So let's use ~40mb Windows 98 OSes until the end of time and not move forward in inch in computing technology.

So you're using Windows 98, are you? I’m not looking forward to Vista, not because I don’t want to see technology move forward, but because I see that frequent OS releases are not in my best interest unless one is needed, and the only one needing this OS is Microsoft. Windows XP was not needed, and I seriously doubt Vista will be either, but we’ll deal with it anyway because we have to, but don’t defend it as righteous change, it’s change for the sake of it.

Yea, I'd heard 4-6 in one of their interviews, so that's what stuck in my mind, and I can't use 10-15 hour developer estimates on full games because most wouldn't admit to that time length. I'm currious what the average play time for FEAR was, because that's one of the recent games that made me wish it was episodic. I'd say it took about 12 hours for me to finish, and the first half was fun, the second half was far more dull (even though I think technically it was still doing cool stuff). I wonder if it'd have worked better if broken up (although I don't think it had a good enough story to have an interesting cliffhanger, or character arcs).

That seems like a bit of an apples and oranges comparison.

Actually, we are talking about the same time frames, an average hourly TV show has about 40 minutes of content, making it about 2.5 episodes to reach a comparable movie time. The average action game weighs in at around 10-15 hours of gameplay, roughly 2.5 times the 4-6 hour estimate of the playtime of a Sin episode. Besides TV having several excellent successes with the format, and games not having that precedent, I don’t see why it’s not a completely fair comparison. I really think it’s far more about conditioning, the format is sound (although I will not defend their pricing).

BTW, 24 gets 24 episodes a season (title’s a bit of a giveaway) and Battlestar is one of those short run programs, typically weighing in at 13 or so episodes.

I find the opposite is true, I actually get bored with games that take too long, and 6 hours at a time is perfect for me. Then again, I find that with similar production values I like TV shows more than movies. Stuff like 24 offers a far better experience because of it's episodic nature than most movies.

So you are willing to spend 20 bucks (it's a lot fo money considering the quality) for 6 hours of HL2-like gameplay?

I said I can understand not liking the price (that applies to any game, of course I'd like to get more bang for the buck). However, if given a choice between $20 for 6 hours of gameplay, and $60 for 18 hours of gameplay, I'd definitely take the first, because I can play it in one setting and don't have to buy the rest unless I want to. Episodic content doesn’t require, by nature, to be overpriced, I’ve seen plenty of games offer less gameplay per dollar than SiN seems to.

I can understand not liking the pricing of this, but how can you not like the concept of episodic content? BTW, you realize it's really just giving you smaller chunks of a game at a lower price, rather than one large game at a large price and after a larger development time.

If you dig deeper though, and do some research, you'll find out that nVidia's implementation will not be anywhere as good as Ageia's because they can only add more special effects but can't use physics to truly affect gameplay.

That depends on your definition of "good". In theory Ageia's solution will be better, but since doing anything that affects gameplay will require the hardware the vast majority of games will only do special effects. Add to that the fact that the GPU solution can more efficiently transfer the effects data to the rendering pipeline and you’ll likely see that in the real world the GPU solution wins.

Products that the publisher thinks can earn a profit get published

Although this is true, inferring that the quality of the product is the primary factor in determining if a product is cancelled and/or not picked up is VERY naïve, especially in today’s climate. Making a shooter a success in today’s market takes far more than a good product, it takes tremendous brute force marketing, strong advertising and media support, strong relationship with retailers, basically things that very few publishers can pull off now (and Jowood clearly can’t do it). To make matters worse, a product like this may not see a profit until the 2nd or 3rd installment in a franchise, and there’s certainly no indication that whoever picks the title up has rights to more than one game (and there may be many other contractual limitations at play). Licensed properties are typically only profitable at the height of the property’s popularity, and only if it’s very popular (like LoTR, King Kong, Matrix, that sort of thing), a property like StarGate is a decent property, but only if you can leverage it for much more than one game, otherwise you’re likely sacrificing too much for it (Sega’s NFL loss is a good example of the dangers of investing in a property you don’t completely own). I’m not vouching for the quality of the product, I’ve seen no indication it’s particularly special, but assuming that it’s demise is due to a lack of quality shows a limited understanding of business, and an extreme lack of understanding about the game industry.

Well, the Epic boys will license their engine in any number of ways. This could very well be a deal where Atari pays little upfront and Epic gets lots of back end royalties.

This is very true, since it costs them virtually nothing to let people use the technology, and there are tons of benifits to having others use the technology (technical and perception benifits) you can rest assured there's a great deal of wheeling and dealing with these licenses.

It's shipping today and you've already rented it? Did I miss something here?

Either the announcement is late, or for the PC version or something, but without a doubt I rented it for the PS2.

Rented this one yesterday, and I'm just not sure who should be more ashamed, Shiny for making it, or me for renting it after having rented Enter the Matrix.

Actually that guy was right on target for two reasons: First, those stores which are now pulling the game have already been selling an "Adults Only" game: GTA:SA.

