Magic Red Button

Caught an interesting story today while I was catching up on my game news feeds in Google Reader.  Apparently a Labour Member of the European Parliament wants to mandate that any gaming device (computers, consoles, etc.) be fitted with a red button that can be used to control access and/or disable a game.

This idea is stupid on several levels.

If the problem is a lack of parental oversight, then either they’re not around to press this button to begin with, or a child is going to press it again once the parent is not around.  Kids are not stupid and for ages have been applying their imagination and ingenuity to doing things they want to do which they are not supposed to do.  A button is either on or off, unless there’s some kind of biometric security built-in, it won’t deter any child over the age of 6 months.

If the problem is more of a panic situation where a parent sees their child playing something they’re not supposed to and want to shutoff the game as quickly as possible, they already have a multitude of options: turn off the TV, turn off the console, or remove the child from the room.  Even better than a magic button, my Xbox 360 already has parental controls built-in, as does my TV, and I’m sure that the Wii and PS3 have similar options.  These types of controls allow me to limit what kinds of games can be played on the console regardless of whether or not I’m standing by to press any buttons, no matter what color they are.

One comment from the politician’s website that does concern me is this:

“We want a code of conduct for retailers and the producers of these games. And internet café owners need to be reminded of their responsibilities. A recent survey showed that large numbers of children, some as young as six, are accessing the internet without adult supervision in internet cafes.”

Children as young as six?  What parent is letting a six year old run around on their own?  I think if there’s any problem here that really needs to be addressed it is a lack of parenting.  I can guarantee you that my 6 month old will not be running around anywhere unattended in the next 10 years.

Still it is nice to know that America doesn’t have a monopoly on stupidity.

Apocrypha

I’ve been enjoying EVE a lot.  Being a sandbox MMO, you really have to come up with your own goals in order to have fun, so it makes a nice complement to a more standard MMO like LoTRO (ignoring the whole scifi vs fantasy argument).

CCP does a great job keeping the game fresh and adding enhancements and fixing issues.  Case in point, I’ve been impressed with the scanning update in the Apocrypha release.  It is 1000 times more usable now that it was before.  I have scanned down a wormhole, and I did pop through briefly, but I’m not equiped to deal with sleepers and given that I’m still in an NPC corp I probably won’t be for quite some time.  The other new feature is the new player experience.  I am planning to create an alt and try out, but I’m holding off until I get DOW2 finished.

My only complaint with the Apocrypha rollout was getting it.  When I launched the EVE client, the patcher didn’t update.  The client wouldn’t login because it recognized an invalid build number.  I had to spend about an hour on the forums to find the manual download links for two patches.  I understand that problems happen, but there’s no excuse that the new patch links weren’t listed on the patching page.

Time Flies

Wow, has it been a month since I posted last?

Whoops.

While I have been finding some time to play, I haven’t had time to organize my thoughts enough to write anything.  Work has been especially crazy the last few weeks.  So, after working and spending time with my wife and son, I have just enough time to play some EVE or some LoTRO or some DOW2 before heading off to dreamland.

Dawn of War 2 is good.  I’m nearly finished with the single player campaign, and I’ve played a few multi-player matches against the CPU.  My concern about boss battles was totally misplaced, which I’m glad about.  I’m going to put together a more detailed review after I finish the single player campaign and try a few more multi-player matches, so stay tuned.

LoTRO is still fun.  I’m working my way through the rest of the current Volume 2 Books.  I’m currently on Book 4 and stuck on a fellowship quest.  Between trying to find a uninterrupted hour or two I can devote to playing and getting a pickup fellowship together, I might be stuck for a while.  Fortunately I’m not in any kind of rush, one of the best things about having a lifetime subscription is I don’t fret about not playing.

I’ve actually been spending most of my time playing EVE Online.  Mining and mission running are both excellent activities when I can only guarantee myself 20-30 minute blocks of play time.  If I’m not on baby duty, I know I can pickup a mission, finish it, and salvage it in a 10-15 minute play session.  I use a Vexor fitted with railguns and drones to steamroll through frigates.  If I can’t guarantee an uninterrupted play session, I’ll get out my Procurer mining barge and head out to the belts of Mirilene or some of the other nearby systems.  I can jetcan mine and relax without worrying about having to leave my keyboard for short stretches of time.

I do occasionally do level 2 missions, but I like minimizing my risks by taking a higher level ship than intended.  Towards that end, I’m training up my Battlecruiser skills and planning to get into a Brutix.  Including all of the support skills I’ve planned, I have about 30 days of training remaining.  I’m not in a hurry, though because I only have about 7 mil in my wallet and the cheapest Brutix I could find near my home was 21 mil.  The important thing with EVE is to have goals.

Mount and Blade

After recommendations from Bill at Dubious Quality and Darren at Common Sense Gamer, I finally made some time to download and trout the Mount and Blade demo through Steam.  Did I like it?  Yes.  How much?  I started with the tutorial around 9:30 pm, after my wife and son went to bed.  After the tutorial I started a game.  I played for a bit: got some quests, failed one and completed others, gained a few levels, got captured once.  I was having fun and then some part of my brain wondered, “What time is it?”  It was 2 am, and I needed to get up in 5 hours for work.  While this isn’t too out of the ordinary, I actually continued to play for another 30 minutes.  Just had to finish one more thing.

