And the first public salvo in the Net Neutrality war has been fired (updated)

By Matt | December 29, 2008

 

Just a quick update here while I’m essentially on vacation. The first public shot has been fired by the bad guys. And it’s a doozy:

Web-based e-mail users can continue to access their e-mail at the Verizon Web site until Feb. 6. After that date, Fastiggi said users will need to log on to www.MyFairPoint.net. Customers then click on Web mail and type in their existing user name@myfairpoint.net and existing password.

AOL, Yahoo! and MSN subscribers will continue to have access to content but will no longer be able to access their e-mail through the third party Web site. Instead, Yahoo! and other third party e-mail will be accessed directly at the MyFairPoint.net portal.

Emphasis is mine. And the omg I’m saying in my head is mine too.

God damn fuckers. I don’t know what to do about this other than to share the info with others, but damn if this isn’t the first step in a really bad direction.

I do not want to have to check my ISP to see which pages/sites/content they allow, etc. That’s opposite of what the internet is supposed to be.

 

What Would Matt Do: I’ll continue to be awesome…and wonder if a DOS isn’t called for. For months. I do not want to be telling my kids that back in my day anyone used to be able to go anywhere on the internet and now, well, comcast decides which sites we can see today.

update: Maybe just a confusing press release? That would be MUCH better.

Posted in Big Business, Bullshit, Links, PC | Leave a comment

D&D 4.0 Geekgasm

By Matt | December 18, 2008

 

I don’t normally gush on this site about anything, but if there was a game of D&D I would have wanted to play in, this would be the game:

Last week, I spent an entire day playing Dungeons & Dragons Fourth Edition with some of my friends. Big whoop, you say. So did I. Ah, but I played in Seattle. With Gabe and Tycho from Penny-Arcade. And Scott Kurtz from PVP. And, to really twist the +3 dagger in your back, our DM was Chris Perkins from Wizards of the Coast, who made an adventure specifically for us to play. For the crushed peanuts and maraschino cherry topping on this sundae of HAWESOME, I got to play a class from the unreleased Player’s Handbook 2. We recorded the entire session for a podcast, which will be released early next year.

Yeah, fuck them all for not inviting me. Am I an animal of some sort? A beast to be ignored? I think not! I am…well, I’m just some random guy on the internet full of random guys, but still I am pretty awesome…

I don’t even really have anything to say here, except if you guys need another, I’m free and I will bring supplies for the group. I’ll even say it’s because I care, but really it’s to butter up the DM. I’m sneaky like that.

Wil, call me. /me makes hand phone pantomime.

 

What Would Matt Do: You know what I’d really like to do? Play some damn D&D 4.0 already. My group wasn’t interested, then there was a fallout and now I’m splintered off playing with another group…who doesn’t have any 4.0 books and really doesn’t want to play it. Woe is me!

Posted in Bullshit, Drivel, Gaming, Links, Pen and Paper | 2 Comments

I see NPD Numbers

By Matt | December 17, 2008

 

Well, I see NPD numbers that Gamasutra saw. Here’s the interesting parts:

To be exact, numbers cross-platform are: Madden NFL 09 sold 3.9 million, Burnout Paradise sold 592,000, Dead Space sold 421,000, and Mirror’s Edge sold 145,000.

Wow. I knew that Dead Space and Mirror’s Edge weren’t successes for EA, but I didn’t realize that the latter was so poorly sold.

Ok, so those are sales numbers for EA. Big whoop. Here’s where I get a little less happy…when people start to think like this:

How sad. These games definitely deserved to sell more.
And I sure hope this won’t result in cancellation of these series or that innovative games are a thing of past.

That’s the first comment on the Gamasutra article. I’m not singling out that guy, but the sentiment. I’ve seen it all over in the debate on Mirror’s Edge and how good it was and how it should be rated and so on. As a matter of fact, some big name journalists recently said the same thing.

That’s just crap. If the games had been better, they might have sold better. I can’t tell you one thing about Dead Space other than it’s apparently very messy and is a horror game. Not really my bag and no one I talked that played it said it was a must play. But Mirror’s Edge… Yeah, they tried, but it was broken. It didn’t flow right, it didn’t feel right and even though some of the stuff was cool, for most people it was just an effort in futility. Plus, it’s a new game in a recession without anything to bring in the Big Guns Big Breasts™ guys.

Whatever the reasons it didn’t sell to well, it doesn’t matter… Because EA has already said they are going to back their old ways. Except well, they never really left them. Spinning your story for less than a year doesn’t count for leaving your old ways behind. Especially when at the first sign of not huge success, you turn around and run the other way.

All of that aside… The next person that says this game or that game deserved better reviews or sales gets a fucking smack. Games don’t deserve shit. They either sell well or they don’t. They earn their way by good design, good marketing and good execution. Usually.

These are my rules for purchasing games:

1) We don’t give charity lays. Really. We don’t buy games because they should have been good or we really like the developer. The game is either worth buying or not.

2) We don’t, at any point, believe anything EA says until they start telling us the truth at least part of the time. Look at John R, the CEO. He says he hates DRM…this from the company that released the most pirated game ever (since people started paying attention), due in at least some part to the draconian DRM measure on it (it being Spore). So when buying an EA game, we need to be doubly sure it isn’t poop.

3) We don’t buy Epic Games. Much like we don’t support Nike because they employ children to work for them (is that still true?), we don’t buy from people who complain about not making enough money off the secondary market on one hand while raking in TENS of MILLIONS with the other. From one game.

 

Maybe I’m being a jackass here, but I couldn’t give a shit of EA succeeds or fails. They don’t watch out for me, I don’t watch out for them. I hope every single employee at EA is happy or finds another job if they are let go, but EA as a company is waring with me, the customer. How much care should I put into their financial difficulties? Zero.

