The Origin of Forgiveness... A Humble Tale.

What would it take to get me to forgive? In much more serious circumstances than video games, I've asked myself that question hundreds of times. There are plenty of virtues I don't pretend to be particularly good at, but anyone who knows me well knows that I've got forgiveness on lock. I just can't maintain even the most justified of grudges for more than a year or two, and eventually I come back to that key question. What, if anything, would be enough to say "Okay, one more chance" to a person or organization? This isn't going to get any more serious from here on out, but I firmly believe in giving credit where it is due, as well as criticism where it is deserved. One company that I've had my share of bad things to say about online (like most gamers) is the real focus of this post. Electronic Arts, I think it is finally time to bury the hatchet.

I haven't knowingly paid for an EA game since Dragon Age 2.

It doesn't take a whole lot of detective work to find criticism of EA online. Virtually every practice that gamers hate about the video game industry has been practiced, if not pioneered by EA. Intrusive DRM, microtransactions, Day One DLC, Always-on Internet requirements (with failing validation servers,) incompetent customer service, churned out sequels to good games... the list of sins goes on and on. EA also has the particular quirk of acquiring much-loved studios and running their core franchises into the ground with terrible installment after botched sequel after failed launch. PopCap, Bioware, Westwood, Pandemic, Maxis and Bullfrog have all been butchered by bad decisions and worse press releases in response to criticism. You have to be pretty bad at this sort of thing to beat out Bank of America, TicketMaster and Comcast for Worst Company in America... twice.

What could possibly make up for all those years of missteps and unabashed greed? Offering refunds on games purchased on Origin sounds pretty good, right? It is a start, and something that Steam doesn't do, but I'm not on board yet, there's still a lot of wrong to make right. How about participating in a Humble Bundle, and having most of the games in that bundle redeem on Steam? Nope, not good enough. Even with "pay what you want," the best of the bundle still uses Origin, and many people, myself included, don't want that on our systems, period. Even reasonable pricing and Steam redemption feels more like a P.R. stunt than a gesture of goodwill, and after all, they are still making a ton of money on the Humble Bundle, right? Well, actually... no. I left out a key detail. 100% of EA's cut of the bundle is going to charity. That... that just might do it. It might still be a stunt, but it is a damn good one.

When I first saw this, I wasn't sure whether it made EA better, or the Humble Project worse.

Mirror's Edge, Dead Space, Burnout: Paradise, Crysis 2 and Medal of Honor are all Steam redeemable and available for as little as $1.00. Dead Space 3 only redeems on Origin, but is also in the bundle before looking at bonus games. The "beat the average" games are Battlefield 3, Sims 3, Populous and C&C: Red Alert 3 – Uprising, though only the last of that batch can be redeemed on Steam. These are some of the highest-profile titles to ever grace a bundle, games that still have some profitability in them at prices much higher than a dollar (except maybe Medal of Honor.) Ten games, six charities. That covers a lot of recent disasters.

I'll even overlook the (recent) steaming pile that is Plants vs. Zombies 2, riddled with way, way too many in-app purchases. I'll forget about the debacle that was the SimCity Reboot. I'll even give the Madden Franchise a pass, despite the fact that it releases every year as a new game for what should, in any sane world, be a free or cheap annual update (an easy one, as I play very few sports games anyway.) I thought the whole Mass Effect 3 thing was overblown anyway, so let's throw that in there, done, gone, forgotten. This Humble Bundle stunt buys you one last shot to get back into my good graces... Dragon Age 3. That's the next game that I'll knowingly pay good money into EA's coffers to solidify redemption. Learn from the past, don't repeat the mistakes of Dragon Age 2... One. Last. Chance. Don't screw it up.

The Humble Origin Bundle ends on Wednesday, August 28^th.

