In reply to this comment by dannym3141:
Take bioware for example. Before they were 'bought' by EA they made some of the (arguably, but almost universally accepted) best games of their particular genre. Baldur's gate 1 and 2, neverwinter nights....


Forgot about Bioware. They're on my list as well. They used to be an automatic buy, but DA2... EA is poison to game companies.

It's difficult to explain to young'uns who were raised on consoles why old-school PC gamers are so disappointed in the current state of PC gaming. This whole backlash that PC gamers are "elitist crybabies" is just so tired. I have a gaming mouse and a 104 keys, yet many PC games are designed for multiple platforms, and, unfortunately, the lowest common denominator is an ADD-addled console player with a gamepad. The result is cookie-cutter dross that is only made discernible in its genre by the textures and artwork that make up its world. I'm not saying great AAA pc games aren't being made any more, just that there are so few, and this move by developers towards always-online DRM for single-player gaming (Ubisoft, Blizzard) limits my choices even more, as I refuse to support that bullshit.

I still play through Doom and Doom2 about once a year and have a blast every time. I'm about halfway through yet another run of Diablo II, and I'm thinking I'll fire up Planescape: Torment or Baldur's Gate after that. So many excellent older games to play and replay, not to mention the large number of quality indie games being released. I don't miss Diablo III one bit.

Not playing it how Blizzard intended for it to be played is exactly why there is such an uproar over the game in the first place. Everyone wants to have their way with their Blizzard game and Blizzard ain't complying. Yeah the DRM sucks but there isn't all that much different in Diablo 3 than any other recent Blizz title. It's a scheme. Anyone who has played any of their games since War3 knows that the games are multi-tiered so what at first seems like a simple, boring, repetitive game ends up being finely tuned & crafted in the end. By ACT III on Nightmare mode it becomes apparent and if one doesn't get that far into the game then they really shouldn't be giving it a review because they should just know better from the get-go.

It's got some of the best multiplayer aspects that I've had in recent memory, running relentlessly across vast floors trying to avoid pools of Hell, or encountering impossible zombie mobs moving 50% faster than normal. It's a lot of fun. Blizzard is a different company than they were back in the day, I don't like it as nearly as much as the first Diablo, for sure... but it's still fantastic. It's still Blizzard. Great mechanics - for what it is - better art direction than most games, great sound and the absolute insanity of it on the more difficult modes where it really comes together. Yeah there are a lot of things that piss me off about D3...

I must admit it seems to me like Blizz didn't give it their all on this one... maybe so they can make sure people go back to their cash cow
The levels are barely random, what the ^%$# is up with the lag? There is too much loot like Yahtzee said, the normal mode IS too easy, nightmare & normal are light/day... don't waste our time. The art direction is great... but not as great as I'd expect from Blizz, muddy textures, accesses the hard-drive too frequently, some of those "cut-scenes" are whack, on Hell mode the random encounters are more difficult than the main quests, no in game auction house? Why the hell is that loot popup menu always there? The story is dumb as fuck. But, regardless that is what the Diablo series is - not much innovation here except in chaos and mechanics and that is good enough for me. We can't compare every Blizz game to WoW... and that is exactly why D3 is great, it's like WoW-ultralite meets Left For Dead, nothing wrong with that.

>> ^Jinx:

A game about evolution that has you playing the role of the creator. Ironic.
It was also a very disappointing game


They dumbed it down to much. Originally, the procedural generation wasn't flat for creatures. In the final version, to be user friendly, they made it so that no mater how many legs or their configuration, you ran at about the same rate as any other creature. So there was no inherent weakness or strengths to the design of your creature, only the static parts you put on made a difference. The same kind of changes where made in all the modes, these changes are what I think made Will Wright leave the gaming industry. Such high hopes and dreams dressed down to sell games, and not to mention one of the most draconian DRM's of its time. (first game I had to call Customer server just to install my game)

>> ^Yogi:

>> ^renatojj:
I wouldn't want religious indoctrination in public schools, but isn't understanding the best selling book in human history part of understanding the history of western civilization?

