Way back in 2005, Will Wright got on a stage and proclaimed the future of gaming did not have to include ultra high resolution graphic, overly flashy animations and scripted environments. He described his vision of a game which was by its very nature, procedurally generated from the textures to the very mechanics themselves.
He got a standing ovation – not just from the crowd, but from me as well which probably looked a bit peculiar to those around me, seeing as I was watching this on youtube. As time went on, gamers were tantalised further and further from videos of Robin Williams creating his own creature to more recently the Spore Creature Creator. All was not well however, unknown to the larger gaming community, storm clouds were forming behind the scenes, the weather system was called EA.
Fast forward to today, the game has been released and for the most part it lives up to Will’s original promises. It is fun, imaginative, very configurable and different. So why have I and many others not bought it?! Why is the rating for the game on Amazon so low? DRM has hit land.
DRM, or digital rights management, is a mechanism or system by which control and access to something (MP3s, DVD / Blueray video, Games etc) is restricted to predefined parameters. Despite countless examples of DRM not working companies still convinced it is their only method of protecting their products press forward with more and more limiting restrictions. Whilst I can understand a system which stops someone buying a game and then installing on ten computers belonging to their friends DRM has gone a lot further. Depending on implementation, it can install hidden software on computer systems, deny owners of legally purchased content (e.g. music) to play it on all their devices and generally inconveniences loyal, legal customers.
But thats all well I good, I hear you say, these companies are stopping people from stealing their work which they are perfectly entitled to. If that were the case, I would agree (despite my reservations.) However such is not the case, you see DRM doesn’t work. Copy protections are circumvented typically quicker than they make it to market. With a bit of know-how, anyone with a reasonable internet connection can illegally download copyrighted music, videos or games which have this copy protection entirely removed. Even more absurdly, in some cases, at a better quality than could be purchased legally! I could go on and on for a while backing up my claims, presenting examples but I am getting off topic.
So why have I yet to buy Spore? Simple, its not that I don’t want it, the converse is true, Spore uses SecureRom coupled with an activation system that allows the game to be installed three times. No more. So if you need to rebuild / reinstall your system or you buy another computer, that’s another install gone. After three installs, the game will no longer work.. that is until you buy another copy. Ludicrous huh? And Spore is not the only game to have such a draconian system, Bioshock and Mass Effect had similar ‘controls’ bundled with them. I did not buy Mass Effect for that reason, luckily I managed to buy Bioshock on steam without such restrictions.
So what is the point of all of this, have EA saved money from people not pirating their game? Quite the contrary, you see, this copy protection system EA seem to be dry humping was cracked and a completely unprotected version of Spore was released to P2P sites before the game was officially released. Turning legitimate users who paid money to buy a game, only to find they were just leasing it, are being driven to piracy sites just to install a game they legally own and others are simply not bothering to buy it, or worst still for EA and Will Wright, pirating it. DRM does not work, certainly in this case EA have lost money than they would have had they released the game with no copy protection. In fact, it made me smile today to read on slashdot that they are being sued because of this tomfoolery.
EDIT: Just found an article with EA relaxing the restrictions slightly. Now you can install the game five times and ‘deactivate’ installed copies. I know someone who installed the game on three PCs when it came out. He is still waiting on EA to de-authorise two of the copies. I will buy the game but only if I can get it without SecureRom and this activation nonsense.
EDIT 2: Ars technica as a great article on this topic, claiming that, despite EA’s stupid DRM Spore has been downloaded more than half a million times. I wonder what percentage were protest downloads?
I found on the BBC today a video preview of the next generation of iPod nanos and iPod touch. It seems the leaked images I posted a little while back were spot on, for a less blurry version, check out BBC’s website.
Not sure whether I like these new designs much, but credit to Apple for constantly refreshing (or just changing slightly to encourage people to buy new iPods every year) their range. When I get a chance, I will have a play with one of these ‘in the flash’ and report back.
