The PC Centric Extravaganza 2.05.08
Posted by Chris Evans on 02.05.2008
My take on all the latest PC and Industry based news...
The PC Centric Extravaganza
Welcome to the PC Centric Extravaganza with me your host, Chris Evans. We have had a busy week of new videos, newspaper articles, new information on games, the EU getting involved in the console wars and loads more! On my blog I have started throwing up some old (and new) articles for your reading pleasure. Also check out my views on EA Changing Direction. On with the PC Centric Extravaganza then!
Dawn of War Videos
Two new videos for the upcoming Warhammer 40K Dawn of War expansion pack, Soulstorm have been released. The first shows off the new ‘Pentinent' engine while the second lets you see the new Confessor unit in all its glory.
While I may not have played Dawn of War that much, it is an RTS that is really enjoyable and provides some tough hard hitting action at its heart. The expansion which I Previewed on Game (link) is looking pretty damn good too and for any RTS fans out there, I recommend you get the demo and see what all the fuss it about!
Child Man and Man Teen
A Dallas paper, the Dallas Morning News has posted a column blaming current societal problems on men, especially video game playing men. The columnist seems to think that society is in peril because men are getting married later and having kids later because they are remaining in a child-like state for too long. This really is pathetic and to introduce video games into the argument just takes away the credibility of the article.
The following are my detailed thoughts taken from my blog.
The Dallas Morning News columnist Kay Hymowitz has launched a scathing attack on modern 20 something males calling on them to drop the game pad and grow up.
Now meet the 21st-century you, also 26. You've finished college and work in a cubicle in a large Chicago financial-services firm. You live in an apartment with a few single guy friends. In your spare time, you play basketball with your buddies, download the latest indie songs from iTunes, have some fun with the Xbox 360, take a leisurely shower, massage some product into your hair and face – and then it's off to bars and parties, where you meet, and often bed, girls of widely varied hues and sizes. Wife? Kids? House? Are you kidding?
Single young males, or SYMs, by contrast, often seem to hang out in a playground of drinking, hooking up, playing Halo 3 and, in many cases, underachieving. With them, adulthood looks as though it's receding.
Ignoring the fact that since the 1960s (the era on which she compares current men) many social changes have occurred and the men getting married and having kids later is not just a result of video games and iTunes. Society has changed and she seems to be finding whatever she can to blame the change on. This is yet another example of people not wanting to grow up with the times and blaming anything 'new' as being the reason for the change in society. They my friends are the people who need to grow up.
In a very similar vein to this there was an article in The Times from Monday 5th February (link) which covered very similar topics. I e-mailed the writer of the article which follows.
Kate,
I have just read your article 'The Dark Ages' and I am disgusted with your portrayal of video games and making some glaring mistakes in the article. Firstly the following paragraph from your article;
Can this be true? Are British chaps really spending their life outside work alone in their bedrooms or living rooms with games on 50in LCD TVs? I assumed that, after adolescence, young men put away childish things and played amateur football, got amusingly drunk, instigated punch-ups, watched Big Brother or ineffectually pursued women. Yet here were men holding down serious careers by day, but infantalised by night in a virtual world.
To me this reads like you are saying that it is better for men to get drunk and get in fights than play video games. Is there anything wrong with men playing video games and not doing these other things? Surely it is better to play a video game than mindlessly watch Big Brother? Games are constructive helping develop reaction times, they have helped people save others lives (link) and to help train military men and women (link) Also, while gamers may often be alone at home while they are playing, they are often playing online games talking to clan mates developing friendships and real world relationships.
Or the panting that goes on in the "Hot Coffee" patch in Grand Theft Auto.
This really rankled me, 'Hot Coffee' was not a 'patch' as you called it. It was a piece of code left in the game by the developer by accident. It was never meant to be playable at all, it was some gifted hackers who found the code and released it. If you recall later versions of Grand Theft Auto San Andreas were released with the offending code removed. To claim that 'Hot Coffee' was a patch is laughable. A patch is a game update released by the developer to improve the game or fix bugs and errors. 'Hot Coffee' was not a patch and to call it so devalues the effort developers put into making patches for their games.
