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April 24th, 2009
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Well, I’ve been travelling a bit, but I managed to get a few Demigod single player games in beforehand, along with a lot of Peggle since I’ve arrived here.
First to Demigod; well it’s a very fun game. It’s beautiful and addictive and has just the right amount of ‘cheesiness’. It also has some ‘cool’ element that I can’t quite put my finger on. I’ve still not ventured online, but almost daily updates from the developers are giving me a lot of hope of the game crossing the final hurdle into greatness. Apparently we’ll (Australia, Europe at least) will be getting a proxy server for the game to assist with connectivity problems. Improvements are being made to the lobby, the interface and the behind the scenes networking.
Oh, I nearly forgot, if you have trouble launching demigod, there are known issues with Comodo and with Google Desktop. There is a stub exe from the developers available on the website that might help. This thread contains a link to the stub exe and helpful advice on game-launch problems.
It’s a shame Stardock borked the release window, but the signs are very promising. Stardock are also promising a more interesting single player experience in the not too distant future.
Since I’ve been up in the sunnier climes of Queensland, I’ve had a few ‘hot-seat’ games of Peggle (at night) with people standing around the computer groaning, cheering or otherwise carrying on. Such a simple game, soooo addictive. It reminded me of the arcade days when I used to meet up with friends and play R-Type, Mario, Gauntlet etc in front of groups of people. I do kind of miss those more ‘social’ days. One can see how the Wii manages to suck so many families in really (socially I mean).
I’ll be firing up Sins of a Solar Empire (Entrenchment) tonight, assuming Peggle doesn’t nudge it out of the road 
We have a ‘what have you been playing thread’ right here. Feel free to contribute
- Scoobs
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Tags: Blogroll · PC Games
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April 17th, 2009
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One has to feel for Stardock, they’ve got a great anti-DRM stance, have good customer support and maintain a pretty open position on their forums. Unfortunately, the launch of Demigod has been a disaster, and it’s due to a combination of relatively unrelated factors, the disastrous combination of which would be difficult to predict in advance:
1. Demigod is a multiplayer-focussed game
2. The game phones home to the server on opening, to check for updates
3. Gamestop release the game 4-days early
4. The servers aren’t really ready for customers ahead of the launch date
5. More than 100,000 pirates try to play the game, ahead of, and after the launch date
6. Stardock did not anticipate a flood of users on launch, but instead planned on a steady increase in users (as this is what happened with Sins)
7. Games reviews will most likely occur in advance of the launch date, up to a few days later
You might be getting the idea on what the likely outcome is.
So, because of an unfortunate programming choice (why phone home for updates on application launch?), and the sheer volume of pirates grabbing the game at day zero (thanks to Gamestop going out early), the limited Stardock server infrastructure caved in, in what was effectively an ‘own-goal’ DOS attack.
This left all the legitimate customers with a barely functional multiplayer game, lots of fan rage on the official forums, and some review sites then gave the game a low score (Gamespot 6.5 for instance) because of the unplayable state.
Oh dear.
Stardock have been working frantically to fix the problem, and it’s looking promising right now that we’ll have a working Demigod game perhaps as soon as today. I really feel for them, and I hope people don’t overlook what is shaping up to be a very good DOTA-style game.
The debacle also brings reviews into question. How do you review a mp game at the day of launch? Gamespot, to their credit, have indicated they will revisit the game sometime soon and give it another chance. 1up have refused to review the game until today, giving Stardock a second chance. Will other review sites be so kind? Should they? I’d be pretty annoyed if I read a glowing review of a game that didn’t work when I fired it up… yet the gameplay will improve dramitically over the coming days, but probably after the ‘review window’ has closed and metacritic is an unforgiving place.
