I won’t go on about the ‘good old days’ when game add-ons were only made if a game did well on its sales, and were shipped in physical form. Those days aren’t as good as they’re old now. Currently, you’re hard-pressed to find a game that’s not getting any form of downloadable content. The concept was introduced on modern consoles and has made its way to the PC, fully establishing itself on the platform during the last two or so years. It now comes in all possible shapes, from weapons and armour for RPGs, to additional multiplayer maps for shooters or RTS games, to fully-fledged add-ons and expansions.

My first brush with DLC, having arrived late at the console party, was Knothole Island for Fable 2. Never again will I be that naïve. I enjoyed Fable 2 thoroughly and was eager for more, however, the add-on turned out to be complete and utter rubbish. For two or three hours of additional gameplay, most of it not half as enjoyable as the main game, I felt cheated and ripped off.

I have since purchased only a few pieces of DLC for select games, and only after thorough research. I bought Operation Anchorage and Brotherhood of Steel for Fallout 3, finished the former (it was worth it!) but got so tired of the game’s instability that I never went any further with the latter. (For the same reason I most likely won’t be getting Dead Money for Fallout New Vegas.) I got the Undead Nightmare add-on for Red Dead Redemption, and that was an add-on that did everything right. It presented a new story, separate from the main game and playable or missable at the player’s leisure. And I got a few bits and pieces here or there. For Dragon Age and Mass Effect 2 I only have the pieces of DLC that were included with my preorders.

Mass Effect 2 was a bit ridiculous in this sense. A year after release there’s still new DLC being made available, and virtually all of it ties into the game in a way that would require you to start a new game if you’ve already finished a playthrough. Or, as someone suggested, load an earlier save and play through the DLC. Which, at least in Mass Effect 2, just defeats the purpose. Dear Bioware, as a working man with a reasonable amount of personal life, how many times do you expect me to go back and replay the same game just for another hour of additional content?
Ok, and now that we’ve settled that, answer me the rephrased question: how many times do you realistically think I will replay the exact same game just for another hour of content?

Do I have to go on about the completely deplorable habit of having different pre-order bonuses depending on retailer? It’s bad enough that games are released with Day-1 DLC, but to have exclusive DLC with one retailer and different exclusive DLC with another retailer just boggles the mind. It’s the kind of joke for which you’d shoot a comedian for telling it.

Keeping all this in mind, what should DLC ideally look like?

DLC should expand on the idea of the original game. Not just complete it. DLC that just adds a bit of gameplay without expanding the original premise might as well be released with the game at launch, and for free. Otherwise it feels like a rip-off.

If DLC integrates into the game, make it available on launch day. This way people with limited time can decide if they want to play it or not. Taking parts out of a complete game to sell them as DLC later is douchebaggery.

DLC should not make me replay a whole game just to get there. The idea of loading a save to play it is a crutch. It breaks immersion and defeats the purpose.

Most of all, DLC should not be noticeable when it’s not there. Don’t put a hook in a game where you offer me a quest line, and when I want to take it, it’s ‘Insert 10 bucks’. Dragon Age anyone?

Not that I realistically expect any publishers to take any of the above to heart – after all they’re in it for the profit – but I’ve drawn my own conclusions. Any DLC that does not at least remotely abide to this, I will not buy it. Heck, I may even hold off buying the game entirely. If I anticipate a game to be DLC-heavy, I will not buy it at launch. If I expect a game to be DLC-heavy and later come out with a ‘Complete Edition’, I will not buy it at launch. If I see a game that charges extra for Day-1 DLC and will feel incomplete without it – I will not buy it. My time is limited, so is my money.

One last thought – you will never hear me make a case for piracy. But trying to squeeze every last cent out of your customers with DLC, dear publishers, is not exactly a persuasive argument against it…

The last two truly excellent releases the genre has seen date back to 1999. Gabriel Knight 3: Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned was the first Point & Click title to convincingly use a full 3D environment. The camera controls and interface were so well-made that they needed virtually no getting-used-to. With a strong narrative and interesting characters, this typical Jane Jensen title was also the last adventure game published by Sierra. The Longest Journey had more traditional production values, but surprised with a deep, atmospheric and highly original storyline, as well as a very likeable lead character.

