Ubisoft’s misguided and universally despised Digital Rights Management system proved itself a complete failure last week, depriving rightful owners of Assassin’s Creed II and Silent Hunter 5 the ability to play the very games they paid for. It would appear Ubisoft’s servers failed, an event everyone knew would happen sooner or later as a perfect illustrative example of DRM nonsense that harms no one but the paying customer.
Ubisoft, is all this bad press really worth these daily articles? Can you truly say you’ve sold more copes of Assassin’s Creed II and Silent Hunter 5 because of your new DRM scheme? Or have you pushed away even more customers and alienated loyal fans? It’s not too late to call the whole thing off and return to creating stable, relatively bug-free games that merit a purchase.
Last weekend, two statements were issued from the UK Community Manager:
Ubi.Vigil (UK Community Manager): I don’t have any clear information on what the issue is since I’m not in the office, but clearly the extended downtime and lengthy login issues are unacceptable, particularly as I’ve been told these servers are constantly monitored.
I’ll do what I can to get more information on what the issue is here first thing tomorrow and push for a resolution and assurance this won’t happen in the future. I realise that’s not ideal but there’s only so much I can do on a weekend as I’m not directly involved with the server side of this system.
Ubi.Vigil (UK Community Manager): Due to exceptional demand, we are currently experiencing difficulties with the Online Service Platform. This does not affect customers who are currently playing, but customers attempting to start a game may experience difficulty in accessing our servers. We are currently working to resolve this issue and apologize for any inconvenience.
Nostalgia (no, not the DS game) is tons of fun. Learning more about products or popular culture that you can only marginally remember from your childhood is sometimes addicting, which is why I am so fond of the Angry Video Game Nerd and his retro showcases on old gaming systems that I never got to experience.
Well, SNK Playmore is having a retro console celebration of its own at the moment because it is the 20th anniversary of the Neo Geo home gaming system. Does anyone remember that thing? No, probably not.
Neo Geo was a rather ingenious arcade cabinet system that allowed owners to swap out multiple game cartridges within the same cabinet – an unusual but highly space-saving feature at the time. Whereas most arcades were “dedicated,” meaning they could only play one game, Neo Geo arcades could play up to six different games. Anyone who visited an amusement center or bowling alley during the early ’90s will likely recall the Neo Geo cabinets that allowed you to select different titles such as World Heroes or Metal Slug, all from the same arcade cabinet.
The arcade system was known as the MVS, or Multiple Video System, but there was also an AES, or Advanced Entertainment System, which was the home console. The AES was prohibitively expensive as it cost more than twice what a new Super NES would drain from your wallet, and the cartridges themselves could run over $100.
Despite being around video games my entire life, I have never seen an AES or heard of any person who owns one.
But if, like me, you’d like to take a trip down memory lane (granted, memories that not many of us have) and tour a digital Neo Geo museum, check out SNK’s 20th anniversary celebration going on right now on their website. You’ll find old Neo Geo ads, a history of the platform, and even a blog sharing some memories of the system.
The PSPgo was a completely misguided project from Sony to revive their all-but-dead handheld. It failed to address key issues, like adding a second analog pad, and just didn’t have any compelling reason to exist. Seeing their handheld lose a ton of market share to Apple’s iPhone had to hurt and the PSPgo offered nothing in the way of competition. Hell, even the paltry amount of games available for the PSPgo suck.
While most of us have been very aware of Sony’s portable shortcoming, it appears their upper-management has finally removed their rose-colored glasses and are viewing reality for the first time:
“We wanted to find a way to give the consumers what they want, so if they didn’t want to go to a retailer they could stay at home and download [games and content]. And we were hoping really to eliminate the piracy issue. Did the PSPgo confuse [consumers]? Yeah, I think the higher price point didn’t help matters any either,” he admitted. “So we’re going back and re-communicating, and I’m sitting here looking at multiple decks on what we’re going to do this year. You’ll see a lot of things coming out from us to better educate and inform the consumer. All I can say is watch this space, because we’ll have answers to those questions.”
One thing hasn’t changed and that’s Sony’s ability to blame piracy as the cause of all of their problems instead of an inventory of compelling games on a well-designed portable, priced at a competitive level. Want my advice? Can the PSP altogether and create a device that blows the iPhone away…or will Sony sit around and let Microsoft do that instead?
