Typical Blue's News kneejerk posts. Did you read the whole section on DRM before attacking, or did you just read the quickie tabloid-style summary? Stardock's policy on activation seems like pretty sensible stuff. Here, I'll cut-and-paste for you so you don't have to do your own research.


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Page 14:

"Similarly, DRM that has arbitrary activation limits for the lifetime of a product are counter-productive. A pirate doesn’t have to worry about such limitations because they’re running a cracked version. Yet the legitimate customer is stuck in the situation where they can’t use a game or program because, a year later, they’ve bought a new PC and run out of activations. That’s madness."

"Legitimate complaint: If a program wants to have a limited activation system, then it needs to provide a way to de-authorize other computers (ala iTunes)."

"Legitimate complaint: Activation-based DRM means that if the publisher goes out of business or simply stops supporting their content that the customer can no longer use their legally purchased item."

"Legitimate complaint: Having an arbitrarily low limit on personal activations makes the program feel like it’s being rented."

Page 15:

"Illegitimate complaint: Keeps people from installing the program on as many PCs as they own. I own an office full of PCs. I don’t think Microsoft would be happy if I installed Office on all of them."

"On other games, we think it’s legitimate if publishers want to require activation to install them. I don’t pretend to know whether the sales lost by users who have no Internet connection is greater than the sales gained from less piracy. I don’t think there’s any problem requiring a user to type in a unique serial number on installing a program. We do think there’s a problem having a user be told they can’t use a program anymore because they installed it three or five times over the course of a year – and this isn’t an obscure problem. There’s plenty of software, not just games, where this has become a significant and obnoxious issue."

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Knights of Honor is not a generic FPS. It's a hybrid turn-based/real-time strategy game that was actually decent. The only problem I had with it was that there was a weakness in the otherwise-good AI that made it easy to beat most AI armies once one figured out the weakness.

I've had it with these m*therf*cking snakes on this m*therf*cking PC/PSP!

The press release claims there are no barriers to entry, but what are the system requirements?

If this game can run on machines that are around 4-5 years old, then yes, the barriers to entry will be very low and that alone will be a big differentiation from a game like Team Fortress 2.

Well, this kind of thing may affect 1up.com (EGM's Web site) as well.

How many of those were replacements for broken Xbox 360s?

It's not that similar to piloting a camera. There is a small amount of inertia in X3. It's certainly enough to affect turns and such. It's very noticeable in the high-speed M5 fighters. Sure, you can turn a 180 pretty easily, but you can't change direction instantaneously.

Also, there are many players that like having low-inertia flight models. Not very many people like Independence War-style or Warhead-style flight models. If I'm imagining a group of spacefaring civilizations at war, I don't like thinking that they aren't advanced enough beyond 21st-century Earth technology to have overcome inertia at least a little bit.

I like flight models like Frontier's or Space Rogue's. You can toggle the anti-inertia drive on and off so both types of players are happy.

My main problem with X3 was the "now what?" factor. I became bored after building my player headquarters and starting to manufacture M7s. In X4, they should add inter-civilization and/or mega-corporation warfare, as well as the opportunities that would arise from such conflicts (assassinations, supply runs, recon missions, etc.). I know there are mods that add these kinds of missions, but they didn't really give me the feeling of "artificial life" I wanted to feel.

Or for people who used to love Master of Magic...

I won yesterday by building a Tower of Mastery. It felt good. FfH2 is the closest thing to a Master of Magic 2 available.

I believe the word "evolving" was used.

Well, of course. Even the nicest, most cuddly dog will rip one's throat out after being whipped, kicked, raked across the coals, publicly humiliated, tarred, feathered, boiled, folded, spindled, mutilated, and anally examined with cold tweezers by the unwashed masses, who will then laugh at the bleeding, twitching, faintly pulsating mass of remaining flesh and make fun of its stupidity for getting itself into a completely avoidable situation. But after attacking its tormentors, it may revert back to happily licking a child's hand, before a second helping of attacks makes it hungry for human meat.

Until I finally left in frustration this year, I was in the video game industry for over a decade, and I observed that most game coders are arrogant assholes. Only the game designers ever seemed to be socially adept. So I don't think it's right to trash a game series just because the lead developer (and designer) is a jerk. Most of the games all of you love to play are coded by jerks. The difference here is that, as the lead developer, designer, and head of his own company, Derek Smart is required to have a public face. If you stuck the programmers of a popular game (say, WoW) into the public, 65% would be about as rude as Mr. Smart is.

Furthermore, it doesn't really matter if his games only serve a tiny niche. If it's a profitable tiny niche, and it very clearly is since Mr. Smart's company is still operational and not in financial straits after many years, then Mr. Smart seems to have earned the right to be a vocal prick, which is more than can be said for most snarky, uninformed and/or misinformed forum posters on the Internet. Besides, what exactly is a "tiny niche"? He's sold hundreds of thousands of copies of his games. Even if you believe that his target market is too narrow, you can't deny that he has a firm hold on that market and is successful enough with it that his games outsell many other "niche" games.

Mr. Smart, you're an asshole... and I salute you for it.

Megamek is OK, but way too buggy for normal play. The interface is pretty difficult, too. My friends and I tried to set up a multiplayer battle a while ago, but it took so long to set up mechs, install the game, learn the controls, and figure out the game interface that we gave up after the game crashed or dropped a player for the umpteenth time.