The last remarkable title saw the light of the world in 2001. And it almost didn’t for most of the world. Runaway: A Road Adventure by Spanish developer Pendulo Studios was already available in Spain when publisher Dinamic Multimedia went belly-up. Only two years later an English version was released. By then it was almost yesterday’s news, but the quirky characters, wacky story and some innovative mechanics made sure the game was a discussion topic among adventure fans for quite some time.

I won’t deny that since then, the genre has seen a lot of ambitious releases, some of them well above average. But there hasn’t been anything truly classy, inspiring or innovative. But what makes an Adventure game stand out from the rest, what makes it remarkable and worth playing?

It seems to be a popular opinion that Adventure games are all about puzzles. Objection, Your Honour. I firmly believe that an Adventure should first and foremost tell a good story. That’s what the classics always excelled at. Ideally, that story should have some depth, memorable characters, and it should make sense. Traditionally, Adventures are heavy on dialogue, mostly with branching conversations. Puzzles and riddles are a part of the package, but that’s where the chaff separates itself from the wheat. Let’s look at three random examples of what went wrong with some games.

Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon had fantastic art direction, good dialogue and a really good story. However, it lacked heavily in other aspects. Firstly, the controls were completely atypical for an Adventure game, more akin to a console platformer and ideally played with a gamepad. Now that has been tried before – Grim Fandango took half a metric ton of flak for that stunt back in its day. And that game is still considered a classic. In terms of story, production values and humour, Broken Sword doesn’t hold a candle against it. Throw in a few jumping puzzles and Sokoban knock-offs, and you have a game that didn’t quite know what it wanted to be. If it was an attempt to lure in new players, it failed miserably.

The first Runaway game was outstanding. Its successor however already lacked the class, the freshness and the sense of humour. Runaway 3: A Twist Of Fate completely blew things out of the water, in all the bad ways possible. A story that was meant to be comical but is actually just absurd, characters that were a mere shadow of their former glory – and please don’t get me started on the absolutely mindless, crackbrained puzzles. Absolutely nothing in that game made sense. Starting and ending with the fact that this series even made it that far in the first place.

Benoît Sokal’s Syberia has been widely touted as a game that could have saved the Adventure genre. With all due respect, I didn’t think so. Virtually everything about that game, in my very humble opinion, was run-of-the-mill. From the characters, to the production values, to the story itself, it was just not good enough. At no point did the game have the appeal to stand out, and the only reason it got so much attention was that there was virtually nothing else available in the genre at the time.

Now you may say, and I’ve heard this argument before – isn’t it better to have a genre produce average games that are at least playable, than no output at all? To at least keep the genre alive? For the third time in this article, I respectfully disagree. Personally, I’d rather have no Adventure games at all, rather than the mediocre titles that are being released here and there. If the developers keep on batting below target, the genre can’t sustain itself and is ultimately doomed to fail.

Which leads me back to the title of this article. I just recently finished playing Jane Jensen’s latest title Gray Matter. Since that game was announced a few years ago, I have been feverishly awaiting it. And it did not disappoint. From the story, to the atmosphere, the characters, the voice acting and music, the detailed graphics – everything just fits. What I specifically loved was the way the puzzles integrated into the game and drove the story. That’s a mistake a lot of developers have made and will keep making – to build puzzles for the sake of having puzzles in the game. The result borders on the illogical and absurd more often than not. Jane Jensen has got it right. Every single puzzle, from the simple ones in the beginning, to the serious nutcrackers towards the end, can be solved with hints found in the game, and just a little bit of noggin power. Not once did it feel like I had to wrap my mind around some developer’s twisted way of thinking. Gray Matter was enticing from the very beginning, I just couldn’t stop playing it.

After I finished Gray Matter, I realized just how dire the state of the Adventure genre is. Over the last few years I have played a multitude of titles, and not a single one was as engrossing and enjoyable as this one. I loaded Black Mirror 2, hoping for a similar experience, but it was not to be. Instead, I got lame characters, lousy voice acting and a game just brimming with mediocrity. After two hours I could not bear playing any further. And that’s all the genre seems to be capable of producing, with very few exceptions along the lines of Gray Matter. If that’s the best I can get – then I’d rather have no Adventures at all.

I received the following e-mail:

Greetings from Amazon.co.uk.

You saved £0.02 with Amazon.co.uk‘s Pre-order Price Guarantee!

