Still working on the SPORE review. Expect it at some point this week/weekend.

In other news, I was reading the blog for Braid (which I can only assume must be written by Jonathan Blow) when I came across this post, which pointed me to a sound byte of two annoyingly-voiced teenagers griping and a Youtube video of David Lynch being David Lynch (beware explicit language).

No disrespect to either Jonathan Blow or David Lynch, but I was really rather disgusted by their obstinacy.

Here’s what I had to say–and say it I did on the blog post comments.

I think it’s absurd to believe in-game advertising cannot be beneficial and should be removed entirely. Developing a game is expensive. Making a game is expensive. You have to pay people, you have to pay budget costs, you have to pay engines, you have to pay publishers and production costs, you have to pay shipping and distribution. And in the end, how much does your game sell for? Sixty bucks. Fifty. Forty. Ten. Then it’s pirated. Sold as Used in Gamestop. Less money made by the developer. Revenue lost. No profits. Studio closes down. Endgame.

Any money a game can make before it’s actually shipped that is not a debt can be incredibly beneficial for the developer, allowing them to produce more of the same quality work they produced with that first “added” game. As long as the ads are not blatant and a hindrance to gameplay, I can’t really complain. Yes, they seem to destroy the essence of a game at times. But would you rather have something pure or would you rather see your favorite studio shut its doors permanently? I want to see my game developer favorites stay afloat.

You can’t escape advertising. You can’t ban it. It’s everywhere. On your clothes. On your car. On the street. Billboards, shop signs, logos. TV shows, radio programs, music and jingles. Your mom’s stories. Your best friend’s opinion on what game you should play. It’s an AD. It’s selling the qualities of a work in order to obtain the exchange of money. Going out and posting about a game on a forum–it’s an AD. News about a revolutionary game called Braid–it’s a fucking AD.

You NEED ads. You need to advertise. Sometimes games would never see the numbers they raked in without ads, have you thought of that? Some extremely beneficial TV shows like 60 minutes get an absurd amount of revenue from ads.

If the main character in a game is drinking from a Coke can, are you seriously going to complain?

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Yes, yes, I know, I know, where’s the SPORE critique? Where’s my game news? What’s happening?

To be honest, there’s nothing going on right now. So don’t worry about it. The game world is incredibly dull, except for Warhammer.

And the Fracture and Mercenaries 2 demos are lackluster, if not terrible.

I’m working on a game right now, so I don’t have much time to talk. Yes, a game. I’ll be uploading my portfolio with my work (finally) at some point soon and then I’ll keep posting about progress with this thing. It’s actually rather exciting. I’m just nervous.

Work is slowly taking over my life. And then there’s World of Warcraft and Monster Hunter, which are viruses. Not to mention I’m giving Beyond Good and Evil a full playthrough, and I still need to get Eye of Judgment to work (why is it so hard to make the cards readable?). My time is nonexistent. In theory. So give me a few more days, maybe a week, and I’ll give you guys the scoop.

God I need sleep.

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SPORE works. Oh, God, I was so convinced the problem was my video card, but after Googling a little, I learned about a community of people that were having the same issues, and by using a simple yet retarded fix I managed to install the game and have it work. It doesn’t run spectacularly on my PC; it’s at lowest settings, and even then it has laggy moments (so maybe I should get the XG Station anyway?) but it runs, dear God, and I’m so happy that I finally have the chance to play. I’ve been out and about all today, fretting over being able to get home and play at 8pm. I’ve only made it to the Creature Stage.

But learning all about the issues and bugs in SPORE and the features that have been lacking in the final version, I’ve become thoughtful as to what problems must have arisen in its development, and where focus has been placed in the game design in order to refine particular aspects of the game that were considered core to its experience. Why is it plagued with so many glitches, errors and difficulties? Why is the DRM so broken?

I’ll be sure to write up a SPORE critique for you all sometime very soon. For now, I’m going to go into hiding for a few days while I play it.

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My computer cannot run SPORE: a game I have reserved two years in advance and have anticipated like the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.

I’m going to go be very depressed for a while.

[EDIT:] I realize I was too vague with my post, clearly, so let’s elaborate quickly: I have a Hewlett Packard laptop, which has had sufficient power to run a lot of what I’ve given it. It even ran Oblivion at like, ten frames per second. It ran the Warhammer Beta, if with horrible lag. But SPORE simply crashes every time I try running it, and when I checked The System Requirements Lab, it revealed to me that despite my previous assumptions, my ATI Radeon Xpress 200M integrated graphics card simply misses the mark for playing SPORE. It’s just a smidge under requirements, where everything else on my computer is relatively decent. Even my processor isn’t half bad, and it’s a Turion 64, which is nothing compared to a Intel Core 2 Duo.

I was devastated all yesterday, and I’ve really kind of lost hope to be able to play SPORE anymore, except for one small glimmer of hope: the ASUS XG Station, a portable external graphics card and multimedia handler for laptops lacking in the graphics department. According to its Wikipedia Article (which isn’t a very reliable source), the ASUS XG Station has been delayed until sometime mid-September while it’s finished up. This means it could be possible to upgrade my laptop using the external video card and be able to play SPORE. However, I have no idea what the price tag on this thing will be, and considering the video card used in it is $260 USD or so by itself, I’m worried the Station will cost somewhere around $350 dollars or more, a cost I just can’t dish out so readily.

I await to hear more news, but for now, I’m pretty much resigned to not be able to play SPORE until I get a new computer in a couple of years. And that really hurts.

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I had a strange and horrible nightmare last night that revealed several things about myself.

