Chargone 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: EA Believes That Making A Lot Of Money Is Less Important Than Keeping Games Expensive

    Chargone ( profile ), 11 Jun, 2012 @ 11:54pm

    Re:

    ehh, Paradox usually does a decent job of that too... though it's not a corporation... privately owned... think it has a single owner, actually.

    it's a publisher too, these days.

  • On the post: EA Believes That Making A Lot Of Money Is Less Important Than Keeping Games Expensive

    Chargone ( profile ), 11 Jun, 2012 @ 11:53pm

    Re: Re: Re:

    price per unit of digital goods gets closer to zero the more you sell. (once you get past the initial hurdle of server load, which is a per customer thing and INCREDIBLY unlikely to make it more profitable to have less customers by itself.)

    even if you sell them on physical media, the physical media in no way justify the current price points, even once you take shipping into account.

    so that's not really an issue.

  • On the post: EA Believes That Making A Lot Of Money Is Less Important Than Keeping Games Expensive

    Chargone ( profile ), 11 Jun, 2012 @ 11:50pm

    Re: Re: Hmm

    CKII takes a little getting used to and paradox often takes several patches to fix all the problems in their games (those things are damn complex, actually)... though it should be noted that they have a history of making sure those patches do keep coming until it's fixed. (the original CK is an exception. stuff happened when it was in development that wasn't their fault but left them holding the ball resulting in a rush job that Worked, but had issues they couldn't really fix. was still fun though.)

    but yeah, once you get used to it CKII is really really good. well, if you're into the whole Grand Strategy thing at all.

    fully expanded EUIII is crazy good too.

    HOI3... well, i've not shelled out for the expansions, but i just couldn't get into that one. they've added a lot of features that are awesome that have made for a more interesting game to tell stories about, and perhaps made it a better simulation... and lots of things work better... but the over all result has come out as a less fun game, for me. i'm told the expansions address some of these issues, but i've consistantly had other things to spend my money on rather than gambling on that one.

    but yeah, point is: if you're into Grand Stratagy, give yourself a few partial playthroughs to get a hang of the mechanics and CK2 is brilliant.

  • On the post: EA Believes That Making A Lot Of Money Is Less Important Than Keeping Games Expensive

    Chargone ( profile ), 11 Jun, 2012 @ 11:39pm

    Re: Re:

    ... i Think the guy's mocking the EA guy, maybe?

    hard to tell.

  • On the post: EA Believes That Making A Lot Of Money Is Less Important Than Keeping Games Expensive

    Chargone ( profile ), 11 Jun, 2012 @ 11:37pm

    Re: Re: Re:

    ok, i'm exagerating about the shotgun... but the enemies did take longer to recover from the blast (if they survived) than the shotgun did to cool down.

  • On the post: EA Believes That Making A Lot Of Money Is Less Important Than Keeping Games Expensive

    Chargone ( profile ), 11 Jun, 2012 @ 11:37pm

    Re: Re:

    ehh, the first game was great if you didn't go into it expecting your normal shooter. it was an RPG with shooter-y combat mechanics.

    second one gave up a lot of what made it good to make the shooter-y bits better... which it did in such a way as to make the over all game worse AND make it harder to go back to playing the first one (drastically different controls). also, many stupid decisions with the story-line.

    i never got the Mako hate.... the Mako was fun. silly physics, but fun. (climbing mountains in it particularly :D)
    though it amused me when my sniper rifle with HE rounds was better at taking down the biggest geth than the Mako's gun was. ('course, Mako had better shields/armour/health so could actually take a hit, where a near miss would seriously mess with you on foot...)

    3... i've heard enough about the fail of the ending and have a low enough opinion of EA that, in light of how 2 turned out, i don't even consider parting with my money for it. it just holds no interest for me.

    (HE rounds in shotguns and sniper rifles in ME1 were just all kinds of awesome. hiding in cover, Mr. Geth? nope. cover is falling and squishing you. MWAHAHAHAHA! oh, my shotgun over heated in one shot? oh well, doesn't really matter when the Entire Room is Dead, now, does it? MWAHAHAHAHAHA!)

  • On the post: EA Believes That Making A Lot Of Money Is Less Important Than Keeping Games Expensive

    Chargone ( profile ), 11 Jun, 2012 @ 11:30pm

    Re: Re: Typical Salesman-speak

    to be fair, at that point you're paying for the hookers and getting the other stuff free, i think.

  • On the post: EA Believes That Making A Lot Of Money Is Less Important Than Keeping Games Expensive

    Chargone ( profile ), 11 Jun, 2012 @ 11:26pm

    Re: Re:

    you realize most of those scores come down more to how much advertising the publisher pays for than how good the game is, right?

    Dynasty Warriors is decent or better, yet every iteration gets crap scores, in a large part because it's regularly assigned to reviewers who openly admit to hating that sort of game and when that's NOT the case it doesn't get it's review scores boosted (as many games do)... this would at least appear to largely because Koei/Omega-force don't throw money and advertising at the magazines (digital and paper).

    also, ever notice how none of those ratings systems ever seem to score anything below the half way mark unless it's basically unplayable... and that's worth 40% or equivalent?

    reviews are useful, but the 'scores' are generally a load of crap. (and they're usually based on pre-release versions of games, on more powerful than average or otherwise optimised machines most consumers don't have when that's an issue, and ignore most of the bugs because, well, it's not the release version yet, is it?)

    .... yeah, pet rant there. sorry.

