Microsoft's upcoming Windows 8 release for PC's is ruffling
the feathers of independent developers.
The Redmond giant plans to not only take a cut of all sales made through
the Microsoft Store but also require Metro apps to be sold exclusively through it.
It appears that Microsoft is taking a page from Apple's
playbook by reportedly planning to take a
30% cut of sales through its Microsoft Store with the upcoming Windows 8. However, according to Microsoft when an app reaches
$25,000 in sales the percentage would drop to 20.
This is where the supposed controversy springs from with
recent statements from Valve's Gabe Newell and Blizzard's Rob Pardo respectively
calling the upcoming Windows 8 "A
catastrophe"" and "Not
awesome for Blizzard either."
Discomfort among the gaming bigwigs may concern Microsoft's closed
platform of the Windows Store (reminiscent of Apple's) forcing higher prices or cuts into profit margins
for developers who choose to sell via
the channel.
Microsoft isn't placing any restrictions on Windows 8 for
products obtained through non-Microsoft channels, however. That leaves developers free to develop
outside of the Metro interface and bypass the Microsoft Store. That might relegate them to a
"perceived" lesser Windows 8
experience but not close it off to them.
With Metro the centerpiece of the new OS, apps that don't use the
channel have limited access to the new UI.
In testing on Windows 8 Release Preview there were no major
issues with Valve's Steam or EA's Origin clients. Both operate independent of the Metro
interface as desktop applications and in Origin's case created a shortcut tile
in Metro that opened on the desktop.
Considering the price premiums demanded by publishers like
Valve and Activision Blizzard for titles of arguable quality it's no surprise
that Microsoft would want a piece of the action if they develop for Metro. With new gaming revenue models based on
in-game purchases and add-on DLC to pad revenue, the potential windfall for
Microsoft could be quite large.
Rumblings from independent developers may be an attempt to
sow the seeds of a new anti-trust complaint against Microsoft because of the
closed nature of Metro applications.
Still, so long as the desktop exists in new versions of
Windows, Microsoft can avoid the anti-trust arguments of the past just as apple
has done on the Mac platform. Should
future versions of Windows remove the alternatives to its own marketplace,
however, it's likely the question will again be raised.
This week brings more expensive pre-orders, Gabe Newell's
crystal ball, Blizzard taking blows over Diablo 3 and more!
On Monday, Dead Space 3 popped up on the Origin Store page. This time around the Sci-Fi zombie shooter
offers single player and co-op play in campaign mode. The game is available for pre-order now for
59.99 for PC (DVD and Download), PS3 and Xbox.
The game is scheduled for release February 2013.
From the Origin
page...
Game features:
• Team up and take
down the terror together: Play the full campaign in online co-op or single
player. Easily drop in and drop out of play.
• Experience a hostile
new environment: Head planet-side to discover underworld cities and accept side
missions. Explore the frozen terrain and search abandoned encampments.
• Embark on a
thrilling expedition to save mankind: Uncover the past, discover the source of
the Necromorph terror and fight to fend off the extinction of the human race.
Also coming in Feb 2013 is Crysis 3 Hunter edition. The game is available for pre-order now for
59.99 for PC (DVD and Download), PS3 and Xbox
Key Features:
• Seven Wonders of the
Urban Rainforest - New York City has been contained in a giant nanodome and
grown into a unique rainforest with seven distinct environments. Master the
ultimate sandbox and turn it into your own personal hunting ground.
• Assess, Adapt, and
Attack - Crysis’s highly-acclaimed sandbox gameplay is back with more open
levels to let players choose their path and approach. Your upgraded Nanosuit
allows brute force or stealth, always giving you more than one option.
• Expanded Multiplayer
- Experiment with new ways to customize your Nanosuit and brand new game modes.
• The Biggest and Most
Explosive Arsenal in Franchise History - In addition to giving you an arsenal
of human firearms, Crysis 3 lets you scavenge alien weapons and deploy an
all-new signature bow
• The Evolution of
CryENGINE - CryENGINE unleashes the power of the Crytek creative team and
delivers a visually stunning and varied gameplay experience.
The preorder bounses
offer...
OVERKILL PACK
available for PC Digital Download Only: Sorry
Xbox and PS3 fans...
• Overkill Pack -
Includes the base game, all Hunter Edition content and the following early
multiplayer unlocks: the Overkill Pack features early multiplayer access to the
Typhoon assault weapon and skin. Spewing 500 rounds a second, the Typhoon gives
players the ability to go guns blazing to take back the Liberty Dome. Also
included in this pack are the Rapid-Fire Nano-suit module and two exclusive
Overkill themed dog tags.
