How excited are you?

[Dudemeister]

Well, to answer the op: Not a whole lot anymore, after hearing about that steam thing.

 

[katze]

You might be in luck! Blizzard may call you on your offer!

May 27, 2010
Blizzard: DRM is a waste of everyone’s time
http://www.crunchgear.com/2010/05/27/blizzard-drm-is-a-waste-of-everyones-time/

(Seems the interviewer may have gotten the wording wrong in that last sentence!)

I will support Blizzard and Starcraft II in their stance on this, and I hope others follow! This is a chance to speak out against mommy-state servers keeping tabs on your authentication status. You do need to online activate once (which I was / am not completely for whatsoever), but after that, they don't do anything at all, like forcing updates, phoning home, requiring other software, data-mining demographics, auto-updating your drivers, locking your account because of other exe files on your system, etc.

Everyone should make Starcraft 2 an example of why DRM is broken and pick the game up…! Not let it become the most pirated game ever.

http://www.videogamer.com/news/blizzard_drm_a_losing_battle.html

Ummm, you do realise that Blizzard's DRM in Starcraft 2 is SAME or even WORSE than the one proposed for Civilization 5? Steam already does all that what Blizzard suggests?

But Blizzard does it even worse than Steam. First of all there will be NO LAN MODE in Starcraft 2. Imagine that. The best world's cybersports game will have no LAN. That is ridiculous. So to play any multiplayer you will have to be connected with their lame new Battle.net 2.0 which is 100500 times worse than Steam due to no chat rooms, forced integration with Facebook and other "nice" things.

Then Blizzard already states that Starcraft 2 will be a Trilogy so when you decide to pay and play the first game you will eventually also be forced to pick up the two other games to participate in major online leagues and to even enjoy a plentiful and alive online environment. Oh, and don't forget, you'll have to buy a separate game to be able to play in online leagues.

Sorry, but if you want to support guys who don't put DRM into their software you should rather support Stardock and Paradox Interactive than following the honey-flavoured Blizzard's PR stunts which have nothing to do with reality.

 

[Akka]

I agree that Blizzard has been so full of hypocrisy on this one that it deserves an Oscar.

 

[tom2050]

You don't buy a piece of software like you buy a pair of socks. You buy the license to run that programme. Games are programmes like your operating system, excel or word. I don't own windows, I have purchased the right to run one copy of that programme. This is the same for 99.9% of programmes 'purchased'. Unless you get a Computer programmer to write you a piece of software you don't own it.

Since I can remember I have always had to tick a box to say I will comply with the owner of the programme's wishes and agree to follow their rules.

You don't buy the EULA only. You don't get to see the EULA until you open the box. Once you open the box, the product is worthless, and you can rarely return it anywhere. Disagreeing with the EULA is pointless, as you have no recourse to get a refund if you tick the disagree box.

The company owns their intellectual rights of their software only. You own the rest, along with your right to resell. Steam is making it so you don't own the rest, you don't even own the right to play the game, they own the right to let you play the game (rent the game to you), and they own the right to 'Turn off your Service' if they wish.

This is how it is.

I posted an interview with the the guys from Valve in which they discuss what you call "data-mining" (hardware, software, and driver data related to crashes to determine potential causes). Few people bothered to listen to it.

I listened to it.. Most was about Mac, issues between PC and Mac, etc...

They started off saying 'graphics performance is a solved problem'; not sure how they came to that conclusion.

These aren't exact quotes, the thing is an hour long, but pretty close.

The data-mining piece:
'who provides more choices, more about micro-transactions (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_good) and identity'; This relates to it a bit, and explains that they view everything as a service, not a product. Not sure where Identity comes into play or why it is mentioned.

Went on about Mac:
MAC has many same characteristics as PC side
Mac games are much more stable than PC / Games per minute play per crash x5 more stable (really surprising per Gabe!)
MAC uses OpenGL, big advantage
don't view mac as afterthought port
Doesn't see it as 'Porting Games to Mac', sees Mac as opportunity

Impressive feats of Steam:
partnership with community, 170000 game servers running their games
service provision is so much greater than console service providers
greater service footprint and are really well protected against failure

Some odd things said:
Steam is like a giant AAA club
scary for Gabe, magical thing happened: collective efforts of team creating things; told them to "run for a while, see what happens", they were a band and needed to do more albums
DOJ hasn't declared we are a monopoly

Financial responsibility ?
gabe wants it so developers can be funded by future customers, not by banks; Not sure what this means exactly ??

