This week’s CM Podcast starts out with some serious Idle Thumbs love. Some similar affection is shown to Jeff Green’s appearance on 4 Guys 1UP.
Dragon Age is out, and although none of us have played it, we still have a few things to say about this epic RPG. Jon talked about Torchlight last week, and Erik is the latest to be sucked in. The release of Modern Warfare 2 is upon us and we hit try to hit on some of the big talking points related to the recent issues surrounding the game.
In tech, we touch on the DSi XL after missing it last week. Things close-out on a discussion about the rumblings of new ways to access our favorite TV over the internet.
Hop in the comments and let us know what you think, and tell you friends.
Covered games and topics: Idle Thumbs, Jeff Green on 4 Guys 1UP, Dragon Age, Torchlight, Modern Warfare 2, DSi XL, digital distribution of TV
Runtime – 36:50
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8 Comments
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Screenshot of Torchlight in NetBook Mode: http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/brainiac/adventure.gif
Modern Warfare 2 is so good I can’t listen to podcasts while playing it.
The single player component, I presume?
Yup. Some of the set pieces in this game are insane. They put blockbuster movies to shame.
I would like to know how many of the changes that IW has done to the PC version of CoD are a direct result of the games being torrented. I recall Bowling giving some numbers on the piracy rate two years ago during a 1Up podcast and it was staggering. Personally I think the PC gaming community should learn to live with these restrictions if it helps curb piracy. It must be infuriating to spend two years and a billion man hours making the best game that can be made and then have half the players steal your work.
I think you bring up a fair point, but the eventual endgame of any argument concerning piracy is simply that a popular game is going to get pirated no matter what. Arguments against “day one piracy” also get a lot of press, but those and many others are based on the assumption that the ratio of pirated games to lost sales is anything significant, which my common sense tells me is a bit of a stretch.
I commonly point to Valve because I think they’re just the most sound example of a company that doesn’t treat its fans as criminals before customers. Steam DRM is the least abrasive PC rights management scheme that I’m aware of and Valve games have the same, tried-and-true server support that gives the breadth of options that most PC gamers want.
You’re probably right about the ratio of pirated games to lost sales if you mean that most pirates wouldn’t buy it in the first place, at least for most games. But I would think that for a game as big as MW2 that even the most miserly of gamers would shell out some cash.
I was just listening to Idle Thumbs 50 and I now have a better understanding of PC gamer’s frustration with IW. I will no longer be so quick to dismiss their complaints.
AlfredP – To your original post, I think it’s more appropriate to see this controversy as being over the changes IW didn’t make to the PC version, not changes that they did. They’re essentially porting the console version over to the PC without adding the features that make it a uniquely PC experience.
It seems like they just weren’t willing to invest the man-hours to make the PC version unique. Part of that is probably that the rates of piracy are so high that it’s not worth it in their mind. They are definitely abandoning the interests of the PC crowd with that decision, but I keep on flip-flopping in my mind as to how nefarious it really is.
In their defense, they are still delivering what should be a great game that will work well on PCs; without potentially wasting resources on a limited audience. On the other hand, they haven’t put in the effort to make it unique to the platform and serve the interests of their users.
I guess I keep on coming back to how poorly they’ve managed their messaging for all of this; and now we’ll see how it all plays out.