World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King sold 2.8 million copies in its first 24 hours of release. Although all the markets are looking down because of the economy, video games, WoW in particular are looking like everything is gravy. The main reason being is that during turbulent economic times people still want to be entertained. Even more so than when times are good.

The Lich King Is Laughing Maniacally At All The Gold

So, just how much money has Blizzard, now Blizzard-Activision made off the WoW franchise? Well, it’s estimated that around 11 million subscribers play WoW. Most of those people have upgrade to the Burning Crusade, the expansion that came out prior to Wrath of the Lich King. Then tally up those software totals, with the $15/month that WoW players must pay in order to play their game everymonth. Financially it estimates to about a $1 billion/year industry.

Just think of how much money you’d have right now if you had invested in Blizzard back when their big release was Lost Vikings on the SNES.

They are kind of pretty and shiny in a hard bitten, vaporware sort of way.  But wait, could this be the proof that we’re all waiting for?  Will DNF be an actual product in our lifetime?  I’ll let you decide that while you gaze lovingly at the once familiar mug of our long lost protagonist.  Let’s hope that if it is real, it makes a better impression than Spore.

Technorati Tags: dfn, duke nukem forever, pics, screenshot, kick ass and chew bubblegum, video games, vaporware

Let’s start with some of the problems of modern gaming - issues that I have at least, maybe you’ll agree with some of them.  First of before anything else is the state of the software.  Buggy releases which feel like nothing more than late beta stage games, crippled with DRM and support that consists of the user doing all of the footwork.

Then you have the blammo, rinse, repeat of modern gaming.  Everything is turning to RTS or FPS.  That apparently is all the choice you get from most major publishers.  Shoot, reload, repeat.  Spore attempted to break free of that model and turned into a miniature version of all of the above.  It’s either a non-fulfilling RTS or a non-fulfiling FPS (First Person Eater?).  When you do finally get to space. . . well lets just say it’s not as open ended as I would like.  It’s a great toy, it’s kinda a lousy game.

It’s also a $50 toy.  Paying $50 for something you can’t return, that may not work as advertised and that you can only install 3 times without a hassle?  Ouch.  Sadly, that’s quickly becoming the norm in the industry of big game publishers (or as I like to call it, EA).

Lastly, we have the system requirements hurdle.  I like upgrading my PC as much as the next guy but it takes time, patience and most importantly, money.  I quickly run out of all three.  Which means within a year of getting a near-uber system, I’m faced with games that I can’t crank up to max.  It’s not the biggest problem but it can be frustrating - perhaps I should just grow and learn to accept it but the part of me that looks at the price tag has a hard time doing that.

Not all of these problems come with all of the modern games - there are good games out there but they seem to be few and far between.

Just as all of this is starting to eat away at me (again) enter. . . Good Old Games.  Simply put, this is a portal from which you or I can purchase older, highly rated games with XP and Vista installers and no DRM for $6 to $10.

With only two publishers on board for the beta (Interplay and CodeMasters), GOG is already a fantastic place to visit.  Fallout, Fallout2, MDK, and a bunch of other games.  I’m already nodding along and smiling as I walk down memory lane and look at games I couldn’t even get to run on Vista.  Except now, I can.  GOG packages their games with installers for XP and Vista and I believe they even had a custom version of Dosbox for very old games.

When games have expansions or updates, often GOG will package these right along with the game.  Nice! I know that my gaming rig will run them as well.  Hell, my wife’s 6 year old laptop will cruise right along with all of these games.

At the two price points of $5.99 or $9.99 this isn’t an investment in a game, it’s an impulse buy.  Not only that, it’s an impulse buy I’m pretty sure I’ll enjoy, already having fond memories of the game in question.  Or, I can try a game I’ve always wanted to but didn’t have the wherewithall to play previously.  If it stinks, I’m out six bucks, not sixty.

And the best for last - it’s all completely 100% DRM free.  That means that if I blow away my computer four times a year and reinstall the OS, I can reinstall ALL of my GOG.com purchased games again.  As many times as I want.  Without complications.  Yay!