The Bible is also the most stolen book in human history.


They need to install some monitoring and DRM in it to keep this travesty from happening. Why aren't we up in arms about people stealing this content? Food from mouths, how will we ever produce future content and updates....killing the religious industry by this thievery, etc...etc

*outrage*

Piracy, thieves, stealing......*shakes fist*

Tags for this video have been changed from 'fred wilson, piracy, sopa, pipa, drm, copyright' to 'fred wilson, piracy, sopa, pipa, drm, copyright, yarrgh' - edited by Fusionaut

This man has nailed it. Besides fixing the law for digital properties, the consumer needs a reason to want to pay for the content he/she is accessing or downloading. There needs to be some kind of real value attached to buying the digital content, and not just because "it's the moral thing to do".

A good example is a site like Good Old Gaming. They sell old classic PC games without DRM. The real value is not just treating their customers right, but also adding things like soundtracks and wallpaper. I could easily pirate anything on there that they release, but I don't because they are offering me good value AND convenience for my dollar.

>> ^notarobot:

blocked in Canada. Use modify headers to get around silly geographic silliness
or
use this link: http://watch.thecomedynetwork.ca/the-daily-show-with
-jon-stewart/full-episodes/#clip610145


Yarr, blocked in Thailand also. I tried your .ca link here, but it manages to stream a 30 second commercial only to say "sorry, we are experiencing temporary difficulties downloading your lineup". Living in a land of ubiquitous piracy plus running 99% of the time with AdBlock and NoScript has made me very impatient with advertising, DRM, etc.!

Thanks anyway for the alternate ideas, I'm looking up the modify headers solution now.

I wrote a paper in school about 12 years ago pointing out that piracy would be solved by customer service... make it easy for people to find and pay for your product and most of the people whose piracy constitutes a lost sale will pay you for the product. The people who continue to pirate when there's a really easy alternative (like iTunes, or Netflix, or Youtube) were never going to pay for your product. So it makes little sense to spend much money or effort on preventing piracy of media. What you want to do is provide numerous options for paid consumption of content.

I think it makes sense to target large-scale piraters with legal suits, but most DRM and copy protection only hurts the honest, legal customers.

I look at this video as these companies being fearful of "XYZ" happening, so they made it happen on their own terms, creating the scenario they needed to get enough fervor to push through their agenda.

Many politicians in Washington want us to live in constant fear of "what ifs", because it justifies their budgets and pet projects in those budgets. It gets people to say yes a lot to them, because if you don't <bad guy/thing> will win!

So their tipping point happens with 911, which is why so many people still believe there's a conspiracy to it. After then, all this crazy shit got passed through because we didn't want <bad guy/thing> to win, or they'd murder/rape our women and children and kick our dogs. And they STILL put forward these crazy ideas of what people could do. Like the pilot might pack a bomb on so he needs to be scanned, like he couldn't nose dive the plane while he's steering it. Or liquids, when clearly many small bottles of liquid just as easily be used to create a chemical bomb.

They want people up in arms and outraged and they do that by constantly berating you with the things they want you outraged on. On some forums you can't even go a day without a piracy discussion and how people are scum and ABC developer has to put draconian DRM in just to make a small profit, and how you should buy it with crazy DRM despite not liking the game or the DRM otherwise you're a pirate and should be in jail.


They keep you so pissed at each other and afraid of what other people are doing to you directly or indirectly, that you don't bother to suspect something more to it.

Because your neighbor is probably a terrorist who is pirating software to take control of the nukes to cause global warming so he can get free healthcare and live like a king on welfare.

Not sure what other hot button topics I could throw in there to make it look anymore crazy, but Im sure there are more.


Additional point, they are saying Youtube, megaupload, etc are piracy/copyright infringement tools. If they didn't own the companies outright when they did it, they BOUGHT companies who promoted the very thing are now slapping everyone for. How does it make sense that they can absolve themselves of distributing the tools people use, and punish others for providing similar tools? And my answer to that is, they aren't making money off other people doing it.....so Profit.

