The future of Origin

I came across an interview with head of Origin, David Demartini on Games Industry about what the future holds for EAs digital distribution service, it's an interesting read. They want Origin to be 'the hub' for gamers and goes on to talk about cross platform though it does sound like they want to be something like Raptr which allows you to see acheivements, game collections, what you've been playing etc and rank you against friends. We seen cross platform gaming done, quite successfully may I add, with Valve and Portal 2 between PC and PS3. Hopefully this is a sign of things, I have been wanting this to happen since GFWL started (which I am still hoping will happen but I'm not holding my breath), cross platform gaming could and should have happened back then but alas Microsoft never followed through with what could have brought Xbox and PC gamers closer together, but I'm not going to get in to that rant now. EA are definitely big enough to fund this sort project, so maybe in the not to distant future we will see EA dabbling in cross platform games. I'm sure if one company sets the ground work for something like this others will follow suite. It needs to be done.

He also discusses Steam, talking about Valves raping of wallets... I mean sales and discounts and how Origin won't be going down this road. Saying how it cheapens your intellectual property. While I can see where he's coming from on the matter, I disagree with the fact it cheapens your ip, the fact of the matter is due to the fact that you are buying from a digital distributor the games shouldn't be the same price as they are if you are buying a hard copy. You have no case, instruction books or discs to make therefore no manufactor costs only those of for the upkeep of servers. I don't see how you can justify £40 for a downloadable copy of a game when it you pay the exact same amount for everything that comes with a hard copy. Then there is also the fact that we are in a recession and everyone can't afford to buy every single title that comes out at 40 quid a pop. Which is why I am yet to buy a single new AAA title this year. Purely because I can't afford to, along with the fact that if I wait a couple months it will be half the price, which points to his earlier comment about cheapening ips, but this is how businesses work. You set a price, if it doesn't sell well enough, you cut the price to increase sales, which is exactly what Valve do with Steam. Not every sale they do is ridiculously discounted they generally range from 10% and upwards, if we take the lowest discount thats only 3-4 quid off a new game. Then there is the fact these sales can rejuvinise games vastly increasing their popularity and even extending the life span of games.

Anyway I have rambled on enough for now, I am interested to see what Origin do in the future, I've never really used it so can't comment on how good or bad I think it is, however they are the new kids on the block and have to prove themselves and it would seem they are attempting to do that as it has had multiple updates during it's first year and looks like they are going to continue to do so.

Should used games be abolished?

I was reading an article on Gamerant about how Crytek developers are in favour of the next generation consoles blocking of used games. While I understand why developers would want this to happen and would obviously be in favour of this: It could potentially lead to more sales of new games making them more money.

This has happened already on the PC side of gaming with the majority of PC games these days having some sort of DRM, be it Steam, Origin or Ubisofts always online DRM system which everyone loves to hate. The Point I'm getting to is that it seems that consoles may be taking a page out of the PCs side of the industry should rumours be true.

Since this has already happened over with the PC community and me primarily being a PC gamer, I am used to this anyway and it isn't as big of a deal to me as it is to a lot of console gamers. But due to the fact I can't buy used games on PC any more, places like Steam have realised this and took advantage with all there constant sales, now instead of buying used games I just wait until they go on sale and buy them cheap. My theory is if these rumours are true, consoles and developers should take a page out of Valves book and do something similar sale wise to keep customers happy.

At the end of the day though, I don't agree with this business practice. I'm all for companies trying to up sell their products it is a business after all and of course they need to make money. But to me this logic is ridiculous. Let's put this mentality into perspective shall we? Say I buy a brand new car, then after a while of using it I decide to sell it for whatever reason; to buy a better one, because I need the money or I just plain don't want it any more. Should the car manufacturer get a cut of my sale of a product which is rightfully mine now? No, of course they shouldn't, they set a price that they thought reasonable to make back the money the initially spent building it. Therefore after I paid said initial price the car would be mine to do whatever I please with. If I want to sell it on, destroy it, keep it forever and add to my collection, it is might right to have a choice in what I do with it as it now belongs to me. 

This logic is the same for the likes of books, dvds, furniture and damn near everything that you can physically buy. There are many places that have made businesses out of selling used goods, look at Gamestop, Love Film (renting by post, not the online version), used car lots, Blockbuster (not sure if they are in business anymore but you get my point), charity shops, eBay and the list goes on, that's just a few off the top of my head. But if you stop used goods from being sold you will destroy many businesses and cause job loses for even more people, which is exactly what we need right now (going to stop here or I will get in to a rant about politics and I can't be arsed with it). The fact of the matter is this does not happen in any other industry why should the gaming industry be the exception.

