Peer Pressure Works!

I quietly added DRM News to my links list awhile ago, but I figure it’s time to holla at my playah…or…something. Christ.

So yeah, after leaving Reclaim Your Game, I was still interested in doing writing on DRM info and stuff like that. Anyway, Brad (those of you who pay attention to comments on here would know him better as Qikdraw) and his wife Kathy had also left RYG and wanted to do something, and set up a simple little Wordpress site. I joined in and…well, that’s actually pretty much it. I’ll have to add in some ninjas and perhaps an exciting scene with rhinos rampaging down a small town street later to beef up the “Holy shit!” factor.

It isn’t anything too fancy. We just do little articles up when something news worthy drops and add a few editorial type ones, too. We’ve actually been throwing content up for a few weeks before announcing anywhere so that there is actually some material there if/when people start swinging by.

We have some plans for how to grow it from here, some stuff that would be pretty cool if/when it comes to fruition (haha! Still being a cryptic bastard!).

And now you know…the rest…of the story.

Good lord! A serious post?!

As I mentioned in a post awhile ago, I used to be an admin on the site Reclaim Your Game. I stepped down for a number of reasons, many of them disclosed in that post.

Recently, they decided to turn their ‘fair and balanced’ (with about as much fairness and balance as the other users of that slogan, Fox News, typically display) on the SecuROM used on the game Borderlands. The resulting testing report is nothing but a collection of biased, unproven claims and rhetoric. Seeing them then begin to talk about that report on other web forums as though it resembled fact, I decided a response was necessary. This is that response.

Remember I talked about this game a year ago? No? Well, I did, ya bastards! Anyway, it WAS a year ago, meaning this is the birthday of Crayon Physics Deluxe. And because it’s the game’s birthday, you can now buy it from the developer for whatever the Hell you feel like paying.

Don’t be a complete dick. After all, I’ve read that it costs the seller somewhere in the neighbourhood of 40 cents in processing fees to complete a Paypal transaction, so if you pay the guy less than that you pretty much deserve to have a beehive shoved up your ass.

As for the game itself, it’s pretty basic. You have a ball you need to get to an end point. How you get it there is your choice…draw whatever objects you think might help. Here’s the trailer video, since that description pretty much made it sound as intriguing as ‘Take a Dump Simulator 2.13’ :

And to say that some people come up with insanely creative solutions would be a massive understatement. The only limit really is how much of an Engineer you feel like being (with all the depression, loneliness and rampant alcoholism that obviously involves).

Also, there is a level editor out for the game, and pack upon pack of levels by the hundred in the forums. So there ya go. Sale lasts until the 15th. Represent, bitches!

Yes indeed, the addiction continues to constantly switching programs. Comfort levels with an application be damned when there be new shit to explore, dammit!

After switching back and forth between Pidgin and Digsby for my IM application, I happened upon another one called Raptr. As much as I usually detest intentionally mis-spelled words, I was intrigued because it’s an IM app for game playing fanatics.

Some of you might know that that is most certainly me. So that’s what I’m using now. So if you happen to chat with me on Windows Live, Google or Yahoo, that’s what the fuck I’m using. And that ‘games played’ widget over to the right there is also tied in to it. It keeps track of games I’m playing, how much I’m playing them, and any Games for Windows Live or Steam achievements that are being unlocked while playing. It isn’t perfect…manually adding games the app misses is very hit or miss, and some games simply aren’t supported yet…but it works. And I like the user page with all of the game info. Sadly, my GfWL install got messed up during the Avast crisis of a month ago, and a bunch of my achievements seem to have vanished since I re-installed. DAMN…I’ll be FORCED to replay Batman : Arkham Asylum (my favourite game of the year) to get them back. Damn!

It should also change my status message to ‘Now playing : (game name here)’, thus freeing me from my usual mistake of forgetting to change my status before starting a game (and it seems that the instant I’ve started gaming, the urge for people to IM me goes up something like 95%).

So now you know what I already knew and had elected not to tell you. Until now.

I’ve mentioned Reclaim Your Game a lot…A LOT. I’ve talked before about how we’re doing game testing for ByteShield titles. We’ve been doing a lot of work, and the whole topic is starting to gain a little bit of notice. From Gamasutra (an industry-related blog for those who don’t know) today :

Moscow-headquartered Akella, developer of Disciples III, Age of Sail 2 and other titles, said Thursday it signed a deal with Byteshield to provide DRM for its PC games in order to counter piracy.

While many gamers object to the use of DRM, Byteshield has made efforts to reach out to gamers for input on creating the technology. DRM watchdogs Reclaim Your Game approve of the DRM, calling Byteshield "safe, transparent, and non-invasive on your PC."
Byteshield describes its technology as an account-based copy protection model that "enables users to run games on multiple computers without limiting their ability to use the product they purchased."

In 2008, Stockholm-based PC game distribution platform GamersGate said it selected Byteshield for its catalog of digital PC titles.

