PixelJunk Eden, 1942: Joint Strike, Everquest 2 ... Wait, What?, The Rise of Cooperative Gaming, Your Emails and more!
This week Michael Zenke joins us as we bring cooperative gaming under the microscope. We mostly try and convince Sean to play with us ... and we'll probably end up winning that argument by default. Just give it a couple years.
To contact us, email [email protected]! Send us your thoughts on the show, pressing issues you want to talk about or whatever else is on your mind. You can even send a 30 second audio question or comment (MP3 format please) if you're so inclined.
PixelJunk Eden
1942 Joint Strike
Everquest II
Wrath of The Lich King Music
Intro/Outro Music - Ian Dorsch, Willowtree Audioworks
"Small Comfort" - Apoplexia (Benoit Casey) - 0:16:20
"Fallen Idol" (Benoit Casey) - 0:37:48
Comments
Pages
Pssh, first 'no epic emails' now no one-liners. Our podcast heroes are getting high-maintenance me thinks. Heh heh.
Blizzard: Dax#1827
I suppose that's one point that's hard to ignore - the science of it demands proof, one way or another.
I think one of the Stardock guys said something that fits this too though: The ones complaining the most about piracy are making games for people who (are most likely to) pirate games.
I think we all know what kind of a system these games demand, and the few that do have them tend to fit the above description.
Of course that's neither a solution, nor an excuse, but it gives an indication .
I honestly don't know what to think or believe anymore in this respect. In the past 2 years I've come to work with a number of gamers, and their approachto this ranges from people who want everything original to the honest 'I try before I buy', to 'I have a fast connection and newsgroups for a reason'.
I personally fall in between the first 2, and have a hard time relating to the latter, especially because they can afford the originals anyway. I can, and that just makes me feel that much worse about it.
I'm 26 now, but remember the time 10-15 years ago, when I used to have little to no money for these things. I got my pirated games off friends for little or nothing on diskettes or the first CDs. My mother didn't have the money or incentive to get me games, and my allowance wasn't getting me past the annual upgrade of a PC component, so in all cases, it's not lost money to the publishers. If anything, they're getting money afterwards anyway - I recently bought the Space Quest games pack just so I could play them again.
I don't think anyone really worries about those people/kids even now anyway though. Doesn't seem to be what it's about.
But with relatively cheap, fast connections in our country (I'm Dutch) and all 3 consoles now having online capabilities to download demos and such, I have a hard time finding the complaints, even my own if I do hit that download link, justifyable. It just seems like we're becoming the rich, spoiled brats who yell and cry when they can't always get what they want.. The ones I swore I would never be like.... And that doesn't feel right.
Got a bit long and ranty again. Sorry
'Bah, I can tank that...'
- famous last words
I think Certis made a valid point about this, but I'd like to throw in my 2 cents. The problem (I'm not saying it's wrong, simply that it's not taking into account the bigger picture) with this view is that consumers are not the only revenue stream for a company. Shareholders also are. Every company owns a certain amount of shares of itself and it's not rare to see one buy some of its shares and sell them back when the price rises (or emit new shares if their coffers are full). This is also a non negligible revenue stream and in order to have people buy your shares at a higher price you have to convince them that your share is worth that price. The share holders right now are very aggressive about asking companies to protect their revenue stream by using copy-protection. In fact, they we way more vocal about this than consumers are about copy-protection. As it was stated, if a game is good, people will buy it. Let me rephrase this : If a game is good, people will buy it, regardless of the copy-protection used.
So I think companies right now prefer to cater to their shareholders on this issue for the moment. Its better for them to cater to those then be "negligent". Ask the previous management of Take2 what they think about shareholder takeovers. These guys get really angry when their money is not well spent or secured.
One must be thinking what's going into the head of Microsoft's shareholders each quarter when they see the results of the Entertainment division tough...?
XBL : CrazyJF
@Fronsac
That got me thinking earlier as well.. I've doubts about its viability, but maybe publishers (or at least developers) shouldn't have shareholders?
That would get rid of a LOT of problems.
'Bah, I can tank that...'