 

What Would Matt Do: I’ll buy the games that are good and I won’t buy the ones that suck. Plain and simple. And I won’t buy from Epic. Seems like simple enough rules. For a company that we can have sympathy for, we turn to Troy Goodfellow and his piece on Ensemble. Good read so far.

Posted in Bullshit, Consoles, Drivel, Gaming, Links, PC | Leave a comment

Video games, they do an old guy good.

By Matt | December 15, 2008

 

(as seen on /.)

Maybe not quite the good your dirty mind is thinking, but it turns out that playing an RTS game like Rise of Nations improves all kind of things:

Both groups were assessed before, during and after the video-game training on a variety of tests designed to measure executive control functions. The tests included measures of their ability to switch between tasks, their short-term visual memory, their reasoning skills and their working memory, which is the ability to hold two or more pieces of information in memory and use the information as needed. There were also tests of the subjects’ verbal recall, their ability to inhibit certain responses and their ability to identify an object that had been rotated to a greater or lesser degree from its original position.

The researchers found that training on the video game did improve the participants’ performance on a number of these tests. As a group, the gamers became significantly better – and faster – at switching between tasks compared with the comparison group. Their working memory, as reflected in the tests, also was significantly improved. Their reasoning ability was enhanced. To a lesser extent, their short-term memory of visual cues was better than that of their peers, as was their ability to identify rotated objects.

So doing basic RTS tasks, because that’s basically what they describe, really helps you with short term memory, multitasking and reasoning. I love it. That must mean I’m a god among non game players…

 

Also, a quick to note to Sony, at least someone still loves you, factual data be damned.

 

What Would Matt Do: I’m going to keep playing RTSes my entire life. I can’t way to win Ender’s Game when the time comes.

 

Posted in Drivel, Gaming, Links, PC | Leave a comment

This is just the start

By Matt | December 11, 2008

 

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. This is just the start:

Sony Online Entertainment has rolled out a system which allows the exchange of real money for items used in the game. Sony is making use of a transaction system called Station Cash which charges your credit card in exchange for a virtual currency which is then spendable on the items. Massively has a walkthrough of how it will work, and shows some of the items up for sale, including vanity armor, non-combat pets, and potions that make various aspects of your character better. "Each of these types of flasks comes in a tier. Tier I flasks increase XP by 10% and cost $1.00. Tier II flasks increase XP by 25% and cost $5.00. Tier III flasks increase XP by 50%, and cost $10.00 each. All flask tiers last for 4 hours on use, and more than one can’t be used at a time."

I don’t know if I called here, but I’ve been saying this has to happen for awhile now. There is just too much money involved in a company selling in game items to the player base for it not to happen. As a matter of fact, I’m surprised it took this long.

I don’t know if EQ or EQ2 still count at the big boys in the MMO game, but they aren’t the only ones going to other ways to squeeze money from their players. Rumor has it that Star Wars: The Old Republic will be going with micro transactions:

To end a somewhat surprisingly eventful day for the RMT and microtrasaction model, EA has announced that Star Wars: The Old Republic will not be subscription-based. Instead, the title will be gain revenue from a microtransactional model. Shacknews reports this surprising tidbit from a conference call held by the mega-publisher earlier today. Said CEO John Riccitiello, "The Star Wars online MMO [is a] mid-session game, microtransaction-based. You’ll be hearing more about those in the February [conference] call." According to the game news site, "Mid-session" is a term that EA uses synonymously with microtransaction-supported titles. This fits effortlessly into EA’s portfolio alongside games like Warhammer Online and the DICE title Battlefield Online.

Now when I say rumor has it, I mean, they won’t confirm it, but it’s probably extremely true. Either way, it’s a sign of things to come. It doesn’t make any sense for companies to charge a monthly $15 when they can get a LOT more from people up front, before they get bored of the game, with micro transaction like methods.

I do agree with Lum in that it’s not really appropriate for a monthly pay based MMO, but idiocy and sillyness hasn’t stopped EA or Sony yet, why assume it will now?

I don’t know if it will work long term, but if you look at the money, the money says get all you can out of the consumer on the front end instead of charging them monthly fee over the long term. I could create some nifty chart thing here, but I think you get my flow.

The next step? Virtual currency will start to gain actual value. It already has actually, but it’ll gain it legit from the companies running the games. Then it’ll gain rights and legality from the government. Then, when things like this happen, companies are going to be liable. It’s a guarantee.

Think about it. What’s going to happen when a company like SOE (the EQ guys), or SOE themselves, start selling in game money/items that aren’t just pretty and buffed up? People will buy them. Then, when a system crash happens or a bug or a hack or an exploit or whatever comes along and fucks with the money they have spent, people are going to sue. Fuck the EULA, they won’t stand up in an actual court. These people that get screwed out of thousands or more will lawyer up and claim all kinds of damages. And sooner or later, one of the cases will be a winner and in-game currency will start to have legal standing.

It’s going to be interesting and ever evolving, but if you don’t think it’s going to happen, you’re kidding yourself.

Companies will have to back up their in game currency with actual currency, have to follow new rules and regulations that congress will impose on them and people will be able to use access their bank accounts directly from within whatever game they are playing. It will most likely take years yet, but it’s going to be fucked up and highly interesting. I can’t wait.

 

What Would Matt Do: Were I a company considering doing the full sha bang, I’d double check all of my laywers AND review all of my code. You’re going to get sued. You’d better have the logs and lawyers to defend yourself.

Posted in Drivel, Gaming, Links, MMO, PC | Leave a comment