UPDATE : I am starting to get the impression this market has matured drastically in the last few months. Apple have been making iPods for 7 years now, improving on the design and functionality as they go along, but is there any real selling point to these new iPods apart from the fact they are new? Sure the screen is slightly better, sure they have a motion sensor… but so what? When it is in my pocket, am I really going to care enough about how different it is to my 3rd gen nano?
It seems that almost every other week there is a revelation in the United Kingdom about data going missing. From mindless fools posting unsecured data on CD/DVDs to flash drives containing military or intelligence data being left in public places. It was bad enough last year when a Government agency lost CDs containing the personal details of 25 million people, but the public was prepared to accept that such things can and do happen occasionally. But since then, more and more data appears to have been misplaced, culminating in the revelation today that a 500Gb hard drive containing details of 5000 prison officers has been lost.
What irkes me the most about all of this, is that no-one appears to have the common sense to use an off the shelf utility (I could name a variety) to encrypt this data! I can (just) understand in a ’secure’ government environment where data is accessed continuously that encryption would not be viable*, but when the data is being transported, not to secure it somehow is criminal! I am not even talking asymmetric cryptography which takes some brains and infrastructure to set up, but how about just using a one time symmetric cryptography model purely for when the data is out of a secure environment?!?!
Data ‘Protection’ minister Michael Wills really needs to start clamping down on these rouge operators who seem to have no respect for the sanctity of personal or sensitive information or resign, I (and I am sure many others) have had enough of our country continually being a laughing stock for having data security policies which resemble a particularly effectual colander.
*although a variety of transparent encryption technologies exist.
.. and I’d like to think its as result of the angry email I sent to google as I uninstalled their new open source browser Chrome, based on the WebKit engine, two days ago. Back then, part of the EULA (End User Licensing Agreement) explicitly stated that by using the browser, anything you type into it (i.e. search queries, comments and presumably blog posts) becomes the exclusive property of Google.
Old Section 11 of Chrome EULA
11. Content licence from you
11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights that you already hold in Content that you submit, post or display on or through the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying the content, you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free and non-exclusive licence to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content that you submit, post or display on or through the Services. This licence is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services and may be revoked for certain Services as defined in the Additional Terms of those Services.
More worryingly, section 11.4:
11.4 You confirm and warrant to Google that you have all the rights, power and authority necessary to grant the above licence.
After The Register broke the news, many people just like me, promptly uninstalled Chrome. Google yesterday responded apologetically saying that they had never intended for the EULA to be interpreted in such a way, and issued an update.
11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights that you already hold in Content that you submit, post or display on or through the Services.
This rapid turn around is welcome, but it does make me wonder… if Google had any intention of enforcing the content appropriation their initial EULA made way for, by simply updating the EULA and not issuing updated binaries is the purported functionality still present? I guess only in-dept analysis of the code will tell, it is an open source project after all.
The hardcore Westwood fans will recognise the title… it is of course the catch phrase of the infamous commando unit (remember, guy with the C4 and the only infantry weapon that seemed to work?) from the original Command and Conquer. But anyway, enough of that. My friend Nick (all hail) sent me a link to EA’s Command and Conquer Red Alert 3 page, it turns out, to celebrate the 13th anniversary of the release of the original Red Alert, EA have put both the Soviet and Allied CD images up as freely available downloads.
I still have my original CDs somewhere, but for those who have not played this classic (and those with MiniRa as the downloads include all the FMVs) it is a great way to get a taste of old school ’strategy’ gaming at its best.
EDIT: I forgot to mention, if you preorder Command and Conquer Red Alert 3, you also get Red Alert 2 thrown into the bundle. Not bad eh? RA 2 is a bit dated now but is still a lot of fun to play.
I normally don’t pay much attention to ‘leaked’ designs or pictures as they invariably turn out to be fake or photo-shopped. However, I do trust some sources more than others and the following picture caught my eye.
Apple’s strategy of radical redesigns every couple of years form a clever strategy for separating people from their money periodically. This built in redundancy by design is quite remarkable, just look at the first generation nanos if you don’t know what I mean. Anyway, it may be real, it may be fake, but I thought I would share it.