- famous last words
I think we can both agree that MMORPGs are a different animal entirely. I don't necessarily subscribe to the notion that everything that requires activation should be boycotted. I do use Windows and Office after all. My main problem really is activation schemes that are overly restrictive (i.e. limit the number of activations etc.) I will also concede that the couple of times an online system had failed (i.e. Triton), the publisher stepped up and dealt with it. It's really just a concern because with large, publicly traded companies, chances are that if something doesn't make them money, they won't do it. And removing activation from old games doesn't.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it didn't gain any sales from having SecuROM. I've no doubt it did get some. I'm just wondering if the headaches all the legitimate users dealt with was worth that. To Take-Two, I'm sure it was. To the users, it wasn't.
No doubt. But if a AAA game is bad, generally it fails. There are exceptions of course but in the case of a mainstream franchise like Call of Duty 4, I think it's safe to say that it sold well because people liked it. The reason I cited it as an example is because it is a game that was very heavily pirated but it still made money and as a result, Call of Duty World At War is getting a PC version. You'll never get any argument from me that PC piracy is huge and a much bigger problem than on the consoles. But many publishers act like this is new and it's always been a huge problem. How many people did you know growing up who had a disk bank full of original C64 or Amiga games? Yes, it was harder to distribute pirated games back then but the market was also much smaller. Relatively speaking, I suspect the piracy rate was about the same. I don't know why publishers bother developing for the PC in the first place if the problem is as bad as they say because many make it sounds as if the platform guarantees failure.
The summary of my problem is this: Publishers are putting more and more restrictions on the games they are only hurting the consumers, not the pirates. They are creating various concerns among their customers that their $60 now buys the same games but only as a limited time offer. And yet they still whine that piracy's to blame when a game fails. Which is it? If you're putting these restrictions on your games (restrictions which cost thousands of dollars) to stamp out piracy but piracy is still why your games fail, then why bother with the restrictions at all?
The term ridiculous was poorly chosen I admit. My problem is that the general tone of the argument made on the podcast was that BioShock only sold well because SecuROM prevented day 1 piracy. My belief is that even if it shipped with no DRM at all, it likely wouldn't have sold that much less as Call of Duty 4 had much less restrictive DRM and still sold well. That didn't happen so we'll never know but the amount BioShock was pirated indicates that there are still a lot of people who played it without buying it. And I think we can both agree that those people suck yeah?
Geek Bravado | Twitter | YouTube | Twitch
While it's true that we haven't seen a big digital drm pullout problem yet, I'm sure many of us have experienced the agony that is the "Launch Day Initialization Servers Going Kaput" syndrome. Nothing says "Thank you, Digital Protection" than bringing your game home and finding you can't play because 100000 other putzes are trying to play at the same time you are.
I just wanted to cite two recent events from the Film and Music world that seem a little relevant.
First, Microsoft's decision to stop supporting PlaysForSure. PFS was the DRM embedded into MS's early MSN Music store, and now that they've got the Zune Marketplace up and running (and are selling some DRM-less songs), they see no reason to continue to spend money on the Auth. servers for that little old piece of technology.
The Wikilink has the stores that used this framework (lots of big names), so it was a pretty widespread tech. One can apparently re-license or burn the media to CD, but after August, it's gone-gone-gone.
I may be wrong on this one, but I believe that the Terminator 2: Extreme Edition release was plagued by broken or missing servers. The second disc included a "high quality" WM9 version of the film that played on a computer, but required a quick call to a DRM server to authorize. I recall hearing about this not working at all a few years back.
We're not going to suddenly be in a world where STEAM sputters out and we're sent running around trying to strip DRM to play our games.
Oh yeah, I just remembered this little nugget. The recent R6 Vegas release was broken for Direct2Drive members, so Ubisoft decided to release a patch to fix it.
Said patch just happened to be a No-CD crack from the *RELOADED* warez group.
That's pretty two-faced, and I can see how it would cause someone to swear off copy-protection methods.
Revel in the sheer improbability that in a universe of such mind-shattering emptiness, you have someone to love - Coldstream
They stopped being meaningful to me as devices a long time ago, and now they've stopped being meaningful as things-ClockworkHouse
Great podcast as always... but when you post it past midnight I *still* need to listen to it and I usually fall asleep on it (and I did, I just finished it now)
there's something a bit strange in revealing I fall asleep to the voice of a bunch of men talking about gaming
... ahem
Anyways, try to post it before midnight guys!
