Whining gets you free stuff

I started thinking about this a few weeks ago, when the article about the guy that sent his xbox to be repaired and lost all his signatures and custom artwork on it. I had been talking about how complaining on the Internet has become the easiest way possible to get free stuff in the real world. In the example of the guy that sent back his xbox - would you trust a semi-valuable non-replaceable item to a huge box-shop? The 360 repair technique is a difficult thing, because of how semi-unique the condition is currently. I've had plenty of irreplaceable items such as signed books, baseball cards and photographs over time.

If he wanted to continue to use his 360 instead of having to replace it and make the other case a complete collector's item that he left on a shelf, he was going to have to send it in for repair. That isn't to say that any level of risk would be associated with it. The folks that do the repair aren't going to really be looking at what the note said that he sent with it, or really any promises that were made. I wouldn't be surprised if that case isn't sitting off to the side where someone replaced it with a stock case because they liked the artwork.

And we get to the current news that Bungie is going to do "something special" for this guy because he lost the signatures and case, and happened to whine about it on the Interwebs. Everyone feels good. How many folks do you think are going to do something special to their xbox now before they send it off in hopes of getting something cool and free?

Now we get to where this one gets interesting to me personally - I blogged months ago about how I felt that the Live Search Club service was really just a scam, because I got tagged as being a cheater on the service. I chalked up the experience as a growing opportunity and went on my merry way. I still believe that Microsoft could save themselves millions by just requiring that the players pay S&H for the products that they win. It would keep the folks just looking for a fast buck from trying to cheat as much, and it would help to speed up the processing time for the requests. That said, I relegated that I was not going to see any of the rewards that I had signed up for.

Then last week, out of the blue, I get a package from Microsoft. Much to my surprise, it was a copy of Kameo: Elements of Power from Live Search Club. Taking as a win that I actually got something from the time and effort spent on the service, I'm relatively pleased. The next day, I end up getting "Project Gotham Racing 3" in the mail from Live Search Club. Now, I was supposed to get these rewards in mid-October, and it was early December that I was told I was getting nothing. Now it's March and I mysteriously get 2 rewards, after a spike in my blog shows that people were sure interested in my "Club Live Scam" blog entry. While I didn't get everything, I sure can't complain about getting something at this point.

And, I can claim myself as one of the masses that whined on the Internet and got free stuff.

Uneducated Parents

There are at least 2 or 3 different things I want to post up about right now, and at least one of them I was planning on writing on this morning, but this one took the cake for me.

http://www.wlns.com/Global/story.asp?S=7985534&nav=5D7v

This mother is upset because she didn't do any work on her part to make sure her kids were playing safely on the Internet, and is now angry at Microsoft's Live service.

"Jennifer says the damage to her children from this incident has already been done... And she has banned her children from using X-Box Live to protect them from becoming prey to online predators."

This is just obscenely idiotic on the part of the parent. They failed to do their job, trusting it to a large corporation blindly, and are upset enough to fly off the handle. If the kids had burned themselves on the stove, would they blame GE? I'm guessing the answer is yes.

The "best response" that this parent could do is use this opportunity as a learning experience and a chance to teach her children. Yes, they got to see someone's "naughty bits", and I'd assume they were male instead of female naughty bits. They'll see 'em again sometime. They didn't get contacted to meet somewhere, they didn't get harmed. To me it would be a good way to introduce them about how important it is to be careful with what they say and do online, and how to act. It also would be a good learning experience for her to go out online, or offline for that matter, and research how to keep her kids safe on the Internet. It's not the nice happy playland full of only fuzzy animals, there are terrors that lurk there. The terrors have lurked on the Interwebs much longer than the ideals of fuzzy little woodland creatures in a nice garden.

Taking a step back, and I don't think at any point I'm going to defend not only what she did in reaction nor what she did beforehand, but the article never says what ages the kids were playing, or what games they had been playing. My kids have non-live enabled accounts on my 360, and they play on those accounts. That said, at some point I'm sure they are going to be interested in having live accounts created, or something equivalent to that. I'm sure at some point the "picto-chat" feature in the DS will become an issue when we're traveling, or once they have their own email addresses that they will get something they really shouldn't. As a Father, and generically as a parent, my role is to protect my children. This extends to while we are at parks, around the house, and now online. There are monsters out there looking to exploit them, and it's not going to go away just because they can't use their 360 online anymore. The best I can hope for is to protect them while they are young, and educate them along the way so that they can make good educated decisions for themselves as they grow up.

Not just take their toys away because I'm scared of the boogie man coming around.