"We are glad to work with ByteShield and hope for a long and successful partnership," said Vladimir Koudr, VP Publishing at Akella. Byteshield chief exec Jan Samzelius added, "Akella’s strong position in Russia along with their focus on user experience makes it a perfect fit."

Very, very cool. And I’m looking forward to Disciples III.

And more changes are in the offing. Maybe I’ll talk about them later…or I’ll continue teasing you all because I’m a jerk.

Last year, the Canadian Copyright Act (Bill C-61) was tabled during a session of Parliament, and eventually shelved along with the government as Parliament was dissolved. In short, the bill would basically have handed every piece of ‘protective’ legislation to the media companies that they’ve ever asked for. The whole document was a wish list of the things the RIAA, MPAA and various software associations have been bitching and whining about needing for years now as they describe Canada as a cesspool of peg legged piratical fiends spreading theft to the world.

Well, the Canadian Government is currently holding consultation settings before setting a new course in terms of Copyright, user rights, DRM, and all that sort of fun shit. The pleasant surprise has been…people actually seem to have taken notice. C-61 sort of woke up a large sector of the population that what a lot of these things can actually mean for the end user, and they don’t seem to have slipped back in to a state of slumber yet. The open sessions that have been held in various cities have reportedly been well attended.

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So, today I was reading that the game Huxley has gone in to Closed Beta 2, but the beta was open to Fileplanet members. You don’t have to be one of the fools who pays for full access, you only need the free account. I hate Fileplanet with a passion…if you DON’T pay the monthly fee, you get shunted to the slow as molasses free servers that usually have a line-up of 135+ people apiece before your turn rolls around.

Still, I was curious enough to try. Huxley was first talked about around 3 YEARS ago, and it’s become more of a mythological beast as the months have passed since then. Oh sure, you hear rumours if its’ existence, but those are around the same level of drunken hunter Ogopogo sightings in terms of their reliability. And yet here was evidence that this game MIGHT actually exist.

The reason this game has so much continued interest? They’re trying to be an MMOFPS. We’re talking massive maps with literally HUNDREDS of players at a time, all operating in teams, blasting the living shit out of each other. Although I was pretty sure it would devolve in to a collection of 14 year old dimwits fragging everyone around them and calling each other names very quickly, I was still curious enough to try. And that’s where the ordeal began.

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So, having gotten all the “WORDPRESS MUST DIE!” venom out of my system, I had still basically shelved the whole Game AAR play through idea. Yeah, I’d also said that it would be some time before I considered Beta Testing a another game…turns out that ‘some time’ basically meant today. And much like I feel my eagerness to do an AAR starting to flow back, too.

Part of it is probably stubbornness…”Dammit, I said I’d do one and no punk SYSTEM is going to hold me back!” However, I also happened to find a link on a forum to the blog site that turned me around on its’ own. It’s called The Blue Casket, and it’s basically a repository of AARs for a variety of games. Nothing special there. However, what DOES stand out is that they are all actually highly entertaining, and often laugh out loud funny.

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Well, I went ahead and played the game tonight. And…absolutely and thoroughly crushed the AI. I mean, it was an outright slaughter. I didn’t lose a single VP, which is RIDICULOUS. So, thinking it might just be the British faction that was having issues, I replayed the level against the Americans. They actually dropped my VP level…from 500 to 483. Um…yeah. Another slaughter. It just doesn’t seem to ‘get’ that assaulting defenses is a good idea when your point levels are dropping, instead focusing on building up it’s own defenses. Great, you have a network of machine gun bunkers protecting your base with interlocking fields of fire. That’s awesome. Meanwhile, YOU’RE LOSING THE GAME.

So, I’m making a switch to a different map that ALWAYS produces some action, Angoville :

Behold the...diamond shape of doom...!!..?

This is a pretty simple, and much smaller,  map. One base is in the North corner, the other is in the South. The East and West corners have the +16 Munitions and Fuel sectors, making those valuable. 3 VPs, two to the right, one to the left.

This inevitably turns in to an out and out slug fest. The two areas with buildings tend to be popular battlegrounds since they control the approaches to the right hand VP spots. And the left VP’s sector control point is actually in that gigantic chunk of land right below it, so that tends to be a hot spot as well.

What I’m going to do with this one is take a screen shot of each of those areas before the battle starts. Then, some of the final shots I take will be those same areas afterwards.

Post Battle : WOW!  Things started off well, with me dominating the map and leading by over 200 VPs at one point. Then the Americans (I decided to play against them…since the Wehr and US were the original factions, they were better designed to fight one another) started pushing back AND had their Engineers running around building damn machine gun bunkers! And then…paratroopers, , Anti-tank guns and mortar squads out the ying yang…Jesus! Things got tense for awhile.

Anyway, I’ll start going through the Replay of it tomorrow. It was a grand total of about 49 minutes and change long, so I’ll get 2, probably 3, posts out of it. That lone VP over to the left ended up seeing more combat that probably any other sector on the map, so I’ll definitely snap a before and after screenie of that area.