Fallout 3 over Securom

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"Nothing more frustrating than doing the right thing and being punished for it" - Broken wisdom.

I'm going to post about my experiences with installing and playing the new Bethesda title Fallout 3, not because it's new and not to give any review of the game. I'm going to jot down how I have found myself on the sharp, pointy and ugly end of Securom. Yes that's right, I have found myself in a "I'm that guy" moment where something that normally happens to the other guy, is happening to me. After some surfing around it appears that my particular problem isn't commented on, so here goes.

The story starts a few months ago when I pre-ordered my collectors edition of Fallout 3 at a local EB Games. Yes that is right, I purchased the game, and have the receipt to prove it! Now I also own other Bethesda games and apart from needing the odd patch, I have always had a good experience with their products. On the strength of that, and the promise of a platform saving game, I ponied up the cash and took possession of my new timewaster.

I'm a busy family man, so I finally got some time to install the game at 9:30 last night. After opening and organising the cool goodies in the collectors tin, I threw in the disc and sat back to read the booklet. After the drive spun up, I was shown a Securom message telling me that I had "Disc Imaging Software" and that I wasn't going to be able to install the game.

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PC Gaming in need of saving? Say it ain't so...

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I have made mention of the ailing state of PC Gaming before, but I had decided to drop the subject as my predictions weren't far from the coming reality.  But this week, an article popped up on Digg.com that I couldn't ignore.  Kristen Salvatore, of PC Gamer magazine (and also of the PC Gamer Podcast, where I catch her mostly) dropped an article at Games Radar (their new home, as it seems the PC Gamer Magazine couldn't maintain their own site) with the heading "How you can "save" PC gaming".

I was surprised to find this, as the company line from the Podcast is that PC Gaming is fine and that rumours of its death are greatly exaggerated.  In fact, as a PC Gamer, I have been taking heart from Kristen and the crew's optimism, and they do a good job of addressing the issues on the Podcast.  It is a good listen if you're interested in the industry and also the tech involved with PC Gaming.

But back to the article.  Kristen delivers a short three-part piece, nicely written, with a couple of swanky words to justify all the money spent on her education.  The piece starts by describing the popular version of the state of PC Gaming, and quite eloquently sums up the problems.

Then we see a nice explanation of the whole NPD problem, which seems to be the only measuring stick for PC Sales figures.  Maybe if we just trusted the figures set forward by the 2 or 3 companies making and selling PC Games, we would avoid the whole "low sales" problem.  But no, we have to keep them honest.  It turns out that the current NPD's don't actually count the sales of download-able games, or games distributed by means other than the mighty North American retail market.

Now Kristen gave us her 3 point plan to save PC Gaming, and as a regular listener to the PC Gamer Podcast, I have to say that I'm very well acquainted with said plan.  The reason for this is that the guys go over this every week!  I would like to take this plan to task.

The Cost of PC Gaming
PC Gaming costs more than console gaming because you can do more with a PC.  Also PC Gaming tends to be at the cutting edge of gaming in general, so just like owning a high performance sports car, you get much more performance for your buck.  This idea of buying a US$700 gaming computer and only having to spend a couple hundred dollars a year on upgrades is nice, but a little fantastical.  I'm not the only one who has gone to upgrade, only to find out that my motherboard doesn't have the right port, or won't support the new standard.  Then the selling of body parts begins.

This may be an area that needs to change before PC Gaming can get the console style status people think it needs.  Tim, a good friend of mine, feels this way and has put some thought into the idea of a modular PC case based on the popular ATX form factor.  This would turn the PC into a Lego set, where an upgrade could be done by replacing an external module, rather than having to open the case.

This could go some way to demystifying the upgrade process, and make PC Gaming more consumer friendly, and "consumer friendly" has worked well for Apple, so why not PC Gaming?