You can still ask for a beta invite at Good Old Games if you’re interested in checking them out.  I’d highly recommend it!

Technorati Tags: good old games, gog, video games, computer games, fallout, mdk, freespace, drm-free, drm

Here’s what it does, and the official site.

Features

* New Cheat: “evoadvantage”. Enter this cheat when are starting a new Creature game to choose any creature from the Sporepedia. Start a new game with one of your more evolved creatures!
* Display part statistics when you are in Build mode. Rollover any part and hold down the ‘i’ key.
* New Cheat: “blocksmode”. Turns creatures into their blocky representations.
* More style filters. Open the cheat window and type: “stylefilter -microscope” or “stylefilter -norainbows” or “stylefilter -nextgen” to see the new styles
* Added 70 new planet scripts with a low terraform score, especially of the “hot and high atmosphere” type

Graphics/Aesthetics

* Animation improvements
* Improved the planets fogging, blooming and lighting
* Fixed animation issues with tool handling, hand walking and some of the more oddly shaped creatures

Tuning

* Creature phase: Improved the pacing towards the end of the game, and increased the challenge in Normal and Hard modes.
* Tribe phase: Increased the challenge in Normal and Hard difficulty modes.
* Civilization phase: Increased the challenge in Normal and Hard difficulty modes.
* Space phase: Made Empires in Easy and Normal modes demand reasonable amounts of money in exchange for peace and adjust the level of punishment if the player doesn’t pay
* Space phase: Made disasters less likely to occur in Easy and Normal modes and increased the time between each attack from the enemy empire when the player is at war.

Miscellaneous

* Creature phase: Improved the way posse members behave during threatening situations and fights.
* Space phase: Made finding your home world and colonies easier in the Galactic view.
* Tribe phase: Made it so that tribe members can travel on steep hills if they need to do so now, but their speed will be reduced a lot.
* Fixed an issue with attacks not working on some bigger animals and larger animals not dying correctly
* Fixed collect mission not completing correctly when all parts have been collected
* Fixed problems with the “Rolling Thunder” and “Déjà Vu” achievements not being awarded as they should
* Fixed floating parts not being deducted from the budget when loaded into creator
* Fixed an issue with the rotation rings not resizing correctly when a part was resized and improved their look
* Fixed an issue where the terraforming score of planet could differ when revisiting a solar system
* Fixed the keyboard controls for zoom & pitch in the Colony Planner not working properly
* Fixed a crash that could occur when watching an epic creature attack a city
* Fixed some issues where the game would freeze when using the Creature Tweaker tool or when capturing a planet in solar view
* Fixed an issue where not all tribe members would obey the raid order when a large group was ordered to raid
* Fixed an issue where banning a creation from one of your other saved games would black out the main menu

Technorati Tags: spore, ea, drm, patch, games, video games, computer games, geek creationists

Gabriel tells of a relationship that starts early in his childhood with an Atari 2600 and plays out much like the story of every adult gamer’s life. During his teenage years, he discovers two overriding passions: freestyle club dancing and Blizzard’s classic RTS Starcraft. I can’t personally sympathize with the former; the club scene has never been anything for me except a mindless churning of intoxicated bodies, a dead-end excersise who’s only real virtue is the physical discipline it requires. Too many people I knew in high school went down that bottomless spiral of meaningless social mingling, destructive relationships, and drug and alcohol addiction and found themselves in their late 20s with no skills, no family, a dead-end job and few true, reliable friends.

You might then imagine my confusion when Gabriel characterizes his relationship with dance clubs as a constructive force in his life and his personal obsession with video games as a youth-stealing, mind-rotting, addictive plague on modern society. You see, in my case, video games defined my life, my career, and my passions in a positive way that led me to a successful career, a happy marriage, and a great group of friends who share my interests. Like Gabriel, I started off with the Atari, worked my way up through the Nintendo, the Super Nintendo (still my all time favorite console), the Playstation, and then the plethora of online PC games that grew in popularity during my teenage years. As dedicated gamers, my friends and I became heavily involved in PC modding and tuning, always trying to squeeze out that extra frame per second. It built our technical skills and provided the foundation I needed to to eventually get a job as a PC technician, after years of dead-end work in civil service I’m still trying to forget.