I hope MegaMek's developers take some time to improve the interface and the network stability.

Mechforce's interface is much nicer. All of the commands and windows were fully labeled and accessible through mouse or keyboard, and the mech building tool was really easy to use, so newbies to the game could pick it up really easily and games could get set up quickly. The only big problems with Mechforce are 1) I have to drag out my Amiga to play it (I don't using the emulators), 2) my friends and I have to play it in hotseat mode because there's no network play, and 3) the movement and attack are time-and-turn-based instead of traditionally turn-based. Although it's not the same as the official rules, the third point is actually a good feature of the game as well, because it made a heck of a lot more dramatic to see mechs like Locusts and Fleas charge out of forests toward assault mechs that couldn't turn fast enough to respond.

I played Titans of Steel: Warring Suns (http://www.titansofsteel.de/), which was a recent remake for Windows of Mechforce, and though I like it, its interface has too many obscurities for it to be a pick-up-and-play game.

I'd like to see a Battletech game, rather than a Mechwarrior game. A nice, turn-based, classic game with hexagons. It should have the ability to select a time period and generate random scenarios for single-player or multi-player battles, like Mechforce did on the Amiga, except with Internet capability and with all technologies available (2750-3100+). FASA could organize clans and houses, build an Inner Sphere galaxy map, create campaigns, and charge monthly fees so pilots could fight battles that could change the borders of the great houses and clans and affect the overall story, while independents could form merc groups and hire themselves out, or even just battle on Solaris for fame and money.

It'll never happen, of course. "Internet common sense" dictates that turn-based strategy games are dead. Come to think of it, though, classic Battletech can be adapted into a phase-based system, a la WoW and other MMOs. That could work.

Yes, zombies will follow anything, you PC and Mac junkies. Amiga Forever!!!

I can see it now:

Hardcore gamer and developer-wannabe (HGDW): "Hello, investors. I'd like you to invest in my newest game. It will appeal to about 100,000 people and cost a buttload of money. It will not have much replayability beyond multiplayer battling. To cut costs, we'll just go with an existing genre... how about FPS? You'll make about US$0.75 per copy before counting server maintenance costs. You'll have to stop game support after 9 months, too, because the cost of support will begin to go above the sales revenue at that point."

Investor #1: "And, you, Mr. Wright?"

Wright: "I'd like you to invest in my newest game. It will appeal to anywhere from five to thirty million people. It will promote creativity among its players, and players can play peacefully or aggressively. In fact, the entire gameplay experience is open-ended, reactive, and interactive. You'll make about US$2.50 per copy because you won't have to pay millions for lots of graphic design, level design, or textures. The game will create most of these procedurally, and players will be creating their own creatures and sharing them with other players. The server system costs will be minimal, because they don't have to do anything but share data, so we can keep game sales momentum going far beyond 18 months."

Investors (all): "No, we'll invest in HGDW's game because it's HARDCORE."

Wright: "But you'll make tons more money, and players will get more enjoyment because they can do whatever they want! What can be more hardcore than a game that people will play for 12 straight hours, with no network overhead costs except when sharing creations? Are you insane?"

Investor #2: "yu suk Wil Write teh emo l4mer"

Wright: "Huh?"

That would be a sorry gaming world.

Remove this headline. It's sensationalism so Pocket Gamer could snag clicks for their advertisers. Anna Kang, not John Carmack (she's NOT "Mrs. Carmack"; she kept her maiden name), said one negative thing and many positive things about the DS. By pulling one line from the interview and using the same shameless writing style, I could've written a similar article from a completely different angle. For example:

"Carmack wants sheep BAD. Carmack obsesses about sheep. ‘OK, tell me: from all the stuff I told you, what can we do? Because I want the sheep!!’"

Time effects, plus the destructible environments, plus what seemed to be pretty cool AI behaviors... I loved the demo, and I'll consider buying the game.

The AI was doing stuff like dodging, rolling for cover, and jumping up to and down from obstacles. It was impressive to watch, especially when shooting them while they were in the middle of dodging, or shooting them with an explosive crossbow bolt while they were jumping and while time is slowed.

If anything, the game will be fun because of the creative ways to kill the opponents. I hope the effects carry over well to multiplayer mode.

This comment was edited on Oct 17, 19:35.

I'm surprised there is no Wii version. The Wii remote would allow the commando to easily aim at any spot in the 3D environment and grapple it. That would have been excellent.

If you look at the blogger's bio, you can see that he's not a "random blogger", as some sites have referred to him. 8bitjoystick is a journalist named Jacob Metcalf for the Seattle weekly newspaper The Stranger. I would tend to believe that a known journalist with no previous reputation for wild rumormongering would not risk losing his job by posting a rumor without first checking other sources.

I could be wrong, of course... but the dude does have cred.

Let me see:

2.5 x 10^6 fighters between two solar systems

assume 4.22 light years between Earth and Proxima Centauri

1 light-year = 9.4605284 × 10^15 meters

2.5 x 10^6 fighters in a length of 39.923429848 x 10^15 meters

62,619 meters per fighter

62.6 kilometers per fighter

38.1 miles per fighter

Bigger than Zentraedi battleships... wow.