HUNTER EDITION BONUS
CONTENT:
• Become the Ultimate
Hunter Online- Get early access to the new signature Crysis 3 bow, bow
attachment, and "Hunter" Nanosuit module for use in Crysis 3
Multiplayer.
• Multiplayer Head
Start - Get a bonus XP boost up to Level 5 and gain the ability to unlock
custom loadouts early.
• Look Sharp -
Customize your loadout, plus get a unique bow skin and three exclusive “Hunter”
themed dog tags.
Seems EA has a lot of faith in it's marketing to command $60
pre-orders for two games that are middle of the pack at best. Seems to be a trend here with these two
coming on the heels of the Medal of Honor Warfighte'sr Pre-order...
Also on Monday, Nvidia has released a graphics demo called
"A new Dawn" designed to show off all the advanced hardware features
of the new 6xx cards and featuring the requisite scantily clad forest pixie
named Dawn not seen since the Nvidia FX demo 3 years ago.
The demo touts full DirectX 11 tessellation,
with more than 4 million triangles making up just the vines and forest
bark of
Nvidia's latest graphics exhibition.. The creators went to extra lengths (pun
intended) making sure Dawn's hair is extra pretty with 40,000 carefully rendered strands. I guess that's a lot of triangles for a tree.
Of course there's the obligatory texturing
optimizations, shader this and that, ridiculously
complex quadratic equations and blah blah blah....
In gaming news that will make your heart flutter then stop
dead there's news of....
A new Ultima on the horizon?
A new but not free to play version of Ultima called Ultima
Forever is currently in development in
the alpha stage but will be entering closed Beta soon according to BIOware lead
designer Kate Flack.
Unfortunately this is going to be released on the IPAD first
then on to other platforms. No word on
when or what platforms but I wouldn't be
surprised to see a version on Windows RT tablets at some point. The game is based on Ultima 4 but set 21
years after the original game. Of course
by this point you probably fell asleep immediately after the word...IPAD.
Here's a link to the story if you're still awake...
And now for something completely different as the Pythons
would say...
Except it's not really different other than the lawyers
shaking their legal briefs at Activision Blizzard.
Seems a German consumer watchdog organization,the German body of the Federation of Consumer Organizations (Why
do European agencies have such weird names??)) is threatening a lawsuit if
Activision Blizzard doesn't respond to demands to highlight the need for an
always on Internet connection on Diablo 3's packaging. Blizzard has till today, July 27th to respond.
South Korea has gotten into the act fining
Blizzard $7000 (US) after raiding Blizzard's Seoul offices for what amounts to
non performance of contract due to the zero day server outages that prevented
even single player games of Diablo 3.
Victims of the outages suffered the infamous
Error 37bemoaned in many gaming news outlets.
Since bad news comes in threes the last
little bit of justice concerns only partially addressed exploit that allows
certain character types like the Wizard and Barbarian to play with virtual
invulnerability. This affects the
auction house in the game where ill gotten booty from the exploit can be sold
for in-game gold or real money. At least
they don't have to worry about EBay now.
So it seems Blizzards unwarranted premium
price, inclusion of World of Warcraft type a la' carte pricing aka
"auction house" and attempt to undercut eBay sales of leveled characters has come back to bite them. It's bad enough that players can gain
artificial bragging rights but now they can fill their wallet too and Blizzard
can't do anything about it.
Remember that episode of South Park when the
kids were playing WoW incessantly to defeat a cheating player that was bullying
everyone in the game. Yeah, that's a
real possibility now.
In mildly interesting Hardware news the next version of Thunderbolt is reported to run at 20GBps, using a new controller
called falcon ridge slated for 2014 release.
At least the upgrade cycle is consistent. Remember how long it took to get USB 3.0?
The Radeon 7990 is delayed till late August. It's powered by 4 6 pin power connectors, 2
7970 GPU's and 6GB of GDDR5 VRAM. It's
said to be using GHz edition GPU's that seem to benefit from binning possibly
allowing the cards to not have to be underclocked like most dual GPU cards have
to be. The release date is said to be
planned around the same time as the upcoming Nvidia midrange 650 and 660Ti
cards.
Now for our foot in the mouth feature.... Gabe newell had some interesting commentary on
Windows 8. Apparently the Valve head
doesn't believe Windows 8 is going to be a good thing for the PC market in saying, "I
think we’ll lose some of the top-tier PC/OEMs, who will exit the market. I
think margins will be destroyed for a bunch of people. If that’s true, then it
will be good to have alternatives to hedge against that eventuality." Newell's
hedge is apparently Linux with recent movements toward expanding Steam's
presence in the Linux space saying, "“The
big problem that is holding back Linux is games. People don’t realize how
critical games are in driving consumer purchasing behavior.“We want to make it
as easy as possible for the 2,500 games on Steam to run on Linux as well. It’s
a hedging strategy.