In the dream, I was playing a portable game. It could have been any console. Something like an action RPG with 2D graphics and puzzle elements. I ended up beating the game after what felt like an eternity of seeking treasure and fighting giant tortoises with cannons on their backs (I’m already considering the game possibilities of this) only to be taken back to my village and being offered a magnificent reward: a weapon I could later use by continuing the completed game, so essentially I could keep my prior equipment and do more long quests. In spirit, it sounds like a strange hybrid between Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles and Monster Hunter Freedom 2.

Anyway, the nightmare happened when I was trying to choose which of the legendary weapons of the village I wanted to have. As I was scrolling through them, I got a preview of that the weapon looked like, but nothing on its stats! Its attack power, special abilities and buffs were nowhere on the screen! And I looked around for some button that would give me the info of the weapon before I chose it, but I couldn’t spot any info on the screen, and was terrified to press any button out of fear that I would accidentally select the weapon when I wasn’t ready.

Then I accidentally pressed the back/cancel button, and suddenly the gifting ceremony was over! I was outside, and I didn’t have any of the weapons! I ran around the village trying to find where the ancient weapons were stored and see if I could still have one, but to no avail. Panicked, I tried to remember where I had last saved my game and whether it would be feasable to simply restart my console and try working back up to that point.

In my desperation, I woke myself up and lay there in stupor, thinking that timeless phrase again: “Oh my god, I’m so glad that was just a dream.”

And then I had to think to myself, “Only a game designer would have a nightmare about bad design choices in a screen for selecting a weapon.”

I must be insane.

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I somehow bumped into a video (aha, it was Kotaku) that detailed the many issues and Hell-like practices of our friendly neighborhood Gamestop on Youtube, to the style of Zero Punctuation.

Watch it here. Do it. it’s important. It’s also NSFW because of language (and the mutilation of stick figures, if anyone around you is offended by that), so get some headphones.

It’s a 9-part video series that goes on and on about Gamestop and how evil it is in everything it does. It even has a very thoughtful, well-thought-out conclusion.

I’ve hated Gamestop for a while now, but it’s usually been from the developer standpoint (which he mentions), where game creators actually get marginal money from sold games by Gamestop because the store relies so heavily on their pawnshop philosophy of buying and selling used games and that money never actually makes it back to the developer. Game devs only make money off the first “new” sale–not only that, but we make the tiniest revenue, with store fees, packing and shipping fees and publisher fees subtracted. In the end, game devs might make something like (this is not a fact) maybe five dollars off every new game sold. Imagine that when facts and figures are reported, we get numbers like “one million copies sold”. Most titles don’t ever get up to one million, and who knows how many of those millions are returns and sales of used copies, which means that in our model that that’s not actually five million dollars of revenue. And then subtract the cost of making the game.

Gamestop sucks on many, many levels, and I plan on probably never shopping there again if I can. I have SPORE reserved at an EB Games so when I get back to the States in a week, I may be making my final purchase. But then again, because Gamestop only holds on to your game for forty eight hours, and sometimes not even that long, my copy of SPORE might be gone already. In which case I will cancel my reservation and get my five bloody dollars back. I hope.

Watch the videos. Watch them. You, as a game consumer (because you are playing games if you are reading my blog, even if you’re a developer) need to be aware of how much money you are spending and saving off your purchases, especially when gas gets this high and every penny saved is earned. I know you’re going to keep buying games, even used games, so watching this video is an incredibly informative experience that teaches you what to do, what not to do, and where you should buy depending on what kind of game consumer you are. Whatever you do, do not shop at Gamestop anymore. And keep informed. Unless, of course, you enjoy being ripped off.

(I have to add: He makes a point about direct download and how it ideally will gradually take down Gamestop and how foolish it is to wait until then, to which I wanted to add as well: you also can’t forget the fact that people enjoy having hard, physical copies of their software, the same way they like getting sculpted World of Warcraft figurines of their level 70s. This means that there will probably always be a physical market for Gamestop to exist in. So it’s up to US, the consumers, to bring it down. Food for thought.)

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David Jaffe (creator of games such as Twisted Metal and God of War) got some flak for saying the primary aspect that he felt was selling Sarah Palin was that she was hot. He had to go on his video blog and be irked recently because he felt people were being too PC about his statement even though yes, Jaffe, it’s a little insulting to suggest a politician is going to be voted for just because she’s hot.

But on that note, I think he’s completely right. She’s attractive. Men are going to like her and want to put her in the office. But oh, you guys have no idea. She’s very attractive, but underneath she’s absolutely dangerous. She’s got that fire, that sharp ferocity underneath that’s just beautifully frightening. That makes her even more attractive to me. She’s got that face to mask the inner limit break.

Mmm. Okay, enough getting riled up. I think Sarah Palin is awesome. I hope she wins. And Jaffe needs to learn to phrase himself more eloquently and not video blog, but he’s absolutely right. I hope John McCain wins. I want this woman defending the country. She’s like Nariko.

Sarah Palin, if I was an American citizen, you’d have my vote again and again. Rock that White House

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I just spent like seven nine hours yesterday playing World of Warcraft. I’m in Mexico with nothing to do for two weeks. I might as well play games. But World of Warcraft the whole day? I really need to play something else. Or do something productive. I guess I’ll go fix Mom’s computer, or something.

Wait, or Monster Hunter. (*finds PSP*)

Someone who is not successful said something that is completely a lie and irrelevant. If exclusives didn’t exist, practically nothing would turn games to one title or the other. It’s getting to the point where everything has the same features and abilities. If exclusives didn’t exist, people would have no reason to buy one console over another, and they’d all end up buying the cheapest one.

They’d buy the Wii. Can you imagine the horror?

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