That experience also led directly to my eventual career choice as a web software developer and web designer. As the geekiest and most technically inclined of my group, I assumed the responsibility of building guild websites, handling server administration, and a brief stint of game programming when we spent some time off from Command and Conquer and Quake to build a MUD - a Multi-User Dungeon, a prototypical MMO with an all-text interface, for those of you who came along after Ultima Online and Everquest. The skills and social connections I developed while pursuing my gaming hobbies are more valuable to me than any other character-building experience in my life.

Without video games, I can’t predict exactly where my life would have ended up, but they provided me the focus that helped me develop my own personal talents into a successful career much the way Gabriel developed his based on his passion for dance. The similarity and contrast between our lives leads me to wonder, once again, at the impact articles like his will have both on gaming culture and on clinical and popular psychology - by further diluting the meaning of addiction and confusing cause and effect in the case of obsessive behavior, involving video games or anything else. The plight of real addicts with debilitating chemical addictions is mocked every time someone characterises an obsession as an addiction, and likewise people with unhealthy obsessions may be suffering from a fundamental misunderstanding of the cause and consequence of their problems which prevents them from seeking and finding the help they need.

I also worry that it provides a skewed view to the already misinformed older generation, as well as the members of our generation who never quite got on the boat, who are still playing the politics of fear we gamers are oh-so-familiar with. Every generation in the past century has been the first to embrace some amazing new technological or cultural advancement and each has had to deal with ignorance and fearmongering that big changes like these bring about. It’d be nice if we could look past generational lines and find the common ground we share as the children of a rapidly progressing society. Certainly Gabriel is welcome to tell his story. I hope that he, and others like him who have allowed a single facet of their life to become an overriding destructive obsession, will someday have the maturity to admit that the problem is theirs, and accept responsibility for their actions and their lives instead of placing blame on the object of their obsession.

(thanks to QJ.net for the image, used without permission, sorry!)

Technorati Tags: video, game, obsession, addiction, addict, obsessive, personality, bohemian, gabriel fransisco

Two of us here at ArsGeek have the game and so far we’re split 50/50 between issues and enjoyment.

I’ve had the game since release and have so far experienced no issues with it. This is the kind of game I enjoy, with a lot for the casual gamer and a lot for the hardcore gamer (space phase).

Cavtroop got the game at the same time, and ran in to the nasty DasmX86Dll.dll issue.  What’s that?  Well it looks like DasmX86Dll.dll is a part of Dasm32 - a debugger/disassembler.  Basically this is a tool used to debug software.  You can get it for free here if you want to check it out.  What happens is, at some point the game crashes to the desktop with an error on that DLL.  Why?  It looks like EA/Maxis was a bit sloppy and left a reference to the debugger in their production code, which should not be in there.  Thus, when the game wants to go into debug mode it crashes to the desktop.

Don’t think that installing Dasm32 will help though, it won’t.  EA and Maxis need to release a patch for this.  Until then, the only real work around seems to be. . . well, the one that we shouldn’t have to use.  Others report that the pirated .exe works fine.  It’s a pretty big problem when the pirated exe works better than the one shipped from EA.  It’s not clear to me if this debug call is a SecuRom call, or one built into Spore itself.  At a guess, it’s a SecuRom thing - once you remove SecuRom from the picture, no crash.

While I don’t advocate pirating anything, I just don’t have a moral issue with finding a cracked .exe for a game that I’ve already purchased, just to get the game to work.  And not only do you have to do that for the game to work, but your running it at a reduced capacity - no online content for you!