So
Linux is held back by gaming? Apparently
the hundreds of disparate distributions, lack of standardization and need for
constant fiddling for basic functionality has nothing to do with its small
market share . Linux is a splintered platform exactly because it's not Windows
or MAC. As a predominantly open source
platform it's impossible to get everybody in the room to agree on
anything. That's
fine for a desktop window manager but
it's debilitating to the platform as a whole.
Nobody is going to invest in an architecture without a built in user
base. That's not going to happen if you try to force a market used to IPAD's to
deal with the idiosyncrasies of Linux. As
a former Microsofty, Newell knows this better than anyone else. If the former Microsoft Bob team member wants
to expand Steam into realm of Linux he'll have to leave much of the open source
crowd out of the loop to succeed. In
spite of this Newell claims the need for open platforms.
‘We’ve
been a free rider, and we’ve been able to benefit from everything that went
into PCs and the Internet, and we have to continue to figure out how there will
be open platforms.’”
Hmm,
that's odd since last October he
predicted Apple was going to be a big influence on game consoles but is also
quoted as saying, "I consider Apple to be very closed." Newell's
newfound interest in "Open platforms" may have more to do with using
Linux as a closed platform for his own hardware than any act of magnanimity for
the Linux community.
In this week's windows weekly Paul Thurott claimed Newell's
statement was made, "in passing"
Yeah and so are Steven Sinofsky's blog posts... http://twit.tv/show/windows-weekly/271
Finally in the Midagedgamerguys editors corner aka "Rant" we're going to talk
about the "unofficial rules"
of FPS gaming...
We've all experienced it.
No I'm not talking about the cheaters with their aimbots or another rant
about campers either. Hey, I know when
the horse is dead.
No, it's something far more annoying than any of that.
I'm talking about when you see phrases in the chat window
like...
" Don't attack the flags", "I'm just trying
to get my unlock" or "Don't kill anybody at the flag spawn"
I'm sorry but unless we're on an unranked server I can care
less about your personal agenda especially if it's not helping the team.
I'm also not a fan of making up rules on the fly or players
whose only purpose is to screw up the game for everyone else.
I'll bet you've run into a few of these if you've spent any
time playing an FPS. You know the scene,
you spawn at your base and decide it'd be more fun to drive than walk into
battle.
So after foolishly jumping into the available seat of a
chopper, tank or whatever,
I'm greeted with...
A-hole: "Get out !@%*&, I don't fly with
asshats"
Me: "Just go,
we're wasting time"
time passes...
A-hole" Just
get out"
Me: " We can
go and try to accomplish something or just sit here."
A-hole, I don't go
anywhere with!@%*&
Me: "Look, save the BFF crap for the unranked
servers and go already""
At which point they either accept my viewpoint or unleash
their inner 4 year old.
-----------------------------------
Either way I'm entertained.
Nothing's more fun to watch than a virtual temper tantrum while I give a
blow by blow to the rest of the team usually resulting in a "!votekick"
on the offender once they figure out he's hogging the attack chopper.
Games have rules for a reason, so that everyone gets at
least a chance to participate. If every
server turns into an impromptu private playground nobody is going to have any
fun.
Make no mistake, you are going to run into it if you play
long enough. My advice, don't accept
it. As I've said before nobody has the
right to ruin your experience so long as you're playing by the rules, the real
rules. If the server admin bounces you
for it, don't play on that server and for god sake don't make any donations (some
servers are shameless about the topic) unless you know the admins
personally.
Some of my favorite servers have made me want to punch the
monitor, needless to say I'm not quite ready to make a donation.
It's strange to be a non-conformist when you're just trying
to play by the rules.
60 is the new 50....or 30 with the right cosmetic surgeon
40 the new 30...
Of course at the core of all of it is the simple truth that
most men are in fact .... 12 years old
Nothing really changes for human males after that age.
Oh sure we get taller and girls aren't icky any more but we're
still 12.
Consider this...
At 12 most boys want a Ferrari, a Corvette or a Monster
truck and at some point their mommy
At 30 we still want..
a Ferrari, a Corvette or Monster truck and "come to momma..."
The only difference is the context.
So how is that a grown man can spend hours happily staring
at his TV with a game controller in his hand?
Simple...