Oh, yes. Look closely from now on at your solicitor and check for the madness in his red, screen-dry eyes.
This just left me stunned. How can you equate gaming with madness? Please tell me where this statement was derived from.
Who knew that the generation who first became addicted to Pac-Man and Super Mario would turn out to be boys who never grew up?
Again this is just poor writing and journalism. Those who played games like Pac-Man and Super Mario have grown up, most of them will have got jobs and matured greatly.
Marriage, families and children are being delayed for as long as possible
Who says people have to get married, have families and children at a young age? People have free will and if they chose to lead a single-life before settling down that is their choice and is not something you can chastise them for.
You also focus on men as being gamers. This is false as a large proportion of women are gamers too. It has been shown that female gamers take up a large proportion of those people who play games.
I am a constant reader of The Times, but it is articles like this which put me off reading any mass media outlets in this day and age.
Yours,
Chris Evans
Steam and Steamworks
This may or may not have been resolved by now (I haven't had the chance to check) but earlier in the week Steam seemed to be having some problems. (following was posted on my blog earlier in the week) I have noticed several threads popping up with people claiming to be experiencing very slow download speed and having downloads stop on them for no obvious reason. Example 1Example 2 and Example 3. I too am receiving many of the issues that people are complaining about and despite some people in the threads listed trying the age old 'ClientRegistry.blog' deleting trick they are still getting the problems.
Valve seem to know that something is up judging by this post.
The fact that downloads sometimes stop/pause is a bug. We are working on identifying the cause and hope to fix it soon.
I was downloading some stuff from Steam the other night and the download speeds were pretty poor, but I can't clearly judge whether this was continued Steam issues or my broadband playing up during peak hours on a Saturday night. I think this may have been resolved for the large part, if I catch anything more you will catch my thoughts on it here next week.
In the second piece of Steam and Valve related news from the past week is the announcement by Valve that they are releasing ‘Steamworks' (unfortunately this only came out a few hours after last weeks column!)
Basically Steamworks is a giant set of developer/publisher tools that Valve have released for free. The tools available follow.
Real-time stats on sales, gameplay, and product activation: Know exactly how well your title is selling before the charts are released. Find out how much of your game is being played. Login into your Steamworks account pages and view up to the hour information regarding worldwide product activations and player data.
• State of the art encryption system: Stop paying to have your game pirated before it's released. Steamworks takes anti-piracy to a new level with strong encryption that keeps your game locked until the moment it is released.
• Territory/version control: The key-based authentication provided in Steamworks also provides territory/version controls to help curb gray market importing and deliver territory-specific content to any given country or region.
• Auto updating: Insures all customers are playing the latest and greatest version of your games.
• Voice chat: Available for use both in and out of game.
• Multiplayer matchmaking: Steamworks offers you all the multiplayer backend and matchmaking services that have been created to support Counter-Strike and Team Fortress 2, the most played action games in the world.
• Social networking services: With support for achievements, leaderboards, and avatars, Steamworks allows you to give your gamers as many rewards as you would like, plus support for tracking the world's best professional and amateur players of your game.
• Development tools: Steamworks allows you to administer private betas which can be updated multiple times each day. Also includes data collection tools for QA, play testing, and usability studies.
This is pretty much…excellent news for any developers or publishers who have looked on with envy at Valve and their ability to offer unprecedented post-sale information and much more. Doug Lombardi goes into more detail on it here but pretty much this is everything Valve use on their games, just without the distribution methods. Great news for developers! – 411 Mania
Another tid-bit of Valve information – EA have revealed plans to sell the Orange Box games at retail separately. This means that anyone who doesn't want to pay the price of the Orange Box for all the games can just got get whichever piece of the cake they want. I'd suggest everyone who hasn't already got it, go buy Portal when this
happens. – My Blog
EU cracks down on consoles
Videogamer.com is reporting that a new EU Commission policy is being aimed at Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo concerning high console prices in the UK.