There’s been talk of how hard it is to remove SecuRom in and of itself.  I’ve found official instructions for doing this online at several sources, and I’ll reproduce them here in a cleaned up version so you know what to do.  Obviously this will stop Spore from functioning properly for you.  But if you have had SecuRom infected games installed on your PC and you no longer want to play them, here’s how to remove this software.

To remove all SecuROM related files (except the license data stored beneath the registry keys) please follow the uninstall instructions below.

Before you start the uninstall process, close all programs which are running in the background, especially be sure that no instance of the Windows Explorer is running.

Open the Windows command prompt.
type in the path of the infected executable:

“C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\[Your game] (for example: The Sims 2 Bon Voyage)\TSBin\[Sims 2 .exe file] (for example: Sims2EP6.exe or Sims2SP5.exe)”

And append /uninstall to it.

So for Sims2EP6.exe, you would type C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\Sims 2\TSBin\Sims2EP6.exe /uninstall

A dialog box should then appear to start the SecuRom uninstall process.

The registry keys described above are not removed by the above uninstall process; otherwise, the copy protection function of SecuROM would be completely undermined. The registry keys, which contain license data, remain on your PC and do not affect any of your PC’s functions. This is no different than other commercially available software programs that employ a similar use of registry keys.

Note: These instructions will work only for applications protected with SecuROM version 7.24 or higher (The Sims 2 Bon Voyage uses version 7.33 of SecuROM, so the instructions do apply). If you have an earlier version of SecuROM, please contact support@securom.com for different instructions.

Speaking of SecuRom - I’m not quite sure why software companies continue to insist that DRM of this type (or any type) is worth it.  I wonder how much money EA stuck into this?  The game was available on the torrents before it’s official launch and yet here’s EA and far to many other companies shoveling money down the DRM hole.

And it’s doubly a problem because of their refusal to see this as an issue.  If the game sells well, EA says “See! DRM isn’t that big a deal, people don’t care and we’re still selling games.”  If the game’s sales are hurt by DRM they fall back on “Pirates are killing our bottom line!”  Seriously?  Games will get pirated, sure.  But you’re much more likely to sell copies if they’re not crippled in the first place by software that does nothing to stop the pirates and everything to annoy legitimate users.

Think EA!  How many more games would you sell to people if your Amazon ratings were 4 or 5 stars?  How manyon the fence gamers wondering if they should plonk down $50 of their hard earned money are going to turn away from this?  I like this game, I really do, but I had to give it a 1 star rating on Amazon as well because of the way legit users are treated like criminals and the folks who do steal the game get to play it whenever and wherever they want.

So what to do?  Well obviously you can decide to not spend your money on this game.  Even more important though, rather than pirate it which is still illegal, why not give your money to publishers who refuse to treat their customers as criminals in the first place?  If PC gaming is a dying past time, it’s because of publishers who use DRM.  If someone’s going to save it, it’s the folks below.

My favorite game company of all time, Stardock, has a number of good to great games out there right now, Sins of a Solar Empire being my current favorite video game period.  They make good games, and their currently in the spotlight for refusing to use DRM, a commitement to ship a finished product and their gamers bill of rights. Impulse is also a neat client and is shaping up to be a real Steam competitor.

I’m glad to give them my money for a product that works, is fun and is DRM free.

The folks at Software, Technology and More have also gone through the trouble of compiling a great list of DRM free, indie games.  Their top pick, Mount and Blade is a fantastic game and the rest, though I don’t have much experience with them, I’ll be checking out.

The bottom line - DRM sucks. It punishes the people doing the right thing by paying developers to develop, causing a lot of unecessary headaches among users and basically making us all feel like we’re just renting a game, not purchasing it. I hope that the mob of low ratings on Amazon sends EA and other publishers a message but I’m doubtful they’re even listening.

Technorati Tags: drm, spore, securom, video games, remove drm, ea, maxis, stardock, indie, games, geek, technology, computers

I’ve been busy making things though.  You can check them out to the right —-> down there somewhere or look right here.

