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Posts
My password is "TekDragon".
edit: If you're talking about my Steam account, do me a favor and buy me some games while you're logged in.
Hey Butt, what do you think Valve's policy should be concerning gaining the licenses for games? I'm sure you once went into a bakery or something, and that's roughly analogous to managing a digital distribution service.
I agree that some profit is better than none. Some of the rights holders have products that could easily make money even today, but aren't doing anything with them. There's all sorts of concerns. Even now piracy is still a huge issue, with publishers being of the mind that it's better to not release the product at all, than re-release it and make some money whilst suffering some piracy as well. It's almost as if by its very existence, piracy negates profits made. It's a nonsensical view, but it's also the reason why outfits like GOG are finding it even tougher to get publishers on-board. None of their games are still selling in stores, but that doesn't seem to matter to the publisher.
That's just one aspect, like you said it's partly an ego thing, even when you're guaranteed a profit over something that isn't making one now. By all rights it should be a no brainer, but publishers still don't like the idea. They still want to maintain control over that product for decades to come, and you lose part of that control if it's still available on a platform like Steam, and in a format that still works. How do you do re-issues? Re-releases? How do you maintain a high price point on older titles? It becomes a lot more difficult because DD has no stock limitations. That's part of the problem, everyone's still getting their heads around the idea of distribution without limited supply, and how that affects the product you're selling, now, and in the future. Not everyone is happy with those changes.
I think Steam has a long way to go in establishing itself yet before publishers are more willing to devote more time and resources to porting back-catalogue stuff onto the system. As it is, I'm pretty amazed that Steam's managed to become a marketplace where any new title has to be released, it's seen as important as high street retail when you're putting your product out there. Given how short a time-frame we're talking, I'd say that's a pretty huge achievement in itself.
Anyway, I'm kind of on the fence regarding Trine, but really it's kind of silly. I mean, it's $5. If I take a PB&J to work tomorrow instead of eating at our expensive-ass cafeteria, I'm already ahead.
At the same time, Steam perpetually has games on sale so if I keep falling for that the next thing you know I've spent $50 in a month on cheap Steam games.
Life is full of decisions.
Robots Will Be Our Superiors (Blog)
http://michaelhermes.com
I was talking about your PA account and convo-shitting.
But I'd like to take a step back for a moment and point out that I just realized something absolutely hilarious about this conversation you and I are having
Would you care to guess what my last few PMs in my inbox have been about?
Hint: They were to a mod.
I dunno, I heard about it being buggy and frustrating.
Plus puzzle games are the bane of my life.
Good feedback. But next someone will tell me it's awesome, and I'll probably be back to buying it. Or maybe if I waffle long enough it just won't be on sale any more.
Steam needs to put an awesome 4X game on sale. Or at least Gratuitous Space Battles; I'd buy it like someone snapping their fingers. But I believe I've mentioned that already.
Robots Will Be Our Superiors (Blog)
http://michaelhermes.com
Maybe that mod will change your user title to "DER KOMMISAR OF THE STEAM THREAD", since that is what you seem to believe you are.
Trine looks interesting, but I really need to stop impulse buying from Steam for the exact reason Michael H mentioned. It's like being nickel and dimed, only in a sort of good way.
They had AI War on sale, which is a pretty fun 4X with co-op. Now it's back up to $20 though.
That was after you gave that guy X-com, way back when we were BFFs... last week.
Haha, I love the internet.
I'd say it's a pretty awesome game sure. Definitely worth the $5. It's a puzzle based action-platformer with a very nice look and style to it.
Nertz, that would have been fun. GalCiv2 is nigh-perfection for me, so anything in that ballpark is right up my alley. They've been compared favorably.
Robots Will Be Our Superiors (Blog)
http://michaelhermes.com
Well who are you going to believe - some random dudes on the internet, or me?
I generally try to avoid impulse buys of "budget" games, just in case they're worth no money at all. Doesn't always work.
You tried that Sins of a Solar Empire game?
http://forums.penny-arcade.com/showthread.php?t=76500
IGN gave it game of the year which I thought was a bit ridiculous, but it's still a solid 4x.