The Cursed "casual" games
The problem is that once you get a job, and/or responsibilities, you turn into a casual gamer.  This has happened to me, but I don't play casual games, and I don't want the PC to turn into a casual game platform.  So if someone is a casual gamer who plays casual games, buy them a Wii, or DS.  The chance that they will go from Peggle to Civ IV is a little slim, so they won't be spending the money to support the industry, so why pander to them?

Honesty the best policy
Piracy may be the crux of the matter, for if the money isn't flowing into the industry, games and innovation won't flow out.  Now, I'm guilty of a mis-spent youth, and in my family man years I have been working on going legit.  What that has meant, though, is getting less games, and scouring the bargain bins.  At AU$99 a game at release, I have been finding a lot of reasons to go without.

Add to that the odd upgrade cost, and my gaming heart is cursing my new "setting a good example to the children" stance.  But in the long run, if we want PC Gaming to be there when we have time again, we need to pay now.

My thoughts on the matter
In the end, we are seeing a shift in the gaming industry as a whole.  I have mentioned before that we are seeing, and going to continue to see, the developer's code where the money is.  So this will mean a swing away from the PC, but I believe that this doesn't mean a complete end to PC Gaming.  There will always be developers pushing the envelope when it comes to graphics and content, and as good as the consoles look, it is going to be a while before they can run Crysis.

Also, as we have seen, PC Games do make money, it just takes a little longer.  And that has always been the nature of the the beast, because PC Games (especially cutting edge titles) sometimes require upgrades and tweaks.  Us PC Gamers know that, and, to a degree, that is the point.  So we buy fewer games and are a little more choosy, we may find that we are going to have to settle for a title leading on the Xbox 360, then dropping a better version for the PC a couple of months later, Mass Effect comes to mind.

Bottom line is that PC Gaming is for the PC Gamers, the elite few million of us who are willing to jump through the hoops and pony up for the better graphics, and the better game-play.  We are aware that things are changing, but sucking up to the casual market is not going to get us Fallout 4.

Jason Remnant

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Is Spore going to be a piece of Spore?

Image by Andrew Scott via Flickr

Flipping through another Top 10 list of the most anticipated games coming for 2008, and once again I see Spore getting all the love.  Normally I would be behind such a high concept gaming title, but for some reason I have only derision for what could be the GTA4 killer, and a boost to PC Gaming.

The game is set to come out early Sept, which is about time, as it has been winning awards since the 2005 E3.  It will be on the PC, both Mac and Windows, and also on the iPhone. It is slated to be one of the saviours of the PC platform, for its hype and popularity and its reasonable system requirements.

High concept games have always been in the PC gaming space, but they have always been the domain of the niche gamer and the appeal and the success never seems to match the concept

Let's talk about the things the creators and the publishers have done right.....and then why I'm not interested.

What works with Spore is that they sold the concept early, maybe a little too early, but still, they have created an audience.  The game is the brainchild of Will Wright who is most notable for the hugely popular Sims games.  I'm not going to go into all the details of Spore, that's what the website, and Wikipedia is for.  Plus I'm sure if you are reading this you probably have a good idea of what Spore is anyway.

The idea of releasing Creature Creator was a master stroke, as it gave us a taste for elements of the game that a lot of us were sold on.  It was a great idea to demo the game and generate buzz.  The Creature Creator gave the fans a full taste of the games appeal without revealing the true game-play.  This makes it hard to judge the game, but gives you an idea of the games potential and a taste for more.

From my past articles you would understand that I have problems with the movie-blockbuster way games titles are being hyped to us nowadays.  I feel that the potential money to be made on games is making publishers strive for mediocrity in a similar way to the movie industry.

As much as I'm not a Sims fan, I was on board with the Spore concept, even though I saw it as a little ambitious.  The longer it took to make, the more I went off the boil, and more the hype seemed to overshadow the concept.

Personally, I think the Creature Creator should have been the first taste we had of the game, with maybe some announcements a year ago.  After playing with the CC, I was disappointed because over the last few years, the cool picture of what I thought it was going to be was snuffed out by the playschool style of the CC.  The look grabbed the attention of my 4 year daughter, 'nuff said.