Things said that are a bunch of techno-babble
we know what GPU's and CPU's are, but what are the opportunities to exploit the architecture
Stability is not always the game ... missed some of it ... permutation of configurations smaller on MAC; love flexibility of PC, but is quanatative of cost and stability
take business functions and re-engineer them around those partnerships; all costs for development are born by customers

Other funny quotes:
need to fix destabilizing issues of PC
Would take 4-5 hours for Gabe to explain why they don't port to PS3; they do analysis on these things all the time!
PC is the wild west, messy and complicated

----------------

All-in-all, it was an interesting interview. Lots of techno jargon talk that will leave even lawyers dazed. Even understanding it, you will not be sure exactly what they mean by it.

Some PICs of the excitement of the interview!

Staring at the ground, about to fall asleep

Gabe wants to play baseball!

 

[tom2050]

Sorry, but if you want to support guys who don't put DRM into their software you should rather support Stardock and Paradox Interactive than following the honey-flavoured Blizzard's PR stunts which have nothing to do with reality.

So, another PR stunt to try to fool poor ole me before I could look into it further. Blizzard is scum after-all... I should have known they didn't have a change of heart!

 

[Gamemaster77]

I voted 5 stars because civ3 is may favorite game of all time and civ4 seemed to be a disappointment. However the changes in civ5 look very good. I am not going to lie and say that I won't be civ5 because of Steam. However I am very unhappy, I don't want to have to play civ5 through any mediums. However it will affect if I buy the expansion packs as they have time to not integrate it into Steam.

 

[katze]

This might be interesting for you to read:
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=128252
A short history of Activision Blizzard or how B.Net 2.0 came to be

I realise we're going off-topic but this is related to the DRM stuff some people oppose in CiV.

 

[Chinese American]

They haven't released much about the game besides using hexes, allegedly better modding capability and Steam--the latter being a major downer.

 

[PieceOfMind]

gabe wants it so developers can be funded by future customers, not by banks; Not sure what this means exactly ??

I recall hearing this a long time ago, back when I was more into "gaming news". He's saying that at the moment it's difficult for "risky" games i.e. games that stray from the standard formula or familiar genres, to get very far into development because investors are not willing to take those sorts of risks. He believes that if gamers could see and be involved in the early development of a game, they could be the ones who invest in the game. After all, those gamers who like the game concept so early on are more likely to want to pay a decent price, and especially so if there could be a good financial return in it. They would literally be investing in games they care about. In principle it all sounds like a good idea but I'm not sure if it has actually happened, at least not for a title that has even a moderate budget.

People often portray Newell as some sort of gaming visionary. Honestly I think he likes that too. Really though I think gamers identified with him and loved the fact he often had an approach that differed from the mainstream.

 

[Gamemaster77]

I recall hearing this a long time ago, back when I was more into "gaming news". He's saying that at the moment it's difficult for "risky" games i.e. games that stray from the standard formula or familiar genres, to get very far into development because investors are not willing to take those sorts of risks. He believes that if gamers could see and be involved in the early development of a game, they could be the ones who invest in the game. After all, those gamers who like the game concept so early on are more likely to want to pay a decent price, and especially so if there could be a good financial return in it. They would literally be investing in games they care about. In principle it all sounds like a good idea but I'm not sure if it has actually happened, at least not for a title that has even a moderate budget.

You don't mean that people would pay for the game before it's released do you? If so would they get some sort of compensation for their investments after the main release?

 

[cccv]

I'd love to talk in detail about how excited I am, but I cannot do so without violating the forum's policy on posting something "vulgar," "obscene," or "sexually oriented." Luckily it would only be "violative of any law" in 35 states. In any event, let's just say I'm pretty darn excited and looking forward to it.

 

[White Elk]

I posted an interview with the the guys from Valve in which they discuss what you call "data-mining" (hardware, software, and driver data related to crashes to determine potential causes). Few people bothered to listen to it.

I listened to it. I also did a fair bit of rewinding to make certain I understood what I was hearing.

One thing that Gabe said especially stands out as relates to data mining...

Gabe Newell

minute 32:49 from this interview

"We have no reason to believe that Mac users are any less software promiscuous than PC users. But maybe that might be naive of us and we'll find out that Mac users don't download software on the internet or something like that."