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Blog Gadgets

Surviving the Steam Summer Sale

Way back when I started this blog, one of my first articles with any significant content was talking about how great Steam is for unemployed gamers. You don't have much money, but man, have you got some free time. Even looking for a job as hard as you can, there's still more time for gaming than the average working person has, and sales, especially of the deep price cut variety, can help with the "not a whole lot of disposable income" end of the equation. As a veteran now of Steam Sales, I can share my learned strategies and talk a little about my purchases this sale week, and how they revisit both the Piracy and the DRM issues.

I've never been so excited about online shopping before. Twice a year, this is actually a legit event.
 I sometimes spend more time shopping for games during this than I do playing them.

Steam Sale Strategy Guide:.


1. Be patient.  Whatever the game you want is, it is probably on sale starting the first day of the sale. However, that first-day price might not be the lowest it'll go for the duration of the sale. In general, until the sale is over, you should wait until whatever you want is a featured item, whether that means the Daily Deal or, this Summer, the Flash Deal.  The Daily/Flash deal price is the lowest it'll go during the sale, and if it is never a featured item, you can still buy it at the normal sale price on the last day of the sale. Patience is rewarded.

2. Participate in the activities when you can. Whether you are completing achievements for tickets or presents, working on a Badge, or voting on the next Community Choice Sale, in general, there is some level of reward for the customer in being a part of the event. It is a simple deal, Valve wants you to be tempted as often as possible by looking at the store, so you are rewarded for doing so. Effective on all counts.

3. Watch for DRM, and decide if the deal is worth the hassle. Even though Steam itself is effectively an anti-piracy scheme, some publishers just won't let their own measures go.  SecuROM, Games for Windows Live, both... personally, if the game is good enough and the price is low enough, I'll deal with it, but be aware before you buy.

4. Check Package Deals and Individual Game Prices. Always. Sometimes, even when a game is on Daily Deal, buying it as part of a package saves money, or for a small amount more gets more games or DLC (Downloadable Content) by the publisher. Conversely, sometimes the package is featured, and you only want one item from it, but while the package is on special, each item within it is also cheaper.

My haul from this year was pretty good. I bought a lot in the first few days, as almost everything I really wanted on Steam was a featured item very early in the sale. I bought the Arkham City complete pack (Arkham Asylum GOTY, Arkham City + all DLC and Gotham City Impostors,) The digital deluxe editions of both the Witcher 1 and 2, Back to the Future by Telltale Games, and Crusader Kings 2. With this, I got  a little bit of everything I enjoy in terms of genre, and picked up games I'd rented or even pirated in the past with additional content.  Not only did Steam get me to virtually stop pirating games, but even the little piracy I've done in the last few years, I've evened the accounts at least in my own conscience by purchasing the titles in question.

I started playing this when I got it, and 10 hours vanished. Politics, assassinations,
birth and death and succession and war... and there is a Game of Thrones total conversion mod.

What is interesting to me is that all the intrusive DRM didn't stop me from getting a pirated copy of a game within a few days of launch.  A reasonably priced service from a company I like quite a bit got me to eventually buy those same titles, and endure the copy-protection hassles as a legit customer. That seems backwards. It tells me something that developers should take to heart, though.  Price motivates ethical behavior in a way that even the world's best DRM cannot, and treating your customers well means that the loyalty you've built up in that relationship will even make some of the most shameless pirates into good customers.  Don't punish the honest with expensive and ineffective means to fight piracy, translate the lack of licensing fees for that garbage into a lower price-point and build a rapport with your customer, and they'll stop pirating on their own.

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Blog Gadgets

A Second Look at Software Piracy, and digital content delivery through Amazon.com, Netflix, iTunes, etc...

 Just yesterday, a friend of mine was talking about this blog and he made reference to my post on illegal downloading and the ethics of piracy, here. He talked about how my article made him think about media piracy and that the debate affected his feelings about his own actions. This got me thinking. Did my last article on the subject really reflect my attitude or behavior on the subject?