Too Much of a good thing?

So, I was reading an article about the Ratings of Publishers (link), and there is a quote in it that really got me thinking -

Should both of these publisher deals go forward (Activision-Blizzard and EA-Take Two), the result would be two huge publishers who collectively publish over 250 console and handheld games every 12 months, a significant percentage of the market in any given year.

250 titles in a year? And that's just two of the publishers in the business right now! The question is really starting to become "how many games will you really play in a 12-month period?" Now, understandably, I won't play 250 different games in 2008. I probably bought more games in 2007 than I should have, which isn't unusual when I get new game systems. I bought games I don't play, because my kids play them, so that adds some. But how many games really can be put out by the industry each year that are worth playing? It's pretty historic that outside of the "ultra-classic games" like the original Super Mario Brothers or Sonic the Hedgehog - and I mean the 1991 and 1992 releases - people don't flock to buy "bargain" games. So how many various titles can you really expect to be bought in a calendar year per person. If you look at the software "take rate" per console, I think you get a pretty clear understanding of "not that freaking many" - Microsoft boasts that the 360 has a somewhere around 7 titles per console sitting on a shelf. So, people who bought the 360 have bought on average 3 titles per year since the console's release. That includes such "AAA" titles as Halo3, Gears of War, Rainbow 6 Vegas, Rock Band, Guitar Hero 2 and 3, Rainbow Six Vegas, Project Gotham 3 and 4, Forza 2, Mass Effect, BioShock, Call of Duty 2, 3, and 4, along with others that I could spend an hour listing off. I listed 15 titles that I would consider the "hot games" for just 1 system, many of which came out in the last 12 months.

You have to add in that currently there are at least 6 unique systems to consider (PC, 360, PS3, Wii, DS, PSP). So let's do quick math - figure on the top end that the average for all systems is at least 5 each per year. That gets us to 30 titles bought per "complete family unit" - meaning if a family had all 6 systems that they would have bought around 30 games in a year. That's a lot of games to play through, especially if they are all long-playing games like RPG's which can be expected to have 100+ hours to playtime. Then realize that Activision, Vivendi (aka Blizzard),
EA and Take Two pumped out a combined 250 titles last year alone. That's a lot of games to put out on shelves to be considered for purchase. And that's just 4 of the major publishers, of which there are nearly 70 unique publishers out there.

It all comes down to - how many games can you really play in a year, I mean really? And how many gamers go back 1+ year to get "platinum hits" or spend the time to replay that really awesome game from 2-3 years ago? Replay value is gone, because we have so many other games out there to vie for our attention.

I think I need to dig out my Dreamcast soon... or maybe my Saturn.

Internet Security Police State

It seems weird to me how much in the Internet has changed, for many people, over the past 10 years. It used to be that the end user was considered an innocent victim on the Internet, and that the network had to protect them against the attacks that they would find themselves under on an almost daily basis. What's happened, however, is that the average computer that the end user uses has become as much a part of the attacker's life as it is a part of the end user's life. Security used to be relatively easy - you keep the attackers out at your main entrance points, whether you call it your upstream peers or drains or "tubes"... okay - most actual professionals would never call it tubes. Now you have to take the security stand that every end user device is a zombie of a larger evil foe somewhere in the ether, and you need to protect yourself against everyone. It's sad that if you don't take this stance you are not only endangering your customers, but yourself to being subjected to denial of service attacks, or worse.

That said, now this great free open area to express new ideas and new concepts is quickly turning into a police state. Providers are frantically attempting to protect themselves, as well as their customers. The cost of this protection? Freedom on the 'web. Then here comes the US Government trying to make sure that the Internet stays "free" by the push of legislation for "net neutrality", the strong-arm tactic to say that internet providers should not restrict, limit, or prioritize the traffic coming into a cusotmers machine. So the attacker in the eastern block who has is zombie army trained on you, sending thousands of packets attempting to find a weakness in your defenses, is actually be helped by the federal government. Why? Because your best line of defense would be a Service Provider that could stand up and take actions to block the attacks for you.

Many providers have blocked ICMP for nearly a decade now. Since this is restricting information on the internet, would they have to open this up? Can you filter attacks before the attack's destination to mitigate effects?

I fear a landmark court case in the next 5 years where a major hacking organization somehow is able to sue because their packets are being blocked by a firewall not at the destination site. Until there are wholesale changes to how information is shared on the internet, it should be considered an inherently hostile environment. I know it's a cliche to say "just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean someone isn't out to get me". But man, it's true.

It Prints money...

