take my comments with a grain of salt. But I have to say, there seems more and more every day, that there's a disconnect between the more hardcore gamers like most on these forums, and the average "joe-casual" gamer. Moreover, I have begun to believe that to publishers and developers, the opinions of the hardcore gamers who post on sites like this one are irrelevant. We are no longer the market. EA is no longer selling games to us - it's selling games to less critical, less scrupulous, less angry versions of us.

Prez you and I are having a mind meld. I agree with what you said 100%. Basically the game publishers seem to have a very limited definition of their market. For quite some time now, I've been mentioning in various threads that the game publishers don't understand their market. More specifically, as you said, they don't get the enthusiast gamer market. They think they do, but its on a very limited level.

It seems like everything they do is catered to the casual game player and the console market. Thats somewhat understandable because there is a huge untapped market of potential players and they are an easier sell. We are the tough audience, they probably would rather ignore us more than anything else. I hope and believe that some smart group in the industry will break away from being the standard old game publisher and be the more upscale publisher for enthusiast titles. Sort of like a George Lucas splitting away from the major movie studios. I'm positive this will happen someday, and when it does, publishers like EA and Vivendi will be drooling at the mouth to buy them up in Googlesque fashion. I would rather they deny them in a CraigsList sort of manner.

Hmmm. I just read through this whole thread. It took about 20 minutes.

Some points
1) I never played BF2; the last BF game I played was BF Vietnam.
2) I've played the BF2142 demo and really had fun. I found it a blast to play the same map for 4 hours.
3) I'm a tolerant, mostly forgiving, even-keeled gamer.

So with those in mind, take my comments with a grain of salt. But I have to say, there seems more and more every day, that there's a disconnect between the more hardcore gamers like most on these forums, and the average "joe-casual" gamer. Moreover, I have begun to believe that to publishers and developers, the opinions of the hardcore gamers who post on sites like this one are irrelevant. We are no longer the market. EA is no longer selling games to us - it's selling games to less critical, less scrupulous, less angry versions of us.

To whit - Look at the sales BF did. Look at the average score the game received from virtually all major websites and magazines. Compare it with the overall feeling of derision and the amount of vitriol on Blues. If all this unhappiness with EA and the BF series on Blues were at all indicative of the average gamer EA is targetting, BF2 would have bombed. Big time. Yet it didn't. Nor will BF 2142.

Like I said before, I've read all of the posts prior to mine, and as I usually do, ignored 90% of the overblown melodramatic pontificating. What I did get out of all of it is that there are many legitimate issues people have here with the game. The patching, the ads, the incomplete features and functions, the lack historical lack of support, etc - all of these are reall concerns. But you know what? I don't care. None of these is even close to a deal-breaker when it comes to my buying decision. Or the decision of hundreds of thousands of other "casual" gamers.

When you get right down to it, we're not talking about a car with no wheels, or a house with a wall missing. It's just a game. I have a maximum level of concern and deep thought applied to games that falls FAR short of that of many here. I could care less if EA drowns puppies or trips old ladies as they pass - I just want to play a fun game with the ever-shrinking free time that I have. That's it. Beyond that, it's hard for me to notice much else about what's wrong with the game. Or care. BF 2142 is a crazily fun game. I don't notice the billboards. I already forgot about the patch I had to install. I don't care much about the lag: it is no worse than in other games. I can deal with the load times, which, while long, aren't all that long to me. What matters most is I'm having fun.

I guess this makes me part of the problem. Oh well. I can live with that.

Riley and Propagandhi, you should really get a room. Obviously, you two want to make out.

Actually Propagandhi belongs in a padded room, and the only one he wants to make out with is Gabe Newell.

I wonder how many naysayers will secretly buy the game. I bet a lot..suckers. You feed the flame. You hate ads and things like steam, you either stop buying these big publisher games or accept it. Most will just accept for the quick fix and publishers like EA, Vivendi etc know that.

I didn't buy BF2, I won't buy BF2142 either. Chances are I'll never buy another BF gmae unless I see a drastic change in their support for the games.

Only EA game I've purchased in the last 3 years is Need For Speed: Most Wanted. Carbon hasnt shown me a reason to buy it, yet. Most Wanted's demo sold me. Looking over EA's release list, there isn't a single game that has me interested in the shit they are creating.


