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DRM (Digital Rights Management) is about to ruin the PC gaming industry. I am not the first to state this and probably not the last either. The discussion about DRM and PC games has reached new heights with EA’s release of Spore. Ben and Rob over at Tom’s Games discuss this here and here in their weekly episodes of Second Take.

Personally I really do not understand why EA and others are using SecuRom and similar products to “protect” their games. I assume the intention is to either (1) stop piracy or (2) stop people from selling used games. For me, the only thing they achieve is stopping me from buying their games.

Piracy is clearly a problem on the PC platform. It is a shame that people does not pay for the games they play and it is understandable that the industry tries to stop this. However, there does not exist any effective copy protection (yet) and I do not think DRM is the right way to stop piracy. DRM is only making it harder for the customers.

I have a stronger beliefe in digital distribution of quality games which are updated after their initial release to a reasonable price. Much like what the guys at Stardock intends to do with their “Gamers Bill of Rights”. This is of course a PR trick but I agree with them in most of what they say.

Back to DRM, copy protections like SecuRom are just creating problems for the people who pay for the products, not stopping piracy. Pirated versions of Spore and NoCD-cracks sirculated, probably even before Spore was released. I want to play the games I buy anywhere, at any time and I want to be able to install them as many times as I like. I payed for the bloody game didn’t I? I wouldn’t buy a bike which I could only use four times, within the city limits on Sundays!

Spore is unfortunately not the first game which incorporates such DRM solutions. Both Bioshock and Mass Effect have received massive amounts of flack for their DRM solutions which created a lot of problems for a large number of users.

So why? Dear gaming, record and movie industry. Why do you use DRM when it creates problems for the paying users, does not effectively stop piracy, increases the price of your products and give you a lot of negative media coverage? Some of the vendors have got it and they are pulling the plug on DRM as we speak. But Walmart, what about the customers who were unfortunate enough to by DRM (infested) music who are not able to play their music any longer?

Inspired by the Rawgameblog and Second Take’s Fall Games Preview I decided to make a list of my most anticipated games for the rest of 2008. These are the games which I consider getting my hands on unless they utterly fail and get really poor critics.

There are plenty of other games which look very interesting but I decided to make a top five. In doing this I had to leave out at least ten games I would like to buy. I also left out games with no confirmed release date. All dates are taken from Gamespot. You might want of have a look at all the games I am tracking. Nevertheless, here are the top five ordered by their release date.

Mount and Blade is set for a September 23rd release. Mount and Blade might not look like the most cutting edge game but I have already tested beta versions of the game and I know it is great fun. Talesworld are now about to release the 1.0 version of the unique game. The fact that it comes from a small provider makes the game even more impressing. Mount and Blade has a large community and there are already developed several mods for the game and you can expect many, many hours of barbaric fun from this game.

Far Cry 2 is going to be released October 21st. Far Cry is the sequel to perhaps one of the best halves of an FPS I have every played. The first half of Far Cry was a truly great game and I am hoping the new developers are able to pull off a complete great game with Far Cry 2. It sure looks beautify, let us just hope it is fun to play as well.

Fallout 3 with its October 28th release is another game I am excited about. I am a bit more uncertain about Fallout 3 than Mount and Blade and Farcry 2. As mentioned, I have already played Mount and Blade and I have a pretty fair idea of how Farcry 2 will play. I have never played any of the legendary Fallout games, Iam uncertain about how the gameplay will turn out and I am a bit uncertain about how Oblivion developers Bethesda Softworks will finish this game.

Gears of War 2 is starting a very hectic November with its November 7th release. Plenty of other great games are being released during November as it is probably the most hectic month of the year (in terms of potentially great games being released). Gears of War was the first truly great Xbox360 game when it was released two years ago, a short time after its superb trailer.

Left 4 Dead on November 20th is going to be a multiplayer blast. What is better than killing hoards of zombies with your friends? Just the fact that it is a Valve game increases my expectations an extra notch or two.

It is no secret that I like digital distribution over the Internet. I do not have any need to gather hundreds of CD, DVD and game covers  which only occupy space and gather dust. To get rid of this problem I have started to digitalize my music and movie collection. I will probably write more about this later and provide an open-source-tutorial to ripping and organizing CDs and DVDs.

The day before yesterday, Metallica released their new album Death Magnetic and I had to get my hands on it. I could have bought just a digital copy but as a long time fan of Metallica I opted for the CD. The CD was delivered actually the day before the release date but I was rather disappointed when this was what I found in a thin envelope in our mailbox. The cover was broken, beat and well perhaps not scarred.

When that is said, I think Metallica has succeed here on two fronts with their new album. They have made very good record but they have also created a successful distribution model. Through Mission Metallica I have been able to see a couple of hours of video from the recording of the record, and download about 10 live concerts and four singles. All this before the record was released. I think this is the way to go to stop or at least to reduce piracy. Provide something extra to the ones who pay. When providing something extra, they also make more money. The record was a bit more expensive than a normal CD (30 Euros as compared to a normal price of 18-25 for a new record) and by releasing material over the Internet, Metallica has managed to create a buzz around the album. However the extra 10 Euros were well worth it. In particular the live material is priceless.

