Visiting the Village: Episode 40
This week, Paul and Ian discuss the trials and tribulations of EA, the shutting down of Xbox support on Xbox Live, the sexuality of Commander Shepard and other vital issues of the day!
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15 Responses to “Visiting the Village: Episode 40”
§ February 15th, 2010 at 7:39 pm
@PSN and charging:
And lemme guess, charging for the service makes it better because … ?
Or do you really think that the money will go back in PSN? Me thinks not.
Paul, I’m with you on making the transition to a payed service.
@EA and DLC:
It seems to be an approach to handle second hand games. They also have a ’10 dollars’ project also targetting the same thing.
Thing is, forcing DLC … tomorrow you’ll then get the entire game through download … do you think EA is trying to reinvent Steam?
If so, EA is soooo very late to the party …
@MSFT and Xbox:
Dunno, the 360 sold fairly well. I think it is just about not wanting to be bothered with supporting the old platform.
@US Army and XBox360:
It could also be that MSFT would end up embarassing itself by selling products that have a pretty high chance of failing. I say MSFT also wants to avoid another Red Ring of Death situation blowing up in public.
§ February 15th, 2010 at 8:22 pm
Ian is totally right about Bioware’s comments. I don’t know why they didn’t suggest that your team mates in the game were ‘defined characters with certain world views’, because then they could easily argue the male members were designed not gay, and Shepard of course could just abstain from the ladiez. Minefield avoided.
Um. DAVID BOCKHAM.
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. Bioshock SUCKED. I cant imagine making it worse as the plot was so thin and predictable. However, I think the critical and fan whirlwind has made the Rapture setting more viable than originally envisaged, so while the plot might seem to be looking for holes to fill that aren’t there, that’s likely exactly what the devs set out to do with it.
Linkin park. CRIKEY.
§ February 16th, 2010 at 10:15 am
Herr Alien – always a pleasure!
- PSN
Well…money will go back into it if they suddenly generate a LOT more revenue from it. Which they might.
- EA and DLC
I think they’re just trying to exert some control over the market – 2nd hand and piracy ARE big areas which create a lack of control – it makes sense to fight back to some extent. Making cheap games that people like and DLC that they want to download is among the better strategies – the problem is that a lot of publishers have tried to do those things in a token way and it hasn’t been effective.
- MSFT and XBOX
Exactly. This is an issue which matters a great deal to some people. The question is, “How much do those people matter?” I was discussing this with someone else and wondered about the effects: I think this might cause people to EXPECT that servers on games will be shut down after a while, and “not ever shutting the server down” will be a thing that more niche games start to use as a marketing bullet-point.
- Army
You think…they didn’t want to sell to the army because of the RROD – amazing! I think they were so in denial about the RROD for so long that it wouldn’t have affected their decision.
—
Malakian!
I don’t know what to do with your particular Shepard suggestion. Like I said, I’m pleased that this issue actually MATTERS to people in a game now.
I know you hate Bioshock – I found it unplayable because of the screaming and the general nastiness. Ian is thinking of replaying it at some point, having not got on with it initially – I will be interested in the results of this. I don’t think out-and-out hatred is acceptable – it’s clearly more accomplished and ambitious than a very very large number of games, so we must give it respect for that. However, I also wasn’t particularly excited by the setting or the story – I just don’t have the right genes.
§ February 16th, 2010 at 6:24 pm
the thing with bioshock for me is what a complete rehash of system shock 2 it was. It wasn’t wonderful to play compared to other shooters, and the art style had been more effectively implemented in other games (the little cartoons everyone raved about were pretty much lifted right out of fallout). I just dont get it’s ‘good’ usp. I guess the graphics were good…
No? I’m not sure I was very clear in retrospect…Well, the characters are all pre-defined except Shepard. Bioware saying that there’s no opportunity for homosexuality because of the squad members’ already formed world views surely makes more sense than saying ‘shepards world view is fixed’ when you’re making approximately a choice a minute…I have no problem being told an option isn’t there because the character wasn’t written that way; noone complains about a lack of opportunity for some Patrick Stewart-voiced emperor coitus in Oblivion, because the character just isn’t written for that to be an option. The problem with this for me is that you’re ‘writing’ Shepard, essentially, and they’ve argued he’s pre defined. I think if they felt it necessary to justify it they should have just said the characters who are ACTUALLY already pre-defined are straight in the canon rather than, as Ian points out, saying the player can pick to kill people but not to be homosexual. That way instead of writing off a player choice, it’d be more like there being no opportunity for Shepard to have a homosexual relationship IN SPACE.
I never thought I’d end a post with ‘homosexual relationship in space’.
§ February 16th, 2010 at 6:48 pm
its, not it’s. Grammar fail…tough day.
§ February 16th, 2010 at 8:38 pm
@Paul
- another RROD avalanche, this time comming from US Army would be very, very bad. The US Army could publish a very accurate percentage of how many machines failed, debunking the numbers MSFT published.