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Currently playing Company of Heroes.

Riley and Propagandhi, you should really get a room. Obviously, you two want to make out.

I wonder how many naysayers will secretly buy the game. I bet a lot..suckers. You feed the flame. You hate ads and things like steam, you either stop buying these big publisher games or accept it. Most will just accept for the quick fix and publishers like EA, Vivendi etc know that.

so is this game fun or what?

looks like its time for some people to review their time management options

________________________
music from space captain:
http://www.soundclick.com/bands/6/errantways_music.htm
http://www.soundclick.com/bands/4/invisibleacropolis_music.htm

shut your valve and lets talk about EA's shit.

What more is there to say? Battlefield 2142 is invasive crap, and no one should buy it.

Yeah.. sounds scary... then you actually fucking read what it is. No name's attached, merely User Y played X for X long and then quit and never played again (or whatever.)

First, if the information is "distinguishable from information relating to other users" then it is ultimately personally identifiable information despite how Valve would like to define it. Is it the explicit name of the person? No, probably not, but just like the AOL search information which was recently found to be far from anonymous despite AOL's assurances, when you combine such information with other available information, identities are revealed. Second, you continue to foolishly overlook is the word "unless" which obviates the supposed restriction. If the user already provided his contact information, that could be construed as the "agreement in advance."

Nice job bolding "personally identifiable information" by the way, even though it in no way relates to anything else you bolded in that sentence.... dipshit

Wow, you are an imbecile. I emphasized it to clearly show that Valve collects such personally identifiable information (despite your prior denial), and that is exactly why Valve listed it in the sentence. Next time READ and THINK about what I wrote before you jerk off a reply.

Oooo, it sounds scary.. until... "If an associate of Valve is collecting such personally identifiable information within one of our products or online sites, Valve will make users aware of this at the time the information is gathered."

Wow, what a restriction! Valve will post in tiny print that information is being gathered.

if providing the information is a requirement of usage, the user may decline to use that particular service or product....Oh.. so... that's not scary at all... bummer...

It's a total bummer because as Valve states, sure the user can decline providing the information, BUT then the user can't use the product for which he paid. So, what Valve is telling its customers is give up your information or go to hell. Now that's good customer service!

Compare that to Vista's user policy or EA's page after page of legalese... Valve simply isn't the monster you make them out to be

Yes, they are all bad. That doesn't make Valve less so. It just means it has a lot of bad company.

Edit: A nice post of facts

Your post is anything but facts. It's nothing but a myopic view of the Valve's privacy policy through Steam-ed up glasses.

This comment was edited on Oct 18, 16:09.

In addition the "individual information" that Valve more willingly shares is pretty personal by its broad description.

"Individual information" is information about a user that is presented in a form distinguishable from information relating to other users but not in a form that personally identifies any user or enables the recipient to communicate directly with any user unless agreed to by the user in advance of such communication.

Yeah.. sounds scary... then you actually fucking read what it is. No name's attached, merely User Y played X for X long and then quit and never played again (or whatever.)

Nice job bolding "personally identifiable information" by the way, even though it in no way relates to anything else you bolded in that sentence.... dipshit

So if a company has a contract or agreement with Valve, it can collect even personally identifiable information. The distinction between such a company and a third-party is essentially meaningless.

Oooo, it sounds scary.. until... "If an associate of Valve is collecting such personally identifiable information within one of our products or online sites, Valve will make users aware of this at the time the information is gathered."

Ok, maybe not that bad, but there's always more, right?

Well.. "If a user does not want to provide this information, the user may choose to opt out of providing this information. Additionally, if providing the information is a requirement of usage, the user may decline to use that particular service or product. When possible, Valve will make a reasonable effort to direct users to the privacy polices of these associates. Valve's privacy policy does not extend to associates of Valve."

Oh.. so... that's not scary at all... bummer...

Compare that to Vista's user policy or EA's page after page of legalese... Valve simply isn't the monster you make them out to be, Riley... Sorry

Edit: A nice post of facts and then another page of rambling bullshit. I'm going back to the NWN toolset, riley.. enjoy your thread... you "win"?


This comment was edited on Oct 17, 23:27.

