Aircross said:
Really glad to hear people other than me saying this for onceWenseph said:
Unfortunate but inevitable consequence of what needs to be doneuchytjes said:
Jimquisition: SimShitty
- Thread starter Jimothy Sterling
- Start date
People have been saying that the video games industry has been headed for a crash for years. They usually would bring up the problem of video games being mostly derivative and repetitive garbage. I'd usually remain skeptical of these claims, but as DRM and companies blatently punishing the consumer becomes more and more of the focus, I can't help but agree.
I used to like ubisoft games, but I made a single purchase of a game that required constant internet connection, and vowed never to do it again. The fucking thing didn't work. I could love the shit out of a game, but if I can't play it, why bother? I didn't boycott EA because it destroys companies and makes otherwise good games shittier than they should be. I decided to stop buying their shit because I don't have a guarantee that I'll be able to play it. Now, despite having practically worshiped Bungie throughout my childhood, I'm actually thinking about not getting Destiny because of the always on requirement. Most gamers have been sheltered from this by their console oasis (with major exceptions, such as psn outage which everyone seems to have already forgotten), but this will be changing very shortly.
People have started talking a lot of shit about valve lately, and some of it is very justified, but is it really that hard to understand why people are so in love with them right now? Despite having beefs with steam, I've never had an issue playing a steam game without an internet connection. The only exception to this is counter strike source, but it's a purely mutliplayer title. Hell, Global Offensive doesn't even require an internet connection, and the only single player option is playing with terrible bots.
There is so much negativity on gaming websites that I'm usually an optimistic and cheery voice, the kind that usually dislikes economically illiterate anti-corporatist rhetoric, so the fact that I just wrote this is more significant than what I just wrote. A lot of the blame for this goes to the shareholders, who seem largely ignorant of gaming and consumer needs and haven't told the big companies to knock this shit off before it became a problem. What they aren't ignorant of is a loss in revenue, which at this point is going to happen. They could have avoided this, but something has to change, or the industry is going to crash. There is no way around it.
I used to like ubisoft games, but I made a single purchase of a game that required constant internet connection, and vowed never to do it again. The fucking thing didn't work. I could love the shit out of a game, but if I can't play it, why bother? I didn't boycott EA because it destroys companies and makes otherwise good games shittier than they should be. I decided to stop buying their shit because I don't have a guarantee that I'll be able to play it. Now, despite having practically worshiped Bungie throughout my childhood, I'm actually thinking about not getting Destiny because of the always on requirement. Most gamers have been sheltered from this by their console oasis (with major exceptions, such as psn outage which everyone seems to have already forgotten), but this will be changing very shortly.
People have started talking a lot of shit about valve lately, and some of it is very justified, but is it really that hard to understand why people are so in love with them right now? Despite having beefs with steam, I've never had an issue playing a steam game without an internet connection. The only exception to this is counter strike source, but it's a purely mutliplayer title. Hell, Global Offensive doesn't even require an internet connection, and the only single player option is playing with terrible bots.
There is so much negativity on gaming websites that I'm usually an optimistic and cheery voice, the kind that usually dislikes economically illiterate anti-corporatist rhetoric, so the fact that I just wrote this is more significant than what I just wrote. A lot of the blame for this goes to the shareholders, who seem largely ignorant of gaming and consumer needs and haven't told the big companies to knock this shit off before it became a problem. What they aren't ignorant of is a loss in revenue, which at this point is going to happen. They could have avoided this, but something has to change, or the industry is going to crash. There is no way around it.
As someone who personally objects to pirating games... I smiled and chuckled at the end of this video.
Awesome video Jim =)
Awesome video Jim =)
What?aegix drakan said:
It's already a hit. And while they might whine about piracy, they're not going to shelve a title that did this well with known launch issues because of it.
Did I hear Jim (indirectly)"suggesting" a pirate copy of this game? (devil)
Actually... Always online DRM is uncrackable... There is no news on Diablo3 for DL... yet...
I am amore of a FPS/Steam user... like I said B4... IF DeadSpace3 gets on STEAM, I'd buy it, twice, for co-op, but if not, single player is fine, because it's NOT that good of a game anyways... as for SimCity, screw it....
Actually... Always online DRM is uncrackable... There is no news on Diablo3 for DL... yet...
I am amore of a FPS/Steam user... like I said B4... IF DeadSpace3 gets on STEAM, I'd buy it, twice, for co-op, but if not, single player is fine, because it's NOT that good of a game anyways... as for SimCity, screw it....
I don't understand.