When we were kids, play was more important than anything
else and the more competitive it was the better.
It's no different when we get older but the games get more
serious and the toys more expensive.
Remember at his core a man is really 12 years old with the
requisite attention span to match.
The games we choose to compete in as adults don't' address the instant gratification that our
inner 12 year old demands.
...and we need to address them.
Men of means can satiate their desires with a purchase. Those less fortunate have to turn to other avenues. Either way, the child must be placated.
Which leads us to gaming.
As technology has matured so have the games.
We're not limited to clunky controllers and pixilated
opponents to challenge us anymore.
We can be the hero, drive the fastest cars and blow away the
other team with one well placed shot.
All without consequence, other than the scoreboards.
But it's just a game, a waste of time when more important
things could be done.
Perhaps but when you examine the goals of most people in the
developed world you find common themes.
Money, power, recognition, control of one's own destiny.
All of these are not ends, however, they're means.
The ultimate goal is to have the freedom to play whatever
game we choose anytime, anywhere, without consequence.
The sad fact is that most of us will never reach the ranks
of truly self-sufficient and play the way we want to.
We'll never get to command an army against the evil hordes
or test the limits of a Bugatti Veyron on some deserted stretch of highway.
Still, the child clamors for attention.
This is why gaming has become so popular amongst those who
have long since left their childhood behind.
Among my generation we know the corporate ladder is a
fallacy and promises easily broken thus denying the child. We reject that which denies our inner 12 year
old an embrace the things that make us whole.
Career, only important if you can master the game and not be
its pawn, we need to play not be played.
Family and friends, in the context of the inner 12 year old
these are your BFF's, your lifetime
playmates
Philanthropy, really we'd just like more people to play with
and we don't like to see our friends sad.
In the end it all comes down to meeting a deep rooted need
to be that carefree 12 year old if just for a few moments. It's a need to free ourselves from the
entanglements of our own survival and relish in the realm on the
inconsequential.
If you can't have the Ferrari, at least you can blast your
friends in Battlefield 3...
Of course the big bombshell was the official release date of
Windows 8. At a Sales meeting Steven Sinofsky (Microsoft President in charge of
Windows and Windows Live) announced the
general availability of Windows 8 will
be October 26th, 2012 on new PC's. No
word on availability of Retail versions, however.
Of course with a $40 upgrade price (download) for owners of windows back to XP it may not
matter as most will likely opt for the digital upgrade instead of the $69.99
DVD boxed version anyway. Even so,
Microsoft's aggressive pricing indicates they're hoping for a quicker adoption
than Windows 7. With PC and ARM based
tablets Microsoft is painfully aware it's playing catch-up with Apple even though
IOS and OSX are still disparate platforms.
Orcs Must die 2 coming out on July 30th, Steam is currently offering
10% off pre-orders. It's also available
through Gamersgate and gamestop for 13.49.
Steam's offering a 2 pack for 22.49 that effectively makes each copy
roughly $11. So buy one for a friend,
you won't be disappointed.
The new game offers solo as well as co-op play plus a new
playable character, the sorceress. New
maps as well as play on classic maps is in the offering as well as new traps
and spells to dispatch those medieval baddies.
Borderlands is a game
I've spent more time in than any other and there's a sequel coming out
soon. Fueling the hype, a recent quote
from developer Gearbox's VP of Marketing Steve Gibson says Borderlands 2
campaign takes 58 hours to complete. Gibson
goes on to say, "."We want it to feel like you get more for your
money, we’re happy for people to pay their money once and feel that they get
ongoing value."If the sequel is as good as the
original it's going to be time well spent.
The game is scheduled for release September 12th 2012.
So while we all anxiously await the next two DLC packs for
Battlefield 3 we got broadsided by news of the Battlefield 4 beta. Due in the fall of 2013, according to the BF3
Reddit page maintained by a BF3 Community manager with EA.
Of course with any news on the next iteration of the
Battlefield series is bound to cause some discomfort amongst the faithful. EA is of course promising to continue support
of BF3 past the release of END GAME citing their continuing support for Bad
Company 2 as an example. I suppose this
answers the earlier question of whether or not END GAME was going to end the
franchise. Apparently this bovine's got
some milk left in her.
How to gain admission to the Beta isn't completely fleshed
out yet according to EA but apparently buying Medal of Honor Warfighter (
69.99) is guaranteed to get you a spot right now. As a side note this news showed up as a popup
when I opened Origin Wednesday.
Origin servers went offline at 10PM PT for 2 hours for what
EA calls "important updates" in preparation for their upcoming origin
9 client. I wonder if it will still say,
BETA.