As I eagerly/anxiously await next month’s upcoming release of Red Steel 2, I can’t help but become entranced not simply by the game’s amazing graphic style and promising Motion Plus utilization, but by the charisma and character of the game’s creative director, Jason Vandenberghe.
Every time I catch an interview of Vandenberghe, especially on video, I feel compelled to read it/watch it. Good – no, really great – game designers have a lot in common with great teachers. They intrigue you, they have personality, they are quite humorous, and they never quite answer questions they way you expect them to. I do not know yet if Vandenberghe is a great game designer or not, but like Miyamoto, he has a certain charm to his personality that leads me to believe he may possess such talent.
Though Vandenberghe was not involved in the creation of Red Steel 1, he did play it extensively, and he has openly stated that the game didn’t quite live up to gamers’ expectations. To me, making such an acknowledging remark is commendable as these days we are constantly being told that if a game didn’t sell well it was because the consumer “didn’t get it” or some other lame pass-the-buck excuse. It never seems to be the developer’s fault that a game doesn’t sell well.
In the video above, Vandenberghe offers some rather wise comments on gaming these days and the strange viewpoints people come up. As we all know, there is a large, noticeable debate occurring that Vandenberghe calls the “Is there a hardcore audience on the Wii” topic. Now, I have already offered my thoughts on this topic once before, but rather than repeatedly beat readers over the head with my opinion on the subject, I’ll just let Vandenberghe speak on the topic.
Vandenberghe astutely describes the entire debate as a religious war and says that he doesn’t take part in religious wars – it’s not really his thing. I couldn’t agree more. Vandenberghe states that games can sell on the Wii if they are good and offer experiences not available elsewhere. Of course, he also acknowledges that he may end up eating his own words a month from now if Red Steel 2 doesn’t sell well. But at least such a statement concedes that the success/failure of the game will be based largely on the developer – not the consumer.
You can catch the first part of this two-part interview here. I’ll be keeping my eye on all the Red Steel 2/Vandenberghe info I can get during the next month before the game’s release.
Hot on the heels of his previous gaming philosophy book, The Legend of Zelda and Philosophy (you can read our review here), editor Luke Cuddy has followed suit by assembling various members of academia and all-around gaming junkies for his next book in the gaming philosophy series, World of Warcraft and Philosophy: Wrath of the Philosopher King.
It would seem that WoW would be a perfect fit for philosophical discussion, what with the constant accusations of the game’s addictive properties as well as its real-world defying economy, and for the most part, this is true.
Like Zelda and Philosophy, WoW and Philosophy organizes itself into individually written chapters that attempt to tackle a specific topic relating to WoW using philosophical tools. For instance, WoW’s economy is studied to determine whether it is the perfect or ideal form of capitalism, and if so, whether it can be reproduced in the real world.
Though each chapter is written by a different author, often causing the quality and consistency of the book to vary, the chapters are broken down into sections to help facilitate out-of-order reading based on specific topics. The book even prefaces each section with humorous quest-based introductions, complete with aged-looking paper laying out your objectives, that claim to give you +5 Intellect! and other rewards after reading. It’s a nice little touch that’s meant to reinforce the authors’ hands-on understanding and experience with WoW and help them connect with the reader beyond an academic-based approach.
Things aren’t going well for Champions Online, Cryptic’s half-baked MMO that I tried to warn you about before the game even released. In an attempt to appease angry subscribers, Cryptic has decided to make the next planned expansion, Vibora Bay (now called Revelation), available for free. I guess Cryptic saw the light and thought it may not be in their best interests to rip-off the same people they screw on a daily basis, especially those poor bastards who purchased lifetime subscriptions.
Revelation will be available on March 10, 2010.
Cryptic State of the Game, Wherein They Act Humble and Apologetic:
We have a lot going on right now both at Cryptic, and with Champions Online in particular. There are huge changes afoot, and rather than spend a lot of time with the preamble, let’s sink our collective teeth into the meat of the matter.
Scrubbing the Kitchen Sink
As we all know, the Kitchen Sink patch had numerous issues that made it onto Live. The reasons for this boil down to two key areas:
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