He said that above quote in the context of looking at the data they had collected and discovering that games on Macs crash less than games on PCs. He said they'd only just begun looking at the data. In the quote he speaks of the possibility of discovering the reason why Macs do better than PCs by looking at what software steam users have downloaded off the net. Clearly valve is looking at more than just system specs and hours spent playing steam games. I don't think it right for them to be using my system resources, to scan my machine, and report back to valve HQ on what software I use, and how I obtained it. What esle do they look for? It could be anything. Scanning for what software we use, and how we came about installing it, demonstrates adequatly that steam has already gone too far.

 

[Disgustipated]

very excited. I do have some fears though. Mainly that they will turn this game into something like civrev. The trend in games seems to be to dumb them down so even dumb 11 year olds can do well (world of warcraft being a big example of this), and I fear the publishers are pushing them to dumb this game down too. I hope that is not the case. I hope there is complexity behind the scenes, and we can micromanage if we want to (give the noobs advisors to satisfy that demographic)

 

[tom2050]

I think micromanagement will be completely dead in 5. For Civ 4, they said they took all the micromanage elements out that people complained about, and from that they tried to implement a macromanagement system.

I can almost guarentee that any remaining micromanagement will either disappear completely or be extremely rare. Combat to 1 unit per tile was probably done with this thought in mind. I don't ever expect to see Multiple unit per tile come back as has been in all previous civ titles.

Pretty soon, the game will probably play itself for you as you watch.

 

[Wotan]

* = for using steam.

 

[Shiggs713]

Pretty soon, the game will probably play itself for you as you watch.

we already had this with civ4 mods

Anyways, I voted 2 stars. Would have easily been 5 if it were without steam. I'll probably eventually buy it just because I love civ so much, but I'm certainly not happy about this integration.

 

[Gelvan]

I think micromanagement will be completely dead in 5. For Civ 4, they said they took all the micromanage elements out that people complained about, and from that they tried to implement a macromanagement system.

I can almost guarentee that any remaining micromanagement will either disappear completely or be extremely rare.

how can you guarantee such a horrible thing? this would be as if they would repeat the big mistake of Master of Orion III. hopefully you are just wrong in that point.

very excited. I do have some fears though. Mainly that they will turn this game into something like civrev. The trend in games seems to be to dumb them down so even dumb 11 year olds can do well (world of warcraft being a big example of this), and I fear the publishers are pushing them to dumb this game down too.

since I was 11 when I started playing Civ1 I don't get this argument. what has age to do, with the willingness for complexity? I always loved micromanagement. I think that's what computer games is all about. the amount of reduction the civrev-games receive is due to the facts that you have no mouse and no keyboard. this limits the options of a console, therefore one has to make BIIIG buttons in the game. so it's a producer's fault that Oblivion was a console game, ported to PC rather than otherwise..
many people, and as I fear, also many publishers think that people who play computer games, could "change" to consoles, therefore they mass produce conosole-computer games with big buttons. but I hardly believe that people who like micromanagement ever will change to a console. console is only "something else". it has nothing to do with a good solid pc game.

 

[Sciguy001]

I would be more excited if they would give us any news about the game aside from the original information release >.<

 

[tom2050]

how can you guarantee such a horrible thing? this would be as if they would repeat the big mistake of Master of Orion III. hopefully you are just wrong in that point.

I hope I am wrong too. There was discussion about the new 1 unit per tile limit and hexes thread... how some thought it was going to be a clickfest having to individually move each unit.

I hope Firaxis isn't listening to those types of ideas, Civilization is a micromanage-type game.

Everything we have heard so far aims towards macromanagement style compared to prev civ games. (very few roads, 1 unit per tile, land units transform into boats, high possibility IMO of far fewer units than prev civ games, etc = game plays more of the game for you IMO; Upside to this is the Strategy portion they say. We will have to wait and see)

But with Take-Two/2K in charge (talk about a group [especially Take-Two parent] with bad history, bad business ethics, and downright pathetic towards consumers), I have no doubt that they will continue to push to alter it to make it more appealing to the masses with a mostly whole macromanagement system.

 

[Slayan]

I was excited till all the "Steam" bullcrap, I have played from Civ 1 but not this time, I'll still be playing Civ 4 daily