In other EA news the new trailer for the upcoming DLC pack,
Armored Kill was released Thursday.
Instabuy for a tank jockey like me..MBT Service star, You Are Mine! Confirmed is the purported "largest map
ever in a Battlefield game, "Bandar Desert" as well as the first ever
arctic map "Aborz Mountain".
Both are shown in the trailer.
I guess they have a bit of work to do since they came out
swinging against the "you're not as good as Steam" crowd. Reasons cited include high prices, lack of
indie games and draconian interface hostile to hardcore gamers.
If you're interested in such things, rumor has it that the
next Sony Playstation will be called
Orbis and will be based on an AMD x64 CPU with an AMD Southern Islands GPU (think
7xxx AMD GPU)which can display up to 4096x2160 resolution or 4K. I guess Sony's going with the
"value" option for its hardware since it's unlikely a console will
receive a high end SKU.
Apparently release is set to be around holiday 2013. As is current trend (think Xbox 360) there
will be no backward compatibility with PS3 games and there will be measures to
prevent the use of used games. So get
your games as cheap as you can because the $10 bargain bin is going away for
all intents and purposes. I'm sure
someone will come up with a hack but of course you risk your PSN account with
that route and you know how seriously Sony protects its PSN accounts.
Sony's half-hearted compromise
offers buyers of used games limited functionality until they pay an additional
fee to fully unlock the used game.
In Graphics card news AMD has gotten aggressive with it's
pricing against the Nvidia 6xx series of cards announcing price drops that
shine a harsh light on Nvidia's lack of a new generation product in the mid to
low end graphics market.
AMD announced price drops late last week across the Tahiti
line of graphics cards with the top end 7970 GHZ edition at $499, the non over-
clocked 7970 down to $429 and the 7950
at $349. AMD's also offering a trio of
free games (3 for free promotion) with
the purchase of these cards as well.
Included in the price drop are the midrange of the Southern
Islands family. The Pitcairm GPUS are currently represented by the
7870GHZ edition priced at $299 and the
7850 priced at $249. Purchasers of a 78xx
series GPU get a free copy of Dirt:Showdown to sweeten the deal.
So it looks like Activision/Blizzard is looking to ditch
Vivendi's 61% ownership in the company.
Vivendi is said to be asking 8 Billion for its stake and has courted
heavy hitters such as Microsoft and Time Warner as potential suitors. Even so, they apparently have yet to find
someone willing to pony up the cash.
Vivendi says selling the shares back to Activision (who at
last report has 3 Billion in cash reserves) is a last ditch effort and is
looking at selling other of its assets first to correct a recent negative credit watch set
on it by ratings agency Standard and Poor's.
Perhaps with a sale to someone other than a huge media group, Activision
could finally keep a decent development group together and stop gouging their
customers.
Analytics are fascinating. Google analytics that is...
For instance, did you know that the most popular blog post
on my gaming blog (midagedgamer.blogspot.com) is my story on Eyefinity? I did that back in February 2011 and it still
gets the most traffic. I guess I should
let you guys know that today that same friend has moved on to a pair of GTX
680's in SLI so he can play BF3 at 2560x1600 on that same 30" Dell monitor
that replaced all those 21 inchers' .
I'm all alone in my AMD based
gaming now but I'm not jealous, just poor...
Moving on to more relevant topics, Microsoft says
overclocking can hurt you, maybe..
The article also goes on to point out that Underclocking
your CPU can increase reliability and reduce power consumption. That and it gets warmer when the sun comes
up.
In case you care and apparently Microsoft is worried you don't,
Win 8 Pro can be had for as little as 40
bucks! The catch is, it's an upgrade for
those currently running win XP, vista, 7 and win 8 release preview. You heard that right, breaking with Microsoft
tradition you can get the cheaper upgrade and save yourself at least $100 bucks
if you upgrade over the current Win 8
consumer preview. Looks to me like
Microsoft is a little worried about the metro backlash. At least I know it works with Steam and
Origin. Check out the link for more
info.
PCPER found a story out of Asia about a passively cooled GTX
680 by a company called "Colorful"
Take it with a grain of salt as it's likely this is a more proof of
concept than product. For one thing,
you'd need at least 5 bays for all the heatsinks!. Here's a pic. Check out the article for more info, Note
you'll have to use a translator to read it as it's in Chinese.
The long awaited Steam Summer sale is here with the
festivities going on till July 22nd.
There are daily and hourly specials popping up on their entire
catalog. Conspicuously absent are EA
titles, however. Speaking of EA, doesn't
seem they have anything to counter the summer sale at this point.