As the game-play and the real details of the game began to emerge, I felt that the concept was gone and I was over it.  It seems as though Will and his team have taken his idea and then re-made 10 odd games to suit each level.  Is this to be the evolution of life? Or just the evolution of gaming?  Both great ideas but were they really worth waiting so long for?

If you are still psyched for the game, feel free to have a go at me.  But just as I haven't seen or played the game, either have you.  I'm not picking on the game as a finished product, but it's the hype that is killing it.  We are seeing more and more hype pushing our beloved PC gaming to the edge, and it is killing games like Too Human before they get a chance to live.

Hype has killed Spore for me.

Jason Remnant

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The PC Gaming Crysis or Box Office Blues

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In the rush to turn Gaming (both PC and console) into a main stream entertainment industry, are our beloved developers, publishers and gamers shooting themselves in the feet?  Is the striving for a "best voice acting in FPS" Oscar pushing Gaming into a space which is not set up to properly handle or quantify the medium?  Is the longing to have Gaming up there with Football, Movies, and long walks on the beach going to put undue pressure and stifle development as we see in the Movie industry?

The Gaming industry used to work on the slow burn principle.  There would be some ads in the trade papers and a game would be released and reviewed.  The sales would be driven by word of mouth and reviews from the people you trusted, or what was available on the shelf.  In the PC space I guess not much has changed, but when you glance over at the behemoth that is the console space, things have become a little, well, Hollywood.

I guess when you have only 3 players in the space, and one is also in the movie business, you're bound to see a few dollars being thrown around.  Exhibit A: The marketing campaign for Halo 3.  So it is no wonder that the stakes are higher, and I guess that it was inevitable that Gaming would be measured in the same ways as the other mainstream entertainment medias are.  And just as we see the clashing of old school thinking with new technology in music and movies, we are seeing gaming being forced into a mould that in the end won't be good for PC gaming.

I don't want to harp on Crysis but it was well documented because everyone else was harping on it, so it makes for a good example.  November 2007 was an OK month in general but the highlights were the release of Crysis on the 13th and UT3 on the 19th.  At the end of the month of the November, a couple of weeks later, both games were canned by press and bloggers as failures.  Fair enough if those couple of weeks were all that mattered, like for example, a movie.  We will never know if the bad press hurt sales or not, but I can't see how it would have helped much.  Having such high profile PC games seemingly fail began the question "is PC Gaming Dead?", which I even weighed in on.  Even though my comments were directed at the future of hardware, and a shift in the way gaming is done, we all commented without remembering the "slow burn principle".

Over the month of December, Crysis rose to 2nd place in the NPD's, and EA announced 1 million sales worldwide a couple of months later.  Crysis still sells well as do most PC games.  Well, PC Gamers have to play something during the WOW maintenance Tuesday nights.  But I wonder how much the "first week failure" will become a factor in the future of PC Gaming.  Gaming is big business, and like any big money making business it needs to make money now.  $170 million in the first week is going to make shareholders happier than $170 million over 6 months or a year.  And at the moment, those sorts of figures in that time frame has only been achieved in the console market.

Comparing games to movies is dumb, and we really need to think of them differently.  I prefer to put gaming in the same section as books, and it is a better fit.  Books promote imagination and knowledge and can allow you to escape, a good game in a genre that appeals to you can do the same.  This isn't that marketable though and gamers want to make gaming as mainstream as movies and similar media, in an effort to add meaning to their lives.  I do agree that there are some real artists in the industry, and that they should be paid well and recognised, but we need to think about what the future will be if we don't stop and get the systems sorted now.

We may start to see a bit more on this subject in the upcoming months as we await the release of GTA4 for the consoles, and Fallout 3 for the PC.  From the hype GTA4 is already a success, and Fallout should do well but it will be an interesting match up, I wonder if the loser will be Ironman?

Jason