Episode 1 – Kerfuffle
Oh noes! We have set foot into the realm of podcasting. I’m not sure what seal had to be broken for this to happen, but the apocalypse is surely drawing closer. Until then, the entire Dorkadia staff sits down to discuss the SimCity kerfuffle. And then we get sidetracked. It’s probably going to happen a lot in the future. Hopefully we manage to entertain you, but please leave a comment and let us know one way or another.
Download here: Episode 1 – Kerfuffle
This was hysterical and informative and awesome. Please do more of these. Thoughts as I listen:
I’ve been following the SimCity debacle with popcorn in hand, and my perusal of Reddit and game journalism sites reasonably confirms that EA and Maxis’s justification for the game being always online (that server-side calculations are essential to the simulation) is complete crap. People have used packet-sniffing programs to analyze the communication to and from the game client, and conclude that practically nothing is being sent or received other than tiny updates about excess power/water/etc. in neighboring cities. The main bulk of server-client communication is for authenticating your connection to the server, and happens virtually every time something in your city changes. That’s why one of their first attempts to fix servers crashing was to disable the fast-forward mode: the client is practically spamming EA’s servers with authentication requests, and increasing the frequency at which they’re sent only makes the problem worse. For those who know how Anonymous’s Low Orbit Ion Cannon works, yes, you did read that correctly. EA and Maxis made a game so bad that it’s DDoSing itself. Munch popcorn, chuckle, repeat.
Evidently EA’s blanket denial of refunds is also illegal, at least in Europe. There’s some sort of consumer protection law that obligates companies to provide a refund of any product for any reason. Refund law tends to vary by state over here, so we sadly don’t have anything similar.
Crowdfunding is one solution to the publisher problem, but I don’t think we’ve seen a full AAA game fully funded by something like kickstarter. A couple of projects (Star Citizen, Project Eternity, etc.) are close, but still in a 1-3 million dollar range, whereas most AAA games are 5-10 million or more. I do think it’s inevitable that we’ll see a major developer turn to kickstarter to fund their game, if for no other reason than publishers’ strategies to stay solvent are fundamentally unsustainable. I don’t mean it like EA and Activision are about to go bottom up, but if you look at their actual profit margin in terms of projects funded versus sales, it’s not a whole lot, relatively speaking. Boondoggles like always online DRM and microtransactions in a 60 dollar game are just increasingly desperate attempts to make that margin a little bigger, at the cost of burning consumers and losing brand value. Eventually that’s not going to cut it anymore, and publishers will have to turn to their developer houses and start gouging them instead. This’ll be the last straw for at least one of them, and then we’ll see the next AAA game show up on Kickstarter. Hopefully that’ll come before the first high-profile crowdfunding scam – as kickstarter-esque services live or die based on consumer confidence – but I’m hopeful it’ll still go well either way.
Can’t speak to how good Dragon Age 2, I’m too busy being hypnotized by dwarf chest.
Yeah, I love the kickstarter-induced revival of obscure genres too. FINALLY GOOD SPACE GAMES AAAAAAARRGH
The online SimCity thing is fundamentally about choice for me. If they make another online version, that’s fine. I think there’s a lot of potential for multiplayer god games. The problem is when they don’t provide a choice between the ‘new’ experience with people, and the regular experience by yourself. Provide the former without the latter and people are gonna get pissed.
Day One/on disk annoyance aside, I feel like the content of that Mass Effect 3 DLC actually detracted from the experience – bringing that race (back) into the story cheapened several emotional moments that happened previously. Hard not to go into this without spoilers, uh… it’s just difficult for me to feel that same gut punch when I talk to Vigil or learn the truth about the Collectors, knowing that that particular DLC is waiting in the wings.
The core problem with DLC right now is ultimately a semantic one. I don’t mean that to sound dismissive; it just seems to me like the criterion for success where DLC’s concerned has a lot less to do with what the content actually is, as it does making said content look like a bit added on to the game, not a bit that was cut out to put back in later. That’s why we like Borderlands 2 DLC and hate Capcom’s on-disk fighters/costumes.
In short: buy Simcity, use EA’s apology game offer to get Simcity 4, play Simcity 4. FLAWLESS STRATEGY.