Fuuuuuuuuuuuck this is like that one time when Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant were all fighting and then they realized that like ten years before that one of them put in a recommendation for the other one to be promoted, but then forgot about it and then ten years later he remembered and it was all awkward.
Ok let's bury the hatchet and be BFFs again.
So I moved Steam (all 27GB of it) to my external drive.
My new idea is to install every single game I own.
Good counterpoint. I don't know what to believe any more. GET OUT OF MY HEAD
TekDragon, I always waffled on SOASE as I'm a big fan of turn based and sometimes get flustered trying manage expansive RTS games. Even Starcraft was enough to give me fits. But I never hear anything less than glowing reviews, so maybe I'll spring for it some day.
Robots Will Be Our Superiors (Blog)
http://michaelhermes.com
There's a demo of Sins you can try out.
Interesting. Of all the complaints about Trine I have ever heard (too easy, lack of variety in enemies, lackluster last level, too short, lack of online co-op), I have never once heard of anybody complain about it being buggy or frustrating. In fact, only bug I am aware of is some people cant get the "complete all achievements" achievement to unlock.
Though the only one of those complaints that I feel are valid is the too easy. They offer a lot of set pieces in places that the thief can just hookshot right through, and the game uses a checkpoint system similar to bioshock so even if you die you just respawn with all the puzzles completed / monsters defeated from before you died. It is what you make out of it, but it seems some people cant enjoy a very beautiful relaxing platformer.
The first 3 or so levels are playable in the demo so you may as well just give it a try but really you are a very very silly goose for not buying it for $5.
http://steamcommunity.com/id/Cykstfc
In the end that was one of my problems with it, too - but I'd definitely recommend any 4x fan at least try out the demo. Especially if your a GalCiv fan.
Trine is awesome. Go buy it.
edit: SOASE is pretty great, too.
All right, people. It is not a gerbil. It is not a hamster. It is not a guinea pig. It is a death rabbit. Death. Rabbit. Say it with me, now.
I then came into this thread because the thread title sucks so bad (Guess I didn't think about it), and you guys got me to buy Trine for 5 dollars, I didn't even know it was on sale, but fuck it, its 5 dollars if I spend more than 2 hours on it I figure Im a winner.
Try the demo. If you don't love, you have no heart!
damn I might have to do that.
Just finished up playing through the first 45 minutes of Trine, and I gotta say already that its great fun, even if it changes dramatically and the puzzles get to hard for my dumbass, the game sure is pretty.
That.
Twitter 3DS: 0860 - 3257 - 2516
Basically people kept saying Valve were lazy jerks because you can't register your entire games collection on Steam and get rid of your CD's. Explaining why this doesn't make sense and how it would be an IP nightmare kept getting ignored in favour of "Why don't you love me Valve?!".
So Suds changed the thread title. Because he enjoys chaos and man-tears.
Er, I actually meant that posts like jdarksun's were the reason for the thread title change (in part, anyway). I can see where it was similar enough to the standard "This" agreement post to make it seem otherwise though.
Anyway, finally started playing Torchlight yesterday after picking it up when it was $5 on Steam. Fun little game, and I'm actually enjoying it more than Titan Quest, and even Diablo II, thus far. No ARPG has ever grabbed me the way the original Diablo did, but this comes closer than any other I can think of.
I'll remember the "this/that" distinction for later then. :P
Yeah it feels more Diablo than Diablo 2 to me, which in my book is a good thing. D2 was pretty definitively designed around group play. Areas were usually huge but largely empty apart from the enemies. D1 felt more focussed, and so does this.
Also, mods. Torchlight is ridiculously at home with mods and there are loads of small, simple good ones that make it more intuitive or better.
Not the old games. A new one called Worms 2: Armegeddon came out on XBLA sometime last year and is now coming to Steam too. The title is a little confusing if you're familiar with the older games. It's the second Worms game on XBLA (the first one was just called Worms) and for some reason it's reusing the Armageddon title.
I'm not sure what you mean by that. They all require installation IIRC, but they're all portable, you don't need a net connection or a disc or anything once they're installed. At a guess I could probably install a game to a USB flash stick and take it with me somewhere if that's what you mean (although running off of a flash drive would be painfully slow).
If you mean shifting the directory around once it's been installed, I imagine that wouldn't cause any problems, it usually doesn't.