And now, other people are doing exactly what they themselves or companies they owned did 10 years ago, but they are making money via ads. So they are taking their previous "customers" by providing better tools, and those customers are making them money via ad placement hits. So in essence, they are already attacking the competition, but want SOPA to make it easier. You will essentially have to kiss their ass and police your network to great cost to yourself to keep from being shutdown by one stray byte of copyrighted stuff.

>> ^kingmob:

I still say the best argument to piracy is things like iTunes, Amazon MP3, and Netflix.


Agreed. Steam too.

Give me the ability to download the content I want without overly restrictive DRM and I will happily pay for it. Oh and geographical restrictions can fuck right off too.

>> ^sirex:

I must say i agree with him on BF3. I think i played BF2 about 400-500 hours. BF3 i've done less than 30 and im bored of it already.
Also the DRM, origin service, and web game lobby are all total bobwank.


I've had exactly the opposite experience...I have something like 90ish hours in BF2, but I have thusfar invested 96 hours in BF3...and at this rate I don't see myself getting tired of it for another 100-200. I'm curious as to your falling out with BF3...level design? For me Caspian Border and Grand Bazaar are as good as anything I played in BF2...and now we have the best of BF2 IN BF3.

Is it the change in physics? Can't dolphin dive? Can't spin like a top when prone?

I'm frustrated with the crashes, and they cannot be forgiven for that, but when it works, it provides me some of the most satisfying gameplay. But I'll admit...I know I have fun with it because I'm good at it. KD: 1.19, WL: 1.62, SPM: >380, and I finish in 1st, 2nd, or 3rd in over 1/4 of my rounds.

I must say i agree with him on BF3. I think i played BF2 about 400-500 hours. BF3 i've done less than 30 and im bored of it already.

Also the DRM, origin service, and web game lobby are all total bobwank.

Pretty awesome that he made all those charitable contributions. He seems like a good guy. And of course I love the DRM-free release. I'm glad the special is selling well.

Oh sorry, I thought you were having a conversation, not masturbating.

Now that we all know how great you are for doing the wrong thing even though you're kind-of-sort-of against it, maybe I could just chime in to clarify:

First of all: I can read as well. I know you see a picture from a bad movie when I post. But that doesn't make your regurgitated diatribe about intellectual property rights that can be found anywhere on the internet where there is a dialog about torrents any more intelligent or original than what anyone else has to say.

Second: In no way am I deluded about the concept of intellectual property. I did not ever imply that Louie C.K.'s work has no value. In fact, I called it "stealing" to download it. I also closed my comment by saying that I probably wouldn't download the show.

And I am not under the impression that just because I can't hold something in my hand, that it has no value. All I said was that it's "silly" to think that experiencing someone's comedy can be a crime. The thing about the T.V. is merely to point out the insubstantial nature of the subject. When I go to buy a T.V., I can negotiate sometimes based on whether or not it's a floor model or still in the box. I can't ask a website for a discount if one of Louie's jokes is bad. And with a T.V., I can keep it for a while and then change my mind. Maybe I decide I don't like it and I want to sell it and use the money to pay for part of the next one. Or maybe I've decided to go to Thailand, and I sell the T.V. to my friend Bob for papaya-salad-money. The point is, the two things are different, not that one is worthless and the other isn't.

And you know what the biggest difference is? Someone should not be punished in anywhere near the same way for stealing five bucks worth of Louis C.K.'s material as they should be for breaking into a person's house and stealing their T.V.

Third: Louis C.K. is probably a multimillionaire. I wasn't trying to justify my behavior as much as correcting Kymbos for saying that he wasn't. But now that you mention it: I see that you steal based on DRM and other issues, but (and call me crazy if you want) when I steal, I take into account the financial status of the person I'm stealing from. It might not justify my behavior but it helps me sleep.

