Tag Archives: Xbox One

March 8, 2016 · 21:58

Of mice and rats

Today news reached me that has me a little baffled. News that seems weird to say the least but, it is news and it is a reality. The news: “Microsoft is cancelling development of Fable Legends, Lionhead Studios’ Xbox One and Windows PC game, and is “in discussions” to close the Fable developer, according to a statement released by Hanno Lemke, general manager of Microsoft Studios Europe“, from several sources gives us the issues at play. In the 10 years running, between 1996 and 2006 we see Lionhead being created by visionary creator Peter Molineux. The man who created Bullfrog, sold it to Electronic Arts and got serious with Lionhead. During his reign, he created Black & White, Fable, Black & White 2, Fable 2, Fable 3 and so on. Each of these titles would shake the foundations of gaming. The originality and vision brought towards these games would continue for a long time to come. Fable 2 and 3 were made as Lionhead had been sold to Microsoft, but now, the curtains are closing. They had one more cash cow by remastering Fable into Fable: Anniversary and that was it.

In the same time that Peter grew Lionhead in the 10 years, Microsoft broke it down to what it is now. A cancelled brand, IP wasted and no look towards the future.

The quote “The free-to-play spinoff of the Fable franchise was intended to be cross-play compatible between Windows 10 and Xbox One” is perhaps the most interesting one. You see, people would have lined up around corners to get a next gen Fable 4, and they would have paid full price for it. Even though Fable 3 was not the jump forward we got when Fable became Fable 2, but the materials created had left plenty of options for a new story, a new storyline in somewhat familiar and accepted surroundings.

What is it with large corporations, especially non-gaming ones, to think that their business solutions will work in an area that is all about art?

On one side there is all the benefits of a separate and different Fable game, yet we have clearly seen that Fable 1, 2 and 3 worked. In an age where good titles are everything, the massive delay Fable: Legends brought is one that gave despair to the gaming community. Consider that both Fable: Legends and No Mans Sky would have been late, yet a multi-billion dollar operation like Microsoft could not get their act on line, whilst Hello Games, a party of 15 people (and roughly £1,827.43 in the bank) are about to release one of the biggest ground breaking games in gaming history, can anyone see my reasoning here?

Gaming visionaries are rare, really rare, I am at least able to recognise those people. It seems to me that Microsoft failed on several levels. The IP that could be transformed and the IP that is still out there is worth billions. Someone like Richard Garriott is sitting on IP that could rival and even surpass Bethesda (this does not reflect negatively on Bethesda). Hello Games has created IP that can revolutionise RPG gaming and sandbox gaming as we know it, whilst Ubisoft, Electronic Arts and Microsoft are barely getting by.

Now in case of Electronic Arts there are still irons in the forge and it is possible that the silent kept Mass Effect 4 could break barriers too, we will find out much closer to the end of the year. I am not taking a look at Ubisoft for now. Every MMORPG has a start-up phase and a game with millions starting within 24 hours will create entirely unseen levels of bottlenecks. Let’s give them a little space!

Yet in all this gamers should see the premise that exists, because two small time developers (David Braben and Sean Murray) have achieved IP originality and growth that none of the large developers have achieved for some time. Large developers have been forgetting that art is the focus, a view Jason VandenBerghe has shown, which is why I have faith that For Honor will be the success I expect it to be. It does not matter that this is an Ubisoft title, I expect it to be a great title! Even though it is not my cup of Tea, it is very likely that I will get this game regardless. For the same reason that I will never part with Bloodborne, even though I am hopeless with this game. It is one of the most amazing titles to play, it shows excellence from the very first moment I started to play; everything regarded for Honor showed the same slither of uniqueness and excellence. The fact that Ubisoft confirmed that For Honor will have a complete single player campaign (perhaps even three, which is a speculation from my side), makes me more and more interested in this game. The release date is TBA, but when we look at the overall score, there is a worry (not specifically towards Ubisoft), the large players seem to have ignored (for the most) the creation of truly new IP, they rely on remastering of franchising, whilst there is still a massive area to explore. In an age where the next gen war is in full swing and the winner decides what platform makes the cut, in equal measure as Microsoft broke its own foot on claims regarding the initial Xbox One, we see a change due to Windows 10 that is fueling additional dangers and fears, herding a massive group of undecided players towards the corral of Sony. This is of curse good for Sony, but that means that Microsoft is either pulling out of the gaming front or transposing gaming for ‘generic entertaining downloads’ that is all about Digital Selling. It is their choice to make, which would allow Sony to become the unopposed winner for 5 generations of console.

In my personal opinion, all due to a ‘business’ core that looks at a spreadsheet and does not understand the gaming business. Sony will regard this as no great loss. The moment that Microsoft realises that the power given to Sony also deflates the future of the ‘Xbox Two’ (or whatever it will be called), we will see many overreactions and no resolution. This last part is not due to Lionhead, this is the beginning downward spiral as we are getting exposed to the ‘carefully released leaks’ of a next Xbox with changeable graphics card. The move by Microsoft to remove the gap between computer and console. As I see it, it will be the end of Microsoft gaming. The issues that graphics bring, often due to open drivers might give a better resolution, yet in addition it brings issues too. You only need to look at Arkham knight and how it is no longer a reality for PC’s, whilst running nicely on Consoles (in my case on the PS4) to see the dangers of this step. With Arkham knight there is no blame towards the developers. One source (extreme tech at http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/224216-is-nvidias-physx-causing-amd-frame-rate-problems) gives us “Ever since Gears of War Ultimate Edition came out last week, there’s been a rumour floating around that one reason the game runs so poorly, with so much stuttering on AMD hardware, is because Nvidia’s PhysX is actually running on the CPU“, which is now impacting Microsoft’s own product “Microsoft has launched the PC version of Gears of War Ultimate Edition, but the characteristics of the two titles couldn’t be more different. The new Gears of War is catastrophically broken on Radeon cards“. So how long until you get a card that makes old games trash and new games rubbish? This is the core that gamers will get to face. In addition, how will you enjoy your console when you end up buying a new graphics adapter at $1200 every other year? There is a reason why I decided on consoles. Yes, I accept that 4K gaming is not an option. However, the equal reality is that I have never stopped loving playing Diablo 3 on the PS4, as well as the fact that Minecraft has ZERO hardware requirements (regarding the graphics adapter) and is every bit as fun and addictive as those needing the Nvidia GFX 980 TI.

Was this ever a consideration for those in charge of making the call of change for the future?

The end of Xbox is not in sight, neither will that be the case for this generation (unless Microsoft goes lopsided on DMA issues). So what about the mice? The mice are the independent developers who softly walk by delivering awesome achievements, may we see many mice on our way to great gaming. The rats are the executive business ‘leaders’ who gotten themselves in a $$$ environment, not understanding that world they move in. Good luck I say! One of these mice is Tom Francis who is on route to bring us a game, currently not yet finished as far as I know. A game that given its size could become a desired game for both PSN and Xbox Live. No matter who gets it, it will be a winner for that brand. I believe it requires ‘better’ graphics and a little ‘more’, but in its basic setting it is as appealing as many ‘hi-res’ games currently for sale. The title is called ‘Heat Signature’ and I hope it will be playable this year. Did you count with me? Three original games, with the larger players showing indecently less promise and in addition the possible upcoming console dangers Microsoft might bring its consumers will impact the gaming scene in even larger ways. That market could shift towards Sony, with a market worth billions for the next real visionary.

Let the games begin!

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Tagged as Black & White, Black & White 2, Bloodborne, Electronic Arts, Fable, Fable 2, Fable 3, Fable Legends, For Honor, Gears of War Ultimate Edition, Hello Games, Jason VandenBerghe, Lionhead studios, Mass Effect 4, Microsoft, No man's sky, Peter Molineux, Richard Garriott, Ubisoft, Xbox One

January 5, 2016 · 20:30

Where is the egg timer?

There is an old saying that there is never an egg timer around when you need one. This being the usual response to a person shouting out: ‘watch this’, which is closely followed by moments of chaos. These things happens, they happen even more so when we act ‘ad-hoc’. Yet what should be the issue when we see ‘The 25 most anticipated video games of 2016‘ (at http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/dec/30/video-games-2016-dishonored-2-uncharted-4-xcom-2) by Keith Stuart and Kate Gray, which was published on December 30^th, whilst a mere 22 minutes ago, @gamespot presents: ‘Scalebound release date delayed to 2017‘ (at http://l.gamespot.com/1Z2AZVS), which was actually published yesterday. So when we see gamespot flaunt the title “Platinum Games says postponement was necessary to ‘deliver on our ambitious vision’”, now let’s face it, the timeline does not shift that much (2016 -> 2017) within 5 days. We could speculate that at the end of the year Keith Stuart and Co were casually careless at the end of the year, a speculation I myself reject because, even though I do not always agree with Keith, the man is a professional and he tends not to be careless in that regard. In the second, Platinum marketing might have tried to ride the waves of free publicity as much as possible, which is more likely than not the case, yet that would be a casually stupid path to take.

Perhaps there is the idea that instead of trying to feed (or create) hypes (especially in the gaming and movie world), the media at large needs to stop feeding us ‘junk’ (read: rehashed news) when a game is more than 20 weeks away. So, perhaps not mentioning any title that is more than 20 weeks away might not be the worst idea. It would stop hypes to a larger extent, it could result in a focus from the media towards the games of ‘now’ or ‘soon’, which offcourse would include a lot more independent developers. How much have we seen in the media, not on half-baked triple ‘A’ ‘publishers’, but on titles like Adrift, which comes from Three One Zero and will launch this quarter on Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One? Is it not most anticipated, perhaps because the media ignored it?

It is my biggest issue with many gaming ‘pages’, especially in main stream media. Too many ignore interesting indie games that would be highly anticipated if more people were aware of it, yet many are pushed into the shadows as two ‘Big-Uns’ (EA and Ubisoft) get overly exposed on products well over a year away. I think that with the consumer in mind, these practices need to stop (or massively lessen). For example, it was only by accident that I stumbled upon Ghost of a Tale, an upcoming game for PC and XB1, I personally believe that this is not an anticipated game because the media seemed to have ignored it, but they kept on rehashing the same news on No Mans Sky again and again.

