While it might be a bit premature before the EULA's, etc., are released... this is great news! I look forward to seeing what projects come of it.

Sepharo wrote on Apr 12, 2010, 18:15:
That's why my favorite "leveling" in an FPS was Wolf:ET

Although some probably disliked it as it only really rewarded the already good players thus making them even better.

I'm embarrassed that I forgot to mention ET - I have probably logged more hours in that than any other game.

It was brilliantly balanced, though* - even when I'm the least skilled player on a team, having high-level FOs and Medics on my team benefits me directly (and they level up by helping me out, even though I'm playing badly).

(*) FO airstrikes aside, perhaps.

Maybe I'm just a pessimist, but I was surprised by DICE's claims that they developed levelling as a core mechanic to give gamers continuity in their multiplayer experience.

I had been under the assumption that levelling systems are making their way into FPS games so that I get addicted to unlocking the next item, and continue to play even after I buy my next FPS.

This increases the chance that my friends will buy the game even a year after its release (so they can play along with me), and increases the chance that I'll still be playing when the next paid DLC comes along.

In either case, I'm a bit disappointed that I need to log X hours/kills/tricks before I'm allowed to use half of the weapons that are coded into a modern FPS.

I find the use of RPG elements in RTS and strategy games (e.g. WC3, DoW, or HoMM) much more enjoyable, because most of the time the RPG elements come into play within the scope of a single game, and they add an extra dimension of gameplay for those of us not so good at micromanagement. Counter-Strike, or Science and Industry, probably best represent those mechanics in FPS games.

It's worth noting that SC2 has had one of the longest development timelines (for non-vaporware) in gaming history, and that Blizzard are legendary for post-release support. Both of these come at significant cost - if any developer can justify a higher-than-normal price tag, it's Blizzard.

That's easy for me to say, though, because I don't have any intention of buying it... the StarCraft universe never appealed to me as much as WarCraft's or Diablo's.

^Drag0n^ wrote on Mar 24, 2010, 22:08:
WtH is a "CMO"? I must have missed that in MBA classes...

^D^

I read it as Chief Marketing Officer.

I guess this was bound to happen once people stopped being impressed by "Senior Vice President of X". It's a shame nobody stopped to think that X is just an idiom and that we'd actually need more than one letter to represent every job function in the world.

On topic... I see the original statement and rebuttal as follows:

SteelSeries: I think we've discovered a practical limit on the DPIs that are useful to gamers, so we're focusing on that and not on pushing the envelope of DPI.

Razer: DPI is important!

Debate fail!

Edit: The Razer Mouse Guide that Razerguy refers to actually makes less of a brouhaha about DPI than it does about your mouse grip. For all their talk about how important DPI is to "some gamers", their "configurator" doesn't even take your DPI preferences into account.

This comment was edited on Mar 24, 2010, 22:37.

Ruffiana wrote on Mar 23, 2010, 16:42:
Every story I've heard about construction has always involved projecting a low bid to get the job, and then when it comes time for the final bill..."oh, we underestimated how much time/money it would take. It's actually going to be X + 50%"

Yeah... perhaps I should have put a </sarcasm> tag into my post

Creston wrote on Mar 23, 2010, 14:04:
Really? That's funny. I must have imagined all the years that we've delivered software (and various other IT projects) on time and on budget then. After all, it must be impossible if you say so.
Creston

Touché.

As a fellow employee of the software industry, I suggest that your firm is the exception, rather than the rule. Also, that the level of creative work required in a game is well beyond most other software projects, and therefore harder to estimate.

Necrophob wrote on Mar 23, 2010, 14:14:
What industry isn't 100% dependent on labor?

I am thinking of civil works projects (construction or infrastructure), where a good percentage of a $10 million project will be tied up in material (like cement or steel pipes) whose price can be negotiated prior to submitting the estimate.

While there are plenty of materials (like SDK or compiler licences) required for a software project, they are dwarfed by the labour cost.

This comment was edited on Mar 23, 2010, 14:28.

Yes, perhaps the games industry could learn from the exemplary project estimation and management capabilities of other sectors like construction, health, aviation, banking, military and government.

As for looking at their peers in the software industry... this would be the same industry that coined the term death march project, and where the difficulty of project management has spawned an entire "agile" industry, dedicated to avoiding the complexity and risk of long-term project development.

Anyone who thinks they can set an accurate budgetary estimate for a software project (which is almost 100% dependent on labour) as well as break new ground has to be kidding themselves.

does Steam Offline mode still require you to physically unplug the ethernet cable to get into Offline mode?

No, this has been fixed some time ago. There's a button in Steam's menu called "Go Offline", which warns you that some functionality will be disabled, until you go online again.

Even while connected to the internet, I can happily run Steam in offline mode and play my games.