PSN: Interstate78 / STEAM /
The reason it gets posted Tuesday night is that we want it out first thing Wednesday morning. I can understand wanting to get something as early as possible, but even if we were to try and release it before midnight EST there would probably be someone else who would want it released earlier and yet someone else who would love it even earlier than that.
So for now and the foreseeable future the show is released sometime before Wednesday morning, usually Tuesday night (as has been the case) and that's if we release on time.
Thanks for listening!
"Can I have a job? I donut have much experiences, butt I always use an spellchecker spellchecker on my articles." - Sway
Using Prayer To Microevolve Latent Antibiotic Resistance In Bacteria since 2005!
Spoiler Fanatic!
We release it when I slap my head and remember I need to post the show. That's always at some point ... but it depends on what I'm playing at the time
“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” ― Howard Thurman
I'm guessing it was KOTOR last night?
I wish you guys would stop encouraging him.
EvilHomer3k wrote:You are an evil, evil person.
Baron Of Hell wrote:YOU VILLAIN!
Sorry I'm late to the party, but here you go.
I'm not really a girl. I just play one in video games.
Elysium wrote:My Gaming Blog
Trust Mord, he is more right than he knows.
Gamertag: Mordiceius
great discussion on all sides of the piracy issue. I don't think of myself as a zealot on either front, but I also don't think the argument is going to change much in the near future.
Last.fm | Twitter
"If I knew you could claim podcast hosts that way, I would had peed on you back at Tamo." - AgentWred
So I am that teacher, and one of the prerequisites to becoming a teacher is a complete lack of shame. Being a teacher is a lot like being a clown with tourette's, except that the stuff you have to blurt out has to be educational.
I guess this is my hello post, so hello! I'm sucking it up and checking out the forums. My xbox live and steam usernames are Mr Sarcophagus. Where's the best place to go to get hooked up with people for 360 games? I'll check out the gears and beers thread.
Also, how do I get a steam invite? Thanks!
For whoever was asking about listening to D&D sessions (Drako?),
I dunno if they've tried these before or not:
http://www.rpgmp3.com/ (Lots of D&D / CoC stuff in their 'epics' podcast)
or http://www.yog-sothoth.com/ (CoC's Horror on the Orient Express was their most recent epic).
The yog-Sothoth lot have a pretty good audio setup too.
inactive here until further notice.
The new title music for Wrath of the Lich King is ok, but how you can say it's any better than the previous two is beyond me as it is practically an arrangement of the previous two aside from some minor additions. I personally found chunks of it to be very unstructured and uninteresting, but it had some good moments.
Btw, I personally prefer the title music from The Burning Crusade.
PS You can find a much better quality MP3 of the opening tune than that terrible sounding youtube video here which is what I believe was referenced on the podcast.
I was also a teacher without shame, Mr. Sarcophagus, before I decided to go back to private industry where I'd get paid more for less work. My students knew I A) played WoW and a lot of other games and B) wasn't inclined to be less of a hardass because of it.
And I'm glad to see your name - I've been trying to get the players in my online D&D game to learn the word, since they were chasing after a stolen sarcophagus. They keep talking about a traveling tomb or crypt, and it makes no sense...
I'm one of the few people you'll meet who've written more books than they've read.
Coffin or casket would at least be more acceptable... They sound like they are chasing a location the way they put it.
BNet: MrCrab#11211
All evidence points to two important facts:
1) DRM boosted week-1 sales
2) The hoopla that resulted from it was a headache we really don't ever want to have to deal with again.
There is clearly no perfect answer to piracy. I suspect publishers are going to increasingly start moving away from PC gaming for certain genres.
System Shock 2.
There is a calculation made at some point at some level that the numbers make it worthwhile. Depending on the characteristics of the franchise, this calculation will vary. So new, risky IPs may push the scale towards "stronger DRM for a quick buck", while well established IPs may be more concerned with image and are more willing to lose sales to piracy in favor of better PR. (Naturally, there are 500 other considerations that go into that decision.)
Comparing Bioshock and COD4 for sales being an indicator of DRM success is not very valuable, as they are totally different beasts: one is a well-established MP franchise; the other is a new SP experiment with almost no name recognition.