Which for a short time was understandable, but many kept on going when we heard the official news that the game was coming in June 2016, but as there were more speculations to be made, No Man’s Sky remained on the publications. The interesting part is that Ghost of a tale is a stealth game that would be very appealing to gamers that reside on the lower end of the Teenager scale (a rarity to say the least), what I saw reminded me of Don Bluth, specifically An American Tail and The Secret of NIMH. It came to life as a successful Indie go-go crowd-funding campaign and from what I saw it surpasses loads of games by ‘established’ software houses. How come not more information has seen the light through the media in regards to this title? You can see a lot more about the game at http://www.ghostofatale.com, they show the issues, the upgrades and more important just how amazing parts already look. The game got delayed from 2015 and it seems that 2016 could be the year of the mouse.

Just such a shame that the media at large does not take more time and space to see the wonderful world of the independent developer, with Technomancers on more than one platform and let’s not forget Kingdom Come by Warhorse Studios, it might initially not sound massively interesting as it seems to be released much later for Nextgen consoles, but the fact that the initial release includes both Linux and OS X should be massive as decent games for OS X tend to be really rare events. The fact that it is a Q2 release in 2016 makes it interesting to keep tabs on, as it would be released half a year earlier than games that are already receiving way to much exposure.

So as we look back on the egg timer, we must acknowledge two things, the first is that a sudden shift to another year is not the main reason, that’s just bad luck for some, but the fact that plenty of interesting games tend to not make the media (especially in their online editions) seems to be a lot less acceptable, especially when we see more and more lacking quality reviews. Yet these games all show that timing is still an issue to some degree, yet personally I find the shifting time lines a lot more acceptable from independent developers who try to get through with limited resources than the shifts we see in larger houses that are either close to or exceeding the billion dollar mark, there it is too often a failed form of managing expectations by not in the least of the culprits their own marketing departments; in addition, when I see what a mere independent mouse can show us graphically, I am happy that the group if independent developers is growing, because a mere dozen independent developers have shown me more to look forward to than several of the established branders of gaming. In all this I must point out that the Guardian article does give a fair bit of indie games attention, but they are one of few amongst way too many, which is a real shame.

For me, it is not about the 25 most anticipated games! I, like many others am a man on a budget. For me the important equations is, which games are released in the next 8-12 weeks, as my budget will allow me to purchase only one game, the hype creators seem to ignore that part, knowing that I have a few more options than many families with two working parents who are in possessions of often more than one playing growing young-ling, I would state that the media is ignoring a mainstream niche, one that should be rectified in 2016.

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Tagged as An American Tail, Don Bluth, EA, Gamespot, Ghost of a tale, independent developers, Indie developers, Kate Gray, Keith Stuart, Kingdom Come, Microsoft Windows, No man's sky, Platinum Games, PlayStation 4, Technomancers, the Guardian, The Secret of NIMH, Ubisoft, Xbox One

November 20, 2015 · 00:52

Forced Discomfort

It is a term you might not know, but this term is central in the current Xbox One debacle. You see the Windows 10 update came with a massive setback, you now have to be online to validate your profile and to play games. The first of a few steps that Microsoft is undertaking, undoing the events of 2013 and to get back on track. Now if you look at Xbox support, you will find that the Xbox now has an ‘offline mode’.

The page (at http://support.xbox.com/en-AU/xbox-one/networking/using-xbox-one-offline), shows several parts, let me show just two that matter:

You need to be online to experience everything Xbox One has to offer, but when you’re offline, you can still:

Sign in to your profile, but only if you’ve signed in online before. This includes the Kinect automatic sign-in mode, if you set that up while you were online.
Play games, if you have a disk or you’re on your home console (see About My home Xbox to learn more).

Now the second part, a side that was NEVER an issue before:

There are some capabilities that you need to be online to use, such as:

Playing games that require online sign-in, even for a single player.

Now, this has happened with games that came from the Microsoft Store that is not a secret, but is that the only occasion?

As for the steps to do this:

How to go offline

Scroll left on the ‘Home‘ screen to open the guide.
Select ‘Settings‘.
Select ‘All Settings‘.
Select ‘Network‘.
Select ‘Network settings‘, and then select ‘Go offline‘.

Your network status will change to offline. To go back online, follow the previous steps, but in ‘Network settings‘ select ‘Go online‘.

Here is the massive issue as I see it. With computers and laptops this was never an issue. You go home, you either connect the network cable or the router could be automatically found. No interaction required. The Xbox360 had exactly the same parts. If I wanted to be inline, I connected the network cable for the time that it was needed. It was never an issue. In my case I had one network cable and one free connection and two consoles, this is why I did that. Even today I am faced with this on the PS4 and the Xbox One. In addition, I see no reason to be ‘connected’ all the time. So why is this now such an issue?

As I see it, this mandatory online is not really mandatory, but as I see it Microsoft is forcing us online, or to be connected and by changing the premise by having to set the network offline and online, we will eventually tire and be connected all the time. We do not win here, only Microsoft does!

This is called ‘forced discomfort‘. Which comes from the Forced Choice Scale of Discomfort. This we get from the 1987 work of J. H. Bernardin in the Academy of Management Journal, 30, 162-173. Development and Validation of a Forced Choice Scale to Measure Job-Related Discomfort Among Customer Service Representatives. This is only one approach to it all, but it is the foundation of what we often face today. The man is a decently brilliant Psychologist and has worked on many projects. In this specific case we use a force choice scale, which was developed to measure discomfort based on characteristics of a specific job. You get to choose 2 scenarios, which causes the most discomfort. For example:

Having to listen to someone’s point of view with which you disagree (perhaps this blog).
Your work is closely monitored (loads of examples).

Now knowing the forced scale will influence our reaction to the situation and Microsoft was entirely unpleased with our desire to remain offline when we prefer it. They prefer a steady stream of data. Now take the previous setting and consider the following statements

Having to patch a game regularly.
b. constantly adjusting your network settings.
c. Having to synch save games.
d. Having to change the disc of a game whilst playing.
e. Switching the batteries in your controller.

Which two would be your most discomfortable ones? Now, in all fairness I should have added 15 more items, but the chances are really great that network settings would score high, which is what we face now on the Xbox One. There was no need for any of this on the Xbox 360, the PS3 and the PS4, so why is this an Xbox One issue?

Because Microsoft wants to return to the 2013 issue that they need data of many kinds. Even if they are not privacy driven. For them to know exactly how many gamers are online playing, the amounts of hours connected is all data they would love to have. None of it goes back to your identity, so there is no privacy issue, but that level of data details one that they can charge game makers for, and they could end up charging a lot.

This is why I am so angry with Microsoft, because as a consumer I feel betrayed! Now consider your desktop and laptop (if you have them), do you need to switch your settings to offline? No you don’t! So if Microsoft can figure this out on those systems as well as the Xbox 360, why make us go through these events?

As I see it, the only conclusion I get is that they have ulterior motives, motives that are not for the consumers that they should be serving as the consumer paid for the device. In this regard we could consider another paper by John Bernardin, namely ‘Conscientiousness and agreeableness as predictors of rating leniency’, you can probably guess the next part. Why should we show leniency towards Microsoft in any way, shape or form? Was their act of backwards compatibility a way to create agreeableness?

And as Microsoft stated on the 12^th ‘we put fans at the centre of everything we do and wanted to make some big changes‘ (at http://news.xbox.com/2015/11/12/new-xbox-one-experience-begins-today/), then why do you keep on pushing for mandatory login through forced discomfort? It seems that you never had any ‘fan’ in the centre, only your own greedy need for a stable stream of connection data! The fact that the press remains oblivious to all this makes me wonder what else we might be forced to face and a third test will be done next week to ascertain a few more items. I do not know what the effect will be but I will explain that fully in the next (and perhaps final part) of all this.

I have no idea whether people will catch on before thanksgiving and Christmas in the US. Even purely Windows 10 has a few issues. Forbes reported: “While the option to disable is nice, ‘Windows Update Delivery Optimization’ (WUDO) is another example of where Microsoft should be more transparent with Windows 10 and let them know upfront what their devices will be doing behind their backs by default” (at http://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2015/08/02/windows-10-vs-windows-8-vs-windows-7-whats-the-difference/), so what else does the new Xbox OS push for and Microsoft has not been upfront about it?

I still have an issue with non-stop online. This might be my own paranoia, yet as we see computers getting hacked into (often due to stupidity of the user), having a power core at your disposal as they turn your console into a botnet. Is that such a stretch? No!

Consider the following data: “the slides from Frank Savage’s presentation at Build 2014 along with the audio of the same. We noticed the fact that Xbox One runs Windows 8” Now this will be Windows 10, so having an app that becomes a remote botnet is not a stretch and by the time people start to consider that their console is doing a lot more than walk ‘the wasteland’, we are confronted with a few hundred thousand consoles, all playing ‘spam the neighbour’. Now I am not stating that Microsoft is not taking precautions, but so far every windows version has been breached multiple times. Soon consoles will be also forced to consider additional apps to protect against such intrusions, it is the price of being always online!

Is it an immediate danger? No it is not! I am not stating, suggesting or implying this, but we know that EVERY Windows system has had its flaws and so will the Xbox One. Often not dangerously, but when a console is always reachable that danger just increases. This is my personal issue with always being connected. It is why I am sparingly connected (and because I have one wire for more than one console).

But I diverged from the initial issue of forced discomfort, I did so intentionally so that you realise that consoles have many sides, they often have more options and powers than the average gamer realises. This is not a bad thing, but in all this that realisation is also linked to the sequence of events as they are now playing.

When you realise that your system can do more than you realise, it will give on the other side of the coin the statement: ‘you can lose more than you think because you never realised that you could have lost it’.

That requires a little explaining. Consider ‘you cannot lose what you never knew you had’ and ‘things can be removed from you when you realise that it was an implied gift, not an actual one’. The first one is often shaped into: “you knew what you had, you just never thought you’d lose it“, a statement that might be true, but I do not agree with it. You see in my view, when you lose you never knew you had, you stop your own evolution. The realisation of new is at the core of growth, which takes me to the second part. An implied gift is still a gift, having it taken away is not wrong of debatably criminal, it is merely an act that stops your evolution. For as you lost elements of growth, your actions become empty. This is why I am so against the entire situation. For the most, I was never a multiplayer man, so I never missed multiplayer, yet I learned that Mass Effect 3 came with plenty of grudges and complaints, yet it also came with the best multiplayer experience ever! Mass Effect 3 was the founding father of me remaining a Gold Live member. Even if I no longer play that game in any way shape or form, that game put Gold on the map for me and as such I evolved due to a part I never knew I had. In that same instance, the implied ownership is still an issue, because even though I no longer play it, the Mass Effect 3 Cerberus system is an implied gift, not an actual one. At some point Mass Effect 3 will no longer be multiplayer, no longer work online. At that point our multiplayer evolution stops (until the next game comes along). Even as I ‘demand’ that my single player game will forever play on the intended console, I will never expect a service like multiplayer to remain active. In that same light I expect a game or preowned game to always unreservedly work on the console version it was made for, but in that same light I see multiplayer as a service, which means that a separate multiplayer is not transferable. This is my personal handle on the things that play, so in that same light, being able to play offline without forced discomfort is a given right, not a managed service. As Microsoft is pushing us to be all online (in the approach given to us in 2013), we should all lash out against Microsoft for leaving us betrayed.