This is going to be a rant outside of my normal, probably cross-linking to various comics that I feel are appropriate for the commentary if I feel I need to. Several of the gaming web-comics (go figure I read web comics about the game industry) have been using the phrase "it prints money" the last few weeks. That is a very interesting comment, and one that I think speaks volumes to the consumer brainwashing in this country.

Take this article from gamespot about a new Guitar Hero game - Guitar Hero: Aerosmith. I'm a huge Aerosmith fan, and have been for a quite a while now. Rockin' Rollercoaster is that much better because it has Aerosmith music playing as you are twirling through darkness. I've been to their concerts, I buy their albums. But this is taking it a stretch. To have an entire game in the "Guitar Hero" genre dedicated to Aerosmith is the epitome of exploitation of a franchise, and it's fan-base, to me. And I'm talking Aerosmith as much as Guitar Hero. In today's day and age there really isn't a reason to put out a disc like this. Rock Band has shown with a smaller customer base a take rate on Download Content of almost 3:1 versus the GH3 franchise. Why is that?

Why is there a need for a new "Mario Party" game every 12-18 months? Why do we need to be incessantly pushed on with a new Madden each year, that the value of plummets faster than the value of your new car as you drive it off the lot. I know this is a shock for many of the rabid gamers out there, but Microsoft really did do a lot of things right with the xbox and the 360. The concept of episodic content is becoming a reality now for console gamers, because they have a massive storage device on the unit. XBL and PSN (xbox live and playstation network) are competing because Microsoft starting using a hard drive to be able to use for content. Now the push needs to be on to stop having episodic content be delivered by a disc, but rather by digital download. And if they want to press a disc with the update and put it in GameStop for $10 as well, even better!

The need for gamers today to wake up and realize that they need to spend their money wisely on games that aren't just a rehash with one new widget every 12-18 months should be on the rise. I don't see it happening right now, rather I see a new breed of gamer getting inducted in the "exploitation of the consumer" plight that we've had for ages.

Hopefully the tide is turning...

for reference on how I feel the gaming companies think about their consumers, here is the Penny Arcade that fortells of the impending pillage of the Guitar Hero franchise:

Crackdown review

At the behest of one of my best friends, I picked up the 360 game "CrackDown" last weekend. I had an additional 25% off coupon for used games at GameStop, and figured it was a good cheap title, worth giving a shot. This has to be the most under-rated "Platinum Hits" game that I've played in recent memory. I remember the "bleh" reviews it got, and the demo really doesn't give the game much of a chance to see just how much fun it is.

The aspect of the game is this - you are a super agent that is tasked with cleaning up Metropolis , er Pacific City, of the crime that fills the streets. As you go through the game, you not only can advance what weapons you have by taking them away from the bad guys, but your skills increase. Each skill requires a different set of tactics - Jumping, Driving, Strength, Explosives and Firearms. Some tactics, such as sniping from way up high to folks down low, give you bonuses to multiple skills at once.

The game truly shines when one of two things happen - you spend 800msp to get the expansion pack for it, or you get about 2/3 of the way through it and really start getting good weapons and your skills are high. The expansion probably isn't quite worth 800msp (or about $10), but it does add a lot of nice gameplay from what I can see.

One of the truly unique aspects of the game is that you can co-op the game, but not be forced to even play together! Thus you can be in completely different parts of the game world, and just be using the game as a way to chat with the other players, and ask for assistance at varying points.

The graphics are a bit on the "cartoony" side, but the engine is rather smooth. I've managed to get the game world to the point where it slows down from time to time, but in general even with lots of explosions and enemies everywhere the game run nicely. There are some control issues, especially while jumping, where I don't feel like I'm doing a great job of controlling the character, but they are minimal. And driving with a control pad is just not my favoritest thing in the universe, but I do okay with it.

Overall I would give this game at least a B+ for the first time through, with enough attainable extras in the achievements to really have fun with it. They set side things like climbing to the top of the main tower, a dizzying height, and then jumping off it safely to the ground, as a challenge to the player. They added a mind number amount of jump and drive challenges to the game for added bonus, and collection orbs all over the place. It does contain swear words, and some pretty graphic violence, body juggling honestly was fun to unlock, but nothing that a Teen really couldn't get over. This is a case where I think the M rating probably isn't justified, save for maybe the language that the NPC's spit out every now and again.

Every so often I get into feelings where I remember specific poems or songs. Today this one is just clearly in my mind...

The Road Not Taken - Robert Frost

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth; 5

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same, 10

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back. 15

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.