It is important to me to be genuine to the people who spend a part of their day reading the things I put here, and sometimes it is difficult to do that without violating one of the rules I have crafted for myself on the internet. The most important one is: “Don't be a dick.” A large component of that rule means that I conduct myself online largely the way I would if I were at a large party with strangers. Quickest way to piss people off at a party? Talk about your religious beliefs (or lack thereof) or your politics. I made the mistake of arguing both in my early years on the internet, and then I saw the religious and political debates on social media sites and in forums. I thought about how those debates made me feel about my friends, family and acquaintances. No one ever really gained any points with me in those flamewars, but some people lost a few. I don't want to “play to the middle”, disguising who I am for appeal to a wide audience, but I also refuse to be a dick online.

See also: "The Greater Internet Dickwad Theory", Google it, now.

Talking about piracy drifts really close to politics for my tastes, so I think that I automatically filter myself when taking on a subject like this. Time for some honesty. There are times where I'm going to pirate something even if I hold to my belief that piracy isn't OK. If a mainstream property is unavailable using a convenient delivery system, at a price that is reasonable for the value provided to me, and the primary entity deprived of compensation is a large corporation, I am likely to pirate. I'm pretty sure that this isn't at all clear with the opinions I presented in that last article. I understand I may take (and deserve) some heat for this, but if this makes you mad, ask yourself a question. If there was no such thing as a public library, would it be possible today to open one, or would it be shut down by Big Content as a “state sponsored copyright infringement center?”

Now, if there is a method of getting that same content that is relatively inexpensive, easy to use, free of intrusive DRM, adds some value and provides compensation directly to content creators, or some combination of the above, I jump at it. Steam for video games, Netflix streaming for TV and movies, various services for music that don't start with “i” or end with “Tunes”, not only do I pay for media despite being out of a job, but I pimp those services without any monetary compensation. Comic Book Publishers and Ebook publishers take notice. THIS IS WHAT YOUR CONSUMER WANTS.

Also, this. If fan art and sales figures are to be believed, your consumer wants this.

The lawsuits and blatant misuse of copyright law as a weapon (most people don't even know that the purpose of copyright law was originally to keep big companies from stealing the little guy's idea and selling it, not to sue college students and grandmothers for unlawful copying of media for personal use) all sickens me. It is destructive and utterly ineffective in putting the genie back in the bottle. My favorite analogy in big content's war on piracy is that of a sinking warship desperately trying to save itself the only way it knows how: by firing its cannons at the ocean. New business models will make some people and companies wealthy, and others obsolete. No amount of poorly-written legislation or frivolous litigation will change that.

Companies that understand and adapt to new business models and consumer wishes can make a lot of money (and some are.) In general, people are willing to pay for delivery systems, but hate paying for content, and will tolerate advertising to subsidize prices until ads intrude on content. Netflix understands this, as do gaming companies that offer free content updates to legit customers or subscribers, and this model has had a lot of success. If a service offers convenience, but overprices digital goods, such as iTunes or Amazon, they can make a lot of money, and anger a customer base that is willing to jump ship to the first viable alternative that presents itself. This, of course, also factors into the “ethical calculations” people do when deciding whether or not to pirate.

I want one of these bad. Almost up to "would punch a baby" bad... but only if the baby was a jerk, talking about religion and politics.

On the subject of Amazon, it has been noted that I profile an awful lot of products that are for sale on Amazon, and many bloggers have made a few dollars from referrals, but I haven't done this. This is not an ethical “line in the sand” that I've refused to cross. I live in the city of Chicago, state of Illinois, and our state government instituted an internet sales tax, which caused Amazon to refuse to do business in this state. This locks that possibility away from this site. I actually really like a few things Amazon has done to push their business model into new directions, and I think the Kindle is really cool (though I don't own one yet.) The notion of a partially ad-subsidized Kindle to bring the device price down (as lampooned here by Penny Arcade) is the kind of innovation I applaud. I feel the same way about Amazon as I do about Apple. Great devices, overpriced and terrible content delivery, $15+ for an ebook is obscene, and the issues with iTunes and why geeks hate it is a whole other article.