There is also an additional issue when we consider ‘section 7b’ of Microsoft’s Services EULA where we see “may automatically check your version of the software and download software update or configuration changes, including those that prevent you from accessing the Services, playing counterfeit games, or using unauthorised hardware peripheral devices“, I do not have an issue with that. I buy my games, all my games! Yet these changes also allow for hunting those who ‘alter’ their Xbox so that they can do something that is called jailbreaking on iOS. These people (to the larger extent) are not interested in pirated games. These people want to play the latest games the moment they are released in Tokyo or the US. They do not want to wait a year for the ‘altered’ edition, they want to full Japanese experience. I get that and I am partially on their side too!

But these changes will not only make those acts no longer possible (which is debatable whether it should be allowed or not), but the second hand gaming world could in equal measure be blocked soon thereafter. Whether this will come true cannot be predicted, yet as Microsoft broke its word on not online gaming, what else will they regard as ‘flexible’?

The fact that the press is still not regarding the online login push as a fact is also a worry, because this was at the heart of the 2013 slump in pre-orders for the Xbox One. So why is no one else picking this up? One friend of mine did state that most people are always online and they do not care. Which is fair enough, yet those people chose this, so why force the others? Is that not a valid question too?

This all links to the premise behind this all. Microsoft marketing might state: “Microsoft will do what is best for you”, but from my evolutionary mind, the premise should be “I know what is best for me“, Microsoft has no clue what my needs are and they will never realise what they are when they push me for setting I am unsettled with, how can that lead to a good experience? I came from DOS, VMS and MVS and I grew into Windows 95 (and Mac OS), we all grew from one system into another one, yet if you allow yourself to be pushed into a system you do not understand, at that point we can only harm ourselves or what we represent (our data and our actions). So as we get pushed into a new system with new rules and changing terms of service we must start to realise that remaining agreeable and lenient is no longer an option, especially as the press is extremely willing to side with whomever advertises the most. Now it is time to address my own implied issues. You see, from my point of view this is not a mere issue, how come that the press is not all over it? I can’t be the only one who saw this element, I am not the only one confronted with the issues as presented with the latest OS update on the Xbox One. So why is no one seeing this? It could all just be me, but if that is the case, we could play online and offline by merely switching off a router and be able to play again without having to login, but that is not the reality I see. What I see is forced discomfort, is it just me or are you realising that switching off your Xbox router comes with setbacks and why is that?

We all need to start asking questions and Microsoft should give us some straight answers.

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Tagged as Academy of Management Journal, Forced Choice Scale, Frank Savage, J. H. Bernardin, Mass Effect 3, Microsoft, Microsoft’s Services EULA, PS4, Windows Update Delivery Optimization, WUDO, Xbox One, Xbox360

November 12, 2015 · 21:30

Seeking the next stage

As we move towards the end of an era, exams, some move towards a new life and towards other challenges and new games. Tonight the start of Fallout 4 begins, too busy to make a real dent in it, but I will take a peak. I did take a peek at Assassins Creed in another way. I did not buy the game for the reason that Ubisoft has disappointed twice now, thrice including the latest one. As far as shown it does not have the massive issues that Unity had, but overall it ends up being more of the same. The finale is completely over the top, but at times one must allow for that. Like all previous AC games, the graphics are beyond unreal, but that is it. The AI of the opponents is still out there, the control, or better the consequence of assumption by the game engine is also still out there, just like in Unity. In all fairness those who want more of the same will like it, partially I want it too but too many irritating moments where Assassins Creed is controlled by the Prince of Persia team and I hate that part. In some instances loading took forever, but that was a PC edition so there are a few elements in play. Even after the introduction when you arrive in London will you get into a squirm who lifts your pocket, you chase and then you need to fight someone (2 persons in this case) Assassins Creed 2, AC Brotherhood, 3 and Unity anyone?

Of course there is more ‘synchronisation location’ here, but that is the one repetitive element I do not object to that much. It shows up the graphics (which has always been awesome) and it is one way to upgrade the map, but that is it, upgrading the map, not buying what you must seek, but upgrading what any synchronisation offers. Did no one at Ubisoft consider that? Oh and again chests all over the place, in the age of Queen Victoria, do you really think that a chest only you will reach has silk money and other things waiting? I can go on for hours, but if you like the game, you will get it, if you don’t you will not bother reading this (which is fair enough), so after that part it is time to get onto the next game. It will not be Fallout 4 as that game is 3 hours away. At the end of the month the GOTY edition of Bloodborne will arrive. Now, this game is not for the weak, it is near impossible to play and I have not been able to finish this game. Yet, I will not give up because it is graphically one of the most beautiful games I ever beheld. All this whilst I see another part of AC Syndicate passes my eyes with particular view on the bad scripted AI and the glitched civilian reaction to you the player. The reason for both games is that both have awesome graphics, but as Bloodborne is unplayable because of the high challenge level, AC becomes almost unplayable due to the faulty approach. If AC had no glitches but remains unplayable because the challenge is massive I would end up revering the game as I did in the time of AC 2 and AC Brotherhood.

Yet here is the kicker, is it all me?

I have always shied away from racing games as it was never my cup of tea, RPG and stealth games were. This is why I have had massive issues with the AC range, but is that fair? I believe that my view matters here, but it is for you the reader to decide how my view adheres to YOUR view of the game, because it is about you the gamer! I can only offer my view and hope that your view is enhanced, nothing more. Whatever you truly enjoy is what you enjoy, so keep that in mind. Another game to keep in mind in November is the nextgen release for Deadpool. Now consider the next paragraph.

In the first I was never a fan of that comic, never followed the character and never played the console editions. There are a few things on this game. It is one of the most politically incorrect games you will find at present. It looks nice graphically. It is smooth, the graphics have a nice comic book look to all of it. So as the doorbell goes and the narrative goes ‘let’s forget about the boobs and go for pecs and biceps’ you know that this gamer is decently over the top. So as you learn how to control Deadpool in original new ways.

So even as you are reading this now, this part was written after midnight. Yes, Fallout 4 is here. I will not bore you with the intro, the explanation that you will read everywhere or the codes. Let’s get to basics. Graphically the game is awesome, I had a go at the PS4 version and the intro that you will likely have seen in many places shows the intro in a decent way. Controls are very much like the previous versions of Fallout, so if you played those, you are well on your way. If this is new then realise a few little things. The interaction is about freedom, in this version it is a lot more about freedom and a little less about carrying all kinds of things and not knowing whether you need them yes or no. the development is also as YOU see fit, so if you are a slugger (slam bam fisticuffs), ‘tchk tchk bang’ (gun nut), or squeak squeak slice (stealth), you have a freedom of choice to go your own way. For the non-initiate I still feel that a first need is intelligence and repair skills (do not decide now, finish reading the article). You see, whatever direction you take, intelligence gives you skills faster and repair gives you better weapons and in addition more revenue from selling them. So we might consider there is a small flaw in the game, but that is not entirely true, it is the way of the world the game is set in. So what should you do? That is the beauty of Fallout 4, you decide and whatever you decide, there is no wrong here, there is just your choice and unlike in real life, you must live with the consequences of the choices you make. In real life you just blame someone else.

Now for the truth, after AC Syndicate (or Unity for that matter), does the game have bugs. Well, I can tell you that this is a fair certainty. So far I have not crossed any, but that will be a mere matter of time. Skyrim had bugs, Fallout New Vegas had its share of bugs and this one will have them, yet in this case we must also consider two parts. Fallout 4 is completely open, so in many cases you can go around such an issue, in the past patches did come out and they resolved many (not all) issues. Will this be the same? It is too soon to tell, but when I learn, I will inform. For now realise that a good game remains a good game and that some things (like open worlds) tend to come at a price, but is that what you wanted to hear?

That is not the main issue, is the game worth it all? So far as I see it, with Rise of the Tombraider the answer is no, with Fallout 4 the answer is yes. Is there another game you seek? Than look for it, perhaps read the review and if you do, always read more than one and decide after you get the goods from a reliable source. You see I do not side with the IGN review, but I stop short form disagreeing with it, because a gaming review tends to be a personal one. In this case Lucy O’Brien writes “Although I could have done with a few more puzzles and fewer firefights“, which was a given in previous versions, but as I saw it to the part I saw, it was massively repetitive form the previous game, so I had an issue there. Another part is what Lucy experienced, which is fair enough “She’s such a potent fighter that I didn’t find any real incentive to avoid combat altogether“, that is in truth the formula that Lara relied upon in the path, yet the steal options we got introduced to in earlier games were very enticing, too often there was a trigger forcing a fight, but the idea of taking a decent part out in stealth is too appealing to ignore, it is one addition I truly enjoyed. In addition, the quote “For true completionists, there are plenty of relics, documents, murals and caves to discover, which can take an average play through from 15 hours to around 30 or 40” implies much improvements above the previous version, yet the initial issue remains that 15 hours (likely just the main game) is not good enough. It is slightly less than the very first game which required 10% of the power we see nowadays, and the game was contained on a disc holding less than 2% of what a Blu-ray can store, so the question becomes, is it value for money, which is something I will let you decide.

Now it is time to take a look at fallout 4. I went in with the experience of the previous games, so I made my character on the Xbox One and I went off to the races (oops, I almost forgot, the installation takes a little over half an hour, so feel free to start the installation and prepare the room with snacks and drinks so that you do not look at that super slow installation progress counter. The game began and here I made an interesting ‘mistake’ Fallout 4 plays in the same way the previous versions did, but that turned out to be an oops moment. This is not something I regret. You see, the play is the same, but the game is also vastly different. An important issue here is the fact that guns no longer degrade! It has changed into upgrading weapons. It does so more versatile than you see in the Bioshock games. Now it will be about finding junk, scrapping it and use those parts to upgrade the weapons you have. In addition perks now have several levels, which means that certain perks will receive additional options. I will not go into this any deeper, because exploration of what you find and what you could be is part of the massive fun that Fallout 4 is delivering in this game.