Why didn't they just take into account the number of pre-orders they were getting, and get a server every time that number passed a certain point? I mean sure, they already have the customer's money, but the trade off is that a good chunk of those customers are going to stop buying their products!
And, who exactly is responsible for this thing anyways? EA isn't a giant monstrosity that dips it's claws into a bunch of developers and makes them dance like puppets. It's comprised of people all trying to put something out there, and receive a profit. But not everyone there can be a money grubbing monster, right? So, who was the person, or people, responsible for the decision to make the game have always online DRM? Was it someone at Maxis? Was it the people in charge of watching Maxis?
It doesn't make any sense to me.
Why didn't they just take into account the number of pre-orders they were getting, and get a server every time that number passed a certain point? I mean sure, they already have the customer's money, but the trade off is that a good chunk of those customers are going to stop buying their products!
And, who exactly is responsible for this thing anyways? EA isn't a giant monstrosity that dips it's claws into a bunch of developers and makes them dance like puppets. It's comprised of people all trying to put something out there, and receive a profit. But not everyone there can be a money grubbing monster, right? So, who was the person, or people, responsible for the decision to make the game have always online DRM? Was it someone at Maxis? Was it the people in charge of watching Maxis?
It doesn't make any sense to me.
There's a lot of talk about a 'crash' and I thought I'd share my two cents.
I subscribe to the "Revolution will not be Televised" theory-that is, the turning point is going to be imperceptable, as collective frustration approaches critical mass. There are a lot of factors beyond the games themselves that play into people buying them, especially the social aspect. But these get weaker with every at-best-lackluster-at-worst-total-garbage release to hit the market.
So what I think we'll see is that EA, Activision, etc. will all be doing the same hat and pony trick with no sign of problems. And then one day, bam! they're burying their latest AAA releases in a landfill.
I subscribe to the "Revolution will not be Televised" theory-that is, the turning point is going to be imperceptable, as collective frustration approaches critical mass. There are a lot of factors beyond the games themselves that play into people buying them, especially the social aspect. But these get weaker with every at-best-lackluster-at-worst-total-garbage release to hit the market.
So what I think we'll see is that EA, Activision, etc. will all be doing the same hat and pony trick with no sign of problems. And then one day, bam! they're burying their latest AAA releases in a landfill.
and one more reason i really do not buy ea games for a month after launch or just never at all. i gave up on ea after sims 2 copy i had gotten was faulty and they where as much help as the best buy was with the return of a computer game. basically i gave up on them after that even refused to buy any of their junk unless it was really cheap.
This sort of DRM is the solution to "piracy". It's the only truly effective scheme. They take a significant chunk of the game (in this case, the actual town simulation algorithms), and don't actually give it to you in the box. They keep that part on their own servers where they can control it.
No way to 'crack' that. Perfect protection from copying.
No way to 'crack' that. Perfect protection from copying.
Yea but thing is, I wonder how many gamers will eventually figure "well, I can't play it for the first few weeks anyway" may as well wait until I can play it without the DRM.poiumty said:
I did kind of want to play SimCity but I knew this stuff was going to happen, so I didn't buy it.
I haven't really had the hotts for a game that has DRM but I remember struggling when Skyrim came out: knowing that it wasn't going to work properly until they patch it a few times. So, as much as I wanted to play it, I waited. I ended up waiting a while because I had other things to play but by the time I got around to it, it was working and I got it for around $20; don't remember exactly.
What really pisses me off is that Maxis really only went this route because of the Sims 3 pirating debacle.
Remember, Spore was their last foray into this DRM madness and it went -very- poorly for them, culminating in a concession of not adding DRM to S3... Only for it to be pirated at a much faster rate than Spore.
Really though, their assessment of going the opposite route and putting even -more- invasive DRM smacks of a lack of perspective; people didn't pirate Sims 3 for its lack of DRM, they pirated it because the Sims franchise is a blatant money grab.
I'm sorry, I bought the original Sims, I bought every expansion; as a kid, I would dump what little allowance I could get on the series, only for all that investment to be rendered moot come Sims 2. I just stopped at that point, but that doesn't mean they didn't do the same thing for S2 as they did for the original--pump out expansion after expansion.
By Sims 3, people were just fed up, they were ostensibly wasting their money on the franchise, so why even bother buying it anymore? Of course, Maxis interpreted this as a fault on their -fanbase- and not themselves, so instead opted to beleaguer the people still paying them than call themselves on their own fault, it's actually quite sickening when you think about it.