Nice job totally ignoring my damning quotes from their privacy policy

Damning?! LOL! I love how you don't wait to even read all of my reply posts before you go ignorantly shooting off your mouth. By the way, my retort is post 95 since you are most likely too lazy to bother to search for it.

Studied it? It's a fuckin pseud-.net front end providing a server browser and a web interface. This isn't something one can study, it's a simple application.

It is NOT simple. It is a complex piece of code that does a lot of things under the proverbial covers. The fact that you think it is simple is why you don't understand my complaints with it.

So Valve should just dump its patches on us from some ftp? Because all the other companies do that for their demos and patches.

Yes providing third-party mirrors for updates provide more reliability and resiliency when Steam fails (which it has done so many times when popular games and updates are released). In addition, third-party mirror sites for updates give customers a place to turn when a game's developer or publisher fails. If I want to play any of my games from 3DO, Interplay, Acclaim, etc. today, I would be shit out of luck if those publishers had only provided updates to their games on their own "Steam" networks.

Steam provides functionality that users could obviously get from other sources, but it's convenient and allows Valve to gather data it uses to make better products. No shit the only reason Valve made it was so they could have this type of flexiblity, but given their support record (which you continue to ignore) it's reasonable to trust them.

At most Steam should be OPTIONAL. Customers who like it should use it. Customers who don't like it because they don't want to be spied upon, or don't want to be forced to install updates before they can play their games, or don't want to be told they can't play their games because Steam is too busy or unavailable and yet it won't go into offline mode won't have to put up with it to use the games for which they paid.

You're the nutball who goes on about how they're collecting all sorts of private info and dolling it out to clients all over the fuckin globe.

There you go again with another gross exaggeration of my position. I wrote that Valve is collecting any of the multitudes of information vaguely described and allowed under its privacy policy and sharing it with any company it wishes to "associate with," and that is more than invasive enough.

I said that data was relevant to their function as a game company, and it fucking is! There's no denying that!

I don't deny that the information has value to Valve's business. That doesn't make it less invasive or justified though.

That's what you're so fucking concerned about? The fact that Valve outsources? I work at a god damn software company that handles this type of information, if we leak it our balls are on the god damn wall...

Well that is little comfort to the customers who are harmed by your actions. I am sure the many banking customers who recently had their data stolen by unscrupulous employees of Indian customer service firms are overjoyed to hear that the perpetrator was caught because their information has probably changed hands multiple times since then.

On a personal note, I discovered today that some son of a bitch in Italy used the information of one of my credit cards to run up over $2000 in charges in the past week despite the fact that the card never left my wallet, and I have never been to Italy. It's going to take weeks just to get rid of those charges, and it is not an absolute certainty that it will be. So, there's a real world example of the dangers of information theft, and one I am paying for despite my precautions. So, I'll be damned if I am going to knowingly put myself at risk to play some video game just because the developer and/or publisher is so arrogant and greedy that they want spy on me and make money from that spying.

The fact that Valve even set up a registration system when WON was canned is a god damned blessing.

Look you moron, WON is not gone. Sierra still runs it because a number of its games like NOLF 2 and Tribes use it. Half-Life 1 would still work with WON today if Valve had done what other game companies did with their games and allowed Internet play even if the master list server was offline. Instead, Half-Life 1 was designed so that if Valve shutdown the master list server, the game would refuse to accept clients from another subnet. Valve only shutdown WON because that was the only way to force current customers to use Steam. Up until that time a little more than half of online players wouldn't migrate even though Valve made Steam mandatory for Counterstrike 1.6. Half of the users kept running v1.5.

Good luck doing that with an EA game...

With the older EA games I have, I don't have to do that. Unlike Half-Life 1, they at least support join by IP address.

Valve has no obligation to support a game this fucking hold.

There is a big difference between stopping support for a game and designing a game so that when you stop supporting it, it will no longer function. Valve did that with Half-Life 1's multiplayer, and one day some games on Steam may not work at all when Valve decides to stop supporting them. The Steam EULA certainly specifies that.

Doesn't exist.. Unless you're talkin about the banner which tells you the server you're downloading from

That's an ad. And it is not a fixed one. The URL is dynamic.

So it's trivial because it's not Valve doing it, or because there's an actual difference between what Gamespy does and what Valve does?