(This is bugged in the current beta, but it works in the current release verson)

but needless to say, we expect them to be offered at competitive prices

expect? Have they really gone this far without nailing down pricing? This is unbelievable - considering the sort of actions we've seen from game publishers over the past few months, I wouldn't want to leave anything at their mercy.

unbiased and outspoken expert commentary

I'm not sure how they expect to pull that one off... I'll believe it when I see a review of LightWeight Ninja that reflects critical opinion.

nin wrote on Jan 26, 2010, 16:27:
Why would anyone buy one of their products now, with those requirements?

Presumably because they can't rent it or borrow it from a friend anymore...

It's amazing that new delivery platforms for the PC are becoming more restrictive and cloud-based than their console counterparts.

Anyone who actually grew up on PC gaming and embraced the freedom and flexibility of the PC platform (mods, hacks, editors, utilities, engine remakes, etc. etc.) must look like a communist hippie compared to the PC gamer of 2010.

This comment was edited on Jan 26, 2010, 17:05.

What surprises me most about this article is that PopCap signed such a deal in 2006.

In 2004 I bought PopCap games both from their website directly and through trygames/ActiveMark, and I'm sure I saw them on other portals like RealArcade. They had already cast their net extremely wide, and then in late 2006 they were already distributing their games via Steam. Signing an exclusive deal of any sort seems absurd.

Am I missing something that refers specifically to producing and selling physical copies of the games?

[Edit: Maybe this is specifically to do with physical media. Mumbojumbo brought Zuma and Rocket Mania to retail channels in 2004, and PopCap's CD-ROM page makes it looks like they're handling most of the physical sales themselves now.

This comment was edited on Jan 25, 2010, 14:41.

Bravo - that was the perfect spot for that one-liner make a comeback.

space captain wrote on Jan 8, 2010, 15:36:
i cant imagine the massive legion of casual WoW people really jumping on a skill-based genre like FPS

It's hard for a gamer to juggle more than a couple of MMOs at once, so I would imagine that they're hoping to keep their WoW players right where they are, and instead try to extract money from the people who are starting to check out games like Quake Live or Battlefield Heroes.

>Players will discover King Cailan’s top-secret political agenda

Just using the word "Cailan" and "political agenda" in the same sentence seems bizarre - I wonder what they'll come up with here. Cailan seemed by far the most two-dimensional character that the game had to offer, and I'd be impressed if they could turn that around.

Stardock is as much against used-game market (or the case, where you gift an already played game to someone) as Steam. If things have changed recently, please correct me.

I believe Stardock has previously revealed that their future plans for Impulse include the ability to transfer your digital games to other players.

I think this was expected to involve a fee - a kickback of some sort to Impulse & the Publisher - but it's hard to imagine a distributor ever getting permission to transfer games without some incentive to the publisher.

Edit: Just wanted to mention that this isn't unique to Impulse - Steam knowingly sold a broken version of Jagged Alliance 2 for over a year (and by broken, I mean that the save games didn't work).

This comment was edited on Nov 19, 2009, 20:03.

They made a profit, that is what companies do!

Actually, it booked a loss ("GAAP net loss") of $391 million for the past 3 months - about 25% higher than the same time last year.

Their claim of profit ("Non-GAAP net income") to the tune of $13 million is basically EA's way of saying "if you ignore all of the unexpected costs - like the restructure (and hundreds of millions of dollars in other costs) - you could kind of say that we made money!".

Edit: Are any accountancy/legalese experts able to shed some light on EA's reasoning for the hundreds of millions in "net revenue deferral" for digital content? I've read their description ("Electronic Arts is not able to objectively...") several times, but I can't work out what the $359 million figure actually represents. Are they bringing forward expected future revenue, claiming that the costs of development are one-off unusual expenses, or something else?

This comment was edited on Nov 9, 2009, 20:08.

I appreciate giving gamers the choice between hardcover and softcover, but surely the point of a strategy guide is to give you complete information about the game. Additional content in the "prestige edition" is a joke!

Re #2: Published strategy guides can often offer one thing that most Gamefaq guides can't - insider information from the developers.

This is actually quite appealing, especially when it involves things like developers' favourite strategies, suggestions, concept art, or background on design decisions, rather than stats (which are quickly copied).

(Full disclosure: the only guides I ever bought were either freebies with ancient PC Gamer / PC Format magazines, or in Blizzard bundles)

Looking forward to seeing how you are planning to monetize the site. As with a few of the posters yesterday, I would happily support any donation or merchandising efforts.

On another note...

>I am impressed with the speed of the site now that the ads are gone.

Entire website is text...

Website is mostly text. I have frequently seen Blue's fail to load because of a pending request to "mediamgr.ugo.com" in my browser's status bar.