A senior Commission official told the Daily Mail newspaper: "We are screening the markets, taking into account levels of complaints about prices, pricing patterns across Europe and customer satisfaction. We are looking for the kind of retail patterns which raise questions.
"Just exposing the real price of certain goods in different parts of the EU can have the desired effect if undue markups are being placed on items."
It is reported that if these companies are found guilty of price fixing, they could face fines of 10% of their annual turnover.
This is very good news for anyone in the EU and especially any UK readers. If the EU takes action against the console manufacturers I expect to see prices slowly start to fall on console hardware. At the moment due to the very weak dollar customers in the UK are paying around £50 or more for their consoles compared to what they should be paying. It really infuriates me to see companies like Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo neglect the European markets and use them to boost revenues lost due to the weak dollar.
If the EU can take action and ensure these companies introduce fair pricing then I will actually have supported an EU policy!
Heroic New Information
New information concerning Battlefield Heroes has emerged revealing that there will be two sides and a small handful of maps available at launch, also as you level up your character you will receive nifty little abilities to add a twist to the game. 411 Mania
Mark Rein on PC/Consoles
In an interview The Guardian newspaper Mark Rein, Epic co-founder talks about lots of stuff, mainly console focused. However he does talk about the PC..and he hates the fact that consoles are becoming the 'go-to' place for games nowadays.
Traditionally the FPS was very much a strong point for PC, but now do you think consoles are catching up?
I'm a real fan of the PC, but yes, consoles are definitely stealing a lot of hardcore gamers from the PC. When Call of Duty 4 came out, I heard some of our guys sitting around talking about the great game they'd had last night and I'm like, 'Hey guys, what server are you playing on? I'd love to come and join you,' and they said, 'Just send us a friends request,' It was at that point I realized they were all playing it on console. Plus, the sales of the console versions are something like ten times the sales of the PC versions.
I feel the pain Mark...I feel it! This is a good interview all round, Mark talks about the consoles and how he hopes to get mods available for free on Xbox Live. Recommended reading.
EA have rummaged up some console sales figures for the European market, a notoriously difficult thing to do as none of the sales trackers openly reveal sales figures. While we don't know where the figures are from, I expect EA to have some fairly accurate figures. The 360 was at the bottom of the pile with the Wii and DS leading the way. The PS3 has been performing well in the European markets too according to this report. Link
Play N Trade, an up and coming US games retailer has made plans to move to the UK by Quarter 2 2009 or hopefully by the end of 2008. They see the UK games retail market as being outdated and hope to shake things up a bit. Link
Rumour – C&C
I have had some musings on a Command and Conquer announcement due soon. The following is from my blog here.
In the latest ‘BattleCast PrimeTime' from EA (linky) the host alludes to something quite dramatic coming this month for C&C fans.
If you buy Kane's Wrath on the PC, or the Command and Conquer 3 Limited Collection (C&C3 and Kane's Wrath) you "will have one more reason to cheer." In two weeks time we will hear more this big announcement from EALA.
What is it gonna be? ‘Tiberium' has already been revealed, and we have one C&C3 expansion nearly released.
As such, my bet is that we will have an announcement of a new C&C3 expansion pack….or Red Alert 3!
I guess those who get Kane's Wrath or the Limited Collection will receive some art work from the game that is due to be announced. I assume it is a game as it is something that EALA have been keeping secret for months already…time will tell, but my money is on Red Alert 3.
This has also been picked up by Rock, Paper, Shotgun (link.) While the C&C Community Manager refuses to say anything yet we must wait and see what happens over the next few weeks.
Wrap Up
That should be it for all the PC/Industry news that has caught my eye over the past week, been pretty busy now I think about it!
There should be a review of Puzzle Quest appearing here on 411 Mania sometime this week, look out for that ;)
As ever, don't forget to check out all the other articles in the Games section, they're great!
Finally check out my blog for some old skool interviews from back in the cncnation.net days and maybe…just maybe a new interview.