The price of the item(s) decreased after you ordered them, and we gave you the lowest price.

The following title(s) decreased in price:

Inception Limited Edition (Triple Play Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy)
Price on order date: £29.99
Price charged at dispatch: £29.99
Lowest price up to and including release date: £29.97
Amount to be refunded: £0.02
Quantity: 1
Total Savings: £0.02

£0.02 is your total savings under our Pre-order Price Guarantee.

Because we reduced the price of your pre-release title between dispatch (when we charged you) and the release date, you will automatically receive a refund for £0.02.  You will receive an additional e-mail when this refund is processed.

Cool, I thought. Not that that’ll pay for my Christmas dinner, but if they insist, why not? True to Amazon UK’s German efficiency, the follow-up mail came today (all personal data deleted):

Dear Customer,

Greetings from Amazon.co.uk.

We are writing to confirm that we have processed your refund in the amount of £0.02 for your Order xxx-xxxxxxx-xxxxxxx.

This refund is for the following item(s):

Item: Inception Limited Edition (Triple Play Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy)
Quantity: 1
ASIN: B0041O4SA4
Reason for refund: Pre-order price protection

The following is the breakdown of your refund for this item:

Item Refund: £0.02

Your refund is being credited as follows:

Visa Credit Card [ending with xxxx]: £0.02

These amounts will be returned to your payment methods within 10 business days.

Pre-ordering on time: £29.99. Having Mom come visit for Christmas (coincidentally bringing this awesome item with her): pure bliss. Getting a refund from Amazon UK where the processing of said refund probably cost a multiple of its value: absolutely priceless.

Some things you really can’t buy…

The game starts off with a short nightmare sequence, which doubles up as a quick and painless tutorial. Once that’s finished, you’re introduced to your character, a young shepherd on a small island called Feshyr. You want to marry the Village Elder’s daughter, and in order to get his permission, you have to pass three tests. Those are easy enough and merely a vehicle to get the story going. Once you have passed the tests and done a few additional tasks, your betrothed wants to leave the island with you, but before that happens, you have to run another errand which sees this chapter end in a twist: the island is attacked by an army and everyone – except the nameless hero – dies. So now you set off to the mainland trying to find those responsible for the death of your loved ones. But true to form, your personal problems will soon have to wait, for there is a bigger picture. Yawn.

ArcaniA is a legit Gothic successor in the sense that it features many paradigms and tropes from the previous titles. If you’ve played any of the Gothic games, you’ll be almost instantly familiar with the way this one works. You’ll encounter a number of characters that have appeared in the Gothic series, and all the monsters have been around before as well, from molerats to swamp sharks. Starting out out with a clean slate, you build your character as you go along. Every time you gain a level, you receive a few skill points which you can allocate to one or more skills. The selection is however very barebones – skills for melee and ranged, three basic spells, that’s pretty much it. It is impossible to max out everything, which is how it should be. Unlike the previous Gothic titles, there are no specializations, so it is entirely up to you what you do with your character.

The game supports hoarding like no other. With a bottomless inventory and all merchants having seemingly endless money, you’ll never find yourself short of Gold. In fact, you’ll have so much that you’ll have a hard time spending it. Good weapons come either as quest rewards or loot drops, and armor is exclusively given as reward for key missions. Later in the game you’ll get some crafting plans for specific weapons, but you’ll never find a good sword or bow at a merchant. What else is there to buy? Oh yes – potions and elixirs, you’ll need plenty of those.

As the game progresses, it becomes apparent that ArcaniA is not nearly as rich and varied as its predecessors. If you expected to be able to pick a faction, specialize your character and earn some more advanced gear, you’ll be disappointed. There is no branching in the story, it’s extremely linear and the game literally sucks you through it. The very few times where I had to make a decision, I couldn’t really have cared either way. In addition, the game is full of what has been so aptly referred to as Fed-Ex quests. You don’t feel like a hero, you’re everyone’s taskman. One quest specifically petered out into half a dozen subquests, each one feeling more random and pointless than the previous one.

