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The Business Side of Video (Space) Games EXCLUSIVELY ON IDLE THUMBS

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Heh, It's funny how EA hate ebbs and flows inversly to Activision hate. I missed what caused the EA hate to swing back around, unless this still has to do with the Sim City launch.

 

Speaking of Sim City, I wonder how well that game works these days.

EA has been upping the hate ante this year by way of the SimCity situation (lying about DRM, trying to mask it as cloud computing) as well as stating that mobile game players think that video games are all about micro transactions, so EA is going to give those players what they want in console releases (hence buying ammo or whatever in Dead Space 3). Gosh aren't they so considerate and not taking advantage of the misinformed?

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Yeah, I think what ebbs and flows is concern among the EA leadership for public opinion and the subtlety it requires. After the SimCity fiasco, several of the people high up in the EA chain of command made the rounds with some pretty aggressive and cavalier statements, which basically boiled down to "Shut up, it's for your own good and you'll like it once you stop squirming." Eventually, they'll figure the kitchen's too hot and go back to placating gamers again, at least until they see the next chance to make some money with a big ol' fuck-you.

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Oh, that reminds me: I don't think Microsoft is getting enough credit for allowing devs to use their own console as a dev kit. That's the first genuinely smart thing I've heard about the X1 - sure, it won't have the extra ram dev kits usually have for debug tools, but it gets rid of a big bottleneck.

 

Of course, the big bottleneck with Microsoft is cert and access to the store, and I doubt they're going to make that smoother.

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The only thing we can foresee about the XB1 being a dev kit is that the function will likely require the always-online part. Which, I mean, I don't necessarily object to that. But I also understand in the long run it'll be futile. People will open up that debug function sooner or later. <_<

 

As for the gesture MS is making in allowing that, it's nice that they came around on it, but I think they can still be held accountable on the part of having to come around to it. I'm just a skeptical jerk expecting the other shoe to drop, and that's a result of this last generation leaving me jaded in a lot of ways. It's like when EA got rid of their projecct $10 online pass thing; I knew there was a catch and it arrived via the console devs saying publishers are free to do that stuff if they want (for a while there, MS seemed to be making it mandatory).

 

Maybe I'm just frustrated that even after E3, when all the cards were meant to be on the table, we're still finding out things or seeing things change. Nothing is certain and that's frustrating to people who have waited a couple years more than usual for the next thing.

 

On that note, it's coming to light that the PS4's 8GB of RAM is getting used up in a big way by the OS just like the XB1; only half the amount is actually available to games. Impressions until now were that 1GB or so was going to be used by their OS. I mean, don't get me wrong, 4GB is still way better than half a GB. And the RAM is still faster and better in general. But this is what I mean; these surprise things we find out about later.

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4gb? What the hell is the PS4 doing with 4gb for the OS? A fully functional computer only takes around 1gb.

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On that note, it's coming to light that the PS4's 8GB of RAM is getting used up in a big way by the OS just like the XB1; only half the amount is actually available to games. Impressions until now were that 1GB or so was going to be used by their OS. I mean, don't get me wrong, 4GB is still way better than half a GB. And the RAM is still faster and better in general. But this is what I mean; these surprise things we find out about later.

 

I thought it was solidly confirmed that the XBO has 3 gigabytes reserved for its OS, not 4.

(Microsoft's justification was that it's being used for all the task-switching and software-suspend stuff the XBO is supposed to do.)

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Sorry, I was rounding things out; it's 3GB for the XB1 and 3.5GB for the PS4 (but again, the quality of the PS4 RAM is arguably better).

 

No word on what the PS4's RAM usage is going toward. I'm sorta not surprised it ended up being more than 1GB, but coming out to 3.5 makes you wonder. Some of it may be the built-in streaming properties.

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Sorry, I was rounding things out; it's 3GB for the XB1 and 3.5GB for the PS4 (but again, the quality of the PS4 RAM is arguably better).

 

No word on what the PS4's RAM usage is going toward. I'm sorta not surprised it ended up being more than 1GB, but coming out to 3.5 makes you wonder. Some of it may be the built-in streaming properties.

 

Well, weren't they bragging about an always-on patcher and downloader system-on-a-chip that would run in the background and let you play your games right away? I'm not surprised that takes four gigs to run.