As for the rest?

Well, building your settlement is a fun addition and that fact is not giving away anything (shown in many demos), but you will soon learn that this part is a lot more important and it shows a new side to the fallout 4 games and it just shows why Bethesda still rules the RPG land. So far, the game is showing me everything I wanted to see, including a decent level of surprises. For me gaming will now stop for a week as exams are about to start. I am still uncertain how bad my exam scores will be in the end, but that will not stop me from fighting for every point I did not get (I am an incurable optimist).

Whatever you do, make sure you enjoy what you do! (I am referring to gaming and not the equally rewarding horizontal lambada)

See you all next week!

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Tagged as Assassins Creed, Bethesda, Deadpool, Fallout 4, PS4, Rise of the Tombraider, RPG, Ubisoft, Xbox One

October 14, 2015 · 00:20

A lesson learned late

We all have this, we stump our heads into a wall, some in ignorance, some through stubbornness, ideologically and the last group through determination. I am one of these four. As I bring the bad news first, I need to talk about myself. I got an extension on a test which might not be a massive one in points, but I am in a state where every point counts! Hoping to save up to 15 points on a test 44 pages long. My little big horn is a ‘Memorandum of Detailed Opinion‘. I still have 30 hours of work actual to go and I had to restart as I was turning my ‘Other Applicable Revocation Issues’ into a mesh of Titanic distraught and the deep dark feeling when you are at the top of a truly high building (like the Hancock building) and you see the street 100 flights down, that one step through the glass looks suddenly so appealing, such dread! I feel a little better, especially as I started fresh again, things are slowly adding up, connections are now coming to life. the smallest issue I had initially was a part in section 40 of the Patents Act 1990 ‘disclose the best method known to the applicant of performing the invention‘, this and a personal believe that my professor was intertwining ‘best method’ with the mathematical approach to describing Cantonese had an impact too. Yet those feelings were all between my own ears. You see, this is the first subject ever in history, where I got confronted with the limitation of my thinking. This has never happened before! We all face the music that we do not get something, but in most cases someone explains, someone aides or you find a supporting document that helps you. We all have that. No, I mean that feeling you get when your life depends on the next conversation and the one part you were not told is that everyone speaks Aramaic, that level of non-comprehension!

Yet, I also feel stronger today, because the light suddenly came on and I am starting to put it together. I took longer than I expected and if I had not been confronted with bad news last week that stress would not have stopped me from completing my assignment. Getting told you need to find another apartment tends to do that to a person whilst his exam just started. So as I finished my notes for tonight, prepping to get loads done tomorrow, I had to write this. You see, this intersects with something I read yesterday on my mobile, I believe.

That part was about Xbox boss Phil Spencer. Microsoft has always been about ideology and ignorance, so to call this part ideological ignorance is not too big a leap. Spencer stated that he was not interested in beating Sony, he was interested in gaining customers, as many as possible. In my view, his predecessors ‘messed’ it all up. I reckon not intentionally. In my view Microsoft was convinced that the TPP would have been in effect now and the steps initially made towards the XB1 would have been massively exploitative, with the law allowing them to destroy certain markets (the preowned game market for one). This all took a step back towards a streaming enterprise that did not quite make it off the floor. The 2013 promise of a 300,000 servers for gamers in one cloud. The quote is in light of the backwards compatibility claim a little hilarious: “Microsoft’s Don Mattrick stated “If you’re backwards compatible, you’re really backwards”” (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2013/05/24/spin-dryers-by-microsoft/). Even then I claimed how stupid the 500 GB thought was. Sony made the same mistake, but with the Sony version a person can update when he/she is ready, the XB1 does not allow for that. In that same article I chewed on some of the presented facts: “Their on-line system is now getting grown from the initial 15,000 servers now that Xbox 360 uses, to 300,000 servers from the moment the next Xbox is launched. It is a 2,000% growth in data collection and over 200,000% storage capacity. If foundations of business are set to return-on-investment, then ask yourself why a gaming system requires that level of growth“, a question that was never answered, but with the TPP, the streaming and the data requirements, it was about the gamer, it was how he/she could best be exploited. That was the view that my mind saw and so far I have been proven correct in almost every way. The next quote supports all this “In all honesty Microsoft Marketing did state that there will be pre-owned possibilities, yet they have not officially stated how this EXACTLY will play out, so we await clarity by Microsoft“, consider that part, if the TPP would have been in effect that part would have costed gamers dearly, so in all this, we can speculate that Don Mattrick was no more than the bearer of bad news and his career took a massive tumble. Now we get Phil Spencer and how this is about gamers. A 2 year stretch that now demands a 145 degree course adjustment. The weird thing is that if the decision makers realised their audience in the era of Xbox and Xbox 360, they should have known what gamers wanted, and adjusting that with their own view of exploitation is a misplaced view to say the least.

So as I see myself ignorant and determined, I also see Microsoft as ideologically ignorant. Ideological in their pursuit of maximising profit any way they can and ignorant to consider that gamers would take this lying down. Microsoft now set at less than 40% of what Sony has, losing the market share the 360 had grown, how stupid is that? The big issue is still that Mettrick and Spencer leave the feeling of being no more than puppets on a string, jumping to the needs of the decision makers behind the screens of Microsoft. Their strings to be cut at a moment’s notice. It is the second failing compared to Sony. Yet, in all this I must admit that Sony is likely to work in similar ways, but in a much better setting as their focus has been the gamer for 4 iterations of their console. That does account for something.

I feel that I learned my lesson late, hopefully not too late and the next two weeks will be about work 24%, study 48% and the rest is about trying to get sleep, food and an apartment. I feel strengthened as my eyes open towards the issues I could not solve for almost 10 days. I also feel better as Microsoft seems oblivious towards the gain they lost whilst they should have known better, in that respect Gamespot (who was source to most of the Microsoft information) should also have known better and as they seem to hide behind the PS4 vs XB1 console war, they have done too little regarding the investigation on the business decisions that did hurt a contending console and forced it towards a gloomier place. We can all admit that backwards compatibility will gain them momentum, yet in the end it will be about good games and yes, Microsoft has done a decent job, but with the lost field, decent will not hack it.

So I end this article with a personal message to Phil Spencer. Phil, I am not blaming you (which would be unfair), I am not having a go at you (which would be too easy), yet I will do your job for you this one instance. There is a game coming, it is nowhere near ready at present, but it is getting there. It is for PC and it has the option of becoming every bit as addictive as Minecraft currently is. So another masterpiece by an indie developer! The game is called Heat Signature as it shows massive promise. This game could propel the XB1 even further. The quirkiness and the connected options for multiplayer could be next thing people desire. The single player part is showing real promise. So instead of waiting and having to shell out another 2 billion for a game Microsoft didn’t create, so how about getting in front of a repetitive timeline for a change?

Heat Signature (heatsig.com) is able to be uniquely placed next to Elite Dangerous, Eve Online, Star Citizen and No Mans Sky. It can exist next to all of them and will be as entertaining to all those who play the other mentioned titles. I suggest that you keep your eye on @HeatSig (Twitter address) and feel free not heeding my word (I have only been wrong 4 times in the last 30 years when it comes to gaming), so I am due another failure. Yet the stats go hugely my way and as such I predict that Heat Signature, a Tom Francis production which was, as I remember it a Johnny Chiodini discovery evolve into a true contender for being the next big thing (as an indie developer title).

In all this, am I too ideological when it comes to gaming? That is a fair question and I must ask this from myself if I want to remain connected to a field I have been involved in since 1983. I believe so and games like Fallout 4 show my view to be a good one. In equal part Elite Dangerous shows that true passion for a game can last decades (something Blizzard also proved with the Diablo series) and in all this Ubisoft squandered it and Microsoft rejected their view only to get bitten on their sitting area really hard. The future belongs to the believers, because faith has always been the most pure and natural driving force. It got me my law degree it got me to the final stage of my MIP and it can get anyone to their place of achievement. Greed is never an achievement! Will Microsoft learn from their mistakes? That remains dubious because the puppeteers behind the screens remain an unknown. I do believe that illuminating them could shed light on the problem and truly propel the world of gamers forward as the onslaught of counterproductive acts end up getting terminated with extreme prejudice. EA has 7 months left to learn their lesson and not fall into the traps with Mass Effect Andromeda, traps that Ubisoft seems to be unable to avoid. Still, if they are unable to do that, John Oliver will be able to have a little fun here too.

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Tagged as Blizzard, Diablo, Don Mattrick, Elite: Dangerous, Eve Online, Heat Signature, John Oliver, Johnny Chiodini, Mass Effect Andromeda, Microsoft, Minecraft, No man's sky, Patents Act 1990, Phil Spencer, PlayStation 4, Sony, Star Citizen, Tom Francis, TPP, Trans Pacific Partnership, Ubisoft, xbox 360, Xbox One

September 11, 2015 · 00:13

Wakey, Wakey

Finally someone in the Guardian tech section seemed to have gotten a clue, the title ‘Video games have a diversity problem that runs deeper than race or gender‘ (at http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/sep/10/video-games-diversity-problem-runs-deeper-than-race-gender)makes an attempt to scratch a surface that many gamers knew and until recently I was nearly the only one trying to break it to the audience. So happy hurray hurray to “a games industry insider with years of experience in a variety of studios. They wish to remain anonymous“, a singular person hiding in plurality! The quote “I don’t really care if you put a female avatar into Assassins Creed” is interesting, but also extremely wrong. Not for political correctness reasons, in that regard I can be even more politically incorrect than an ecstasy head shagging a crack prostitute in the main chambers of the House of Lords. No, this is all about innovative gaming, a female character could change the field and the quote is part of the problem as I will illustrate soon.