Theme Hospital

I recently bought this of GOG.com as it was only about $6 and I loved playing it as a kid. I dunno why but it seems a hell of a lot easier than I remember it being. I used to struggle to get past the first level with earthquakes but I've beat that one and got a fair few levels higher than that just since yesterday and I haven't even done the money cheat either, which used to get used a lot back in the day. There aren't enough games like this these days, the closest we have today is the bullshittery that are facebook games. I want a proper game not one I have to be friends with so many people to achieve the next level. Tycoon games are in quite a lul at the moment, sure we had the announcement of Sim City 5 recently but except that what have we had, Rollercoaster Tycoon was about 7 years ago, Hospital Tycoon was 5, Sim City 4 was about 9 and we haven't seen anything Bullfrog in over a decade. I want someone, I don't care who, to bring out a series of new Theme games with fancy new graphics. This was meant to be reminiscing about the awesomeness that was Theme Hospital, but I kind of went on a tangent. Long story short people should go buy Theme Hospital it's a great little game.

Is 'Ripping Off' a Game Really That Bad?

IGN did an article named 'A History of Gaming's Most Shameless Rip-Offs'. After reading it I did the stupid thing of actually reading comments on a IGN piece. I think they have killed off a couple of brain cells, anyway that's beside the point and I should know by now that IGN comments are full of trolls. Moving swiftly on to my point, the majority of people seem to think that 'ripping off' games is a bad thing. I am not going to deny that a lot of games released have been near enough carbon copies of other games with slightly altered art work, to say that certain games are any more than that is ridiculous. Does that make whoever copied these games in the wrong? I wouldn't say so.

Say I was to start learning to develop games, I more than likely wouldn't start creating my own games straight away, I would attempt to recreate games that all ready exist, and if I did that it would be work that I actually created so is it wrong that I try to sell it? Again, I wouldn't say so. If I was to create a pong like game and attempted to sell it, I wouldn't see it as ripping off the game. Obviously I wouldn't say that the concept of the game was my idea, only that is was my recreation of the game. I can't remember who said it but 'imitation is the sincerest form of flattery'. All these games stated in the IGN article are doing exactly that. Recreating a game that already exists shouldn't be looked down upon as a lot of people seem to do. These developers may start off replicating games but they may just move and to create that next big game you love. So at the end of the day just let developers develop. It is their job and/or hobby after all. Today they may be making a 'rip off', but the knowledge and experience they get from making them may lead to making that next big title tomorrow.

Defining 'Indie'

This topic arose due to this article about Notch and his thoughts about if Mojang are indie any more due to their increase in popularity and size. I was sat reading through the comments, a lot of them about what exactly is Indie. How is it defined? 

I have always thought of indie games to be developed by a person or group of people that are an independent company. A company that are in charge of the structure of their business and development of their own games. A company that doesn't rely on third party publishers such as EA, THQ and Activision. Others define indie developers as a company or group of individuals that make games purely due to a desire to make one over making money, not to say making your cost back isn't important, it just shouldn't be the primary goal, or that they have a low or none existent budget and are generally small in the amount of people working on a project.

While I agree with those points, the last one not so much. An indie developer usually do start off small. But this leads to the question, "When are an indie development team no longer classed as an indie developer?" This is why I believe indie is more about having control over your own company and product than the actual size and finances behind it. 

Take indie music for instance. At one point indie bands were the likes of garage bands and bands without labels going round getting themselves gigs and venues by them self rather than being signed and under a record company label of some sort, and of course there still are many bands like that, infact they are on the rise, just as indie games are. This is because publishers and third parties are needed less and less these days due to the amount of ways artists/developers etc can communicate with their audience. This is largely due to the openness of the internet these days. But getting back to my point there are many indie bands that have had major success over the years. They are still an indie band though the fact that they have become successful doesn't change that fact. The principle is the same no matter the medium. 

Is Mojang still an indie developer? Until they lose control of development of their games, budgets and deadlines by third party publishers I would say yes, they still are. Just because a development team is indie doesn't limit them to the likes of casual games such as Super Meat Boy, Limbo and Bastion. Most of them choose to go down the more casual game type due to smaller budgets. If they have the time and dedication, I see no reason we can't see much bigger Indie titles in the future. It will just take them longer get it finished and out to the public than you big name developers.

Improvements for Steam

I was reading an article over on IGN about how Netflix are dropping out of the game rental service. I got to thinking and thought that Steam (or any other Steam like client for that matter) should implement something like that. They are big enough to pull it off and in this day and age there should be somewhere for PC gamers to rent games from. The used/rental market in the PC community is pretty much none existent due to DRM. Every other platform has a decent rental services so why can't we. I believe a lot of people would appreciate a rental service for their PC. There are a couple services like this in place such as:
Gamefly, which by the looks of the game list for their Unlimited PC Play service seems to be a bunch of small and indie games.
Onlive has some bigger titles at its helm however that is a streaming service, so unless you have a fast and reliable ISP. They are not for you I would actually use Onlive if I had faster internet. But it takes ages to buffer a 20 minute YouTube video I dread to think how my poor little connection would cope with a fairly new video game.