I've started to roll out a few changes to this site, the first of which is the Facebook page for this blog (hit “Like” in the column on the right), where I'll host a few polls and other site-related extra content (maybe contests?) as I develop it. I also may work on the layout, so if things look a little stranger than usual, I am tinkering. Future possibilities include moving to a new domain name (a ways off) and adding the code to be able to reply to comments directly (probably soon). In addition to any comments about piracy and digital goods/content you might have, if there are things you like or dislike about the blog or its layout... sound off!

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Blog Gadgets

Yarr...

Since I talked a little about Digital Rights Management (DRM) yesterday, I figured I'd talk a little bit about a related issue that is a little more controversial. Pirates.

No, not these guys.

Though most geeks can agree that DRM is a Bad Thing, the ethics of piracy when it comes to movies and software is a little more murky, and there are a lot of differing opinions on the subject.  Sweden has seen the pro-piracy movement turn political, as they have their own "Pirate Party" in government now.  Here in the US, the RIAA, MPAA and several other acronyms have put pressure on our own government to take action against piracy.

These Guys.

Geeks are bitterly divided on the concept of intellectual property from "information activists" who believe that content is information and should be free, to the traditionalist thinking that says that piracy is stealing, same as ripping off a book, DVD or game from a store, and everything in-between.

I mention the in between, because I don't think you have to believe that piracy is properly stealing to have some ethical qualms about piracy.  Stealing takes something, depriving its owner from it and unlawfully transfers exclusive possession to someone else. Unauthorized copying and distribution doesn't deprive the owner of anything. If someone could make a copy of my car and drive off with it, leaving mine intact, would I call the police?  

I know that's a little Reducto ad Absurdum, and it leaves out some of the finer points.  I believe, personally, that while piracy is not theft, content creators deserve to be compensated and credited for their work.  I wouldn't like it very much if someone copied things I'd written for their own profit.  Non-commercial sharing of copyrighted works is unethical, but it isn't really theft. 

An old argument that doesn't work for me has been used by Big Content for years, the idea that if people copy and share, content will stop being profitable to make, and people will stop making it.  Sorry, but cassette recorders didn't kill radio, the VCR didn't kill TV or Movies and The Pirate Bay didn't stop the Movie Industry from posting record revenues these last few years.  People will create because they have to, and those who appreciate their work will show that appreciation by providing them with money. The people who lose out are the middlemen. The studio, producer, promoter, etc... 

The middlemen have seen the writing on the wall after decades of making piles of money on the backs of content creators, and they are prepared to spend some of their vast fortunes ensuring that their way of life doesn't change.  They will fail. You can't put the genie back in the bottle, and the smart middlemen will find a new way to keep themselves relevant instead of leading the doomed charge against progress.  I've heard the current strategy described as "the sinking ship desperately firing their cannons at the ocean." I like that.

Though I believe all this to be true, I still don't pirate a lot of content. I'll go into details on why in a future post, but I believe that though piracy is wrong, treating it like traditional theft is also wrong, and ultimately foolish.  

Watch this space soon for my first guest blogger, Joel from A momentary lapse, who writes about movies so terrible, they are amazing.

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Blog Gadgets

Today's Article Brought To You By the Letters D, L and C

Today's article is up late because so far, Dragon Age 2 is very, very good. One of the few advantages, from a geek's perspective, to not having a job is being able to pick up a new release that has been carefully budgeted and saved for on launch day... and play the hell out of it.

I installed the PC version after getting back from all of the day's errands, and installed the unlock items from Facebook, Penny Arcade and the other myriad sources that a shiny promotional item could be earned pre-launch. Then I redeemed the code for “The Black Emporium”, which is their free incentive DLC, that comes with a mabari warhound. Thinking about it, I then went and purchased “The Exiled Prince” launch DLC and installed that.