It is the quote “The problem of marginalisation in games development isn’t just about women, or people from different religious or ethnic backgrounds, it’s about entire genres. Marginalisation is happening in the very fabric of the design process, and this is just as damaging to the health of the industry and its ability to hold our attention” that gives a pause, because I have stated part of this for well over 2 years. You see, when Ubisoft started to claim the release of an Assassins Creed every year, which I still see as the beginning of the end for Ubisoft. They show a nice face, their books might seem nice, yet overall they have been lucky with over 50% now based on the digital channel. Yet, there is also cause for concern, first the Division is delayed again until 2016 (Q1), which if it is truly a good game will still rake in loads of capital, yet consider on how AC Unity was close to a flop, in my view the ‘sales numbers’ seem high because Unity came free with nearly every Xbox One shipped. It is one way to get the sales numbers up, but will it give contribution (you know revenue minus costs)? Now AC Syndicate and so far the game is another iteration with another location, with Prince of Persia styled chase scenes, repetitive missions and triggered events. This is part of the problem. Yet, Ubisoft must also be praised, you see, the game ‘For Honor’ is part of the stable that can revive gaming. Gamers wants something new, they want change and For Honor seems to be all that, new, smooth and challenging (as far as I could see).

My biggest issue with Ubisoft remains that success is not a formula, yes a formula does tend to diminish the chance of failure, in equal measure a true success becomes utterly unobtainable too. Add to that unrepaired glitches and a QA department that adheres to marketing regulations and a disaster is close to an assurance. I have stated it in the past on more than one occasion. The article states “Mainstream big-budget video games have been shifting towards a mechanical singularity for years, and it’s really time to ask if that’s something that might be keeping people away too“. It is not a wonder that independent developers are now starting to be the big thing in gaming. If we ignore a release date we get Hello Games, by Sean Murray with ‘No Man’s Sky’. What is interesting here is that even the gospel papers are using ‘hints at release dates’ to pull in the viewers to their site. This must be a first in gaming history too! The old games still have the pull of two generations of gamers, David Braben is proving that with Elite Dangerous. More people are flocking towards the games that offer more than a mere 10 hour trip, a game that offers more than just the chases, the views and a fake open world. Metal Gear Solid 5 is in that case unique, Fallout 4 is unique, and none of those game franchises come on an annual base. The weird part is that Ubisoft sat on a treasure, Black Flag could have been the pirate RPG Sid Meier could not make because technology stopped him and marketing relied on the AC brand to proper something that was close to utterly perfect. They got lucky because Black Flag become the only decent game on launch night of the PS4. I reckon that is pretty much the only reason why it became the success is should not have been destined to be.

Linked to all this is the quote “The thing is, the recent excitement around Capcom’s decision to release a remastered version of series favourite Resident Evil 2 suggests there’s still a large audience for the original recipe“, this is absolutely true. The second one was an amazing piece of work and gamers remember that, which means that the IP can be reapplied to the new consoles. Re-applicable IP is worth a fortune, because any established IP of quality is more than a mere lottery ticket, it is the grail to a 9 figure revenue ready to be a pool of sustenance. This is why I believe that games like Ultima 4,5,6,7, System Shock (1+2) are not dead, they only await the right team to fix it up for the system of today (or tomorrow) ready to feed 50 million hungry gamers. That’s just 2 out of a dozen of IP’s ready to service a community that has a hunger that will not go away. Even as we speak, new games are coming, yet the approach that Tomb Raider took, no matter how nice it looks, it shows perfect graphics at 10% of the gaming time the first game brought. It doesn’t matter whether this was a lack of budget or vision. Gamers are offered less and less, which means that the old IP shows 5 times the gaming the new games are doing.

This is all proven in addition with the quote “Nintendo’s recent Wii U multiplayer “shooter” Splatoon provides a pretty good example of how thinking outside of the box – mechanically as well aesthetically – can turn a “core” genre on its head and make it speak to people who enjoy a slightly different way of playing games“. I think it goes beyond that. This game is worth buying a WiiU for. An original game has always had that effect. PS One with Tekken (Tomb Raider can almost a year later and truly brought sales numbers to a high), PS2 with Ridge racer V, Dreamcast with Soul Calibur, GameCube with Star Wars Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader, the list goes on and in that regard PS4 and XB1 both disappointed. Yet overall the next gen consoles are now showing less exceptional games and the future is not super bright. Yes there are really good releases but the number of them are not great, in that regard we see a new wave, consider that many (including me) are currently more interested in the remake of the 3 Mass Effect games for NextGen systems than in Mass Effect Andromeda. That is brought through disappointing NextGen releases and sloppy QA. So far Phantom Pain is one of the few true NextGen releases that are turning public opinion about by being truly exceptional, another title in that regard is Witcher 3.

The appeal for the massive joy that playing these old masters brings cannot be ignored, yet that also brings the problem that the title gave, namely ‘Video games have a diversity problem‘, it does and until true NextGen originality comes knocking (more than 3 titles) this feeling remains. Yet, good games are coming, the E3 showed that, but gamers do not know when and the Ubisoft problem is not going away at present. The quote “A new generation of successful indie developers is currently moving into the mid-sized AA space that so many more experimental companies occupied throughout the 1990s – and they’re hiring” is the most uplifting one, because that brings more likely than not a new wave of originality (we hope) and that will get the gamers on board.

I believe that 2017 is what will make or break the current consoles, yes the PS4 is doing extremely well, yet both systems have a massive market share and as the great titles are brought that field will move in either direction (PS4 vs XB1). That struggle will keep gaming alive and as more gamers have both systems they will win no matter where the game ends up, but the winner will be decided by the best games, Microsoft learned that with the 360 and ignored that with the XB1 as the powers that be decided on some ‘family entertainment system’ a choice that nearly bankrupted the Microsoft console division. In all this one part must not be ignored. It is ‘diversity’ and the owner of that part will bring the winning ticket to a console, for a long time Sean Murray held it with his upcoming game, yet as the flawed choice of keeping people in the dark on release date grows, so will the interest in the game dwindle to anti-climactic proportions, which is a shame. What Sean forgot was that gamers do not mind waiting, as long as they get some insight as for how long. We will wait until Q1 2016, but we want to know about the delay (and for roughly how long) so that we can buy something else to play. Sean forgot about that part, the fallout will come and as fallout 4 is released people will no longer wait and just move towards another game that gives them long term pleasure. I truly hope that we get to play No Man’s Sky because I believe this to be the one new game that will give me long term pleasure, the one side AAA game marketeers just do not grasp. It was never about the price, it is about the fact that 10 hours of gaming is not gaming, it nothing more than a narrated short story we can do without.

One part the article did not illuminate.

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Tagged as AC Syndicate, AC Unity, Assassins Creed, Black Flag, David Braben, Elite: Dangerous, For Honor, Hello Games, House of lords, Mass Effect, Metal Gear Solid 5, No man's sky, Prince of Persia, Sean Murray, Sid Meier, System Shock, Tekken, Tomb Raider, Ubisoft, Ultima 3, Ultima 4, Ultima 5, Ultima 6, Ultima 7, Xbox One

July 26, 2015 · 21:03

A steamy deception?

As I started to dive into the world of hardware just to satisfy my renewed addiction for Elite (now Elite Dangerous), I thought it was my duty to keep a relatively normal approach to this. This is purely because I am a student on a budget and I need to make certain that I keep a normal life after paying my bills, so as I have been weighing the options, the views of re-entering the world of PC gaming is one that comes with several traps, even though some people entering this field are not realising this.

For some this jump is riddled with confrontational choices of lesser applicability.

In my case, Elite Dangerous does not take an over the moon graphics card, so I personally have an advantage, but many other people are not gifted with that option.

So as some ‘diss’ the PS4 or the Xbox One, because they are ‘only’ consoles, be wary of the dangers of factors you might not be taking into account.

In my previous blog ‘Getting back on the horse‘ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2015/07/19/getting-back-on-the-horse/), where I consider the costly dangers of a PC, my alternative thought was to move towards the new Steam Consoles, let’s face it, a steam console is basically a console for PC games (via Steam). So why not consider that?

Well, let’s take a look:

As I personally see it, Steam itself is misinforming the people from the very beginning. You see, in gaming, graphics is key and when we see ‘Alienware Steam Machine‘ with the mention NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX GPU 2GB, yet it doesn’t not mention, whether it is a Titan, a 980, or a 740 or anything SPECIFIC, you better believe that the non-mention could set you on the short end of the equation.

The steam store does however mention models that do correctly mention that part, they often mention more too, which is good, but all this comes with the hidden trap. For example, the Asus ROG GR8S, which looks extremely pretty with that aggressive redness for the FPS killer amongst us. It offers the option to upgrade memory and storage, but not the graphics card… Oops! Is that not the heart of the gaming matter? Now in all honesty, it comes with NVIDIA® GeForce® 750Ti, which is decent, but it is a little less than one third of the GeForce GTX 980, so how long until we see a 2016 game (or even a December 2015 game) that you cannot fully appreciate on your brand new console? The graphic needs of the PC gamers accelerates a lot faster than the consoles, which is why some games look so much better on PC (Skyrim is a good mention), but it does come at a price.

Now there are more and more places where you get the option of building a steam machine, of course with the added bonus of having parts that can be upgraded, yet at that point we will get too close to the PC again, which means pricing and now with the limitation that it is not a PC, so only for gaming.

So how is this a good idea, or better stated, is it a good idea?

As I go through most new upcoming steam consoles (the bulk ready for release in November 2015), I must admit that the 3XS ST15 (at http://www.scan.co.uk/) stood out of being completely adjustable, yet when we add it all up, we get a £1106.74 system (AU$ 2,355.71), which is more than the above average gaming PC, so how are steam consoles a solution against the gaming PC?

At least with actual consoles, the games will be made for that console for years to come, maximising the game, without you spending a fortune. That was clear the moment you realised that the powerful graphic cards are prices at the cost of a PS4 and an Xbox One combined. So are these ‘new’ consoles a steamed deception?

On one hand, yes, because the steam store does not mention certain essential facts, which is not really their fault, but in the case of Alienware it is likely to become an Alienware issue. As the two models state: ‘NVIDIA® GeForce® GPU 2GB GDDR5’ for a graphics card and the Alienware Alpha at $849.99 states “Fully maxed; giving you all the console you will ever need“, which is great, because from my point of view that implies that this console should come with a ‘EVGA GeForce GTX TITAN X Superclocked 12GB‘, if that is not the case than the term ‘all the console you will ever need‘ is deceptive in the very least! So as I see it, Alienware is setting itself up for one humongous issue when people (after receiving local legal advice), whilst the buyer after this will claim for the fore mentioned graphics card, as to keep the promise ‘all the console you will ever need’.