The most interesting offering from Origin/EA right now is a
pre-order deal for Medal of Honor
Warfighter digital deluxe edition. It's available
for Pre-Order for 69.99. Medal of Honor
is more faithful to actual military campaigns and doesn't have quite the
following of Battlefield 3 or Call of Duty but to the faithful it's a must have
that can apparently command $70 for the privilege.
Taking advantage of the pre-order now will unlock the
British SAS Spec Ops. Plus, the Russian
Spetsnaz Alfa Group Heavy Gunner and U.S. Navy SEAL Sniper and rifle as part of
the Origin-exclusive Digital Deluxe Edition.
Release is set for October 23, 2012
If you're a fan of the cult favorite Killing floor, the
Summer Sideshow event is going on till July 23rd. You get special NPC's to mow down plus a new
map called Hellride. I did a short
walkthrough of the new map and special characters find it on my YouTube channel
here...
I'm pretty new to actually taking it at all seriously and
before a few months ago I primarily used it to share videos I took of my annual
Christmas display with far flung family.
Then someone suggested I take my blog to the next step using YouTube and
I reluctantly tried it out with thus far mixed results.
Over the past few months you may have noticed an evolution
of sorts in each successive video.
For one thing, I've gotten over my physical
shortcomings. Even in the face of the
cold steely subjectivity of my webcam.
In short, I can care less what you think of my appearance, I'm more
interested in the content than my personal appeal.
However, I know that can be a problem since I either have to
have outstanding production values or at least some attribute that's broadcast
worthy. Not that I take the medium that
seriously, I mean come on, YouTube's
success was built on cat videos and amateur infomercials.
I have a face for radio and a voice that at times sounds
like I've got a mouthful of cotton. I
know that, so no need to remind me of it.
Still, I do the best I can and try to be entertaining, even
if I come off like a bad imitation of John C. Dvorak at times. Still I've suffered the "get a
life" commentary more than once.
You may have also noticed that comments on many of my videos
are disabled. Mostly because I get nothing
but trolls and OCD sufferers delighted to correct every misspoken word or misplaced
fact.
All this adds up to a very limited audience with success measured
in single digit views.
Even with my relative anonymity I've managed to run afoul of
YouTube's copyright bots and faceless denials of revenue with no real
recourse. To date no videos have been
pulled down but I've had some blocks in foreign countries, sorry Germany.
I've had one video in
a series of videos on the same topic denied adsense revenue seemingly
arbitrarily.
I'm not looking for trouble but it seems that the
inconsistent application of YouTube's policies makes it difficult to avoid
it. How can anyone possibly learn from
their mistakes when the only notification you receive is a generic, " We
think you did something wrong" email with no specifics?
So it seems every upload is a roll of the dice. Who will I offend? Will the humming of my
PC's power supply somehow violate someone's copyright? Perhaps the sound of thunder from a passing
storm will trigger a copyright violation of the Door's Rider's on the storm!
Obviously I have two issues, interest and
inconsistent application of the "rules"
To go by YouTube rules I guess I'm only safe with the
aforementioned cat videos so long as they don't purr in tune to anything with a
copyright.
To be popular, I have
to have production values equivalent to at least a TWIT podcast. Of course even some of their videos only get
50 views and they have a million dollar production facility not to mention
staff.
I've looked at other YouTube videos similar in content to my
own and seen no evidence of the heavy hand of YouTube's legal department that
I've suffered. It appears Monetization
and content is unaffected in these cases.
That leaves me a bit confused. I
can only guess at my own sin.
I've seen videos with thousands if not millions of views
that even their creators find less than stellar. No accounting for taste I suppose.
So in the end, I'll keep trying new things and probably run
afoul of a few more arbitrary YouTube rules in the process.
If nothing else, perhaps my adventures can serve as a
precedent as I navigate the minefield of popularity and legality in the YouTube
metaverse.
Let's see what rules this video breaks, eh?
Update!
I've figured out how to make a video that can be monetized and doesn't trip me up wit YouTube's ContentID system...
A couple of new video's about Killing Floor, a survival co-op game by tripwire interactive and available on Steam.
The first video is the strange "conversion" necessary to run the 2012 summer sideshow event. Even after the huge update last week another 450MB download was necessary...Strange.
The second is a brief walk through of the 2012 Killing Floor Summer Sideshow event
showcasing the special NPC's and the new map, KF-Hellride...
I finallly got around to doing a video review of this game. Although I did a summarized review in this blog a few months back I wanted to give you some tangible examples of some of my observations. I've divided the review into 3 parts.