It is a pity that the quest design isn’t more interesting, because ArcaniA sure is fun to play otherwise. With the new engine used by Spellbound comes a really smooth and slick control set that makes combat an absolute pleasure. It is simple, yes, but that’s what’s so nice about it. Timing attacks, flurries and evasions is a breeze. With the Lunge capability that you can unlock very early, fighting mob groups becomes very enjoyable. Also you can hit several foes with one strike, much akin to the Group style from The Witcher (albeit not nearly as refined). The learning curve is very gentle in the beginning, and when the game puts you into the first real battle, it comes as a bit of a surprise. Later on the game throws some formidable foes at you, so those aforementioned potions will come in very handy.

Speaking of engines – this is definitely the prettiest and smoothest engine ever to present a Gothic game. For me it ran without a single crash, and apart from some minor technical glitches (pieces of vegetation disappearing in front of me as I walk past them) I found no issues with it. It’s also not too much of a hardware hog, a current medium-range system will run the game just fine. There has been talk of game-breaking bugs on some forums but I haven’t come across any of them.
However, the effort that went into the engine stopped just short of the character models. The whole game seems to have a total of five different male models. Most male characters have got the same face, poorly disguised by different facial hair and headgear. The female side isn’t much better, only there are less of them, so it’s not that obvious. It is however very disconcerting when the princess of a town has got the exact same face as some merchant woman. In addition, you keep seeing the same facial animations and gestures during conversations. The game could have used a lot more work here.

That also goes for the voice acting. It’s unfortunately a staple issue with German-made games that their voice work is often sub par. I am absolutely no expert for English accents, but what’s happening in this game is without rhyme or reason. Some voice actors are British and try to hide it, some are openly American, some try to sound like a mix between Crocodile Dundee and Pirates of the Caribbean. It doesn’t end there. Many of the dialogue lines are over-exaggerated, simply transporting the wrong feeling according to the situation. It’s not up to scratch at all, and downright atrocious at times.

There are a few other aspects where the game feels unfinished or doesn’t make a lot of sense. For example, crafting happens in your inventory. All the whetstones, anvils and alchemy tables you find in the game – they’re just for show. If you have learned a recipe or crafting plan and you have all the ingredients, you just click to make the item appear in your inventory, be it a weapon or a potion. Which is a bit of an immersion breaker. Also, there is no way to sleep and accelerate time, something that you could always do in previous titles. If you find a bed, by all means, use it, but you won’t get anything out of it. Towards the end, the game chases you through a lengthy set of rather linear temples and cave systems and finally gives you some easter egg hunt quests which are nothing but annoying and seem to only be there to stretch game time. Which, for an RPG, is surprisingly short, you can breeze through this in about 25 hours.

ArcaniA is not a terribly bad game by anyone’s standards. It’s just not terribly good either. Compared to the disastrous Gothic 3, it’s a huge improvement on the technological side, with a decent, if overly linear story line, appealing graphics and a very acceptable soundtrack. It’s also better than the ‘inofficial’ Gothic sequel ‘Risen’. But it’s not good enough to redeem the franchise and make it truly shine. Fans of the franchise have probably played this already, everyone else is better off giving it a skip and waiting for The Witcher 2.

‘e Squared’ no longer limits itself to e-mails alone, but uses SMS, Instant Messaging and Blog articles to tell the story. That’s the first fundamental difference to ‘e’. The second core difference is not far behind. While in ‘e’ and its small supplement ‘The e before Christmas’, e-mails were used to drive a story that was funny and just mildly over the top, ‘e Squared’ turns things around and uses the story itself as means to take a dig at all the new media and technologies of the Internet age, of which we have become so dependent.

Several characters from ‘e’ make an appearance, three of them as leads. There is David Crutton, former CEO of Miller Shanks and now MD of an up-and-coming advertising agency called Meerkat360. There is Liam O’Keefe, former copywriter of the same Miller Shanks and now part of Meerkat360′s creative department. And there is Simon Horne, again formerly of Miller Shanks until he committed one creative theft too many, found himself on the run, and is now blogging from an unknown location. This cast is complemented by a number of guests, both old and new, who are giving the story the right spin.

The story centers around Meerkat360, who as an ad-agency try to be so different in everything they do, that their urge to be different turns out to be their greatest hurdle. They battle with one partner who is more interested in extreme sports than driving the Creative Department, another partner who is always away on some or other seminar, an MD with anger issues, two PAs with delusions of adequacy, a creative department that wouldn’t recognize a good idea if it slapped them in the face, reps with fear of flying and a naivete that would make a 3 year old look street-savvy… and that’s just for starters. You can see where this is going. Pretty much down the drain.