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In all fairness. I have 16GB of RAM in my workstation, and the only time I even get over the 8GB of usage is during development. Games rarely ever go over 2GB of usage. But the thing is, if you have the memory, it will get wasted (i.e. Steam is using 300MiB of RAM, more than firefox). So this will also start happening on the consoles. Memory is there to be used, but supporting services should at least to try to be as small as possible.

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Followup on A/B and its timing on spinning itself off: one of its consistent revenue streams is WoW subs, but investors have been getting skittish about the decline there. The figure I've seen bandied about is below 7 million and A/B won't be profitable enough to handle the music stopping on CoD.

 

WoW's now at 7.7 million. I'm curious to see if investors start issuing 'sell' orders as a result.

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It seems odd to me that this man is so vitriolically indignant about sexism in a game that is also, and more centrally a game about glorifying gruesome acts of violence and dismemberment.

 

This seems less like another horrible example of flagrant casual sexism in games and more like somebody being offended by something that is actively trying to be offensive.

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So what, it's being offensive for offensiveness' sake? I think that being offended is a perfectly reasonable reaction in that case.

 

Moreover, I think it's reasonable for people to have different tolerances for differing potentially offensive things, and to be harder on some things that are particular issues for gaming than others, particularly if it's how games present women given that kids getting into gaming is nearly entirely 50/50 between genders these days, thanks to the ubiquity of computers and the expectation at school that every student is comfortable with a computer. Turns out that if you put a computer in front of a kid, pretty much everyone will try and make it play a game, and the gaming industry is really bad at retaining these customers. It is no coincidence that feminism became an important topic in the mainstream gaming media a few years after affordable education laptops for children (and for internet browsing) started to become a thing.

 

Also I think it's pretty obvious Suda51 has sold out at this point.

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So he said and then she said and then he said. I see. 

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Oh god, the x-ray specs are pre-order DLC?  Ugh.

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Via Game Informer via Joystiq; Michael Biehn, the guy who played Corporal Hicks in Aliens, describes working on Colonial Marines as not being fun and lacking passion.

http://www.joystiq.com/2013/07/26/michael-biehn-working-on-colonial-marines-wasnt-fun-at-all/

 

It's a pretty good combination of honesty and insight on the industry. He touches up on a topic that came up on Idle Thumbs a long time ago, about how the industry doesn't necessarily need better acting talent and needs better (or just the outright presence of) directors for that talent. He gives Dean Evans, the director for Far Cry 3's DLC, credit in this fashion.

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Yeah, I don't think people realise how important the voice director is to making the voice acting sound anywhere near-decent. An indie game I worked on happened to have one, and our voices turned out pretty good for a low-budget indie game with community theatre actors. I was secretly pleased we had much better performances than Baten Kaitos, which was the last game I'd played with voice acting at the time.

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EA lost the appeal about the lawsuit for likeness rights from former NCAA players. http://www.nbcnews.com/business/former-ncaa-athletes-win-video-game-lawsuit-against-ea-6C10809666

I'm glad that appeal was struck down. If EA wants they can keep filing appeals with higher courts I guess, but man. I don't like the idea of EA having a monopoly on official, real sports.

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Breath of Fire 6 is on its way!

 

... to PC, tablet, and smart phone.

 

... as an online RPG.

 

"Service starts 2014."

 

Fuck this goddamn industry.

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Capcom sure knows how to endear themselves to fans.

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Breath of Fire 6 is on its way!

 

... to PC, tablet, and smart phone.

 

... as an online RPG.

 

"Service starts 2014."

 

Fuck this goddamn industry.

You forgot to mention...it's free to play! Yaaaaaay!

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I didn't realize we were up to 6 already. I remember liking Breath of Fire 2 a lot.

You should play part 3, it's my favorite in the series and recommend it at every chance I get.

 

One of my favorite things about part 3 is the reviews it got when it originally launched - it was referred to as a "more of the same" JRPG. And it's like, how is it more of the same when you turn into a freaking dragon?

 

 

Capcom sure knows how to endear themselves to fans.

No shit, right? Capcom is on some weird war path totally embracing the "sell out" method of video game business. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to staple my mouth shut for saying "sell out" unironically.

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