NEWER POSTS

Spore: Rejected

By Shamus Posted Monday Sep 8, 2008

Filed under: Rants 77 comments
See Next Month's Minimum RequirementsPrevious Post
Next PostTreacherous Computing

Of the current 158 customer reviews of Spore on Amazon.com, 134 are single-star reviews, most of which fault the game for its DRM.

See also here and here – apparently there have been problems with the activation servers.

I don’t fault folks like Strangeite, who picked up the game in spite of this idiocy. There are so few new ideas coming to us these days that it’s exceedingly difficult to just let something like this pass you by.

While a game with this much hype behind it can’t really flop, it can sell less than expected. But if that happens EA might just conclude that people don’t want new things and that they should go back to making more cookie-cutter graphics demos. Or they’ll just blame pirates. If the game sells they will either learn that we accept this sort of DRM, and if it doesn’t they’ll learn that we fear new ideas. Buy the game or don’t: There is no way your choice can push EA in a positive direction. No matter how things go, they are going to take home all the wrong lessons from this.

I take no joy in any of this. It’s such a massive, stupid waste of potential.

 

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

See Next Month's Minimum RequirementsPrevious Post
Next PostTreacherous Computing

77 comments

 

DMotR B-day

By Shamus Posted Sunday Sep 7, 2008

Filed under: Notices 39 comments
Spore Leaked?Previous Post
Next PostSite Reorganization

Has it really been a year since my first webcomic ended? (Which was exactly a year after it started.) Apparently it has.

Note that Darths & Droids is running like clockwork. To my knowledge, they haven’t missed a single installment. (I think I missed six or so during the run of DMotR.) My comic covered 3 movies and ran for 144 episodes. By episode 144 of Darths & Droids they were only mid-way through the first of six movies. Whew.

To the Comic Irregulars: I hope you guys love making these things, because according to the navicomputer you’re going to make over 1,700 of them before Darths & Droids ends its twelve-year run!

I love the internet.

 

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

Spore Leaked?Previous Post
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39 comments

 

Royksopp: Remind Me

By Shamus Posted Saturday Sep 6, 2008

Filed under: Movies 40 comments
An anthropological introduction to YouTubePrevious Post
Next PostStarcraft Units

One of the best music videos I’ve ever experienced came to me as a completely random YouTube find:

I’ve watched it several times, and I know there are many details I’m still missing. I wish there was a higher resolution version available.

 

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

An anthropological introduction to YouTubePrevious Post
Next PostStarcraft Units

40 comments

 

The Golden Age of PC Gaming

By Shamus Posted Friday Sep 5, 2008

Filed under: Column 185 comments
Stolen Pixels #18:Diving BoredPrevious Post
Next PostStolen Pixels #19:Assassin's Greed

In my earlier rant against the current-gen Frankenstein graphics cards, a couple of people were quick to point out that while modern-day system-specs are indeed impenetrable to most people, the good old days of PC gaming weren’t much better. In the early 90’s, we had to fiddle around with config.sys and autoexec.bat to get games to work, make special boot disks, and know what freaking port and IRQ thingjigger our soundcard was hooked into. It was appalling.

She's not a 10,000 polygon bump-mapped model, but Cate Archer of No One Lives Forever 2 manages to look pretty dang good. Okay, her outfit is over-the-top, but that's the fault of the 60's spy movie heroines she's sending up, not the graphics engine.
She's not a 10,000 polygon bump-mapped model, but Cate Archer of No One Lives Forever 2 manages to look pretty dang good. Okay, her outfit is over-the-top, but that's the fault of the 60's spy movie heroines she's sending up, not the graphics engine.

Those were the rough and tumble years before the new technology settled into place and was packaged and distilled for the average consumer. PC Gaming was a niche back then. And as much as I hate to say it, I think Windows was good for PC Gaming. It handled that stupid memory management / soundcard nonsense and gave developers a “stable” platform on which to build. Once you’ve paid the overhead in memory and performance, having an operating system there is actually pretty nice. It eventually made it possible for non-technical people to play some PC games.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “The Golden Age of PC Gaming”

 

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

Stolen Pixels #18:Diving BoredPrevious Post
Next PostStolen Pixels #19:Assassin's Greed

185 comments

 

Stolen Pixels #18:Diving Bored

By Shamus Posted Friday Sep 5, 2008

Filed under: Column 0 comments
Stolen Pixels #17:Bill of LimitationsPrevious Post
Next PostThe Golden Age of PC Gaming

I didn’t really give Assassin’s Creed the attention it deserves the last time, so we’ve come back to it. Go ye therefore and read it.

 

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

Stolen Pixels #17:Bill of LimitationsPrevious Post
Next PostThe Golden Age of PC Gaming

0 comments

 

An anthropological introduction to YouTube

By Shamus Posted Thursday Sep 4, 2008

Filed under: Movies 39 comments
Don LaFontainePrevious Post
Next PostRoyksopp: Remind Me

I’ve been reposting YouTube in lieu of substantive writing for a while now, and I’m starting to wonder how long you’re going to let me get away with it.

Today’s lack of meaningful posts is entirely the fault Rustybadger, who left a comment yesterday with a link to the following:

It’s almost an hour long, but well worth the time. I found it to be deeply compelling. It’s a presentation by anthropologist Mike Wesch before the Library of Congress. (Mike Wesch is also the guy behind the now-famous Web 2.0 video, which is less about technology and more about how people use it.) It’s a discussion on both the culture of YouTube and YouTube’s effect on the culture.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “An anthropological introduction to YouTube”

 

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

Don LaFontainePrevious Post
Next PostRoyksopp: Remind Me

39 comments

 

See Next Month’s Minimum Requirements

By Shamus Posted Wednesday Sep 3, 2008

Filed under: Rants 74 comments
Mike vs. BJ SheaPrevious Post
Next PostSpore: Rejected

The dire fate I predicted here is coming to pass:

It’s a new graphics card from NVIDIA. Let’s see:

  1. It takes up the space of 2 internal expansion slots. So, you’ll need to use up a PCIe slot, and one beside it.
  2. It’s numbered all crazy. There’s little new technology or functionality. It’s actually an 8800 series chipset with some different tweaks to the production and clocking, but they renumbered it as 9800.
  3. It’s designed to be used in conjunction with additional cards, so you could put two of these things together. (Assuming you have room for a couple of these space heaters in your computer case.)

I can’t wait until game developers have to list this stuff on the side of the box. We already have stuff like this: Continue reading ⟩⟩ “See Next Month’s Minimum Requirements”

 

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

Mike vs. BJ SheaPrevious Post
Next PostSpore: Rejected

74 comments

 
OLDER POSTS
From The Archives:

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What is Vulkan?

There's a new graphics API in town. What does that mean, and why do we need it?

 

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Games and the Fear of Death

Why killing you might be the least scary thing a game can do.

 

Dead or Alive 5 Last Round

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A Lack of Vision and Leadership

People fault EA for being greedy, but their real sin is just how terrible they are at it.

 

Dead Island

A stream-of-gameplay review of Dead Island. This game is a cavalcade of bugs and bad design choices.

 

Blistering Stupidity of Fallout 3

Yeah, this game is a classic. But the story is idiotic, incoherent, thematically confused, and patronizing.