I mean I see MSFT dismissing the statistics gathered by regular folks. But I can’t see them easily dismissing the hard facts provided by US Army, gathered from a fairly large batch of consoles.
MSFT is in denial, and does a good job at brainwashing. But they’re not that stupid.
-MSFT and XBOX
“‘not ever shutting the server down’ will be a thing that more niche games start to use as a marketing bullet-point.”
That’s interesting. It does sound like a terriffic selling point, but I don’t think I’ll live to see a company maintaining a master server for a game that NOBODY plays or buys.
At one point ALL companies WILL shut down master servers.
What happens now is merely the fact that the player count used as deciding factor wether to keep the servers online or not, that player count, is higher than 0.
What I do expect to happen is that game developers that do want their game to stay alive, will shed some light in their own master server architecture, to allow the community to maintain the MP part of the game.
And to give an example (and bang my own drum while at it):
http://www.moddb.com/mods/avp2-project-savior
§ February 16th, 2010 at 9:28 pm
@Alex
“the thing with bioshock for me is what a complete rehash of system shock 2 it was.”
Yes, and that STILL hasn’t been talked about enough in a non-stupid way. It’s kind of a twisted art deco re-imagining of it…which I think is an interesting project at least.
I think the uniqueness is the art direction – nobody can say that it doesn’t have unique art direction, minor Fallout similarities aside.
“The problem with this for me is that you’re ‘writing’ Shepard, essentially, and they’ve argued he’s pre defined.”
Well I think that’s the problem here – they are saying that you are NOT writing him. They believe different things from you – I don’t think either of you are wrong, particularly. I think that’s how you choose to relate to the experience they’ve presented.
I do think it would be weirder if there were dialogue options to initiate a homosexual encounter but all of the other characters always rebuffed it…in fact that would be both hilarious and offensive in probably equal measure.
@Herr Alien
- RROD
You’re really into your RROD. I’m kind of impressed with how much you’ve thought about this: “Oh, what if THE ARMY published their RROD stats”! I find this amusing. But you are definitely right in some very defined and yet slightly abstract way.
- MSFT and XBOX
“At one point ALL companies WILL shut down master servers.”
Well…well. If we try to sidestep a certain amount of carrying this beyond the pail of common sense, and THEN deal with it, I think that largely depends on what the “master server” is and how difficult it is to maintain. Ian is better on this – I think some “master servers” could quite plausibly be maintained if the number of players was less than, say, 10. But I guess not for a big complex game. Anyway, yes I do see some form of service provision guarantee as being important when things like EVE are launched. We shall see. Maybe those things are protected from it just by dint of sheer player numbers.
I like things that players can take over and run themselves. That is probably a more sensible way forward – like that dude who bought Meridian.
I notice that you addressed almost all of these things later in your post, which I should have read in its entirety before replying, however I am going to excuse myself on the grounds of tiredness. Zzzz…
§ February 17th, 2010 at 1:09 am
I think the most convincing conspiracy theory about the Army rejection I’ve heard is that Microsoft were worried about the extremely low game attach rate.
They wouldn’t be able to recoup the cost of the console by selling software so they’d have to charge at least what the console costs to make and that probably wouldn’t be such an enticing deal for the Army.
The only problem with this theory is that Sony quite happily sold the US Army a load of PS3s when they undoubtably cost even more to make.
§ February 17th, 2010 at 3:57 pm
They probably charged them a higher price than if they’d just gone to Gamestop and ordered them…
§ February 19th, 2010 at 6:29 pm
I was a little suprised the EA online component part of the discussion and the X-Box deactivation didn’t get linked up…
Given EA’s recent predaliction for shutting down support for games, shouldn’t we be now worried about losing the ability to play some of EA’s games at all given this?
§ February 22nd, 2010 at 12:40 am
I thought we did link it up – perhaps not efficiently enough!
“Given EA’s recent predaliction for shutting down support for games, shouldn’t we be now worried about losing the ability to play some of EA’s games at all given this?”
Well yeah, absolutely. Especially if publishers are moving towards server-based “DRM” system – people are definitely losing control of their ability to play games in perpetuity.
§ February 22nd, 2010 at 11:02 am
I think this could help though. I think the population at large will get a LOT more annoyed at the idea of being locked out of single player games than multiplayer games.
§ February 22nd, 2010 at 1:25 pm
That’s definitely true – this is a much more obvious THREAT.
§ February 22nd, 2010 at 3:02 pm
“People are definitely losing control of their ability to play games in perpetuity.”
And that’s good, in the eyes of EA ($$! more sales of new games!).
I mean it’s even better than Microsoft’s “we’re no longer supporting XP”.
To point out the picture, I’ll remain in the OS world. Imagine an OS that will no longer boot if a certain server is no longer online. THAT is the equivalent of EA’s server based DRM (and Ubisoft’s) in terms of operating systems.
§ February 22nd, 2010 at 8:55 pm
The backlash to Ubi’s DRM has been so strong, I’m certain they will have to back down from parts of it a la Starforce.