It's the latter and you would understand that if you actually read and understood the whole damn paragraph as I mentioned the difference.

Compare their policy line by line with every other on the internet and there's ZERO fuckin difference.

Valve is no less guilty just because they have company in their actions.

This comment was edited on Oct 18, 00:51.

shut your valve and lets talk about EA's shit.

I have no gripes with VALVe, to even compare them to the anti-christ EA execs is insanity. I've never felt like a peon to VALVe, I never felt like they shoved half-baked shit out the door to safe money, I've never felt like they took the core team off of supporting their franchise title and turned the games over to a bunch of fucknuts that couldn't spell the word "patch" let alone create one. Every possible turn EA has given it to their customers when they could have risen above it all and showed us that they wanted to earn our loyalty. Nope - instead its all about a bunch of sports-coat wearing, Brite Smile, game show host looking executive fuggers watching the stock price all day.

I'll bet you that most, if not all, of the EA executives wouldn't even know what a WASD was from a widescreen LCD. They suck, they're ruining gaming with their blood sucking approach to raping gamers - and most of you fuggers sticking up for them are to blame.

Want to play an NFL licensed game? Well I hope you like EA because thats you're only choice. What this does is they corner the market and squash competition and basically run a genre into the ground. They tried whoring all the major sports but the other sports had some ethics.

Games for gamers by gamers? Nope - a bunch of suits just looking to make games for money. Its great if you're a stockholder, sux if you're a gamer. It will never be about you - it will always be about the green. They will acquire, devour and kill off any company to reach their master plan = fat golden parachutes for all their board members and execs. There is no such thing as a valued EA customer, we're all just a means to an end. I have NO problem with them making money, there is a way to do it and a way not to do it. Respect your customers EA.

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$OE - they put the FU in fun!
==Boycott EA==
This comment was edited on Oct 17, 23:12.

Valve will not share personally identifiable information with any third party unless the user agrees to such disclosure in advance.

That statement is meaningless and toothless not only by the "unless" but also since...

"Personally identifiable information protected under this privacy policy and collected from users may be done in conjunction with associates under agreement with Valve."
So if a company has a contract or agreement with Valve, it can collect even personally identifiable information. The distinction between such a company and a third-party is essentially meaningless.

I also love how you left out the most damning psrt which precedes that excerpt (the emphasis is mine since Valve wouldn't draw attention to it):

"By using Valve's online sites and products, users agree that Valve may collect aggregate information, individualb information, and personally identifiable information, as defined below. Valve may share aggregate information and individual information with other parties.

In addition the "individual information" that Valve more willingly shares is pretty personal by its broad description.

This comment was edited on Oct 17, 22:52.

Nice job totally ignoring my damning quotes from their privacy policy, but anyway:

Like I said, you blame the publisher, that's fine. I don't share that opinion.

I told you, I'm fucking looking at it right now. It IS idle. As time goes on it does nothing but release resources. Since my last post it's dropped to 3.5 megs of ram, still hasn't used a cycle, and I've sent nothing to Valve since I checked their website out making my last post.

If you've got some fuckin EVIDENCE post the logs, otherwise your word is totally worthless.

No, but unlike you I have actually studied it enough from a technical perspective to know that it is.

Studied it? It's a fuckin pseud-.net front end providing a server browser and a web interface. This isn't something one can study, it's a simple application.

My point is that consumers already have web browsers.

So Valve should just dump its patches on us from some ftp? Because all the other companies do that for their demos and patches.. right.. I forgot..

Oh... wait...

Steam does nothing, but allow Valve to easily collect data from its customers every time they want to play their games and try to sell the additional crapware on Steam to them.

Steam provides functionality that users could obviously get from other sources, but it's convenient and allows Valve to gather data it uses to make better products. No shit the only reason Valve made it was so they could have this type of flexiblity, but given their support record (which you continue to ignore) it's reasonable to trust them.

See, there you go again from one extreme to another. Either Valve is collecting everything or Valve is collecting nothing. Just because I strongly think based upon the evidence that Valve is collecting more data than it has publicly disclosed doesn't mean that I think that Valve is collecting anything and everything. However, it also certainly doesn't mean that what I believe Valve is collecting is justified.

