Archive for January, 2007
Monday, January 15th, 2007
Many of you may already be aware that Valve are putting a lot of in-game adverts into Counter Strike 1.6 – the older but by far the most popular version of CS.
The vast majority of CS servers are run by players and people who have nothing to do with Valve. These people pay for servers for people to play Valve’s game, so Valve don’t have to. And now they will also have to host adverts, for which only Valve will get money.
That sounds pretty bad to me.
Servers are not cheap – I should know, I have to pay for the official Determinance ones. Every person who hosts games for us does us a huge favour, and I plan on rewarding people who run good servers.
I don’t plan on spitting in their face and effectively making money off them.
Valve do have to pay for the master servers and all the Valve servers. The master server when you have so many games really is negligable, and as far as Steam goes: I don’t think anyone asked for CS 1.6 to be put on Steam in the first place, I certainly don’t think they view it as a good thing.
I’m not especially close to this issue however, and there may be sides to this issue I don’t understand, so if I’m misrepresenting anything please let me know.
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Sunday, January 14th, 2007
On my way back from Electronics Boutique today – having bought Commandos: Strike Force and Marc Ecko’s Contents Under Pressure for a total of £8 – I was approached by two twelve-year-olds. They tried to buy the following age-restricted items from me:
- Cigarretes
- Marc Ecko’s Contents Under Pressure
I’m not kidding. (And I don’t smoke).
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Saturday, January 13th, 2007
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Saturday, January 13th, 2007
Once Upon A Time is a 4 player MP title which I like a lot because I think it’s the right size for a first title.
This interview with the devs is worth reading.
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Thursday, January 11th, 2007
We’re almost at code freeze. Quite possibly tomorrow. Big stuff.
I don’t have much else to say, just been fixing bugs all week.
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Thursday, January 11th, 2007
The USC Media Division’s retraction of their sponsorship of Slamdance is very interesting. That’s one of the most insightful pieces of text I’ve read by someone not deeply involved in indie gaming.
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Wednesday, January 10th, 2007
… act most likely to wake the fuck up your stupid lazy good for nothing cat.
Scooter FTW.
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Wednesday, January 10th, 2007
Awesome casual game Zong by the wonderous Starvanger is now associated with Determinance. We’ll be linking to this on the main page shortly but for now go play it!
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Wednesday, January 10th, 2007
Yeah, I think that worked.
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Wednesday, January 10th, 2007
We sent an old Determinance beta to Slamdance, and they politely told us we weren’t selected because they couldn’t work out how to play it. We’ve dealt with that issue, or at least tried to.
But now they’re getting one ass-load of press due to them removing Super Columbine Massacre RPG from their festival. After they invitied the game to contend to start with.
I haven’t played SCMRPG, although I did read this review of it. The review made it sound incredibly interesting.
As far as the morality of making the game goes, I don’t have a problem with it. It’s a guy making a piece of art based on the memory of a tragic event and I sincerely hope that the people seriously affected by Columbine never have to hear of it. But I don’t believe in censure of an internet-distributed product on those lines. (I don’t like all the 9/11 films because it’s too soon and they’re more about profit than expression, but I don’t think they are morally wrong either really.)
As for Slamdance pulling it… well, I think they helped our industry avoid another massive Daily Mail GAMES ARE EVIL headline. But it’s once again diverted everyone’s attention from what indie games festivals should be about. I think that using shock tactics like that in a game is obviously a valid form of art. But I’m all about indie games being good because they’re fun and atmospheric and original and lasting. That’s what I want a festival to be judged on right now. Films can be judged on how shocking they are, I’d like games to be rated by more fundamental stuff at this stage in their development.
By pulling SCMRPG Slamdance have put all the attention on that game and taken it away from the other entrants, whose only recourse is to withdraw and get a Joystiq post about them.
A joystiq post about them withdrawing, not about their merits as a game.
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