Here’s where the third core difference from ‘e’ comes in. Where the original was light-hearted, ironic and generally not overly serious, ‘e Squared’ comes across deeply sarcastic, broody and almost bitter. The lead characters have got absolutely no redeeming qualities and don’t inspire any form of sympathy, more like a ‘you deserve everything that’s coming at you’ feeling. As a reader you feel almost powerless when you see them getting themselves deeper and deeper into crap, to the point where you think it can’t get any worse. And when it does get worse, you’re not even mildly surprised. They had it coming.

And that’s where ‘e Squared’ ultimately fails. The way it looks on new media and the Internet makes it a sobering and at times unsettling read, up to the point where suddenly every one of the main characters catches a lucky break, thanks to the same technologies that Beaumont seemed to be heavily criticizing. This is not to say that the book is a failure in itself, far from it. But it lacks the consequence that I came to expect after the first few chapters, it lacks the ultimate breakdown, the circle is not being closed. It is a small consolation that at least two of the redeemed characters seem to be intent to try and do the right thing going forward.

If you have read ‘e’ and liked the premise, there isn’t much you can do wrong with ‘e Squared’. If this is all new to you, I’d suggest you get hold of ‘e’ first in order to familiarize yourself with the characters and the narrative means. ‘e Squared’ is full of allusions to the original, many of which will otherwise be lost on you. Despite the caveats I strongly recommend both books – I however left wondering if Beaumont was actually criticizing the Internet and the way we use it, or if he was just using extreme examples for his story and actually didn’t mean to say much at all…

This article is also posted on purpleplanet, a tech blog I am contributing to. There is no creative theft going on here

“Woke up last night under the mountains
Driving from Zurich to Milan
I lay there listening to the echoes
Thinking of Iceland and Japan
So many smiles, so many faces
And my home so far away
I lose some of me in all these places
And I can’t help the way I’m changed

All over the world in eighty days
Memories turn like magazine pages
What kind of a man could live this way
I do what I can
But I can’t escape it”

However, there is one thing I’ve never been able to wrap my head around. The first song ‘Man of a Thousand Faces’ is a great piece, with a nice piano part and interesting lyrics. It shows what Progressive Rock should be about – quality instead of quantity. Except that, when the song is essentially complete and over at approximately 4:10, the band felt the need to add another 3 minutes of atmospheric chants and other hoo-hah. Why they chose to take a completely rounded-off song and add the extra time, making it sound less complete as a result, has escaped me since I first heard it.

Any ideas? The comments are open.

I didn’t get to Computicket on the day the sale started, and on the next day, there were no more tickets left. However there are currently lots of posts on sites like Gumtree, Bidorbuy and several forums, offering to sell tickets at harsh mark-ups. The ‘cheapest’ you can currently get is about R600, I have seen offers of up to R800, and there are unconfirmed reports from 2009 when tickets were selling at up to R1000 ¹. For reference: last year the face value of a rAge ticket was R250, this year it’s R300. There have also been reports of seats staying empty due to ticket resellers not being able to find buyers for all their excess ², but again I can’t confirm that because I didn’t make it to the expo last year.

I did actually have two tickets, but couldn’t go on short notice and sold them to someone at the price I paid for them.

There is nothing in the law to keep people from doing this. It happens with any kind of concert or event tickets, especially the popular ones. Computicket’s Terms and Conditions prohibit the resale of tickets bought through them ³, but that has yet to stop anyone from doing it. Computicket also restricts the amount of tickets per customer. For rAge the limit was 5 tickets each, which is already too much. Make purchases under different names and you’ll quickly have a sizable amount if tickets in your possession. I posted on two web forums looking for tickets, and was contacted by someone who offered me tickets at R600 each. My reply was that that seemed a bit excessive, considering the ticket’s face value was half that, but the reply was that this was the current going price. The mail address of this person, which I am not going to publish but have given to the relevant people, indicates that he is a regular reseller of rAge tickets and not just someone who happened to have a few excess. I wonder if that person even goes to the expo.

