and tell me with a straight face that they couldn't have done that on demand instead of requiring always on.

Anyway sorry Rolling but you're 100% wrong here. People definitely hate EA for a variety of reasons but in this case it's 100% justified, their rather long standing tradition of shitting on older franchises is pretty well documented.

Oh well hopefully they learn their lesson from this. I'm off to my familys place for a few days, merry christmas everyone!

Honestly, how many people use offline mode for steam on a regular basis? Or GFWL or Origin? Unless you're traveling prolly not very often, or live in the sticks with shit for internet.

I really don't think this is as big a deal as you guys are making it out to be.

Verno is right that the real issue is game specific always online DRM, and distribution platforms are a bit of a tangent. But did you play Diablo 3? Even if you have a great internet connection, you'll still often have your single player game ruined by server maintenance or server side lag. There's no benefit for the player, just unpredictable inconvenience.

That's part of why I don't think EA/Maxis should take D3's success as encouragement to try the same shenanigans. A lot of people who hoped it wouldn't be so bad were burned by D3 and learned their lesson.

Dades wrote on Dec 23, 2012, 00:19:

RollinThundr wrote on Dec 22, 2012, 23:59:

jdreyer wrote on Dec 22, 2012, 23:49:

RollinThundr wrote on Dec 22, 2012, 19:58:
Yet you all have no problem buying hundreds of titles on Steam only to be always online to play them. Look I get it for those who travel alot, or military who don't have an always on connection. But that's like a 1% of less minority of most PC gamers. It's no where near the issue some of you are making it out to be.

LOL, typical winger. Disregards facts, or doesn't bother to learn them, instead saying what feels "right." Don't go away Thundr, we love you man.

Fact of the matter is, if it was another publisher behind the game most of you prolly wouldn't give a shit. I get it, it's popular to hate EA for any reason.

Fact of the matter is that you hated on Blizzard for months for the same reason and are trying to dodge the hypocrisy. Your argument to the contrary involving DRM with online services has already been debunked. Most online services have an offline mode or don't require a consistent connection, just a polling one.

People don't hate EA for any reason, they hate EA because they do this kind of shit to games. Do people need to draw it with crayons for you?

- DADES - This is a signature of my name, enjoy!

Verno wrote on Dec 23, 2012, 00:27:

entr0py wrote on Dec 23, 2012, 00:03:
You don't know that Steam, Origin and GFWL all have offline modes? I believe Steam has some requirement whereby every couple of months you have to authenticate or offline mode stops working. But that is pretty friendly to people with laptops or crappy connections. Still bones people with no internet access at all though.

Yep exactly. The comparison between something like Steam and an individual game like Simcity is completely flawed anyway. One is a service to sell games, the other is an actual game. There is a pretty big feature gap between them. Digital distro services have to implement DRM as per publisher requirements, publishers on the other hand get to choose what goes into their games.

EA chose this path because they like under pinning their games with online connectivity now as it gives a convenient excuse to retire unsuccessful ones that aren't generating an ongoing revenue stream. Look at the rather pitiful list of online features and tell me with a straight face that they couldn't have done that on demand instead of requiring always on.

Anyway sorry Rolling but you're 100% wrong here. People definitely hate EA for a variety of reasons but in this case it's 100% justified, their rather long standing tradition of shitting on older franchises is pretty well documented.

Oh well hopefully they learn their lesson from this. I'm off to my familys place for a few days, merry christmas everyone!

jdreyer wrote on Dec 22, 2012, 23:49:

RollinThundr wrote on Dec 22, 2012, 19:58:
Yet you all have no problem buying hundreds of titles on Steam only to be always online to play them. Look I get it for those who travel alot, or military who don't have an always on connection. But that's like a 1% of less minority of most PC gamers. It's no where near the issue some of you are making it out to be.

LOL, typical winger. Disregards facts, or doesn't bother to learn them, instead saying what feels "right." Don't go away Thundr, we love you man.

Creston wrote on Dec 22, 2012, 16:18:

You can set your region to private and never interact with other people,

And then when our servers go down, or your ISP goes down, you won't be able to play! YAY HAPPY FUN LAUGHS BUBBLES!

EA, no matter how many fucking bubbly t(w)its you drum up to pretend that it's all done for the player's benefit, it's still DRM, and you can still go fuck yourselves.

Creston

HorrorScope wrote on Dec 22, 2012, 12:59:
I get the complaints but there has to be a phobia for the consistent and repetitive nature of DRM/Online/Piracy complaints the repeatedly happen at Blue's.

Sure EA blended two things MP w/DRM Piracy prevention cleverly, to your dismay. But luckily I seemingly never have DRM related issues, even though I'm no real fan of it, I just can't join this brigade without really having been bit to any noticeable means. I've had more problems with Wal-Mart plastic bags giving way.

MP Sim games have been grossly overlooked, hopefully this will actually be good. Transport Tycoon Deluxe anyone?

Cutter wrote on Dec 21, 2012, 20:15:

RollinThundr wrote on Dec 21, 2012, 18:02:

Cutter wrote on Dec 21, 2012, 11:21:
Please, just no. To this and JJ Lamebrams and his savaging of Star Trek.

He modernized the series and put out a decent sci fi flick, the hell is wrong with that?

I wouldn't expect you to understand Star Trek...or what constitutes a decent "flick" for that matter.

Cornholio wrote on Dec 21, 2012, 22:38:
People might stop pointing fingers when that fringe idea of 'personal responsibility' gets put to use.

netnerd85 wrote on Dec 21, 2012, 16:45:

Creston wrote on Dec 20, 2012, 22:16:
Awesome stuff.

Thanks GOG!

Creston

Shouldn't you be thanking EA Games mwahahahaha!

Cutter wrote on Dec 21, 2012, 11:21:
Please, just no. To this and JJ Lamebrams and his savaging of Star Trek.