Geesh, how in the heck does that make any sense? They didn't sell it knowingly, and it wasn't rated that when they put it in the stores, they were deceived along with the ESRB. This is like hiding a joint in the trunk of my car, then a year later telling me about it then saying "well, you've been transporting drugs across state lines for a year, you may as well accept that you are a drug mule and start running heroin".

It strikes me that in essence we have a product which is legally (by the EULA) designed & contracted to be accessed in a specific way, and which has been rated based on what was made accessible in that way.

Again, I do not believe this is true. The ESRB rates the content in the game, not the content that's accessible without violating the EULA (if you have the contract between ESRB and Take 2/Rockstar that states otherwise then you can correct me). If they did state this in the contract, then it'd be a VERY bad thing since some unscrupulous game developers will assuredly abuse this by adding loopholes to the EULA that allows them to hide whatever content they like and completely undermine the ESRBs system.

I don't think it's unfair or wrong that a developer omits, as in this case, content they specifically and deliberately removed access to.

I'm still not convinced they meant to remove it, but even if they did, they still did not do it. If they'd removed access to it then it wouldn't be an issue.

Would the canvas analogy not be more correct if you discovered 'insert thing here' under the canvas after x-raying it, when you had signed a legal agreement not to x-ray it?

No, I don't see how that would be applicable. If you’re suggesting that the ESRB’s rating system is only applicable to content that’s accessible through means strictly defined by the EULA, then that would change the situation dramatically, but I’m quite sure it pertains to all the product’s content.

Regardless, in the situation you described we’d just have both parties breaching contract, one breach does not negate the other. Also, to apply directly to this situation, we’d have to include three (possibly four) parties for the analogy to fit well.

The analogy I used is when a painter reuses a canvas. If I buy a painting of puppies then x-ray it and find a painting of a naked goat underneath, can I sue the painter? He never intended for it to be found.

As I understand it there was no suit, this analogy is quite inaccurate. A more accurate analogy would be the painter selling me a painting and signing a contract that stated he disclosed all the content of the painting, then the undisclosed content that’s viewable by the x-ray would be breach of contract and actionable. I’ll even take it a step further and say that the content visible through x-ray could be of cats, and even though that’s not generally objectionable, if the painter said there were no cats in the contract, then he hid cats in the painting, then it’s actionable. However, suing is still not quite applicable here since the ESRB is simply changing their rating, not suing Rockstar (so they’re not trying to get damages for the breach, they’re just doing their job, the job Rockstar didn’t let them do because they didn’t disclose the content).

The decision as to what rating the game deserves is up to the ESRB. You can argue all day long about the wording of their guidelines for what makes a MA or AO title, but it’s still their judgment call. The definitions are subjective, for sure, and they should stay that way because games have far too many variables in the way they are executed to make a “ratings template” definable. As long as we have decent consistency in the body that rules on each game then the ratings will work (I don’t think we’re quite there yet, though).

Which is more pathetic, spending a week or more farming an item or finding a more expedient means to an end?

I think caring enough to do either one of these things is pretty pathetic. I mean, if you're actually spending weeks just to get enough resources for an item, and the experience is otherwise pointless, then that's just sad.

There was no guarantee that all of your hard work would result in any financial reward.

Umm, there was if they won, that's the nature of a contest. The man has a legitimate gripe, the contest was hardly a service from Epic, it was a marketing effort that used the community in order to promote their product. It was intended to be mutually beneficial to the contestants (at least the winners) and Epic, and complaining about them not fulfilling their end of the bargain after fulfilling yours is a legitimate complaint. Although I do not think it’s a huge complaint, to argue that they should not expect anything is taking fanboyism to a rather frightening level.

Although that's likely cool for the both of them, it's not like they have an exclusive, and what it likely really means is that they have an agreement for "bulk" licenses (much like a publisher buying a year's worth of advertising).

Valve would have gotten their asses handed to them in court if they tried to undercut VU's box prices.

Although I'm sure their contract has pricing agreements, those agreements are there because Valve wouldn’t have sold less than that anyway, so they’re hardly “the reason”, more like a consequence. Bottom line is that if Valve really wanted to sell the game at $40, or even $30, they’d most certainly have been able to negotiate that.

you're going to be limited to a single system for any given game, which basically makes it a limited monopoly

Not true, again, Steam is not the only way online delivery has to work. There are many games that use multiple online delivery channels, much the same way games ship in multiple stores. The same motivation to do specials will exist no matter what the channels, since most games will not make their own delivery system like Valve did. In the end I'd say you'll end up with about 6 to 10 major online delivery venues and most games will use at least 3 of them.

Uh, how far away is the store? Several hours? Because that's how long it takes to download HL2 even on the fastest connections.

Honestly, if I hadn't seen it myself I'd agree with you, but I installed steam and in 72 minutes I was playing (I got the game a month or so after release, so trafic was likely lighter, but that's still insanely fast). It takes me about 40 minutes to get to the software store I'd have to go to to get it, so for me it was considerably faster, but I'm sure I'm not an average case.