The point is – by buying tickets in excess, creating a shortage and then trying to profit from it, people place themselves in the scum pond of capitalism. Right there with stock speculators, naked short sellers ⁴ and other people who try to make money from nothing, however illegitimate their methods are. You’re not a hero, neither are you a clever businessman. You’re a parasite. You try to sell something with 100 to 150% mark-up while offering absolutely no added value. You’re taking advantage of a shortage you helped create. And you’re depriving a person of money they might have otherwise spent at the expo.  That’s not business – that’s theft. You’re stealing money from people who are desperate or gullible enough to buy from you.

The possibly only way to completely curb the black market is to personalize tickets and tie them to a name and ID number. If you present a ticket and your ID and name don’t conform with the ticket – sorry, no admission. If you have tickets that you can’t use, the only choice you have is to return them and let the organizers sell them to someone else – re-personalized of course. But aside from the fact that this would be completely inconveniencing legit customers, it also opens a big can of worms with regards to privacy, fraud and data harvesting – other parts of the capitalism scum pond.

The rAge LAN organizers, New Age Gaming (NAG), have a clear policy on this issue and seem to try their best to enforce it.

“As you may realise, selling and buying second-hand tickets to the NAG LAN @ rAge is seriously frowned upon. Please report anyone attempting to do so here, or PM me if you’d like to remain anonymous.”

They also have a suggestion for people with excess tickets:

“If you have extra tickets that you need to get rid of, please contact us and we’ll happily buy them from you for their original price plus shipping/delivery. We will then sell those tickets back to willing buyers for their original price.” ⁵

I reckon that’s only fair. Return your tickets to NAG, they’ll give you exactly what you paid for them, and cover your shipping cost. You won’t lose a cent. Of course, you won’t make a profit either – but it was never yours to make in the first place. The alternative is to be a good sport and sell your excess at face value. Anything else is unsportsmanlike at best, and the scene does not need people like that.

If you still happen to look for a rAge ticket and are unwilling to pay inflated prices, contact lauren at nag dot co dot za and have your name put on the waiting list. Apparently they usually get a number of returns as the event draws closer, and will sell them at the original price.

As long as we are talking about standard editions, the pricing is quite simple. Nowadays, new PC titles usually retail between ZAR350 and ZAR400, console titles range from ZAR600 to ZAR700. Similar price gaps exist all over the world, as a quick check with the major retailers and online stores will confirm. They’re not always in the same proportion, but they are there.

A short while ago however, some publishers started retailing their A-List PC titles closer to the ZAR500 mark, a price tag that is more common for SEs and Limited Editions. Modern Warfare 2 was one of the first to retail in this range, with the upcoming Starcraft 2 being another example. It doesn’t surprise me that so far it’s only being done with sure-fire sellers, but I don’t think it would be good for the market if this had to happen on a wider scale.

There has aways been a fundamental difference between games for the PC and the different consoles. While PC titles were always easier to copy than console titles (rumour has it that that’s the reason for the lower price tag as well), their resalability has gone down to pretty much zero. Virtually all games that come with an online component also come with a unique key which is usually tied to a user account. Trying to revert a once-used key back to unused is often enough an exercise in futility. Bottom line, reselling a PC game is mostly just as impossible as trading it – unless you can find a dealer who doesn’t have the knowledge. I have found second-hand Steam-based games in shops before and even bought one accidentally – the seller either didn’t know or didn’t care that I would be unable to play the game and had essentially just acquired a R150 coaster.

Console games on the other hand are easily tradable and sellable. They don’t get tied to one console or a single Live/PSN-Account, so selling a game comes with no limitations. There is the odd title that ships with one-time codes, usually for downloadable content, but the core game is not affected by that. It is very common among console players to trade and lend games between friends, and there is a vivid market for second-hand games. On the other hand, while piracy exists on consoles, it requires modifications to the system’s hard- and software which generally are a breach of the respective supplier’s Terms of Use and void the warranty for the system at the very least.

So let’s put this into some numbers, shall we? You can buy a new X360 or PS3 game for R600, play through it in one or two weeks, then sell it for R400-450. You’ve essentially spent no more than R200 on the game. Put those towards another game and you’ve spent R800 on two titles – R400 per title. Now you’re close to PC prices. Or you can take the brand-new game that you’ve finished in two weeks, find someone who wants that game and has another brand-new game for trade that you want. Whoopee. You’ve just pushed your per-title cost down to R300. Got to love being a console gamer.
Meanwhile the PC gamer spends 350-400 bucks on his game, finishes it and it ends up on the shelf, because thanks to ever more restrictive DRM his copy is now forever dongled with one of his own user accounts, and he couldn’t sell it if he wanted to.