Part 1 is primarily about the setup menus and Stunt mode
Part 2 is about Nightshiift and Race Modes
Part 3 is about Big Battle, Monster Truck and Speed modes.
Good old Blizzard is apparently banning Linux users using
Wine to play Diablo 3 . The
configuration is officially unsupported but it seems Blizzard may be taking it
a bit farther than that. Apparently a
recent patch has flagged many such users
as allegedly using cheats and banned their accounts with no refund
offered. Blizzard is unapologetic and
claims:
"We've
extensively tested for false positive situations, including replicating system
setups for those who have posted claiming they were banned unfairly. We've not
found any situations that could produce a false positive, have found that the
circumstances for which they were banned were clear and accurate, and we are
extremely confident in our findings. Playing the
game on Linux, although not officially supported, will not get you banned –
cheating will."
I'm still waiting to hear if they apologized for the server
launch debacle.
On the motherboard side of things apparently Gigabyte is
beating ASUS and MSI to the punch by having the first certified Dual
Thunderbolt port boards for the PC. In
case you don't know Thunderbolt is effectively Intel's light peak architecture
(sans the light part) offering 10 Gbps I/O performance (2x that of USB 3.0) per
channel/connection. It uses a combination of PCI-Express and
Display port protocols on a single cable.
That's how you can
have a Thunderbolt display like Apples 27" daisy chained to the same port
as an external disk array. The question
is, if this is running off the PCI-E bus, will that consume PCI-E lanes
possibly affecting configurations using SLI or crossover?
With dual connections
on the GIgabyte board you can run up to 12 devices and 2 displays (6 devices per
channel 1 display per channel). In this week's
TWICH on TWIT Ryan Shrout reported that he's been using a Thunderbolt drive
array and having a generally positive experience. Apparently Thunderbolt devices show up as
internal instead of external meaning you could theoretically have a huge storage
array and not have to keep it your case.
Not A dual thunderbolt enabled board :-)
This could finally
put USB and ESATA out of their misery as soon as prices come down. Cables seem to be the real bone of contention
with Thunderbolt with prices starting around $50. Far from being just a patch cable,
Thunderbolt cables employ logic chips in the cables themselves to sort out the
signals making them active instead of passive connections.
In completely unrelated news, PCPer is reporting speculation
from a Digi-times article (since removed) that ASUS and Gigabyte may be
improving the motherboard RMA and warranty experience according to a Digitimes
piece. What gamer hasn't had a flaky
board returned to them on their dime once or twice. From the article..
"If
these changes to the RMA procedure are indeed accurate then the worry of a
faulty board being sent back to you if the damage was judged not to be a
factory defect need no longer prevent you from sending a buggy or even
non-functional board back to the manufacturer. There are likely to be some
limits on these new policies, keep your eye out for updates as the arrive."
So the new AMD 7970 GHZ edition is said to be a bit faster
than GTX680. Of course that's an overclocked card but some
will argue that all enthusiast level cards are over clocked even if the box
doesn't say so. I don't buy it...
That's great for AMD fans waving the performance flag but
you can't run away from the fact that to beat a GTX680 at load means using 60
more watts of power to do it. So what's
60 watts in comparison to the whole system.
Well, have you ever touched a 60 Watt incandescent light bulb when it
was on? I guarantee you didn't touch it
for long.
Power = heat and extra heat causes more stress on all of
your system components. Yes 60 Watts
isn't 300 Watts. Still if you're running on the ragged edge
with say a LAN party SFF rig you may not appreciate that extra 5% performance
boost as much when all your fans are spinning at 3000RPM. Also let's not forget that not everyone runs
their pc's in the most agreeable of environments. Every degree temperature drop has real
meaning if you have to keep the thermostat at 80F in the summer.
Of course if you're the type that just simply must have the
fastest anything then my arguments fall on deaf ears. Performance is a relative thing especially
with computer hardware so it's best to focus on more tangible factors. Those being power, heat and price.
I know I sound like an NVIDIA fan boy but the truth is I'm
not impressed with hollow victories.
Match the power consumption and performance of the 680 and I'll be
satisfied. Also note that I currently
run AMD cards in my both my gaming rigs (a 6970 and a 6950) So much for the
BIAS argument....
Catch the latest TWICH on TWIT for more info on Ryan Shrout's
experiences with the 7970 Ghz edition.
YouTube's been buzzing again about the possibility of a
dinosaur mode in BF3. (just search for
BF3 Dino mode) It all started from a forum exchange with a Dice developer that
was followed up by a reddit post.
