rbtroj

The Sims: LDS?

I want to start a boycott to protest the growing use of microtransactions in games if only because it seems to be leading to reduced content at release. How long before all that you get for $50 or $60 is an empty world and a generic avatar (a la Snow Crash)? Then, you have to pay $10 for a face/body, $5 for clothes (one outfit), $2 - $20 for quests/missions/whatever, $5 for each level above the only one that shipped with the game ... and so forth. Oh, and the $15 (soon to be $20?) monthly fee.

I understand the publishers'/devs' desire to monetize things this way because apparently enough of the sheep blindly buy into it to make it worthwhile, but enough is enough.

I think this beta has confirmed for me what I should have known since around the WoW beta -- I'm over MMORPG's (or whatever you want to call them).

I guess I just want to do more than kill borg/klingons and click on up arrows next to my skills.

Sorry to any fans, but STO -- for me -- is a long way from where it should be.

I haven't had a game gig in almost 2 years now, but just to give you an example of how ridiculous things are - I did a game in 2005-2006 that paid almost $5000 for what amounted to less than 2 hours of work. Just after that one, I had a give for an even higher profile title that required in excess of twenty hours in the booth and made just under $3K for it. Hell, in 2007, I got over $3K for a part that got cut from the final production.

There's been a lot of activity in the last year by the guilds to bring some kind of sanity to the biz, and things have gotten a lot better. But, there's a long way to go to bring games in-line with other performance media.

Thank God for commercial work.

Sorry to go a little OT, but does anyone know if HL2:Ep3 is actually going to see the light of day? Or has it been quietly axed? I know Valve's riding the L4D cash cow, but the whole "six months between releases" thing for HL2 episodes should have brought us Ep3 about, what ... two years ago?

Yeah ... I don't know the video game industry the way you guys do, but I know quite a bit about the world of investment. Based on the update you posted and the suggestions in the original story, you ought to strike the whole thing. It's not accurate. If nothing else, the update should lead the story now.

I think they should have Fisher break into a live read every few minutes. Perhaps in the middle of a boss battle, the action could pause while an advertiser's :30 spot rolls. Games should become more like TV. We already paid for the game, no reason why we shouldn't have to sit through commercials as we're trying to play. It's kind of like commercials at the movie theater. Or, hell, commercials on subscription TV (aka "cable").

Unfortunately, the only way for advertising in video games to fail is if we don't buy the games. And we're not nearly that principled, are we?

Once responded to a call of a trespasser during the overnight hours at a college athletic facility. There was a crafts exposition being hosted in the facility at the time. As I was circuiting the building, I came around the end of one aisle of booths and almost walked into a full-length, free-standing mirror in the dark. I shined my flashlight up at the mirror and saw myself ... and an individual behind me with a knife raised in one hand. I spun around, trying to throw the mirror at the subject to give myself time to draw my weapon. The mirror fell well short of the guy, smashing into pieces all over the running track. Only when I yelled at the perp to drop his weapon did I realize that he hadn't budged an inch.

That was probably because he was a mannequin in one of the artisan's booths.

Slash

Proof (once again) that publishers should just piss off and go do what they do best: move boxes.