For the future I think I will go for digitally distributed movies, games and music. If the provider offers backup I do not have to fear broken CDs and covers, and I do not have to reserve several meters of dusty shelf space to the covers.

The case

After selecting a case for my new living room computer I had to buy some more parts to piece together a running PC. The case I selected was the Lian Li PC-C32, in black. Overall I am satisfied with the case. It is fairly spacious, it looks good, it was pretty easy to mount everything inside of it. However, when I got the case it was a bit bigger and lighter than expected. The plates used for the case were a bit thin and the top lid had two screws in the front which I did not see and they almost made me force the top off. Other people have said the case comes with one motherboard stand too many. I did not have that problem as I installed a microATX board. The stock fans on full speed were a bit nosier than I would have liked too but it was nothing a replacement of fans and a fan controller could not handle. I chose the ZM-MFC1 Plus controller from Zalman.

The hardware

The computer consist of a Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H microATX motherboard with an on-board AMD HD3200 video chip powerful enough to playback full HD video. The AMD 780G chipset is a favoritte among many reviewrs (1). The motherboard is fitted with an AMD Athlon 4850e CPU which only requires a limted amount of power and 4 GB of Kingston DDR2 memory. Both the 1TB Spinpoint F1 hard drive and the SH-S203B DVD player came from Samsung. The plan is to get another hard drive and install it in a RAID level 1 to have backup of images, music and movies. Hopefully will the prices of solid-state-drives fall while the performance contines to increase so I can get such a drive and use it for the operating system drive. The whole ting is powered by a NorthQ Giant Reactor power supply which I had laying around.

The software

I have I have been using Windows Vista 64 because I had a license and I eventually plan on getting a better graphics card to be able to play games. Currently the cards are either too expensive, too noisy or not powerful enough so I think I will be waiting until the next generation arrives or until someone starts selling better cooling solutions for, for instance the AMD 4870X2. If I wasn’t planning on gaming I would have used a Linux distro for sure.

The problems

I wish I could say everything went accoring to plan. Unfortunately it did not. First, the PSU is a bit too noisy. The 850W version of the Zalman ZM1000-HP could be a possible solution. Second, the DVD is way too noisy. I do not plan on using this much but it sounds like a plane taking off. Third, the stock fans were too noisy on full spead. This has been solved by using a fan controller. I might also replace the fans. Fourth, I will certainly get a modular PSU the next time I buy a new one. I hate all those cables. Finally and most annoying. The graphic chip has some problems with HDMI and TVs. If I select the right input on the TV and then turn on the PC I get an image and everything works perfectly. However if I change the input on the TV to something else and then back again to the PC, I do not get any image. It seems it is a problem with the Catalys driver and the handshaking with the TV. I hope this will be fixed with the release of a new driver. As a consequence of this problem I have not used it as much as originally planned. I have not moved neither movies, images nor music to the PC.

The future

As mentioned I have planned to get another disk and a new graphics card. This is however somewhere down the road. It would have been nice to get a quieter PSU as well but with the noise level of the graphic cards of today it is no point of getting a silent PSU before I know which graphics card I will be pairing it with. When new and more powerful CPUS are comming I will probably update those too. However until later the two core AMD should do the job.

According to the local newspaper, commuters in Trondheim has been unhappy (1 2) with the public monopoly situation and the local bus company for a long time. Team-Trafikk (the buss company) says, not surprisingly that the travelers are happy. Some of the discontent has came from the introduction of an electronic transit pass. This has been going on since 2000 and it has had a problematic inception, costing the travelers several millions NOK (1 2). After seven or eight years of planning and failing, Trondheim has now finally gotten an electronic transit pass.

As a daily commuter and a techno lover I had to try the new card which was released July 1st. I did of course buy it online from tkort.no. The web shop has unfortunately been developed by someone with less computer skills than an eight year old. It is hard to find information about the products and in particular about the prices. I did not have problems but I would say it was difficult to figure out what to get and how much it costs. I have been using computers for more than twenty years and I wonder how it is for old people with limited knoledge of computers and web shops.

When I finally found out what to buy I could not pay using the web shop. Most decent web shops allow you to pay with Visa, Paypal, Mastercard or similar but tkort.no requires you to wire money to their account using your (internet) bank. I did so and the process took 12 days, involving several conversations with customer “support”. They did not provide a lof of help and they almost blamed me for losing the money and wanted me to prove that the money was transferred. They had no or only very limited information about how the system was supposed to work and they had no idea of where my money had taken its way. After 12 days it was ok, and the transit pass was working.

Then two days after the money appeared they called me because they had drawn too much money from my account and wanted me to come to their office so they could correct their bookkeping. They wanted me to fix their problems. I said I was sorry and that I could not help them at that moment and the woman calling me got upset.

After using the pass for some time I must say it works quite well. However, the introduction of the web shop was a disaster and the information given to both the bus drivers and the customer support was not existing. All in all a very good example of hopeless project management. It is not strange they have had several time and cost overruns. Nevertheless, I hope they will sort out the problems as I believe that electronic payment is the future and far supperior to good old cash.