Dan Kaplan
Lead Gameplay Programmer
Firaxis Games
What evidence is that? Not saying you're wrong but I've seen nothing documented to link the increased DRM to sales.
True enough. My argument is simply that I've seen no evidence to indicate that stronger DRM is leading to more sales or to put it more broadly, that making is harder to pirate something is significantly increasing sales. Note that I say significantly because making something hard to pirate will result in a few more sales, I just don't believe enough to justify the headaches caused to the legitimate customers. The only games to date that have used the activation method are BioShock and Mass Effect. New IPs yes but new IPs that were heavily hyped and came from developers with outstanding reputations. I don't think those titles a good argument for the technology's benefits, nor will Spore be when it comes out. That game could require you to sacrifice a small animal each time you ran it and it would still sell like bonkers.
See above. CoD4 may have been an established franchise but BioShock was not an unknown title. In fact, that it was such a hyped title is the reason I think such a stink was made about the activation. If it was a smaller niche title that didn't have such wide appeal, word of the activation scheme probably wouldn't have even come out until after release and the outrage over it would have been a lot less.
Geek Bravado | Twitter | YouTube | Twitch
(Argh, I wrote this out once, and I think my submit failed.)
Thanks for the reminder to join the Steam group -- I would love an invite (Cyranix). I haven't been diligently visiting the GWJ boards but will probably start to.
I'm a pretty regular TF2 player with Quarter to Three (we play Friday nights as well), and there was talk at one point of a throwdown between GWJ and QT3. Is there interest in such a shindig? Does this need to be brought up in a different thread?
Steam: Cyranix | Battle.net: Cyranix#1687 (NA)
[derailing thread over to my interests for a minute]
Hey podcast crew, thanks for the lengthy response to my lengthy email about D&D Interactive. I think you covered all the main topics I talked about, and agree with the points you made about open betas being dangerous for the product.
I guess what bothers me the most is that WoTC specifically ruled out using 4th edition rules in virtual applications in their 4th ed GPL (the GPL is the 4th ed version of the open gaming license they were using for D20 before). This establishes that companies like Smiteworks (the FGII publishers) can't ever set up an official set of 4th ed rules, monsters, or powers.
This differs from the D20 approach - under the D20 SRD, virtual applications were allowed to use the official rules in their products.
This change is a deliberate step in order to preserve competitive advantage against Smiteworks and other VT companies, so that when the D&DI toolset comes out, it will be the only one with the 'official rules' attached. This is a real pity from a fan's standpoint - the strength of the D20 arrangement was that more publishers used it because it was open to all. Closing off accessibility to 4th ed rules for other VT publishers means there will be fewer VT products I can use if I want to play 4th ed.
Possibly where this is going is yet another discussion of 'well, the shareholders wouldn't like it if we did it differently.' There's a serious problem in the US marketplace, a confusion between long-term and short-term shareholder value, and actions like this tend to demonstrate that too many large US companies just don't 'get it.' If Hasbro did everything they could to pave the way for FGII to do well, in the long run, it would be good for D&DI. Official D&D products will always have name recognition, better capacity for funding and features, and similar advantages on their side. A D&DI product that is better than FGII will do better than FGII by a factor of ten - if you increase the number of people exposed to FGII, you're increasing the size of the potential audience for D&DI.
In any case, back to the software I'm using:
One thing aside from the lack of official 4th ed stuff that I really don't like about Fantasy Grounds II is the need to upload / download everything from my computer and my crummy DSL connection. I would pay them 10 bucks a month if they'd let me use a server space so players could get maps and rulesets I upload without having to get them directly off my computer... plus it feels like an enormous security hole the way they're doing it right now.
Anyway great podcast and thanks for the response.
[/derail over, go back to your regularly scheduled piracy/DRM conversation.]
I'm one of the few people you'll meet who've written more books than they've read.
You can post your Steam ID link in this thread for an invite.
TF2 challenges should go in the Official TF2 thread.
Fixed.
I wish you guys would stop encouraging him.
EvilHomer3k wrote:You are an evil, evil person.
Baron Of Hell wrote:YOU VILLAIN!
Visit our mighty TF2 thread (http://www.gamerswithjobs.com/node/3...) and issue your challenge. I think you will find the response to the idea of a QT3 vs GWJ match to be very well received ideed.
