Makbeth

The most recent American to be killed by religious extremists on American soil was a victim of your "true religion of peace". His name was Dr. Tiller.

The teachings of Christianity are what prompted many Americans to do what I thought I'd never see: Americans cheering the death of another American at the hands of religious extremists. Your "religion of peace" taught these people that murder/terrorism is moral, as long as it is done in Christ's name.

And while I understand that not all Christians are that violent, I have seen more praise for Tiller's murder than condemnation. You might say that this is a vocal minority, but if yours is a religion of peace, why are the moderates/pacifists quiet enough that they can be drowned out? Shouldn't they be a little louder about this? A true religion of peace ought to be able to present an image consistent with that description.

The hypocrisy on display here compels me to make the following judgement: There is no criticism or mockery of your religion (or others like it, Islam for example) that is harsh enough to be unjustified. I applaud EA for mockingly presenting the face of Christianity we are familiar with rather than the face you pretend it is.

You don't like my opinion? You're a Christian. You say you want peace. Make it happen. The burden of proof is on you and all the other silent ones like you. As it is now, there is barely any more proof of your existence than there is of the God you worship.

Oh, of course, because that philosophy applied to the banking and housing industries worked out so well for everyone involved now, didn't it?

I don't know if you've noticed, but the software market is extremely hostile to the consumer. The consumer buys, but doesn't own, the product, can't use it on multiple machines in many cases, receives no compensation for glitches or bugs that make the product unusable or impractical, and has to keep upgrading or be left behind when support expires.

This is the state of affairs after four decades of the market regulating itself.

A guarantee like this has no more potential for abuse toward developers than the current system does towards the consumer. It will level the playing field. If the product does not work as advertised, doesn't install (Terminator) or doesn't allow the player to finish (NWN2), then the developer has not earned the money they were paid, and should give it back.

I do agree that two years is too long. If a game is deeply flawed it will be obvious in three months or less. Any game I've ever regretted buying took less time than that to show its true colors. I also think that the longer you have the game, the less you should get back for it. Perhaps a setup could be established where 50% of the refund price is taken off each month until it reaches 0% at the end of the third. So, if you liked the game enough to keep it around and replay it a few times, you will not be getting a refund.

There are real-world examples of this. I bought a graphics program called TrueSpace for my work, only to find out that one of the features they didn't mention in the marketing materials was that no significant modeling operation could be undone. I had thought all modeling packages have full undo functionality (and aside from TS, all the ones I've tried do), and was shocked that it would be missing from a 3D graphics application that is advertised as letting you build complex artificial and organic structures. They had a 30 day return policy with a full refund, which is rare, and I used it. Even though the software was shamefully lacking in essential features, it was one of the most fair software transactions I've had.

Unfortunately, Vue is nearly as broken and does not have a return policy. Their customer service department will simply deny that any problem exists and, in the most polite way possible, will tell you to go screw yourself for even suggesting there's a problem. I would very much like to have my $1000 back, but I'll never see it again, and I'm stuck with a program that does not do what it says it will do, and what I bought it to do.

This is why the software industry needs accountability, and why developers need to be terrified at the prospect of their product sucking. If you can't produce good work, you don't deserve to be working in that field. It's simply not what you're good at. Same thing on the business level. A company that screws over its customers is undeserving of existence, and there is no injustice in the company and its owners going bankrupt.

I know I haven't stayed entirely on the gaming topic, but games are software, and no better or worse. The concept should apply to both recreation and work.

As a player and unhired member of the development team for Neverwinter Nights 2, I am very happy to hear this and would like to see this happen in the US.

The line about patches ending the days of game-breaking glitches is absolutely false. After 3 years, Neverwinter Nights 2 was still broken to the point where I had to spend 3 weeks modding in a fix that would allow me to continue to progress through the game, and it was fully patched. The customers shouldn't be required to finish the work they paid the developer to do. It may not fit the legal definition, but I still feel that releasing a game that broken qualifies as theft. Obsidian clearly didn't care about the quality of the game, and because they already have my money, they don't have to care.

Apparently Spider Man 3 was the same way. Millions of people bought it only to find out that it was crap. But, by the time the poor quality of the game was known, it was too late, the game had made a profit. For one-shot games, all you need to make money is a good marketing department. In examples like these, a bad game is pretty similar to a scam, since scams too are little more than good marketing.

The idea that you will avoid that developer in the future is pretty weak as well, since those of us who pay attention to the developers of games are a pretty small minority.

I am happy to see that any accountability at all is finally being placed on the game industry for the quality of their products, and I hope this becomes the norm for all software, not just games. If we had demanded quality in the first place instead of accepting mediocrity, there would have been fewer successful companies, but their products would have been worth the price.

I'm all for the idea that if you produce crap, you and the rest of your company are punished through bankruptcy. Better developers are going through the same these days anyway.

Glad to see I'm not the only one. In my case I actually had to mod the game to make it possible to advance through the story. The map wouldn't come up when I tried to leave certain areas.

NWN doesn't need a new expansion, it needs a new engine and a new dev team, one that will take care of it instead of building an alpha and pushing it out the door before the first round of testing.

Still, it's a good enough game that I was willing to spend the time fixing it.