What I suggest is the ability to download the full game as you would do if you were buying the game out right. The you pay a fraction of the price and you can rent the game for a day, a weekend, a week or a month with the price varying depending on how long you wish to rent the game for. Along with the ability to download rented games as you would purchased games, you would also be able to have your save games and acheivements saved to your account so you can pick up where you left off next time you want to rent the game or even if you decide to buy it. They could also do discounts for the games you rent as an incentive to actually buy game. So say save 10% when buying a game you have rented in the past.

I have another couple of ideas which are frankly quite simple. The first of which is about the Steam client browser. It needs tabs, simple as that. They have tabs on the in game browser when you open it up using the shift and tab, I don't see why they can't put them in the desktop client.

Lastly is something my brother found on Reddit and pointed out to me a while back. They should put in a feature like this. Basically add an option to do a quick and simple scan of your hardware and tell you whether or not you can run a particular game. It would be an expansion of the worded system requirement at the bottom of each game page.

Are gamers too cynical and unforgiving these days?

Over the past few months we have seen a number of new games out, I mean actual new games rather than sequels to older games, such as Homefront, Bulletstorm, Dead Island and Rage. I can't talk for Rage as I have yet to play it but will do in the near future (probably christmas). Anyway even though each one of these games had rocky launches and lack luster reviews, they are pretty decent games. But as these are unknown titles the majority are more willing to automatically shun these games, while the likes of your CoDs and Battlefields among other well known titles I can't think of right now can get away with not so brilliant launches.

This mentality among gamers is wrong. If you are going to shun a game for a crappy launch, it should be done for every game. While I'm not saying everyone does this of course, there are a lot that do. I believe in the fact that not every game is going to have that perfect launch that they planned as mistakes happen, there's hardware issues, the list could go on. Dead Island is a perfect example of this, they had a terrible launch, especially their Steam launch (I'm still not sure how they ended up releasing the completely wrong version of the game but I'm not going to get in to that rant) but behind this crappy launch was infact a pretty awesome game. The point I'm getting to is you have to put faith in developers to fix problems when they occur, this is the exact reason patching of games was invented (along with with adding new content of course).

Along with that people these days seem a lot less forgiving with new titles than franchises. My theory on this is if we keep shunning new games the market won't change and get stale and we will be left with nothing but the same old generic game over and over. It is getting to that stage with shooters right now. There are many decent shooters out their but because they aren't Call of Duty they get completely over shadowed by months of advertising for the same game. Homefront is a prime example of this, the game in itself was a good game in it's own right and yes it had a bad start MP wise with server issues. But tell me other well known shooter franchises have never had problems at release. At the end of the day, they worked on it and sorted it out. The single player on the game was pretty good, the ending was a bit disapointing as it could have went on a bit longer, but it had an interesting storyline and decent gameplay.

Bulletstorm while it got over looked some what, it did have some momentum behind it but the hype about the game lasted ... well it didn't last. I'm sorry but that game put fun back in to games. Far to many games are trying to go all hollywood with their almost life like graphics and serious storylines. This game gave you guns put a load of enemies in your way and told you to go nuts. You could sit and complain about the storyline which I think was fairly decent, but it didn't really matter. The game focused on gameplay and I believe it truely pulled it off. Bulletstorm to me was a warm up for DNF. The only thing I didn't really like in the new Duke game was the fact you only got 2 weapons. Duke is supposed to have a massive arsenal of weapons. Putting that aside the game was fun.

It just seems people are far too cynical and unforgiving when it comes to games these days. If you don't get what I'm on about go read comments on damn near any review site and look at the amount of fanboys ripping on shit and abusive flame wars. There's always going to be the 'my dads harder than your dad' kind of flaming but people are generally full blown dicks these days. I am getting to the stage where I'm almost ashamed to call myself a gamer these days. Which is why I have moved away from the mainstream side of things and started to show smaller and indie games a lot more love. I for one would rather support developers with new original ideas even if they don't come across perfect over the franchises that chun out slightly tweaked games year after year. If you are going to update a game do it on your current game we don't need a yearly update for £40. Take Valve or Blizzard most of their games are old as balls but because of the support they have given their games over the years. People love them.