(Yes, I might be exaggerating just a little.)

Don’t let me go off on a tangent now, we’ll talk about the piracy issue some other time. The bottom line is: you want to raise prices for PC titles? Go ahead, knock yourself out. But then you’ll have to give the customer something in return. More value for money. More tradability and resalability. Less restrictive and/or intrusive DRM. Take your pick. I’ll gladly spend R500 on a game, if I can sell it again in case I don’t like it or don’t want to keep it, without having to jump through all kinds of hoops. But leaving everything as is and just upping the margins may well spell doom on the PC market.

Unless, of course, that is the objective…

The Battlefield series always followed a large-scale, strategic approach to its game play. Big maps, large teams and the option to play a slow-paced, methodical game were there since the series’  inception, and that’s what’s won it a lot of followers on the PC. In the last five years I myself have poured hundreds of hours into both Battlefield 2 and Battlefield 2142, as have a lot of my friends and clan mates. Now I am by no means a competitive player or über-skilled, but I have always enjoyed a more or less relaxed game with friends.

Battlefield Bad Company, the second console iteration of the series after Modern Combat, took a somewhat different approach. Smaller maps, less players, faster pace. Bad Company 2, the latest installment of the series, also made it to the PC, but it continues the paradigm shift of the console version. Which caused a bit of consternation with Battlefield veterans, who saw the new direction as a nod to other major franchises like Call Of Duty, and as an attempt to draw players of those brands over to Battlefield.

So far every Battlefield game was released with flaws that, over time, were more or less addressed in numerous patches. Bad Company 2 (in this article I am talking about the PC version) has got a few fundamental flaws, at least by the series’ prior standards, that are worth talking about. Inconsistent hit detection was a staple flaw in Battlefield 2 which, as of patch 1.5, is still there, albeit not as grave as it was in the release version. BC2 takes it to new levels at times, where it is possible to finish off opponents with the minimal amount of shots needed one day, and the next day a whole magazine (the word ‘clip’, in the context it’s used in, is incorrect) will not take them down. Developer DICE have attempted to fix the problem in several patches already, with differing results and, on the bottom line, unsuccessfully. The hit registration appears to be affected by higher latencies and connectivity issues. There are a few unofficial tweaks running around on the net but so far no one has been able to conclusively say if these will work for everyone.

That being said, DICE have always had issues with their QA. It has happened numerous times that a large patch fixed a few things but then broke others. I remember well the occasion when a BF2 patch (I think it was 1.12) hit the frame rate so badly that  the game went from acceptably playable to completely unplayable on my (then fairly low-end) system, prompting me to shell out some money for system upgrades. So far BC2 has got a similar track record. It has been suggested for DICE to take a page out of Valve’s book. Their STEAM-based games receive small patches that individually address very few issues at a time. However the patches happen in greater frequency. It seems that with the multitude of things to address, DICE might fare well in doing something similar. Resolve two, three issues at a time, QA the patch, roll it out, then move on to the next issues. The question remains if the Frostbite codebase allows for that kind of work. But having an 890MB patch be delayed for two months and then having it introduce new bugs, while only half-fixing some of the more pressing ones, can severely rub a player the wrong way.

Not all the flaws are of technical nature. The map design has moved from large and open maps in BF2 (and to a mildly lesser extent in BF2142) to smaller, corridor-based maps in BC2. This type of design encourages faster-paced playing styles and reduces the squad-based, tactical approach. Especially in the Rush game mode it is fairy difficult to develop variable tactics, since there’s usually no more than two ways to your objective. It also encourages some major a-hole tactics which can ruin a fairplayer’s day in ten seconds flat. In the older games it was rarely if ever possible for one squad to steamroll a full server, but in BC2, one squad playing tightly and ruthlessly can upset the balance of the game completely.