I predict that some will try and use this incident as an excuse to push DRM agendas further, but really, the blame lies partly with Stardock for bad networking choices and poor advance planning of their server loads, and mainly with Gamestop breaking the street date and causing the kafuffle in the first place. Had pirates only gotten their hands on the game at launch, Stardock most likely would have been able to direct legitimate users to a different update/login/mp server. Even if Stardock had had DRM in the game, it would have been cracked well before the official launch date.
You can be sure Gamestop doesn’t care
- Scoobs
Comments are welcome RIGHT HERE
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Tags: Op Ed · PC Games
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April 11th, 2009
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Last week, the Australian Government announced that the national broadband network (NBN) would be built by none-other than itself, and not one of the various applicants that had been jockeying for the job over the last 6 months or so.
And we all rejoiced!
Well, most of us anyway. There are the usual short-sighted fools who think that national infrastructure can be built ‘for-profit’ and run as a straight-up business. What rubbish! Rail and road infrastructure certainly doesn’t operate that way (look at the high rate of failed privatisation of these to see what the alternatives are), and the NBN is the ‘highway’ for the future. The rate of return on this kind of infrastructure is difficult to calculate, but is no doubt too slow (or too hard to capture for profit) for most private companies.
Much of the negative analysis I’ve read fails to see the add-on benefit to the economy from the presence of such infrastructure, and none of us really can see just how much technology will change in the next decade or so. My bet is that we’ll look back on the current adsl network (and Telstra monopoly) as an amusing yet horrifying chapter in our communications history, much like we laugh at the thoughts that a 14.4 modem was all we were ever going to need a decade earlier! 43billion is a lot of money, but what was the equivalent cost of putting in our national road infrastructure? These things don’t come cheap!
The benefits of having Telstra out of the picture are also great. It has single-handedly held us back to maximise its own profits. I can’t wait to see them compete on real terms with the other telcos – consumers will be the winner.
It’s nice to have something positive to talk about, in terms of broadband in Australia, so here’s hoping our undemocratic senate pass the ‘ok’ without any problems.
- Scoobs
Feel free to comment here
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Tags: Blogroll · Op Ed
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March 31st, 2009
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I’m a big fan of a bunch of webcomics, but one of my favourites is Girl Genius.
The artists behind this actually drew some of my favourite collectable cards from the old Jyhad/V:TES days, and the style has evolved but is still very distinctive.
Below is a portion of one of the comics, which I found hilarious and feel the need to share. It’s out of context a bit, but shows you the style and humour commonly present in the series. Girl Genius is a Steam Punk type comic, so if you are vaguely interested in that sort of thing, please go and check it out. Buy their stuff! You can also buy the comics in pdf format these days (not as good as the real thing, but probably the most realistic way for a disparate audience to get their hands on the art!)
By the way, if the Foglio’s dislike me putting this portion up, just let us know in the forums!
- Scoobs
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Tags: Blogroll · Webcomics
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March 30th, 2009
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Well I managed to have a busy week at work, plus a nasty cold to make it more fun. Human bodies suck.
Anyway, on the gaming side of things, I finally had a go at FEAR (yes the original) and have been playing it off an on all week.
Although it looks a little dated, it still plays very well i.e. the shooting is fun, the explosives in particular are cool, and the enemy dudes are challenging if you don’t cheat The story is engaging despite being clichéd, but they manage to spoil the atmosphere sometimes by inserting obvious ‘game’ elements that jar you out of the world they’ve built.
For example, the boosters to health and ‘bullet time’, which could be explained away as some sort of high-end experimental military tech, are found lying around in dark corners of a water treatment facility… on crates, behind pipes etc. It’s stupid! The weapon caches are sometimes well done e.g. at security stations, but man, the office workers in the US must be well armed chaps! They all bring pistols and rifles to work!
Despite that, I’m enjoying it, because shooting in the game is so much fun. If you, like me, passed this over on release, I recommend grabbing it on the cheap and giving it a go. I may even move onto the sequel, although the reviews I’ve listened to (podcasts) indicate that the plot elements are still largely unresolved.
- Scoobs
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Tags: Uncategorized
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