In my view, the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 (Australian Law), might soon become popular reading with the steam console gaming community where we now see that the graphics card likely to be included is already not up to par to deal the full ability of either Tomb Raider or Metro Last Light gives voice to the limited truth of the claim and as such Alienware could theoretically end up having to upgrade their $700 system by a lot for the current customers at no charge (as a gamer, I find that path nicely amazing).

This is not a given until settled in court (if it gets there), but in all this, the slippery slope of steam consoles as their release seems to be (as I see it) is shown decently clearly.

Setting an upcoming hype in average equipment, hoping for that day one killing revenue in November 2015 is debatable at best. I wonder what happens to the sales commission in January when the consumers get either their refunds or free upgrades.

So even as we can accept that there is a market for these consoles, the fair fact is that the good machines are at the price of a PC, whilst only being able to do their console duties, which is of course the choice of the consumer. Yet, did this consumer group properly investigate their options and more specifically the limitations that their budgets would bring?

So, what do I have against these steam consoles? I personally do not care, as I decided towards the Xbox One for Elite Dangerous, but overall, when I see what people will want now on steam, and what people will desire next year on steam (like No Man’s Sky, Eve Valkyrie, Star Citizen, Survarium and Asylum). Whilst there are a lot more games coming in 2016 and even by the time Assassins Creed: Syndicate is released (late 2015), what will that game require to fill its hunger for graphical needs? Will the installed graphic card offer the maxed experience?

So even now, in foresight, there is no guarantee at all that many of the steam consoles will offer max gaming whilst the system is still in its warranty stage. The systems that do offer the options of maximising will cost a bundle, which is what steam machines were definitely not about.

For now I will call these consoles a dicey market to say the least, for the rest, time will tell!

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Tagged as 3XS ST15, Alienware, Alienware Steam Machine, Assassins Creed Syndicate, Asus ROG GR8S, Console, Dell, Elite: Dangerous, graphics card, PS4, scan.co.uk, Steam, Xbox One

July 24, 2015 · 22:58

Get the right info to choose.

I have always believed in this, a person has to make a choice and it is up to the informers to make sure that the people are given the true choices. This is always hard, there is no denying this. You see, we are all biased to some extent. I fell in love with Elite in 1984 and with the coming of Elite Dangerous, that passion returned. So when I read ‘Will Elite: Dangerous Be Wiped Out by Star Citizen & its Beautiful Ships?‘ (at http://moviepilot.com/posts/2015/07/23/will-elite-dangerous-be-wiped-out-by-star-citizen-its-beautiful-ships-3406342) I just had to take a look.

For me there were two reasons, the first is that as a previous passionate Elite player, I am very aware of the game and I feel that I am in possession of expert knowledge to counter most attacks on Elite Dangerous (without having played the game until my XBN1 arrives next month). I know next to nothing about Star Citizens, so when I hear that a game like No man’s Sky and like Elite is out there, I will take a look (I believe that there is a place for all three games if they are up to scrap).

The first quote that got to me is “It’s a beautiful game, but it can also be isolating and boring. You have to be prepared to invest a lot of time into Elite: Dangerous in order to benefit from its gameplay” which was preceded by “it’s held back by numerous irritations“, which got to me just on the go. This all linked back to a previous article. From this I wonder what level of investigation Kenny McDonnell did to begin with.

Now his allegations from the previous will be addressed shortly.

‘Can also be isolating and boring‘

Is that true? The game has Solo Mode (just you), Private mode (just you and your friends) and Open mode (you, your friends, soon to be new friends and all unmentioned wankers), so what do you mean isolating? Now the XB1 version is still not finalised, so this is still coming, for now that version is solo only (well decently dependable solo). There is no denying, that version still has bugs because it is not finished yet and if that is not a real bother you can get the game for $31, which is AWESOME!

‘Prepared to invest a lot of time‘

Well, is that not what a game is about? For the record, the game has several trainings missions for you to get into the game, I reckon that this will take a little over an hour to get it all done, if you also watch the attached trainings videos to help you get the best out of it all you can complete the trainings missions a little under 55 minutes (rough guess). Now, if you want to know the truth, you should watch

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rtajDGnqAo

This is by far the best intro video made. It is the work of Troa Barton, watching it is a must. In one hour he shows the beginning highlights. In that time he gives a short explanation and shows more than I bargained for, so I was hooked again in 10 minutes. In that time he kills half a dozen opponents with the ship you get at the very beginning of the game. So you get a good start in 1 hour, which is again AWESOME!

So is there any truth to ‘prepared to invest a lot of time‘? Yes! You see there are 20 ships and 10 more coming. Ships fall into different categories and some will cost up to 200 million to buy and outfit, you start with 1000 credits, so this is not a small game it is a massive journey and you get the universe to traverse and grow. Some will like mining, some will prefer hunting, smuggling and piracy, some will prefer trading. All options, whatever YOU decide.

Some parts can be boring especially when you are trading, however, boring is good because some trade ships are not that good in fighting, by the time you have earned enough outfit an anaconda, which sets you back over 200 million, you have a ship that can devastate loads of opponents and carry 260 tons of goods, which at 15K per tonne per haul nets you a quick 3.9 million. So all this is not boring at all.

If you are a feistier person where you can tell the opponent that he/she is no ‘2B’ (and kill that person) you are in charge of choosing what to do.

Now we get part 2 with the quote “However, there’s another game on the horizon. One that promises players a space sim like no other; Star Citizen. Star Citizen may have a release date in 2016, but I can see it excelling on the PC“, so Kenny (not the ‘oh my god they killed Kenny’ person), is dissing a game in a bad way against a game that is not out for another year? Odd, because he becomes all speculation for a game that is not even out yet. And let us not forget that Elite (the original) was an established level of excellence in 1985 and now again from all the videos you can see online, this game does it again.

Then he states “We’ll have first-person space combat, mining and trading, all colliding with first-person shooter elements in a massively multiplayer persistent universe“, which is what Elite Dangerous on the PC already is (in space flight). So what’s the beef?

Then we get “Personally, I can’t see Elite: Dangerous performing well under the pressure that Star Citizen will bring to the space sim community on PC“, which is fair enough, it is his view and as such he is entitled to think this. I personally believe that Elite is already bringing the pain of great gaming now!

Now I need to step back for a moment to look back at his previous article which is linked in the article I linked at the beginning.

The price of minerals is too low and therefore not profitable or worth doing.
– Really? True that your first ship is not equipped for that, but the later ships are and you can get a few millions per trip down the track.

Exploration data could also be upgraded as the player isn’t given enough of an incentive to do so – other than the universe is pretty.
– Really? Larger ships have great exploration options, but you need a large ship and several components costing millions.

A small point that someone on Reddit made I completely agree with: Lower the scanning range on planets, so while exploring the player has to go close to the planet to scan them, therefore providing better visuals and experience.
– That might be a fair point, I cannot comment on that.

A greater variety of missions for those that aren’t Elite would be much appreciated.
– Again a fair point, yet Elite is still growing on the PC, so that is an option, further the power play option in the game has several goals to achieve and you get to select yourself HOW to achieve them.

More merits for getting cargo or resistance pockets – they’re not really worth the hassle in the game’s current state.
– I actually do not know (so again this might be a fair point)

An improved in-game chat feature
– true, for now it is one on one, unlike the XB1 edition where you would have group chat as the system is made for that.

Now, some points here are valid, yet this game is still growing and the game offers 100 times more than the original ever did and it is currently in state ‘released’ something Star Citizen is not.

In addition, the current article had to mention for Star Citizen:

Over a hundred star systems in game which will be hand crafted and will include heavily themed, scenic landing locations from day one unlike Elite: Dangerous.
– fair enough but that game is still a year away, in addition, a hundred systems versus billions of systems is a far stretch of competition.

No procedural generation could lead to less boredom when traversing space.
– So far people opposing ‘procedural generation’ seem to not understand it, for that part just look at many no man’s sky videos. Procedural Generation does not imply boring iteration, that has been shown in No man’s sky a few times (will get to the Elite side shortly)

Far more freedom in terms of ships and their customisation.
– Possible, yet Elite already has 20, 10 are upcoming and there is no information that it will end there, in addition there are all levels of customisation, which is about the ship, not the look.

Superior graphics and more well-designed worlds.
– That is massively subjective, on the PC what I personally saw, some of the sites are beyond amazing and let’s not forget this is a space game, space is overwhelmingly black.

Better control over your ship, with improvements like yaw and more focus on first-person shooting mechanics.
– That shows that Kenny did not do his homework, the instruction videos on the PC show all that, including advanced lateral movement, strafing and so on. I reckon that it requires a decent HOTAS to enjoy (in opposition of the keyboard), so as I expect the XB1 to have the same options, I have not personally seen that.

Now let’s take a look at Star Citizen, the work of Chris Roberts.

Important is that he was one of the people behind Wing Commander, which I played intensely, so I know that this was a good game. So the person behind all this is not a newbie or a wannabe.

Now even though Star Citizen has had its share of Scepticism, we must remain honest. This is a crowdfunded game and it is well funded at present. In addition, a game like this is not an easy feat, yet also, the person behind this has proven his merits with Wing Commander. So as this is a 2016 game, my first view is that whomever start nagging and whining before October 2015 is an absolute idiot and should not have crowdfunded this (or just shut up until the beta is out there in its full potential)

So as we take a look at Star Citizen we need to keep an open mind. From the first go we see something very well done, but this is a trainings mission, if the rest of the game is on par than this game will be well worth it. So apart from walking around, the game definitely looks good (as it is) but the game has a long way to go (several glitches were shown, but as I stated, this is a beta at best). This was an April video, so I can assume that the game has processed from that point. I will not judge the game on what I saw, apart from the fact that it looks good, in addition there is no way to correctly assume that this game will outdo an established game like Elite Dangerous, but I feel that if the game goes on with the level of views that I see now, there is nothing stopping this game to become the third game next to Elite Dangerous and No Man’s Sky. There is no way that it overtakes either based on the information I currently have but that does not stop Star Citizen to become an equal game with a growing fan base.

Now for some future Elite expansions (as per the Elite Dangerous Wiki)

Landing / driving / prospecting on airless rocky planets, moons & asteroids.
Walking around interiors and combative boarding of other ships.

The first two are nice and adds to the experience of Elite

Combat and other interactions with other players and AIs in the internal areas of star ports.
Accessing richly detailed planetary surfaces.
Availability of giant ‘executive control’ ships to players.