If you read AG and are also playing and enjoying Spore (DRM unloved as it is) feel free to comment with your spore profile or sporecast as well as I’d love to check it out.

Technorati Tags: spore, sporepedia, drm, amazon review, ea, sporecast

See, it used to be that you requested access to a beta release, you helped play test the game, the devs took in all of the beta tester’s suggestions and bug finds and then released a better, less bugy, more complete game.

Now it seems that not only have we entered the world of the patch, where games are released sort of almost kinda done, with a few little itsy bitsy problems that will be worked out by the second or third 300MB patch.  But, you now have to pre-order a game - pay actual money - just for the privilage of being included in a beta.

What if you hit the beta program and find out the game sucks?  Or that the devs just can’t be bothered to fix the deal-breaking (for you anyway) bug?  Hey, guess what, after the hours you put in helping them test their product, which you’ve determined isn’t for you, you get to buy it anyway!

Maybe the devs and publishers could ask gamers to invest 10% of the total cost of a game at the start of the development cycle!  Then, if the game doesn’t sell well or is a complete waste of 1’s and 0’s, they can blame the investment pool of players for not raising enough money.

Maybe I’m just grouchy today, but between this and flash on Linux, I think I’m going to go home, unplug and read a book.

Technorati Tags: beta, cod, world at war, call of duty, pay to play a pre-release, horsefeathers, video games, pc, computers, technology, angry geeks

Technorati Tags: video, spore, pet, creature creator, giant time sink

w00t!

Technorati Tags: ea, spore, woot, video games

Feel free to check them out here.  Nothing too fancy as I’m still getting the hang of it.  I can tell you that so far this is right up my ally.  Customization, tools, toys, and from the sounds of it, interesting game play.  Launch day should be a busy day for me.  I’m very much trying not to let all the hype build this up into an impossible game - reality in place, I still think I’ll like it.  Time will tell though.

Technorati Tags: ea, electronic arts, spore, video games, creature creator, hooked on a feeling

Looking at Spore, a game I’ve been excited about for a while now, it looks like there will finally be a change from the grind of rapid build up and nuke, or hide behind the pretty foliage from alien’s shooting beams at you paradigms that have been so prevalent lately.  I’m even getting sick of my new old standby - COD4.  Level 55 on a PC and. . . wow.  A gold gun, more shots down the line and more infantile chatter over which levels are ‘teh suck’.  They’ve even launched a whole ad series in a bunch of major urban public transportation stations.  How cool is it to see a video game, any video game, advertised in a place like that?

Call me nostalgic or an old fart but I miss the days of turn based RPGs and strategy games that really made you think.  Civ, Baldur’s Gate, Total War, MOO2. . . these are games I spent days on, working out my strategies, leveling my party, conquering worlds and taking real pride in my accomplishments.  No twitching involved.  All of these games had their shortcomings and limitations based on the systems and resources available - but they also all had that golden sheen of near endless replayability, go at your own pace game play and customization.

Guess what Spore is offering?  Pretty much all of the above.  While game play isn’t strictly turn based, it does look to be paced at a rate I want it at - not at the fastest click or quickest button push.  You start with your creatures at a cellular level and bring them all the way through to interstellar conquest.  Yowza!  It’s got vast scope, incredible customization, the ability to be not just a game but a social network without the grind of MMORPG camping.  I can’t wait to get my hands on this game and tool around with it.  Single player with creature sharing - so I can choose my level of interaction with other people online and I’m not forced into reading inane comments by school kids learning they can swear on the ‘net or grouping with a bunch of strangers.

There will of course be some limitations and downsides to this game - there is no gaming nirvana, at least not yet and probably won’t be until we get a Holodeck or its equivalent.  There will be limitations to the game but worst of all, there will be DRM.  Good old SecureRom, in it’s scaled back form.  At least there’s no 10 day activation anymore, EA has backed off of that, you can even play the game offline.  You will however need to authenticate when you install, and every time you update.  Here’s the official word:

We authenticate your game online when you install and launch i