Fourth: I steal download things a lot of the time based on whether I think they are fairly priced. I loved the original Conan the Barbarian, mostly for it's kitsch-factor, but I still own the VHS. When the new one came out, I said to myself "that looks like a giant piece of crap taking a crap." So I downloaded it and you know what? I was right. Fuck them. I'm glad I didn't pay twenty-five dollars for ten-cents-worth of soda, two-cents-worth of popcorn and zero-cents-worth of nap time. And all just to grant some Hollywood producer his million dollar reward to play it safe.

One of my favorite things I've ever gotten for Christmas from my wife was the Criterion Collection edition of "Seven Samurai." I love it. It's got this great cover art that looks almost transparent even though it's printed on cardboard. I think it looks so good because it's taken from the original cellulose of the title screen but I don't know. It's also got a great supplemental book, a great CD of special features and anytime I want, I can sit down to three whole hours of good solid movie. I think it cost around sixty-dollars at the time we bought it and it was totally worth it. Meanwhile, somebody gave me the latest "Pirates of the Caribbean" DVD and the ugly yellow text on the menu alone is enough to make me want to burn it for the insult it does to people who paid good money for it.

And you know what else? I doubt that if Louis C.K. were to meet me, that he would hold it against me that I downloaded his show.

I guess I've rambled long enough. I just wanted to make the point that the issues involved with intellectual property are complicated but the concept is something that little children can grasp. So it might not be beneficial to the conversation to write off someone's point that you might disagree with simply because you want to sound righteous. Especially when in the end, you admit that it's all just stealing anyway.

PS: The last book I bought was the hardcover edition of "A Dance With Dragons". I paid the extra money because I find physical copies more satisfying, and I couldn't wait for the paperback.

>> ^kymbos:

He that is among you without sin, let him cast the first stone...
While I may not align my personal self-delusion with Ryjkyj, the thing I find interesting about piracy is that we're all hypocrites
Spoco, to paraphrase you, you’ve said that it’s the Big Corporates ’ fault that you torrent specific products because they insist on controls and limitations, or are too slow. So what? What entitles you to immediate and unfiltered access to whatever you want, whenever you want it? They are artists producing that material, putting their heart and soul into it. Why do you feel entitled to it in a format of your preference?
While I sympathise, I don’t find it a watertight argument. Even those who refuse to torrent on moral grounds may be inhibiting the expansion of art. There’s pretty convincing data around showing that file sharing has led to more musicians producing and being paid for their art than would have occurred otherwise. By file sharing, you are participating in this expansion. By refusing to, you are stunting its growth.


Oh, don't get me wrong, I know what I'm doing is wrong, and I know that I should be providing those who make the entertainment money. And as I said, I do with movies... TV not so much, because it's that thing that I don't have much interest in re-watching shows. (Except Deadwood, we bought all of that on DVD, because you can watch that over and over and get things you missed in the beautiful cussing the first time ) So, there, yes I have a problem. A show like Fringe. I think that's an awesome show, looks like it doesn't have much life left in it, could do with the support, but what can I do realistically? I can't add to its ratings at all as I'm not a family with one of the rating boxes (one of my friends was for a while, was fun to intentionally watch 'good' tv to try to boost ratings ), if I bought the show on DVD it'd really be a symbolic gesture on my part where I'd end up with a bunch of DVDs I'll never watch.

Now, if they made the remaining episodes of it available worldwide for a small subscription fee (and hey, open up the back catalogue too so people can catch up), then I'd stop torrenting it and use the legal downloads (assuming they aren't DRM'd all up the butt).

So yes, I know that torrenting isn't 'right', but I try to do the right thing by the work I like. But I have issues with me doing it, and would like to be provided another avenue to do it legally where I can support the creators I like (without having to pay for crap I don't like). @Ryjkyj seems to believe he's actually in the right, and that's what gets my goat. People who seem to think you're only producing something if you can hold it or touch it. That's such utter rubbish.