oyvindhauge.com

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.

I found this nice Wordpress plugin by Oliver Baty which allows you to include your Xbox Live game card somewhere into your blog. I made some changes to the plugin which allows me to display my game card anywhere inside any of my entries. Now, I simply write [gamecard haugeoy] (don’t laugh at my score )

or [gamecardfull haugeoy]

anywhere in my blog entries. Please remember to use HTML mode.

You may want to download the plugin with my modifications but please don’t blame Oliver Baty for the changes I have made and remember that the plugin is provided without any warranties.

Changes to the original plugin (version 1.3 beta)
Unfortunately my webhost does not provide Curl installed so I had to modify the plugin and make it use fopen instead. I replaced some of the code. Edit: the changes were included in this post but the code was removed because it caused some problems with Wordpress

I have been a long time user and fan of Steam, Valves digital distribution platform for computer games. Steam makes buying reasonably priced games from a decent sized catalog of games, easy. Steam gives me lifetime backup of my games and I can download them whenever I want and play them from any computer with an internet connection.

There are a couple of other digital distribution services as well: Stardock and their Impulse platform and Direct2Drive to mention a few. I tested Stardock the other day and I was impressed or almost scared of how easy it is to buy and download a new game.

First, select the game you want to buy.

Then, pay for it using Paypal (at Wikipedia) or any credit/debit card. Paypal is an electronic escrow service which I recommend for safe and easy payment on the Internet, especially if buying from ebay.

Finally, you download the game using Stardock’s Impulse platform. The download speed was very satisfying and I maxed out my internet connection the whole time.

This is how it should be done. Fast and easy sales and distribution. The price is relatively low, the time it takes to buy and download the game is minimal, the game will be automatically updated, I can uninstall it and download it later and I do not have to have a lot of DVDs floating around, fearing that they may get broken.

Image linked in from GameSpy

The acclaimed World in Conflict (WiC) is a fun, beautiful and fast paced video game for the PC. It has a several infantry, armor and air units, a decent story, and good looking destructible environments, smoke, fire, water, and explosions. Never have artillery barrages and nuclear explosions been so beautiful on the PC.

Nevertheless, after finishing the single player campaign I am left with a feeling that something is missing. WiC is supposed to be a RTS/RTT game but where are the strategies and the tactics? Pounding your enemies to pieces using artillery and air strikes before rushing them with, freely replaceable, tanks does not require a lot of thinking nor strategy. When the pace of the game is so high and the penalty of loosing a tank is so small, the most important thing you need to think about is the placement of your artillery fire. Flanking and other tactics which were very useful in games like Company of Heroes are not really necessary and in many of the missions you are not given the luxury of time to apply any tactics as Ivan keeps coming in waves.

The developers of the game, our Swedish friends at Massive Entertainment, have done a good job creating a quite fun game even though it lacks some of the tactical/strategical aspects of other games. Norwegian Rangers are even included in the game, however with a quite poor English accent and I suspect our Swedish neighbours are trying to make fun of us.