The Exiled Prince made a lot of people pretty mad. The usual geek complaint is that on launch day, if you buy a game, you should have access to everything the developer created for that title, without paying any extra. Day One Downloadable Content is like the developer making a whole game, then cracking off a piece of it and holding it for ransom, or so the argument goes.

I don't know that I agree with the groupthink on this one. When the original Dragon Age: Origins came out, there were also 2 pieces of launch DLC, also one free and one you pay for. The idea was to test free DLC as a means to control piracy and get a little bit more developer money from the secondary sales market (as free DLC ain't free after it has been downloaded once) and to see what people would be willing to pay for in terms of extra content. DA:O had as our freebie “The Stone Prisoner”, which added an interesting recruitable character and associated quests to the game, and the premium content was called “Warden's Keep”, which added an area, a questline and some merchants to the game.

Is this guy worth a few bucks over a crumbling tower full of monsters? You bet he is.

People hated it. I personally appreciated what they were trying to do, instead of adding SecuROM or some equally draconian DRM software, they gave people a reason to buy their product on launch day. The only thing a lot of folks were saying is that they mixed up which content should have been free, and which was worth paying for. (I hope you can see where this is going.)

Dragon Age 2 listened to the fans, and didn't abandon its plans to rethink copy-protection to protect their game's value. They reversed roles, making the DLC that is effectively just a new area with a few toys the freebie, and asked you to pay a premium for a new (fully voiced) character, and all the quests that, while optional, add significant content to the game. Guess what the fan response was.

You won't pay for me? *sigh* Guess my house goes unavenged.

Do we, as gamers really want to send this message? Don't innovate, don't create more if you expect us to pay more? If the premium content was created, but not available at launch, would that fix it, or just spark a new set of complaints about having to wait for it.

Sometimes, as gamers, we remind me of an old joke about a bunch of little old ladies sitting at a buffet chattering away. One says “The food is terrible here. It is overcooked, under seasoned and dried out.” Her friend enthusiastically agrees, adding “And such small portions!”

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Blog Gadgets

Steam Sales - The Unemployed Gamer's Best Friend

While I discussed previously in general some low-budget entertainment options for the "salary impaired" geek, I'm going to talk about computer games.

PC games, in particular, are a hobby many geeks enjoy, as many of us have game-capable rigs, and (generally speaking) easier and better online play make the PC a choice over the console for a few genres of video game. Some types of game, most notably the MMORPG are all but unrepresented on consoles, and the RPG offerings (with the notable exception of the JRPG) on the PC tend to have a broader scope.

Bias confession, I have an Xbox360 and a Wii, but I prefer to game on the PC, as RPGs are my favorite genre, and I grew up on old school adventure games. Being a PC gamer, more than anything except playing Dungeons and Dragons, (yeah, with books and dice) shaped me into the geek I am today.

Problem. Console gamers short on cash can roll down to the nearest Gamestop and pick up a used title. PC Gamers don't have that same kind of (legal) option. So what is an ethical gamer who is chronically short on cash due to lack of employment to do?

Steam. The digital delivery system run by Valve that used to be buggy, intrusive and a big pain a few years back has come a long way. I've lost discs for games I paid retail for, with no (again, legal) options for being able to play them without rebuying the game. Steam may be a form of DRM (many geeks' least favorite letters), but if you buy something there... you're all set if you want to reinstall it months later.

And what about the cash flow problem? Steam runs sales ALL THE TIME. Weekend sales, mid-week sales, "We just felt like it" sales. I've picked up titles that launched at $60 for $10, and little titles that I'd have never heard of without Steam for under $5. Some of the deals I've gotten were, truth be told, on games that were on my "gotta play this later" list, and were a year or so old, but I've seen titles only a few months after release at over 50% off. Not too bad, considering that I have a lot of free time I didn't have before, I just can't blow all our money on games. I can spend a little of it, and stretch the heck out of that dollar on Steam by watching for those sales.

And I don't even have to put on pants.

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