Rabish12

I facepalmed at myself. My bad. Jumped to conclusions because the last three charts I saw like this came from Apple (then again, the last three charts had an explicit claim that Apple was dominating the portable games market, not just the implication of it). Either way, it's hardly a fair comparison - they're comparing a cell phone and a portable video/music player with three gaming devices. And besides that, claiming the fastest hardware user growth in consumer tech history when you've only compared it to three other products seems somewhat suspect. What about consumer tech outside of video game consoles, portable media players, and cell phones? There's NOTHING outside of those in the entire history of consumer technology that can approach even the PSP?

I like how Apple keeps making these charts hoping people are stupid enough to think they mean that the iPhone and iPod Touch have become the dominant gaming platforms without realizing that most people who buy them don't actually buy them for gaming, and probably don't even buy games for them.

Here's what I don't understand: Pitchford's original statement was that he doesn't trust Valve. Then he went back on that and said that it's not him but the rest of the industry that doesn't trust Valve. So someone asks the rest of the industry, and are told that Valve is great and they love what they're doing and that Steam is the best thing since sliced bread... so now he's saying that there MIGHT be a perception that Valve MIGHT not be trustworthy in certain segments of the games industry? I'm fine with people voicing their opinions and criticizing companies (I'm definitely not a stranger to criticizing both Valve and Steam, since there's a lot involving the two I don't agree with at all), but this man has gone through three completely different claims within the span of a month, with one of the three being untrue by his own words and the others being apparently unfounded going by Ars's research.

Politicians don't flip-flop this much. It's insane.

My issue isn't so much that they don't get any criticism. It's a bit more about how they don't seem to be criticized as strongly as other companies, but mostly about what happens when these kinds of controversies finish. EA repeatedly pulled crap like this, and while people will often forget a lot of individual issues they had with the company they can still remember it having a bad history and pulling a lot of crap overall. Capcom's gained a reputation for whoring and rehashing their games, as has Square-Enix. Nintendo STILL has a reputation for making "kiddie" games because of censorship they stopped doing in the mid '90s. All those big companies have done questionable things and have paid for them in a major loss to their public image. But Valve? Valve does something like announce an L4D sequel to be released within a year of the original and people get pissed off at that, but as soon as that controversy's passed? Suddenly, Valve are perfect again. Suddenly, they return to being a company that rarely, if ever, wrongs their customers, and who should be loved and supported as much as possible.

My biggest issue is that, like I said earlier, Valve gets a free pass. If anyone else in this industry screws their customers hard enough or on a regular basis, they're eventually remembered as a company that does so for ages afterwards. If Valve screws their customers hard enough AND on a regular basis, they get away with it because people revert back to being massive fans as soon as they cool off from the current controversy. Valve is basically in a position where they can do whatever they like without any long-term consequences, and it's because they KNOW they are that they seem to be getting even worse.

Honestly, I've never been one of their "followers". The company's practices, from using their online store as DRM so that anyone who buys any of their games is basically having ads for Valve's other products shoved down their throats, to demanding a down payment of one million dollars just for the right to do a Mac port of Half-Life 2 (and then lying and claiming that it was because Apple wasn't willing to bother), right on to this. People seem to think Valve border on being perfect as far as developers go, but they absolutely aren't. They're a horrible company that happens to make excellent games and that happens to be very, very good at making themselves look a lot less greedy and profiteering than they actually are.

And as far as Left 4 Dead being an overhaul... look, I don't expect a sequel to blow me away with changes every time. But when the sequel has graphics that are at best AS GOOD AS the original, when the new features are all mostly embelishments or pointless things, and when they even recycle a large number of art assets from the original (something you can definitely see in this game from the footage - they're using a lot of the same zombie models)... and even worse, when that sequel is being done within only a year?

I'd understand if this was a $30 product or something, but isn't releasing sequels that offer little more than incremental improvement and yet still cost full price one of the reasons people hate EA? Isn't releasing a new game within a year of the previous one that looks more like an expansion than a new product and then treating it as though it were a full release with a proper development cycle something that people frown upon with nearly any other company? Why is it that some people think Valve, and only Valve, deserve a free pass when they pull something like this?

Here's an idea, Valve: instead of using early access to the demo to hock pre-order sales of your game and treat your customers like worthless shills, how about you give it to the people who were faithful enough to you company to buy the original Left 4 Dead assuming that you wouldn't spit in their faces by releasing a mostly-the-same sequel within a year of the first release that'll splinter its online community? Or would that be too close to the "friendly pro-gamer" image you're trying to carry and too far removed to the disgusting reality of what greedy dicks you are?

Well, watching that was a good waste of my time. Aside from the blue glow, none of the stuff they actually noted makes much of a difference given the fact that it's a teaser trailer. Even the glow... well, series fans no doubt already knew what they stated about it.

That said, has anyone else noticed that nearly the entire fight in the trailer takes place on a single plane? If you ignore the flashy effects (like the long sweep of "ink" when Ken does his roundhouse kick), they spend nearly the whole thing fighting along what looks like a rather strict horizontal line. The only part where either of them seems to come off that line is when they simultaneously punch each other, and even then Ryu immediately jumps back on to it. Maybe that's the thing we're supposed to be looking out for?