The rest is nice too, but I hope that these extensions are not an attempt to add a ‘Mass Effect’ mode to the game (although walking through Space Stations could be an awesome experience.

So both games will have their own moments in where they excel. I do not agree with the view that Kenny McDonnell has regarding Elite Dangerous, but he is allowed his own view. I believe that there is space for both games.

The additional question becomes why must all games have all the options?

I believe that the lover of No Man’s Sky will love Elite Dangerous and there is a decent chance that they will love Star Citizen too.

I see that Star Citizen (from the training mission) is a more serious attempt to create a space flight flight simulator, it seems more on a ‘military’ approach to fighting than Elite Dangerous is. If I would compare it to other games than Elite Dangerous versus Star Citizen in that regard relates to Privateer versus Falcon 4.0, so from what I see now, the people who love more realistic fight flight Simulators would push themselves towards Star Citizens (when it arrives), so feel free to have fun with Elite Dangerous until that game arrives. That is from the little I saw from Star Citizen now, but that is not a guarantee that a more basic flight and fight options would not be available. Star Citizen is, as I see it at least a year away. So in all this I personally have a few issues with the article Kenny McDonell wrote.

From my view, you the reader, if you are into these kind of games, watch the Troa Barton video and decide from that whether you would give Elite Dangerous a go, as it will be one year until you can start the discussion whether you want Star Citizen, Elite Dangerous or both.

Just make sure in the end it was your choice due to receiving the proper information!

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Tagged as Chris Roberts, David Braben, Elite: Dangerous, Falcon 4.0, Kenny McDonnell, No man's sky, PC, Privateer, Star Citizen, Troa Barton, Wing Commander, Xbox One

July 19, 2015 · 21:03

Getting back on the horse

Finally a blog article from me that is for the most all about my view of gaming (because there is nothing interesting about reading stories regarding Varoufakis being a sore loser in the Guardian).

We all have these moments where we go shopping, whilst there are no funds available. A situation I have been very familiar with, yet we still go browsing in many places to see whether there is something to work towards. This certainly describes my case and as I found out soon thereafter, I got myself into a mingled world of facts and none facts a lot more than I bargained for. So what started this?

I’ll be honest, ever since the release of Elite: Dangerous I have been living on the edge of my previous addiction. It is one of the most loved games I had ever played. I still think back with utter fondness playing this game on the CBM-64. Wireframe and low resolution were at the core of a game that offered such fun, its challenge and entertainment that left its mark on me ever since. I played the remake on the Amiga somewhere in the 90’s, but the original was still the soul breaker for me. With David Braben making the ‘now’ version for today’s PC environment and by adding not just a galactic map, but by almost mapping the ENTIRE galaxy, this game is now an entirely new revelation and because Sean Murray keeps on not giving a release date for his upcoming masterpiece No Man’s sky, my desire to play Elite: Dangerous increases. It is however not that simple, my PC (which still works excellently) is now 9 years old, so it cannot deal with today’s gaming. As I stated, there is no way to afford a new PC at present, which is why I kept on browsing.

Now we get to the issue: The amount of gaming systems out there appear to be a joke! I lost two days getting back into the field I had high expertise in, but as I moved to consoles (as keeping up with gaming PC’s became way too expensive, even when I had my good income), the market moved on (as it would) and I learned that changes had been many. Now, for the most I understand it all, but the diversity to learn what is needed to know is one that a non-hardware savvy person, gamer or not, is one that could boggle the mind.

It took me two days to get back onto the level of knowledge I once had. Even now, there are still diminishing gaps.

So, why is all this an issue?

Well, even though the graphics card was always an issue, in my days I moved from a Diamond Viper (which was top of the market in 1998) to a NVIDIA GeForce 6800 card (in 2005), which was again pretty high up (and not cheap), at this point I could game pretty much anything, I had the top of the range SoundBlaster and a good screen and I could game and compute my life away behind my desktop.

Now gaming has changed. For one, it is no longer really about sound cards, the system board has all it needs for gamers, so we are left with the proper processor, the right amount of memory and the graphics card. This is where the issue starts. The diversity of graphic cards is now a jungle, how can any parent choose the right system for their kid, or for that matter, how can any newbie gamer select the best card for their needs?

I can tell you right now that many shops are truly lacking in knowledge there. When you go to online places (which is an initial MUST), you get a boatload of options too. System prices range from 999 to 4299, so where is the best choice? In the middle or at the far end? Questions that many do not have and others state: ‘the more expensive the better’ (which is a truth to some degree). You see, at some point I decided to stay one hardware iteration behind, so that I could game at a very high level, yet needing a decently less amount of money. That truth in gaming remains to be an almost absolute truth. There is a new property in play, one that was never a real issue even 5 years is now a massive part, it is about the noise level of the graphics card as some of those bad boys make noise when they are working, which is not that dissimilar an issue from the Xbox 360 DVD drive and fan noise. So getting a quiet system is worth it. A lesser item is the power consumption of such a card, which at maximum uses as much energy as two PS4 systems in full gaming mode and at the price of $999 (just for a graphics card), that bad boy costs the same as two PlayStation 4 systems. So is gaming on the PC worth it?

That is the question you must ask yourself, especially considering that gaming will take another bang in hardware in 3-4 years, even as you might only need to replace the graphics card, you see a devaluation of 25% a year. That is the part many people are not always considering, which fair is enough. Now, the truth is that if you see some games like Skyrim, where some mods were made to truly blast the hell out of the word pretty, as an RPG fan, I would fold like a bad poker player at the mere sight of the created graphics, yet, I never felt that Skyrim was anything less than amazing on a console, and I knew that the PC was a lot better.

Fortunately for me Elite: Dangerous does not require the most massive card, so that system is a lot less unaffordable than any new system, but unaffordable it remains, so what is this about? First of all, people need to really take a look at what they are willing to afford online before walking into a computer shop. Places like http://www.pccasegear.com and http://www.mwave.com.au/ (for Australian consumers) are good places to take a first look. When you see the prices you are in for (that is before you add the keyboard, mouse and display), you need to see what the graphical needs will be, and moreover, how some games perform. In this I relied on http://www.tomshardware.com/ in the past and it is still around. It is here where we would read “In the graph, MSI’s card is listed at 34 decibels. This is done to represent just how quiet the Twin Frozr V solution really is. The meter wouldn’t register a reading two inches from the rear panel, even when the fans started up“, that is indeed one part that matters, another part is frame-rate, so how smooth is the game, this site gives us that too, although one setback is that Tom does not seem to test all resolutions whilst the new gamers all want 1440p and a few now demand 4K resolution performance graphs, but the new upcoming cards will likely show that too.

There are other sites that give good independent review of cards, just be willing to spend an hour looking at the different places before you go shopping, I have tried a few conversations out there and I can tell you now that these places (read: shops) are often devoid of true inside knowledge on cards, finding one gamer amongst that lot is a treasure, but also a hindrance, as you might find yourself overspending a bit sooner and a little more than you expected.

In all this, PC gaming will remain and there is no reason why it should not, but in this day and age that part is too often forgotten, and electricity, especially in the UK does not come cheap. The amount of gamers not considering their electricity bill is growing on a daily basis.

For example, 9.429p per 1kWh, 600W PSU means 0.094 x 0.6 x 24 = £1.35 per day, meaning that your gaming PC (if you keep it on all day) will cost you £495 a year alone. The Australian example is harder as energy suppliers seem to REFUSE to give out clear pricing, only when they know all your facts will they give you any information, making them slightly less reputable than the ice dealers in Kings Cross. So if we go by the same system and a 20c per KwH, we get: 0.2 x 0.6 x 24 = $2.88, which amounts to $1042 a year on power to the gaming system alone.

You might think that this is trivial, but in this day and age, in these moments, you better consider shutting down your PC. A friend of mine got scared as he got his quarterly bill, he now shuts down the computer properly. It is one of the running costs of gaming that people forget as they think it does not matter, and when you are renting in a university dorm it might not, but when you work, you are not working to be the bitch of Energy Australia, or EDF Energy for that matter, are you? At least UK power (www.ukpower.co.uk) gave me some decent prices to work with.

How does this relate?

Getting back on the horse is a term we see ourselves confronted with, because the term ‘is the juice worth the squeeze’ is becoming a predominant question in gaming, not just in PC gaming, the fact that several high profile cases have changed the industry is linked to all this. When we see Assassins Creed: Unity, with needing gigabytes in patches, where a game almost a year old is still receiving patches (number 5 was released 3 days ago). The gamer’s view of quality demand and the industry of lacking the ability to meet even the minimal requirement here is also affecting the choice of gaming system. Why spend $4200 on a system that will require patching for a year? And that game is not alone. Arkham knight is now treading that same line, an industry inherently unable to even meet basic expectations. And even though Witcher 3 exceeded expectations wildly, the new patch is massive at 7Gb and as Forbes is informing us (at http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidthier/2015/07/18/theres-a-problem-with-the-witcher-3s-new-patch/), where we see “the new patch means that The Witcher 3 doesn’t perform as well on either the Xbox One or the PS4, dipping down to 20 FPS fairly consistently in some of the game’s busier locales” gives clear indication that PC gaming is however much desired a path that is riddled with issues at a price so much higher than the console world.

So even if it were possible for me to get back on that horse, I have serious doubts whether the juice will be worth the squeeze, because at $4200 ($1999 is a more realistic choice in decent gaming PC’s) I would demand a decent level of perfection in gaming and even though the hardware meets it, it seems more and more clear that the industry is no longer able to meet these expectations, so even though I will require a PC at some point, my old one still (thankfully) suffices for non-gaming purposes and gaming on a PC is no longer truly surpassing the joy of a console.

Many will not agree with me on the latter and that is just fine, some will get great gaming on their PC when it comes down to World of Warcraft and League of Legends, yet when we consider the following headlines ‘Battlefield 4 – what can we expect from the summer patch?‘ (July 10^th 2015), ‘Batman: Arkham Knight PC Version Fixes Not Coming Until Fall‘ (July 16^th 2015), ‘The Huge Witcher 3 Patch Is Rolling Out Over The Next 24 Hours‘ (July 17^th 2015) and the least said about ‘F1 2015 Errors, Crashes, Bugs, Performance, Low FPS, and Fixes‘ the better, with 2 patches within a week (including a day 1 patch) and as stated “PC community still seemed to struggle to get a decent gameplay experience” the question is not just about the massive cost of hardware, the issue becomes, if this industry does not up its game by a lot real fast, will there still be a long term future for these less affordable gaming PC’s?

