mimicit

Games People Play, Yeah I am talking to you EA and DICE.

“Games people play, you take it or you leave it”–Alan Parsons

How long have I been playing video games? Early eighties, real early. I played space war on some NCR equipment that my dad had in his shop. Vector graphics rule. Yes I am kind of old. 35 years on Monday in fact. I had an pretty much every console I could afford, and every computer. That fad has long ago left me, along with my free time. I look for games now that stimulate that feeling of urgency, and make me feel as if I am honing a skill with my weapon. As of late that game has been BattleField 2.

Do I like BF2 as much as the crack before it, namely UT ? No, simply it does have the fast paced in and out, kill imperative that made UT so much fun. Its not just the style of the game either. Its the code. Try to get on BF2 for a ‘quick’ game, it ain’t gunna happen, the multiplayer menu sucks. I mean it sucks to a point it makes me not want to play the game. I just do not have the time to bend over backwards to make the experience of this game better. I have tried launching to servers from the command line, and using web-based menus to find servers, but man, why? Why not just code a decent in game browser for the game that I can scroll while its loading in. As it stands, it just lags the machine right out, it becomes really unusable. This is the situation on a decent machine, SLI, so I can’t even imagine what other people are going through. Ugh, the load times. Do I really need 10,000 rpm RAID0 to get load times under a minute, good lord.

This rant however is about greed. I was really wanting to try out 2142, the upcoming Battlefield game. When I saw that they released a Beta, fantastic, I was ready. Could it be that they learned from their mistakes and fixed some of the problems that made BF2 crappy? I wouldn’t know first hand, because they made the Beta a Fileplanet exclusive. That’s right. They didn’t send me an email, even though I bought the last game, to let me know it was happening. I called my brother who has a subscription to Fileplanet to learn that he was playing it. On his Dual SLI machine with a 10k rpm drive, it took him almost 7 minutes just to get into the game. Does the in game browser still suck ass? I don’t know, I should have asked him. I was just seeing red from the fact they want to make me pay to play a beta. New behavior for EA? Hardly.

EA is a company that makes its users pay for mods that it develops for its games. For those veterans of UT this seems like them kicking us square in the nuts. I remember when the UT would have addon packs , new maps, new stuff, and it was like a christmas present. Every 3 to 4 months we would get a free upgrade and it would change up the entire game. I got everyone I know, including my wife, playing CTF in UT. Now, every time EA comes out with content, it wants 10 bucks. A kick in the nuts. Now, they have a beta and they want me to pay FilePlanet.Kick to the nuts. 2142 apparently suffers from the same lackluster performance and bloated code. Boot to the balls.

Well screw you EA. Last straw guys. First off, you have an opportunity here to switch from the old model, namely content as a closed system that you pay for, to the new model, content driven by users and advertisements. Look, the commodity that you produce is easily replicated, that is the code can be copied at little or no cost to you. Why then are you treating it like a pop corn maker, making me pay for each accessory that is hand made in China? It’s so obvious that it makes me sick. Sell advertising in your game. Easy. I’ll say it again. Sell advertising in your game. You already have an established base, just toss up some billboards in the towns, or product placement, hell even a commercial before each round. Why are you dropping the ball on this? The more popular it became, the more money you would make. Remember, this is a ‘beta’ you are making money from. This should really appeal to you EA, making money from a beta. Thats what you were trying to do with FilePlanet right? Well next time do it with Pepsi, I am sure they would be more then happy to provide the mirror for you. The only reason I even suggest this is the fact that I no longer watch television. I canceled my cable 3 months ago. All the advertising dollars that these companies are spending on trying to make me buy their crap, well its going where crap belongs, down the toilet. I am the target demo. They are missing me completely. All these game companies are missing out on the revenue stream. I watch people play WOW for 24 hours at a time, until their eyes bug out. Why the hell isn’t there a free version with advertising? I am sure there are smarter people than me that have devised this strategy before. I am probably missing the obvious flaws. The bottom line, I am not going to buy 2142. Thats it, game over. I bought two copies of BF2, but I am not buying 2142. No to 2142. Unless somebody buys it for me. For my birthday.