So yeah, I’m really enjoying the game.  I’ve since hit the level 7 limit of the demo and purchased the complete version.

I’m actually surprised I liked it so much. I’m a pretty shallow gamer.  Graphics are a big part of games for me, enough so that I don’t usually play older games or indie games.  Even when the gameplay is great, if the graphics aren’t good then I’m not interested.

My only complaint isn’t actually game realted.  When I purchased the full version, Steam didn’t convert my existing installation but re-downloaded the full game again.

So if you like RPG’s go get it.  It’s a little bit Oblivion and a little bit Total War.

Gears DRM Debacle

Event like the Gears of War DRM debacle perfectly illustrate why Digital Rights Management is such a bad idea for the PC platform.

As a software developer myself, I can guarantee that there is no such thing as bug-free code.  Any piece of software that has more than 50 lines of code in it is going to have bugs, and any bug fix can introduce additional problems.  So anytime a developer adds functionality (like say DRM) to a product they are adding new possible problems.

When new functionality improves the game experience, this increased risk of problems is worthwhile to a gamer, but the addition of DRM usually provides no experience  improvements.  This is why Valve’s Steam has so much customer buy in.  Games are digitally distributed so there’s no CD/DVD required in the drive and I can buy and play a game without having to leave my house, and Steam allows me to download my purchases again if I need to.

With the exception of MMO’s, I’ve stopped buying PC games except through Valve’s Steam or Stardock’s Impulse.

Game publishers (and movie studios) need to look at what happened with the music industry.  Record studios pushed DRM in different forms for years without success, and now both iTunes and Amazon are doing great business without any DRM at all.  Customer’s pay for convenience and quality, not hassles.  Pirates won’t pay no matter what kind of protection is included.

Warhammer Expanding

Lot’s of news and commentary on Mythic’s announcements today.  Keen is excited, while Darren is concerned.  I’m neither.

They’re rolling out a new class, a cut class from the beta, new areas, and new events.  It’s a free expansion spread out over the next few months.  I’m glad to see Mythic aggressively marketing and developing their game, and I hope they succeed, but for me it’s a game of wait and see.  My subscription is up on February 17th and I doubt I’ll re-sub before then regardless of what Mythic does with the game.  Warhammer just can’t compete for my free time compared  to the Moria expansion for LoTRO, finishing Fallout 3, and a expectation for Dawn of War 2 coming shortly.

I’ll continue to follow the developments with more than a little interest, but I can’t see getting my Engineer out of mothballs until June or July at the earliest.

Max Level Again

Back in October I hit max level in Lord of the Rings Online for the first time ever in an MMO.  Well two days ago on my birthday, I took a vacation day and brought my hunter from just a little way into level 59 up to 60.

brynulf_level60

brynulf_level60_played

The nice thing is I’m only half way through the Volume 2 quests, so I’ve still got a lot more to do in the expansion.

Ding Level 35 in RL

Today I ding level 35 in that Real Life game.

Every year in January as my birthday approaches I think about being older.  More specifically I wonder when I’ll start to feel like an adult.  I used to think that once I got out of college and got a job I would start to feel different.  I actually asked my first boss about it (coincidentally he was 35 at the time) and he said that it wasn’t until you had kids.  Marriage didn’t seem to make a difference either.  Last October I celebrated the birth of my first child, so this year I can finally put that advice to the test.

Nope, I still feel the same.  Not really a bad thing, I guess.

No More War for Me

So I’ve cancelled my Warhammer subscription.  It doesn’t go inactive until mid February, but if the past two months are any indication I won’t be playing any more.  I played a Dwarf Engineer into Tier 2 before I ran out of steam, so I can’t comment on the PvP or endgame much.  For someone who is primarily PvE player the game is good, but not great, and good doesn’t cut it when Moria’s caverns are calling me so strongly.

The Greatness of Moria

Everyone in the MMO blogging community seems to be on a big Lord of the Rings kick lately Michael, Darren, and John (among others).  As a long-time player, I’ve been very pleased with the response the Moria expansion has gotten.  LoTRO really hadn’t garnered much attention prior to November, so it’s great to see the pendulum swing the other way, even more so since it’s so well deserved.

How good is the Moria expansion?  Let me answer by mentioning that I am a huge Warhammer 40K Dawn of War fan.  I own the original game and all of the expansions.  It is the oldest game I have installed on my computer that I still play on a semi-regular basis.  So of course, I’ve been looking forward to DoW2 and I was excited to learn recently that Steam players who bought Soulstorm were going to get an early preview.  Last night when I launched Steam I found that the preview/beta was available for download which I immediately started.  My plan then was to spend an hour or so in LoTRO to wrap up some crafting and turn in some quests, then log out  and try DoW2.  So three hours later at 1:30 am, I logged out of LoTRO and went to bed.  I didn’t even think about the demo until I was browsing through my Google Reader feeds this morning.  That is how good the Moria expansion is.