  • On the post: EA Believes That Making A Lot Of Money Is Less Important Than Keeping Games Expensive

    Chargone ( profile ), 11 Jun, 2012 @ 11:20pm

    Re: Re:

    also: second hand market: if i don't like you, but want your game legit, i'm going to buy it second hand. that said, if i don't KNOW you, i'm going to do the same thing.

    on the other hand, if i know you, like you, and have the option of selling the game second hand if you've managed to fail, i'll shell out full price for the new copy on release day (the fancy version if i can afford it) ... and if it's good i won't be selling it for years (if ever) at which point someone else buys that second hand copy of your OLD stuff, decides they like it, pokes around, decides they like You if you've managed not to stuff up since (being evil with DRM and such counts as stuffing up) and repeats the cycle.

    personal experience also tells me that the more of an oddball the game is, the better the odds are that it will be spectacular rather than merely average, provided it first passes the 'not actually crap' line. but these games get no marketing, and thus don't sell so well, so get written off as no good. mean while crappy realism brown generic shooter clone 459 gets hyped to hell and back and makes heaps of sales... right up until the market is saturated...while costing a lot more to make... and pissing off the customers who actually care about how good their games are. (especially if you use DRM or strip out features...)

    ... .... ...
    yeeeeeeah, i lost my point in the middle there somewhere.

  • On the post: EA Believes That Making A Lot Of Money Is Less Important Than Keeping Games Expensive

    Chargone ( profile ), 11 Jun, 2012 @ 11:13pm

    Re:

    that last line is basically the underlying problem with the content industry in general, i think.

    the internet has lead to an environment where consumers will support far more creativity at 'i want to make a living' level than ever before... and are no long as supportive of the costs of the 'big splash' level stuff being the norm.

  • On the post: EA Believes That Making A Lot Of Money Is Less Important Than Keeping Games Expensive

    Chargone ( profile ), 11 Jun, 2012 @ 11:08pm

    Re: Re: Re:

    a competent team of statisticians and historians will teach you far more in the way of useful stuff about economics than any number of economists. (they're more likely to be right, too.)

  • On the post: EA Believes That Making A Lot Of Money Is Less Important Than Keeping Games Expensive

    Chargone ( profile ), 11 Jun, 2012 @ 10:45pm

    Re: Re: Re: Well, you asked.

    the tendency for machines that actually run them to crap out and then be irreplaceable due to obsolescence kinda kills them after a while too, actually.

  • On the post: Angry Spaniards Crowdfund Money To Try To Bring Former Banking Boss To Court For Bank Collapse

    Chargone ( profile ), 11 Jun, 2012 @ 09:45pm

    Re:

    those last two are incredably stupid. the first one tells us that there were ignorant (and not terribly smart) people involved... but the second just shouldn't be an issue at ALL (how would anyone even Know unless they were close to one party or the other and were acting in malice?) and the third should result in a trespass case...

  • On the post: Angry Spaniards Crowdfund Money To Try To Bring Former Banking Boss To Court For Bank Collapse

    Chargone ( profile ), 11 Jun, 2012 @ 09:38pm

    Re:

    not quite sure what you'd do with such evidence, given the apparent nature of the US courts and politicians...

  • On the post: Australian ISP: Negotiating With Hollywood Over Copyright Is Like Talking To A Brick Wall

    Chargone ( profile ), 11 Jun, 2012 @ 07:52am

    facebook hates this article

    or possibly the comments, i don't know. attempting to share it on facebook produced this message, however:

    "The content you're trying to share includes a link that's been blocked for being spammy or unsafe:

    http://fbexternal-a.akamaihd.net/safe_image.php"

    now, unless that's a kiddy-porn site or contains some vicious attack code, i don't see what business facebook has blocking it, and even if that is the case, i'm not entirely sure what business it has blocking a link to this article, but there you go.

  • On the post: Australian ISP: Negotiating With Hollywood Over Copyright Is Like Talking To A Brick Wall

    Chargone ( profile ), 11 Jun, 2012 @ 07:48am

    Re:

    ... if they were a government, we could set them on fire and be done with it.

    or Defenestrate it's members. that'd work quite nicely with all those skyscrapers... just gotta find a way to open a window, really.

  • On the post: Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

    Chargone ( profile ), 11 Jun, 2012 @ 07:34am

    Re: Re:

    from memory: something written in a full language will run itself. something written in a scripting language needs an actual program to run it.

    i may be over simplifying or misunderstanding, but that was the basic explanation a friend of mine gave me.

    (example: i don't know what language Paradox uses for their grand strategy games, but the AI runs off Lua scripts, which modders can write and which don't do anything on their own without the game to run them. (that said, paradox's games store a lot of other things in plain text files rather than the executable or specialised file types for ease of modding too, but that's mostly just data files, nothing complicated that actually does anything, just values the game looks up.)

  • On the post: Two Men Sue Chicago Police; Claim They Were Abused And Falsely Charged For Filming Officers

    Chargone ( profile ), 08 Jun, 2012 @ 09:48am

    Re:

    ... how many steps are required before that ends in molotovs?

  • On the post: Two Men Sue Chicago Police; Claim They Were Abused And Falsely Charged For Filming Officers

    Chargone ( profile ), 08 Jun, 2012 @ 09:46am

    Re:

    ... mostly valid point except...

    none of that has ANYTHING to do with communism.

    just saying.

    there's a fair case for Fascism (not 100%, quite, but close) but communism? no.

    the word you're looking for there is probably 'totalitarianism'

  • On the post: Two Men Sue Chicago Police; Claim They Were Abused And Falsely Charged For Filming Officers

    Chargone ( profile ), 08 Jun, 2012 @ 09:41am

    Re: Was it deleted?

    well, given that he just Did...



    but yeah. this.

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