The Tower's Spire ? State of PC Gaming

Surely, anyone who loves gaming and doesn?t have their head buried in sand or indeed sandwiched between a rock and soil will know of Blizzard?s recent talk about Diablo 3. Or at least read some blog, article or press release on it. No doubt those of a sane mind have perhaps been left scratching their noggin as to some of the phrases and thought processes of big developers/publishers of late, not just those of Blizzard.

Its an interesting time to be a gamer on the personal computer, the platform that was only a few years ago dying an imminent death, being left behind by the evolution of consoles. Now thats turned around, progress is once again on, but at what price? There is certainly plenty to raise questions about ? and the answers are usually just as unclear or unhelpful.

Publishers taking control of products

So the most obvious change is the appearance of wild publisher distribution platforms, we had digital stores before and they are nothing new. Steam being one of the most well known, but there are plenty more to choose from ? now publishers want a piece of the pie. ?Its to be expected isn?t it?? it should be expected, but its probably not happening quite how folks would expect.

Scrapping between the old publishers launching their digital services and existing well-known and well-established service(s) is already to a degree taking place. When two companies don?t get along it tends to end with the customer losing out. Not only that, but with any of these services there is still a very big question of server security ? you need only look at the breaches of various sites new, old, moral, legal and seedy of recent times to get a feel for what dangers placing card details online entails.

Furthermore, clients ? oh how I hate having so many clients installed. I went from using xfire as a chat client with community features to using Steam as a store primarily, then community organiser, now its full-on both. I do not need more ?social? clients to break my relevant communities up based on titles.

Please, don?t get me entirely wrong ? while I am willing to support publishers and (preferably) developers with their own digital distribution methods, I also like customer choice. That is, the option to buy wherever I want? publishers would have their own little desert islands if they could.

Drrrrrm drrrm drrrrm drm drm drm

Publishers protecting their intellectual property, from pirates, who plunder their customers disks, storm their servers with illegal users. So what do you do?! You stop your legitimate users from playing offline, from copying your disks, from hot-disk-swapping and all sorts of other stuff. DRM had its rough spots, with claims of rootkits, trashed hardware, unplayable games and even game-performance impacting.

For every publisher that gunges up disks with layers of drm-cake there are developers and publishers who denounce DRM and offer some beneficial alternative or indeed drm-free products. Its argued DRM and always-online schemes rarely prevents piracy or hacking; its decoded, altered and released as an open product. Who loses here? Its been noted that pirates effectively offer a ?better service? ? you might not be able to play online, but your game won?t run out of uses (accidentally or through system error) and you?ll forever have a backup you can use. Not to mention if your Internet connection is poor or non-existent.

So long as a product is registered online and has an online component, authentication can take care of at least making sure a user has bought the product ? does the publisher or customer gain anything by having the runaround system of dealing with ?activations?. Its a waste of time from what I have experienced of it, you request a new one because ?your system had a failure? and more often than not a publisher will oblige.

***

I stand here a bit of a defiant customer, I might like your games, but your thoughts are getting a bit messy and you are showing your corporate side ? its putting me off and I?m going for a much younger partner now. That is, the Indy scene and smalltime developers willing to try some new things and more obscure genres often with far more open minds. I remember reading one quote about a failed first-game in a now game-series? it was along the lines of ?more money means more innovation!? ? basically translated to ?buy our games, we shall be rich and won?t listen to you anymore?.

So yes, those Indy developers and smaller developers (some old, some new)? they sure are nice people. Developing those games, talking to their customers, sharing their development process, knowledge and everyday happenings. Not too much legalese, not too much money-grabbing, humble at times. Such nice people.

Source: http://www.towerdesigns.co.uk/blog/2011/08/09/state-of-pc-gaming/

fidel castro enfield enfield spartacus spartacus el salvador el salvador