Remember, Spore was their last foray into this DRM madness and it went -very- poorly for them, culminating in a concession of not adding DRM to S3... Only for it to be pirated at a much faster rate than Spore.
Really though, their assessment of going the opposite route and putting even -more- invasive DRM smacks of a lack of perspective; people didn't pirate Sims 3 for its lack of DRM, they pirated it because the Sims franchise is a blatant money grab.
I'm sorry, I bought the original Sims, I bought every expansion; as a kid, I would dump what little allowance I could get on the series, only for all that investment to be rendered moot come Sims 2. I just stopped at that point, but that doesn't mean they didn't do the same thing for S2 as they did for the original--pump out expansion after expansion.
By Sims 3, people were just fed up, they were ostensibly wasting their money on the franchise, so why even bother buying it anymore? Of course, Maxis interpreted this as a fault on their -fanbase- and not themselves, so instead opted to beleaguer the people still paying them than call themselves on their own fault, it's actually quite sickening when you think about it.
Every programmer worth their salary knows, that whatever you code up, you must not rely on any kind of network connection whatsoever, for obvious reasons. You have to actively build in safety measures to minimize the risk of any data loss.
It doesn't surprise me that marketing / upper management doesn't get that though. So an always-on requirement makes perfectly sense, right?
But yeah, the best thing you can do is to delay your purchase until the first dust has settled. The major bugs will have been fixed within a couple of weeks, and being a PC game, you may even be able to get it a little bit cheaper than at release.
It doesn't surprise me that marketing / upper management doesn't get that though. So an always-on requirement makes perfectly sense, right?
But yeah, the best thing you can do is to delay your purchase until the first dust has settled. The major bugs will have been fixed within a couple of weeks, and being a PC game, you may even be able to get it a little bit cheaper than at release.
I don't see how waiting two weeks would be important. The first two weeks is what matters to the publisher NOW but if a large portion of people reliably hold off on always-online games than they'll start caring about the rest of the month for those games.
Is there anyone who's surprised by what's in this video?
I knew long before it launched that this would happen, and that it's not going to be worth the money as a result. I didn't need to buy it first to find that out.
Did anyone not know that? For real? And if you knew it and bought the game anyway, why? And why ***** about it? You got exactly what you expected to get. Don't act ripped off. You can complain about how retarded EA is for throwing away their business like this, but you can't legitimately complain that you feel ripped off.
I knew long before it launched that this would happen, and that it's not going to be worth the money as a result. I didn't need to buy it first to find that out.
Did anyone not know that? For real? And if you knew it and bought the game anyway, why? And why ***** about it? You got exactly what you expected to get. Don't act ripped off. You can complain about how retarded EA is for throwing away their business like this, but you can't legitimately complain that you feel ripped off.
Wow... so it does work offline and they aren't going to let people play offline? I was under the impression the design of the game itself made it dependent on server side software, but not like some kind of timed bomb going off that forces people off the game if they aren't connected. At least the popcorn festival continues unabated.Airon said:
It's not just that the DRM fuck with you being able to play the game. It also utterly destroyed the mechanics of the game. Now because of this server side DRM there is a huge lag between your cities and cities are completely unable to cooperate.
So basically the entire justification of having this DRM, the MP, is fucked up the ass because the DRM makes the MP unplayable. It will take up to 10-20 minutes for one change to register, if it registers at all, and cities are completely incapable of communicating beyond basic things like power, water and sewage.
Good job EA AND Maxis. Screwed the pooch on that one.
So basically the entire justification of having this DRM, the MP, is fucked up the ass because the DRM makes the MP unplayable. It will take up to 10-20 minutes for one change to register, if it registers at all, and cities are completely incapable of communicating beyond basic things like power, water and sewage.
Good job EA AND Maxis. Screwed the pooch on that one.
I knew this was going to be a good video. Nice work Jim.
Honestly, I feel I've been ignorant about judging what so many people like. I didn't know so many people were interested in Sim City. I hope the game (or rather its infrastructure) improves over the next few weeks so people can enjoy it.
But I have to agree with Jim, if we really want to stick it to these publishers we should just wait a few weeks before getting our hands on the new titles. Maybe revisit the old steam library while we wait? Two weeks really isn't that long anyway.
Honestly, I feel I've been ignorant about judging what so many people like. I didn't know so many people were interested in Sim City. I hope the game (or rather its infrastructure) improves over the next few weeks so people can enjoy it.
But I have to agree with Jim, if we really want to stick it to these publishers we should just wait a few weeks before getting our hands on the new titles. Maybe revisit the old steam library while we wait? Two weeks really isn't that long anyway.