Speculation says it's more along the lines of the Zombie maps in Call of
Duty. So think of it more as a novelty
than a real game mode. Further
speculation says it may show up with the aftermath DLC. If it does come to pass at least it won't be
another zombie DLC pack.
I'm getting kind of
tired of stumbling corpses. Although I
don't know how much better running around Caspian Border shooting at Barney the
purple dinosaur would be. The whole
dinosaur thing was kind of played out in the 90's. Actually, it could work, I always hated
Barney....I love you , you love me....blech..
Speaking of YouTube, I apparently ran afoul of a minor
copyright claim in my last video on my channel due to some music clips I
included in it. Find it here
Without going into some long diatribe about the evils of
copyright law I will say this. There is
definitely a problem with the copyright holder's understanding of Fair
Use. In my example, the newest clip I
used was almost 20 years old, was poor quality and not even a complete version
of the song. Full credit was given to
the artist and label and was not used as promotion for my video in any way. Apparently that doesn't pass muster in every
country but it's ok here, so far.
I just wanted to see if I could make something cool and I
think I did.
The argument copyright holders (meaning the record companies
and not the artists) often make concerns of all things milk and cows. They say if the milk was free why would the
farmer invest in producing it.
I have two thoughts on that.
The first is simple.
I think the farmer should make money on the milk but not after it's gone
sour. In other words, have a reasonable
limit to copyright, say 10 years then let it fall to a creative commons license
where usage such as mine is allowed so long as I give credit to the
artist. No harm, no foul and it could
give new life to old material.
The second thought goes even farther. Consider that perhaps the farmer shouldn't be
producing milk at all but rather growing renewable crops . In other words, the farmer's role of milk
producer is obsolete and only kept relevant by an obsolete transactional system
that ultimately prevents him from moving past it. He's inhibited by his reliance on the revenue
that is only possible under the old system.
His survival is tied to it and ultimately controls his actions.
I only mention this because at some point you may run into
the same thing especially if you like to upload
game videos to the Internet. If
it makes you angry turn it into action and support organizations like the
Creative Commons Organization. http://creativecommons.org/
As you all probably know by now if you're a Battlefield 3
player, this week has a 2x experience points event in progress.Being an avid player I've been taking
advantage of EA's gift.It's been
rewarding until last night...
I'm going to show you something.It will be familiar to anyone who browses
server lists in Battlefield 3.
It's a detail page for a Battlefield 3 server I
"used" to play on.
In fact, it was one of my favorites, until today...
You see, I'm picky about servers I put on my favorites
list.
They can't have too many cheaters (average is said to be 10
to 50% of players)
They have to be ranked, not disable equipment like rockets
on an anti-aircraft and
the admin needs to be around to keep things under control.
All of the above applied on my previous visits to this
server before last night.
Yes, this is a bit of a rage rant but there's a good reason
behind it.
I was thrown off this server (which has never happened on
any server since I started playing BF3) because the admin appeared to be protecting
an obvious cheat.I had a !voteban
initiated on me and it was 2 to 2 with 11 votes left when the admin just
decided to kick me off.
The vote was initiated by the cheat in the chat window with
the following phrase...
"!voteban my
playername (to shut his cock sucker mouth)"
Now I've never tried to suck on any part of a male chicken's
anatomy, in fact I've never even had my face near one, I hear they've got nasty
tempers, wouldn't want to get "pecked"
This is the kind of juvenile rage that is common in games
like BF3 but with myself and others calling out this obvious cheat it seemed
strange that he stayed and I got the boot.Come to think of it, I've never seen a server notification in the chat
window about a player kick due to a detected hack.I've seen it on other servers but not this
one.The admins generally just leave it to a chatroom vote.I've dealt with cheats before on this server
but this time was especially bad.
Of course there's another possibility...
You see, this server takes donations for its expenses and
it's possible that such donations earn the donor a blind eye from the
admin.Ultimately it's the admin who
makes the call on bans and it's reasonable for them to protect their revenue
stream.Reasonable, that is, if you think extortion is a legitimate
enterprise that is.
It appears EA does little if anything to police their ranked
servers so long as they get their check. You see
EA not only distributes the game, they'll rent you a server to run it on
too.So if they're going to leave it up to the
community then our only recourse is to call out the perpetrators of the crime
so to speak.
In any case, I'd recommend staying away from this particular
server and others like it unless you're the cheating type.In that case, by all means aimbot, auto knife
and instant kill to your heart's content.Nobody will say a word so long as your cheat is undetectable or possibly
make a donation to the admin.
After all, it's entirely reasonable for a player to have 34
kills and 0 deaths on a fully populated 64 player map right?
.JPG)