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Tagged as Amiga, Arkham Knight, Asus, CBM-64, David Braben, EDF Energy, Elite, Elite: Dangerous, energy australia, Forbes, Graphic cards, Kings Cross, mwave.com.au, No man's sky, NVIDIA, PC, pccasegear.com, Personal Computers, PS4, Sean Murray, Skyrim, Witcher 3, www.tomshardware.com, xbox 360, Xbox One

June 15, 2015 · 00:18

As the heart thumps

We are only two days away from the E3, those who are into gaming will wonder ‘what will we see next?’ We all feel that way, yet lately, the more I see of Elite: Dangerous, the more I await its arrival on PS4. For now it is a Microsoft exclusive. I remember the day I became ‘dangerous’ I had been playing it for quite some time. Consider the screen below. This was the screen we drooled about. It was on a C-64 and it was ‘da bomb’ in those days!

So many hours, at first jumping short distances, hoping no one would attack me, but after my first pulse laser, I got to be cocky (and got killed in the process). Now we see the next gen pics, one is the PC, the other is as I was told the Xbox One edition (this is not a cut scene, this is actual game view). If you think that ‘it is all about the resolution’ then you are quite frankly a nob (or a dweeb). I have been and will remain a Sony fan (I still love my Xbox 360), there is no denying that this game is beyond amazing!

Most information on the XB1 edition so far, I got from YouTube. As I played the original and have had decades of gaming experience (which is why I knew the flaws Microsoft is fixing now, were a solid known issue for me 6 months before the system was released, and not all have been fixed by the way). Now, most gamers will be the Mario kind, or the Grand Theft Auto kind. This game might not appeal to either, yet, I feel that the flight simulator and Role Playing Game kind will truly love this game, and we are in for a lot more heart elevation than just this game!

To get a good initial look of the game then watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grIGMs3Kj4k. The man talks clear but waffles a little in the beginning. He is going through it all clearly, so bear with his explanation, because it is worth it! If need be, skip the movie to 4:45, now you see the first glimpse on how a mere idea in 1984, becomes something truly amazing when the computers catch up to the imagination of an individual, in this case the imagination of David Braben and Ian Bell.

This is not a 30 hour game, this is a game that will keep you busy for many months, if not years to get it all to a worthy level, but let that not stop you, because as you evolve from one ship to the next one, you will be able to transport more goods, have better protection and go hunt criminals. The openness of the game that was, was already impressive, the size of the new edition is beyond anything you can imagine. We are talking a few million times larger than the original. For those who like the idea of space exploration, this is one of two games to get.

What is amazing is not just what it looks like now, it is the fact on how the navigation systems from 1984 are still at the core of what is now, it was the most innovative look and now, this view is the centre of aligning your ship and weapons systems towards your enemies. And it does not just ‘seem’ to be the best, as you watch the game on YouTube you can see how fluent the controls seem to be, especially as we consider the response from Blitz ‘Oops! We’re going the wrong way’ moments later it is all back to normal.

The other game to get is ‘No Man’s sky’, but that one I will leave alone, because, too many people are hyping this game, based on the same materials most saw (YouTube and so on). So we will wait for actual release date information.

What is interesting is that leaking information is not just limited to the political branch of the media, it seems that Dishonored 2 information has leaked. Dishonored was the stealth game on 360/PS3/PC, which had open levels and had a steampunk look to it all. The interesting part is that there was no set way to do the game, stealth or kill everyone, you got to choose. Another interesting part was hat when I replayed it on the 360 a while after I completed it, I found in more than one level another way to get the game done, which is awesome, because that gives a clean ‘open level’ approach, something that I am a big fan of. There is still question whether it comes and whether it is a leak or a ‘miscommunication’ but gamers live for these moments, because Dishonored 2 was not in the open pipeline and a fan will get overly enthusiastic when a sequel arrives of a game he is a fan of.

At this point, the Bethesda conference is only 12 hours away! 12 hours until the Fallout 4 trailer will get additional support and information to those who love that game (that would be me). 12 hours after that the show takes off for thousands of gaming fans! There will be joy, there will be tears and there will be outrage. The latter part might be a bit much for Ubisoft, but there is no way to tell how they will fix previous blunders and how they will appease the deserting population they have experienced. Time will tell and on that part I will not speculate at present! I still feel that they could turn it around and rebuild what they had lost, it just takes one truly visionary person (often not found in a board of directors).

Ubisoft does its presentation 20 hours after Bethesda, Bethesda has a 12 hour leap on Microsoft too, so whatever news they bring will get unadulterated limelight for the better part of a day. The rumours are ripe and some state there will be more than just Fallout 4 and Doom, but again, they are just rumours and Fallout 4 is pretty massive sized news, especially as it comes out this year, so that means within the next 6 months.

So why more on games? You see, games are getting to be a much more important part in the lives of people, many of them not into gaming at all. Gaming is now a major player for Trademarks and let’s take a look at patents!

You see, IP Australia tells us “Software inventions must be industrially applied. Software that is merely a procedure for solving a given type of mathematical problem is not patentable”, yet when we look at the The Copyright Act 1968 (Cth) we see the following “Under the Act an article is industrially applied when, with the consent of the copyright owner, fifty or more items are made from it, which we see in section 77, 17. If the design is not able to be registered, for example because it is not new and original, it will still lose copyright protection once it is commercialised section 77“, now we get to the part that matters: “By registering a design under the Designs Act 2003 (Cth), for example a design for a kettle, the owner obtains a monopoly in that design but, unlike with copyright, the protection is only for a maximum of ten years and not for the life of the owner. With copyright the owner does not obtain a monopoly. If two people independently prepare a drawing of a kettle neither infringes copyright in the other’s drawing. The registration of a design gives the owner a monopoly in that design and the owner can prevent another applying the design, or any fraudulent or obvious imitation of it, to any article in respect of which the design is registered [see s 71(1)]”

This jewel comes from the Legal Commission of South Australia (at http://www.lawhandbook.sa.gov.au/ch11s12.php).

New we get back to the gem, the jewel of gaming, Elite. I mentioned that navigational part of the game, which is the kettle. Was it registered, is it protected? Let’s not forget that ‘it will still lose copyright protection once it is commercialised [s 77]’, which gets us to the need for protection for these games and the growing powers of trademarks and Patents. Yet, trying to get a Trade Mark or Patent after you gone public is another matter, so what legal protection did these new makers prepare?

Consider the uniqueness of the Elite navigation display, how protected is it? You might think that this is a joke, but it is not. A new game will cost between 20-150 million dollars, so you need to get it right and make sure you have your protection in place. Even though larger productions are less likely to fear Trade Marks or Patent infringement (usually they fear industrial espionage), but having the protection just makes your case stronger. So here is the Crux for some of the new Law firms. If you take time to visit the E3, how many products are in need for protection? Who has actually done the full scope of this? IP is an evolving market, the protection required will increase with every iteration of the game. You see, the gaming industry has arrived in the location, the hardware industry was in 1998. Now that makers will return to an annual release of a game, an iteration of the original, the game will also face the danger of a ‘white’ version. A look that is similar (but not ‘looks alike’) that provides the gameplay the gamer would like. You see, no matter how their marketing division brings it, Assassins Creed 2, AC Brotherhood, AC Revelations, AC3 and AC Black Flag are in many parts similar, as such, game makers have had 5-7 years to catch up, 3-5 years for those who waited for the second one to become a hit. As such, in light of the fact that re-engineering can usually be done in 40% of the timeframe, the need for legal protection will increase almost exponentially. Do you think that no one else is now thinking of a ‘new’ GTA5? The game brought in a billion dollars, so YES! There is someone trying to flog of a new game offering a similar game. It only takes one innovative part for the original to feel the pain of losing a market share. There is however a change, you see, some still feel the following description: “Obtaining a patent is a long, tedious, and expensive process, that it can be challenged by the examiners and later by others in court“. Yet the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT), which is internationally accepted, has an international patent, which does not have the same threshold patents used to have, which means filing is easier and most important cheaper!

If we look at the definitions in section 39.1 of the PCT treaty, we see :”(vi) computer programs to the extent that the International Searching Authority is not equipped to search prior art concerning such programs“, yet is that not a failing of the organisation? The fact that a billion in revenue cannot be protected, is perhaps slightly ludicrous. Again, in Robert Bosch v Siemens we see: “However, it is not to be inferred from these rules that searches or examinations in the software field are to be ruled out in international authorities. On the contrary, it seems to the board that according to the PCT searches and, if applicable, examinations of this type can and may very well (perhaps even should) be carried out if the competent authority is appropriately equipped“.

So, the victims remain as international authorities are ‘trying’ to get equipped? There is enough here to see a needed evolution that not unlike Torts will go on a case to case bases. The case on Sega v Fox Interactive, Electronic Arts, and Radical Entertainment regarding a US Patent, which was settled for an undisclosed amount. There the core of the infringement was the navigation system, the copied one was ‘too’ similar.

The core of gaming is expected to exceed 80 billion in 2015, that target is already likely to be exceeded, so as we see that gaming is now expected to overtake BI Intelligence market revenue by 1300% (yes thirteen hundred), we can surely see the short path we have in view as the need for software patents are required to strengthen an iterative market. Even though there will be some protection in Trade Marks as the branding of a game is too similar, consider the quote “if the novel elements are functional, the item cannot be copyrighted: although it might be eligible for patent protection“, which takes us back to Elite as a first example. Its navigation is quite unique, I have not ever seen it anywhere else to that extend and now as the larger masses go to play, such protection is more and more an issue. Take into consideration that the affordability of patents are now a fact, giving an option to patent, until opposed (which still needs to be decided), we have enough to see the change in the gaming industry, IP is taking a foothold, so when you follow the E3, see how often you hear the term, ‘our new IP’, because that part will take centre stage as per last year. So where are you now in all this?

More interesting, which law firms are considering evolving their portfolio with the gaming industry, which is only an $80 billion market for now!

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Tagged as AC Black Flag, AC Brotherhood, AC Revelations, AC3, Assassins Creed 2, Copyright Act 1968, David Braben, Designs Act 2003 (Cth), Elite: Dangerous, Ian Bell, IP, Microsoft, PCT treaty, PS4, Robert Bosch v Siemens, Role Playing Game, Sony, xbox 360, Xbox One, Youtube

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