W T F are you talking about? I sarcastically SUGGESTED that valve could collect everything, in reallity they're collecting some things which they deem relevant to their business practices. You're the nutball who goes on about how they're collecting all sorts of private info and dolling it out to clients all over the fuckin globe.

I never said Valve wasn't collecting data. I KNOW valve is collecting data. I said that data was relevant to their function as a game company, and it fucking is! There's no denying that!

Valve's privacy policy allows the sharing of collected information with its "partners" which could be any company which contracts to do business with Valve.

Ah, nice. A fact.. something other than your rambling bullshit. Here's the section of the agreement I believe you're refering to:

Valve may allow third parties performing services under contract with Valve to access stored information but such access shall only be to the extent necessary to provide those services. In those instances, the third party will be bound by the terms of this privacy policy.

That's what you're so fucking concerned about? The fact that Valve outsources? I work at a god damn software company that handles this type of information, if we leak it our balls are on the god damn wall...

All of Valve's patches for its older games post Steam have been due to problems with Steam. So, that is certainly nothing above and beyond what Valve should do since it replaced all of its older games with Steam versions.

Bwhahah. The fact that Valve even set up a registration system when WON was canned is a god damned blessing. When Bungie sold out to MS the Myth communities had to fucking HACK their way back on-line, with no official dev support. Good luck doing that with an EA game...

Valve has no obligation to support a game this fucking hold. None. But they do, because that kind of effort is an asset to their cause and they realize it. And yet you chastise them for not being fuckin dipshits like the rest of the industry, nice job Riley...

Steam has popup ad banners when launched

Disabled.

small ad banner on the download window

Doesn't exist.. Unless you're talkin about the banner which tells you the server you're downloading from, in which case you're a tool.

Gamespy can't collect the same data unless it is integrated into the game to do so. With most games it isn't. Gamespy Arcade does collect and track some useage statistics of its users in terms of how many times they have frequently a game's lobby on the system, but that is trivial compared to the types of data that can be gathered from users during gameplay and associated with purchase and demographic information that Steam can collect.

So it's trivial because it's not Valve doing it, or because there's an actual difference between what Gamespy does and what Valve does? I'm guessing the difference you're siting is fucking purely philosophical and/or some possibility you've culled up from the depths of your 'brain.'

Enough of this shit, I'm sick of your page long factless posts. You mentioned a section of their privacy policy that you had a problem with ONCE, and then in the vaguest of terms.

Compare their policy line by line with every other on the internet and there's ZERO fuckin difference. Welcome ot the information age, buddy, information is free and what you do on the Internet will never be private. As for Valve's single player logging, that stuffi s collected ANONYMOUSLY (FROM THEIR POLICY: ""Aggregate information" is information that describes the habits, usage patterns, and demographics of users as a group but does not describe or reveal the identity of any particular user." So wtf is your problem?

Why the hell are you people talking about Valve? We're supposed to be bashing EA right now, forget Valve for the moment.

Steam has data collection and tracking even when you play its games in single-player mode. Where do you think Valve's is getting the data to put together its stats ( http://www.steampowered.com/v/index.php?area=stats )? So, Steam definitely one-up's EA's in that department which is multiplayer only. And, an additional nice thing about Steam's tracking is that since it is a also a purchasing system, the data collection and tracking is even less anonymous than EA's

Typical bullshit coming from Riley since he keeps telling us he doesn't have Steam installed and hasnt for...what, over 2 years now?

Huge difference here between EA and Valve. With Valve, the system specs information is VOLUNTARY and asks you once every 3 or 4 months if you would like to participate, you can choose NO.

2nd, everything on that Valve Stats page (except one item) is SERVER SIDE, not Client side. So no it is not tracking your system information.

3rd, Valve track gameplay information to improve the next episodes. The HL2 single player stats do NOT track your internet browsing habits in order to sell you shit you don't want via place in-game ads.

4th, the Steam Ads that come up when you launch Steam...can be disabled by the user in the Steam options.


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Currently playing Company of Heroes.

???

IT'S CALLED A JOKE. MAYBE IF YOU DIDN'T WASTE ALL YOUR TIME POSTING 15 TIMES IN A ROW YOU MIGHT GAIN A SENSE OF HUMOR.

Maybe if you actually spent more time on your posts, you'd learn how to really write a joke.

This comment was edited on Oct 17, 22:34.