Let’s not harp on about the completely and utterly pointless profanity filter in the in-game chat. It makes perfect sense to mask out ‘stuff off’ (which I told some kid the other day who kept screaming about hacks every time someone killed him) when at the same time the in-game voice-overs are blaring f-bombs and other profanity into your ears. Which does absolutely nothing for in-game communication, by the way. Neither does the lack of voice comms. At the time of release, the in-game Voice over IP, which allows you to communicate with your squad mates was not working. It is supposedly fixed now, however most people I know have since gotten tired of trying and instead started using TeamSpeak or a similar third-party application. Myself, I have the BC2 VoIP turned off completely at this stage. Which is fine enough when we play among the clan, but if you’re alone on a server without clan mates, every idea of teamplay goes out of the window. Never mind the social aspect that was much more prevalent in BF2 – there you could start out in a squad with total strangers and end the day with new pals or even recruits for your clan. Right now I can’t even talk to some of my non-clan friends because they usually are in a different TeamSpeak channel or aren’t using it altogether.

Last not least, DICE are being a bit too obvious on the practice of releasing additional maps. Since the game was released, it has received four map packs, each consisting of two ‘new’ maps – which are without exception maps that are already in the game, just for different game modes. The interesting part is that all these maps existed at at the time of release, every PC user and every ranked server already has this content installed. It just gets unlocked at a later stage, there is no download or installation needed. The business idea behind this? On the console versions, if you didn’t buy the game first-hand, you don’t have the so-called VIP code, which gives you all this ‘new’ content for free. But you can still get these maps – you just have to buy them. On the PC, there is no such thing, because you can’t sell the game to someone else anyway (well, you sure as heck can try).

I was very skeptical about BC2 initially. So after reading this rant one might think I’d have tossed this game out of the window like no-one’s business. Strangely enough that’s not the case. Battlefield has got a long history with my clan, and even though it took me a while to get into the game, right now there’s no better unwinding mechanism than to hop into a game with a few clan mates, duking it out with all weapons and in all manners possible, while ragging each other about every kill, every slip-up, every set of dogtags taken and generally talking crap. And despite all the flaws there are a number of game elements that I hope will make it into Battlefield 3, which is apparently in production. A mix of the more sophisticated BF2 gameplay and mechanics, along with the more innovative and sensible parts of BC2, minus some of the traditional bugs and flaws – that can only spell awesome.

I’ve written the odd review or two in my day and always had a problem scoring the subject of a review. The notion of being able to put a score on the bottom line of what essentially is an opinion, and have any claim of accuracy, escaped me at all times. At the end of the day any review can only be an opinion, a writer reporting his experience with a certain product. To put a score on that gives it an air of fact that no review can claim for itself. But even if you make the score a part of the opinion – which is the right thing to do in any case – how does it work?

There are a number of different scoring systems out there, from the 100 points scale (or percent scale), its quite popular derivative 10 with decimals, to school grades (A, B, C, D, F). What most of these have in common is that they have some serious flaws. Take the 100 points scale. There isn’t a journalist alive who could tell you with any degree of sophistication what the difference would be between a score of 83% and 85%. Is there even a difference?

Gameshark.com-Editor Bill Abner put it quite aptly when he said in a recent podcast that if your scoring system doesn’t use its full scale, it’s crap. And it is true for most scoring systems that their scale is a bit skewed. If a game scores below 50% on the 100 scale, it makes no difference if it scores 45 or 25 – virtually noone is going to consider buying it. On the other hand, the majority of review scores end up somewhere between 70% and 100% on that scale. Which is probably a good thing – but why have such a wide scale if most of it serves no purpose? Even on the school grades it doesn’t really make a difference if the game scores a D or an F.

Bill freely admits that he would love to change the Gameshark system to something along the lines of Siskel & Eberts Thumbs Up/Down rating – but doesn’t have the brass to do it.  He reckons that the readers want scores. But is that really the case? Yes, readers want something to gauge if they are going to spend their hard-earned money on a game. However, does it really have to be a 1-10 scale or even a 1-100 scale? Personally I am quite partial to what Ars Technica do – their game reviews get a Buy – Rent – Skip verdict. Clean, concise and to the point. Let’s be honest, it’s basically a mildly extended Siskel & Ebert scale – thumbs up, down and sideways, if you so will. A rating cannot replace a full review, there are things you just can’t put into a score, even if you do component reviews where Graphics, Sound, Gameplay etc. are commented on and scored separately (which is usually just done to conceal the author’s inability to put together a concise, flowing piece of writing). Looking at a score alone cannot replace the value of information that is – or at least should be – found in a review.

Besides, no journalist likes to type out several pages of text and then have people not read it because all they want is the bottom line…