The ‘new’ iPod nano (3rd generation presumably) … not sure if I like it much, although it is hard to tell from this blurry shot. The orientation is interesting and might suggest a landscape style view for movie playback.
Just a brief note to say that I have updated my original post on the MD5 hases of all the *buntu (ubuntu, kubuntu kde3 and kde4, edubuntu xubuntu) builds to include the ‘revision 1′ 8.04.1 cd images. Everything should now be up to date again.
Whilst shopping the other day I randomly found Supreme Commander in one of the software ‘bargain bins’ at my local super market. I had played the demo last year when the game came out and been impressed, but time restrictions had precluded me from buying it. At ~£5 it was a bargain so I snapped it up and tried it when I got home. I must say I am extremely impressed. In the last three days I have played for ~12 hours trying a number of skirmishes as well as starting one of the campaigns.
I can find very little to fault with this game, which for regular readers will come as a surprise given my sometimes overly harsh standards. There are a number of genres that are purportedly ‘massive.’ Massively multiplayer (e.g. World of Warcraft) is a prime example, but in recent years we are starting to see massively single player (e.g. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. or the TES Series i.e. Oblivion) but massively strategy games up until recently have felt fairly claustrophobic. Indeed, it appears that the genre is a fairly niche one, given the popularity of tank rush games like Command and Conquer 3.
I think the greatest potential weakness the game has is the potential to collapse under its own weight. Skirmishes typically range between one and two hours against a single AI opponent and the campaign missions seem to keep expanding and expanding rather than ending. In fact, I think it is safe to say everything in this game from the maps to tech trees have been scaled to the nth degree. I have only scratched the surface of this game at the moment and I like what I have seen so far (apart from the slightly odd voice acting), for the price it is a bargain and I highly recommend you try it yourself if you are a fan of the strategy genre. When I have had time to play it more I will write a more detailed review.
EDIT: To get a real impression of the scale of the game, check out the trailer:
I have been saying it all along and this just confirms it. Microsoft took (presumably) a random group of people and showed them the Windows ‘Mojave’, the purported successor to the ‘current’ Windows. So, forget about 7 and take a look for yourself.
I can’t really say too much more without giving the game away, although part of me wonders just how random this actually was. Without wishing to be offensive, these people do look to be fairly PC-illiterate and it wouldn’t be too hard for Microsoft to manipulate the outcome. On the other hand, with the amount of ill conceived rubbish being circulated about Vista it doesn’t take too great a leap of the imagination.
EDIT: Just did a bit of reading and found out the test bed for this experiment was a HP dv2000 laptop with 2Gb of RAM. I had a dv2799 (for a short duration) and I know they are very capable machines (although the workmanship is terrible – I have 4 go wrong but never-mind), however not outside the realms of the ‘average’ consumer system. This is good as it at least makes it a fairly fair demonstration.
So why have I yet to buy Spore? Simple, its not that I don’t want it, the converse is true, Spore uses SecureRom coupled with an activation system that allows the game to be installed three times. No more. So if you need to rebuild / reinstall your system or you buy another computer, that’s another install gone. After three installs, the game will no longer work.. that is until you buy another copy. Ludicrous huh? And Spore is not the only game to have such a draconian system, Bioshock and Mass Effect had similar ‘controls’ bundled with them. I did not buy Mass Effect for that reason, luckily I managed to buy Bioshock on steam without such restrictions.
Back then, part of the EULA (End User Licensing Agreement) explicitly stated that by using the browser, anything you type into it (i.e. search queries, comments and presumably blog posts) becomes the exclusive property of Google.
I can find very little to fault with this game, which for regular readers will come as a surprise given my sometimes overly harsh standards. There are a number of genres that are purportedly ‘massive.’ Massively multiplayer (e.g. World of Warcraft) is a prime example, but in recent years we are starting to see massively single player (e.g. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. or the TES Series i.e. Oblivion) but massively strategy games up until recently have felt fairly claustrophobic. Indeed, it appears that the genre is a fairly niche one, given the popularity of tank rush games like Command and Conquer 3.
