Welcome to the wet feet edition.
Why wet feet? For many reasons, not the least of which are the background sounds used by Turbine.
Have you ever been to or acted in a high school drama production? Remember what the high school acting coach used to tell students to say to make “crowd sounds”? During more than one production we saw the dramatis personae on stage muttering “peas and carrots, peas and carrots”. Most of the time it makes us wonder why the students are so hungry. Even game developers use “crowd sounds”. Have you ever spent any time in the auction house in Lord of the Rings Online? Next time listen to the background sounds. From day one of the beta we have been listening to the same person say “feet wet” in the back ground. So on to the first set of wet feet…
Is Zynga wading out of the water?
You always have to be careful when you are quoting a “source from a source”. It‘s kind of like having a guy, who knows a guy, who knows a guy, who has a distant obscure relative. When you are quoting an “anonymous quote” that has been deemed to be “largely accurate” you have to be as careful as a long tail cat in a room full of rocking chairs. With that lengthy qualification here is the quote, via Tech Crunch:
Pincus announced at a 5pm meeting yesterday at Zynga that Zynga was going to launch a social game network called Zynga Live. The Zynga Live initiative was a social gaming network. Facebook and Zynga has been negotiating on Facebook Credits and the talks turned for the worst. In the negotiation process, Facebook shut off Zynga’s feeds and threatened to shut down games. Zynga in the process threatened to completely leave Facebook and prepared to do so in the previous upcoming weeks. – via Techcrunch.com
Techcrunch is also reporting that the 800 pound gorilla of accessible games, publisher/developer Zynga, may indeed be set to take their massive virtual farm conglomerate, Farmville, and other games, to their own website. If (and believe me friends that’s one mountain sized if) reports are true, it’s sort of ironic that just as big names like Electronic Arts, who just acquired Facebook games publisher payfish…oops, Playfish…to the tune of $25 million dollars , in preparation for getting their feet wet, that the people who where there when the trend started are preparing to get out of the pool. It sounds like something we should talk about on The No Prisoners, No Mercy show. In fact we did, as you will hear on show number 61, already recorded.
Wading into the deep end
The problem with the anonymity of the internet is that you never know who is really who. So while we are pleased that Logan Decker, editor-in-chief of PC Gamer magazine stopped by to read our latest tirade on Ubisoft’s draconic rights…er…digital rights management we can only hope it was really him. Regular readers and listeners, will, of course, know that we first wrote about Ubisoft’s DRM in an article entitled “Kiss us first”. What really lit a fire under our collective butts, however, was the affect this had on active duty military in places like Iraq, spoken about over at Arstechnica in an article entitled “The Victims of PC Gaming DRM: One Soldiers Story” . So yes, in the end we will all admit this issue has us hopping mad. We didn’t want Mr. Decker’s comment to get lost in the shuffle so here it is :
I’d like to add that I do sympathize with developers very much on the issue of piracy. I can only imagine what it must be like to work your ass off for years on a game — especially a great game like Assassin’s Creed 2 — or to risk tens of millions of dollars and your professional reputation publishing one, only to see it casually exchanged after its release. I get that.
My point wasn’t to pick on Ubi over this DRM, but only to bemoan the terrible effect this DRM can have on the experience for PC gamers, and to do our part to encourage the growth of alternatives like Steam, Cerberus, et al.
Later gators!
Logan
If we raised a ruckus over Ubisoft and DRM, it is only right that we toot someone’s horn loudly when they do a good thing that addresses the same issue.
You all know, of course, how near and dear to our hearts we hold the independent game developers out there. Not convinced? Listen to show 60. If you haven’t heard of The Humble Bundle by now, head on over to Arstechnica and read all about it here . For those of you who refuse to go over to the link here is the first paragraph explaining The Humble Bundle:
“A group of indie developers are selling a package of their games which includes some of the biggest independent games on the market. Gamers can name their own price—from 1¢ to $1,000—for a pack of games that would go for around $80 if sold separately. Anyone who buys the package can feel better about themselves as well; customers can send any amount of their purchases to two major nonprofit groups.” – Michael Thompson, Humble Bundle: greatest sale of indie games ever?
O.K. , Show of hands – a bundle of software, all games that are already popular in their own right; put out there on the web with the only price “pay what you want” and no DRM whatsoever? Who thinks the developers won’t make a nickel? O.K. now everyone put your hands down because they made over a million dollars. Sadly, there was some pirating of the humble bundle; we won’t lie to you (what two nuns lie? NEVER) . But in the end it appears that there is at least some good left in the gaming community. Perhaps, just perhaps, in the minds of some of the big triple-A game developers and publishers (and yes maybe even investors) this will convince them to seek other avenues to insuring revenues rather than unreasonable DRM.
The No Prisoners, No Mercy Team
Side Note
There are many things that I have woken up to in my life – some BN and some AN (before nun and after nun). In the BN days there have been times I was awakened by a garbage can being thrown down an isle by an angry drill sergeant. The most startling of sights I ever woke up to in those days is a hallway filled with smoke. One of the nicer things that I regularly wake up to is a small dog who alternatively licks my face because she wants to get up, or moans because she doesn’t.
This morning I was awoken by something much different. At 4:00 am I woke to the sound of a nearby fire department sounding a periodic horn blast that sounded a flash flood warning. I can’t say it was a sound sleep, because our guard dog was busy making the rounds between the rooms, one of the stops being on my bed; and the worst the storms got, the quicker went the rounds.
As diligent as he is, even our guard dog needs a break now and then – and sometimes that break comes in the middle of the proverbial dark and stormy night. During a lull in the storm he decided that he should “get while the gettin’ is good” as grandmother used to say.
Our guard dog has a particular quirk. He certainly takes his duties seriously, his usual reaction to someone he thinks doesn’t belong on the premises is to offer to “rip them a new one”. Outside the storm had indeed calmed, if only for a moment – long enough for the guard dog’s odd quirk to come into play. After all, even guard dogs need to answer the proverbial call of nature. Out the front door we went. We both stood there on the front walk. I looked at him, he looked at me, as if to say “and just what are we doing out here?” Now knowing that it is merely a momentary calm I urged the dog into action, with no results whatsoever. The thing is, you see, while there are plenty of walk ways on which to relieve himself he simply prefers the grass. That in itself is not unusual, of course, as most dogs prefer the same. The difference is, as brave as our guard dog is, he simply doesn’t like to get his feet wet.
A lighting strike just over head sent both I and the guard dog into the house like…well, like a bolt of lightning – And right into the anxious Boston Terrier waiting just inside the front door. You see the guard dog isn’t our only dog. The second is a Boston Terrier that weighs all of 16 pounds soaking wet. A fact she was anxious to prove. Lighting strikes nearby? She didn’t care. Pouring rain? Please. Sound of someone or something rattling around in nearby bushes? Kid stuff.
Yes, the sound of something in the nearby bushes.
The rain started up again. Nearby, no doubt, some wild animal tried to arrange itself to stay fairly dry in the shelter of the building’s eaves. Fifteen pounds or one hundred and fifty, it didn’t matter to the small terrier what it was – she was ready to take it on.
The guard dog starts his training with the Boston Terrier next week.
(For the record, the dog above is not our guard dog, merely a clever picture I found on the internet.)