At the end of the day this industry needs innovation not repetition. Innovative ideas are rarely perfect on their first attempt which is why it keeps the industry moving. Games are supposed to be an investment, some thing that you can go back and play in a few months, years or even decades. There are games I still play from the days of early Nintendo and Sega, because they are good games. Will I be playing Black Ops 20 years from now? Probably not. I can't say for sure but I pretty certain I won't be. Half Life, Doom, Red Faction, Painkiller, Command & Conquer, all these games have been out for year yet I keep going back to them. Was it because they kept releasing pretty much the same games over and over? Hell no it wasn't. It was because they were creative and innovative would I enjoy them as much now if they were just a carbon copy of some other game? No. These games were not perfect, but they are great games so the flaws get over looked.

My mascot

Well I've been throwing ideas around for what my banner/logo for this site should be. I ended up with an idea about a Mascot which happens to be a pig. A pig? Yes. A pig. Why a pig you ask? Basically the intials of the site is p.o.g but I couldn't think of anything that would relate to that. Then I thought p1g, P1G looks like pig and the idea was born. This pig has now be named and will forever be known as Paul. He was named by my friend Nathan (who owns www.portalcasino.co.uk I know a shameless plug but nevermind). I said he could name him if he helps me design him and the banner. So he gets photoshop and to name my pig, I get a pig and a pretty picture to go up top there. So far what he is going to look like is still in the works, Nathan suggested making him out of the letters P1G (yes I know 1 isn't a letter, not my point). It sounds like a good idea, I'm not sure how it's going to work I can't picture it, I'm interested to see how it would work actually it sounds pretty cool. I'm kind of thinking a cartoonish pig, sunglasses, quite bright coloured t shirt im thinking yellow all within a circle of some sort. I'm going to start doodling and see what I come up with. Anyway I'm going to bed now.

A Proper Introduction.

And i'm back, with a proper introduction instead of me rambling endlessly looking for a point to talk about. It will happen again though, I know exactly what I'm like. I am Craig, I use Player One as my online name for pretty much every game. I did start off with whatever default name games used to give me, ie Player, Default Player etc... which evolved at some point to Player One. Yup I've quite the creative one I know.
Most of the games I do play are mainly single player, at the moment I have a few games on the go as I'm trying polish off my frankly quite large backlog of games. I blame steam and there constant deals and cheapness. At the moment I'm playing GTA4 many doing that to build up a little gamer score as I don't have an xbox. I will get some more Windows Live games some point down the line, I reckon batman AA and Gears are probably next no the list to get. I started play Metro aswell, I did start playing it awhile back but got stuck at some point quite nearish the start and never ended up playing it for awhile, so it's yet another game I have on the list.
What little multiplayer I do play is generally anything Valve and old halflife mods.

At the minute one mod I'm getting proper into again is Science and Industry, It's an under rated halflife 1 mod. Basically you play a a security guy of a science company and your main objective is to research better weapons, armour, and other upgrades and devices. You can do this quicker by stealing the other teams scientists, along with secondary objectives like sabotage and stealing the other teams weapons which you don't have yet. Even after all these years the SI guys still have there weekly gathering on sunday nights (9 gmt).

Rambling just to get me started.

So basically I've been thinking about starting a gaming blog for god knows how long to ramble on about games I've been playing or one that are coming out and anything else I care to rant about at the time.. I may move on to youtubing some point down the line but anyway I digress. I don't really know what I'm going to talk about in this one tbh, I'll end up typing until some sort of topic comes out. Future posts will most likely be a bit more thought though.

One thing that has been annoyed as of late is the fact that trying to use a playstation controller on PC is such a fucking faff to get working due to first off that there doesn't seem to be any official Sony drivers for them. When I did get the controller working in the windows settings would it work in games? Hell it wouldn't. Lucky I had some spare moolah about so instead of getting pissed off with sony I just went and bought a xbox controller, which works without a problem. At the end of the day I just did that mainly as I'm quite lazy and prefer going with the easy option. Anyway my point being I should be able to use whatever controller I like on my computer. I mostly blame sony for not having drivers but it makes sense for MS to not give a crap about any controller that isn't by them. But it should be about the customer and making things easier for them.

All this to play some GTA4, have had the game for ages but haven't actually played it yet. It's steams fault I constantly buy games on special and end up having a massive backlog of games. Anyway as we're on about GTA4 that's going to lead me on the GFWL. While everyone seems to complain about it and how it's not as good as steam and it's crap and all that shibbang, its frankly not as bad as everyone makes it out to be. Granted the desktop client is frankly pretty poor but the ingame aspect is really quite decent or at least in my experience of it anyway. They still need to work on it and release more games for it, eg halo gow and other xbox exclusives. That would be a start of getting back at least some of the pc community. Anyway I'm tired and kinda losing concentration on what im rambling on about so I'm going to finish it now. Next time I'll have some better prepared stuff to talk about but if I hadn't started this now I wouldn't of done this for even longer.