The thing about smart people is they seem like crazy people to dumb people -- Thing I saw on the Internet
That seems like a good balance, not trying to hide gaming from the students, but letting them know that it doesn't mean you're a pushover. Every semester or so we set up Rock Band in the auditorium and have a battle of the bands for the kids. This is one time when the Rock Band strobe light and fog addon pack would actually be pretty cool.
Dude, your D&D campaign sounds sweet. Anything with sarcophagi is great in my book (I just wanted to use the word sarcophagi). Phoenetically, the word sarcophagus has the sound "phag" in it, with no end of ridicule on XBL
You're welcome to join us - my game is full up, but there will be others.
And sorry the people on XBL are jerks, I have a PS3 which means I have no friends, don't know which is worse
I'm one of the few people you'll meet who've written more books than they've read.
Great show as per usual, and while I feel for Rob having to edit it - I really do prefer them longer (oh hang on maybe I should reword that... nah, no one will take that out of context I'm sure).
On the DRM/SecureROM argument - to be honest I don't give two hoots. I go out I buy a PC game, I go home I install and then I play it. If anything gets in the way of that process, then that's when we'll have words (I'm looking at you EA and your non-working BF 1942 that I still can't get to work and your less than useless customer service that couldn't give a flying... well you get the idea)! Also if by installing your game it screws with anything else on my PC to the point of making it fail or crash then I'll probably not buy anything from that publisher for a while (I did end up buying X3 once I'd learned that they'd patched Starforce protection out of the game). What I think should be done is that any DRM technology that is on the disc should be CLEARLY labled on the box. I want to look at the systems specs and see down the bottom exactly which DRM tech was used so that I can make an informed purchasing decision. I don't want to find out when I get home and try to install. Most AAA titles I can find out ahead of time, but what if I'm in the store and looking at an impulse buy or no one online bothered to inlcude the DRM used in the preview material?
I've also recently jumped back into EQII, I got AoC at launch and within a week was over it (before any fanboi's tear me a new one - its just not for me, didn't hate it, it just offered me nothing that was really interesting after the first few days) but I had emails letting me know that my EQ, EQII and Vanguard accounts were freely available till end of July. So I thought "what the hell", and re-installed them. I enjoyed the new starting area in EQII so much that I've since resubbed. I wont talk about my experiences with Vanguard as I realise I'd have no friends here (oh ok, I've been enjoying it too *winces in anticipation of flames*) but I think SOE were very clever to offer this deal during the early days of AoC, as most of my friends have now tired of AoC and are looking for where to go next - guess where most of them have ended up?
I'd like to add my voice to the request for recorded D&D sessions from you guys. The reason the Penny Arcade guys one was good was both a combination of the fact that the games were run with the 'listener' in mind (lots of extra descriptions) plus the great voice/personalities of the players. You guys have the second part in spades so the recording should be a fun listen.
Mind you I get a bit tired of all the D&D love, what about the new Traveller rules that came out from Mongoose? What about some of the cool new games and indy RPGs like Cthulhutech or Sufficiently Advanced. I understand that most players wont go out of their comfort zone but I expected better of you all really (*removes tongue from cheek*)
The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit. - W. Somerset Maugham
thanks kingmob, but i'm not sold on the whole digital D&D thing yet. maybe once local games dry up, I'll give it a try.
Cyranix is a swell chap...I vouch for him. Welcome aboard, mate!
Hi! The Gears and Beers thread is over here -- the war effort always needs fresh meat:
http://www.gamerswithjobs.com/node/3...
The basic procedure is to friend up the "GWJ Gears Clan" gamertag, and then be online when things are happening, which is usually from about 9-10PM EDT onwards. We spam everyone on the clan list with invites when we're first getting a room together, so if you're around, you should get in without a problem. Otherwise, send a message asking for an invite to someone who's in the game. Most nights the room fills up quickly and there can be a bit of a waiting list after that, but lately we've had two rooms running, so with any luck you'll find your way in somewhere.
Oh, and grab the DLC now The Gears DLC maps are all free now, and we do play them, so it's best to make sure you have them before jumping in.
XBL: pneuman | PSN: pneuman | music | blog | twitter
Pages