It’s been a week filled with talk about next generation consoles, now that the world has been introduced to Sony’s PlayStation 4 (kinda) and Microsoft’s Xbox One, but not many people have thus far asked the question of current generation consoles. Specifically, how long more do we have with them until the move to the next generation is forced upon us?

After all, as much as we might say that we’re getting the consoles on release, we still have quite a large library of current generation games, which we don’t have when the next generation initially releases. This then means that a large number of us are going to stick with the current generation, at least for the time being, before eventually committing in one or the other direction; or both, if your parents are loaded or you’re just an excessive spender.

So then the question becomes, how long will we have with our current generation of consoles? Rather, how long will developers endure development on the current generation?

It stands to reason that a developer will want to get gamers onto the newer, next generation console, but the catch-22 is that they already have a large, established audience on the current generation. As such, they might be forced to sacrifice one or the other or cater to both, depending on the publisher they are attached to. EA, for example might well hold off on a full-on move for now, since they can afford to port many games over and support as many platforms as possible.

According to Blake Jorgensen, chief financial officer at Electronic Arts, who claims that the publisher will be supporting current generation consoles until 2017, that might well be exactly what they plan to do. This revelation came during the Stifel 2013 Technology Conference in New York.

Now, we already know that games the likes of Battlfield 4, FIFA 14 and the next Need for Speed are all being developed for the current generation, however even with that, the extra four years of development effectively extends the current generation console cycle to twelve years, which is two years longer than initially declared by the manufacturers when the current generation was once the next generation.

Then again this might just be thanks to EA deciding to develop games for the Wii U again, and of course the Wii U has comparable specs to the PS3 and Xbox 360, so it’s just a matter of porting the games over and tweaking them. Whether this — and Frostbite 3′s incompatibility with the Wii U — leads to buggier, less functional iterations of blockbuster titles in the coming years is anyone’s guess, but in truth I don’t think it matters that much since within a few years, most of us ought to have found something new to play with… in a manner of speaking.

Still, support until 2017 provides quite a nice buffer, but this is obviously just EA and we must wait a while longer to see how long other publishers aim to support the current generation before leaving it to die. In the meantime, I’m going to go and hug my Xbox 360 as the ‘break-up vision’ overcomes me.

Recorded: 22 May 2013

Welcome to another themed episode of the eGamer Podcast. This week we’re talking about the topic that is on the lips, keyboards and webcams of every self-respecting gamer or gaming writer in the industry, and then some. I’ve actually heard non-gamers discussing the Xbox One — although they did insist that it would be competing with the Xbox 720, so there’s that…

As a result of the more focused episode, we’ve not got the regular shownotes for you. Instead, we’ll just say that we had Alessandro, Adam, Azhar, AG, Peloma and myself on hand to discuss the Xbox One in intricate detail, debating every finer point of the next-generation console offering from Microsoft, and we also used a few links to help us out. Let’s call these links resources. Here you go:

Resource 1.
Resource 2.
Resource 3.

BONUS: Just for shits and giggles, here’s a few more links mentioned in the podcast:

Infinity Ward’s new game engine derps out.
You’ll be wanting to click on “I’m under 21″.

As usual, we also answered your questions. All of them.

Don’t forget that you can subscribe to the RSS feed so you never miss an episode. Enjoy.

Direct Download | Libsyn | RSS

This morning I had a quick stroll through Memebase, like I always do, and having not had the chance to go on for a few days, I was bombarded by pictures related to the hot topic of this week, dogs the Xbox One.

A lot of these pictures were the incessant drivel of arduous fanboys and cynical haters, but amongst the crowd of ostensible critics, there were a few gems. At least, I certainly thought they were gems. And so I decided to copy them here and share them with you all, you know, since there’s absolutely no other news coming out right now.

So we’re clear, I quite like the Xbox One and I feel that it’s more of a refinement of a near-perfect console, rather than an unnecessary reinventing of the wheel, as was required with the PS4. As such, I am definitely a six or seven out of ten, where zero would be completely against, five would be completely neutral and ten would be ‘shut up and take my money’ excited. I am mildly interested, then.

Definitely check out our podcast this week, which is geared specifically around the Xbox One, and features some rather contrasting opinions from the crew. Also tell us which picture you agree with most. Or feel free to share some of your own, preferably tasteful pictures in the comments.

The Xbox Reveal is now well in the past. We know what Microsoft had hidden under its covers and we’ve seen what it can do. But now that all is said and done, at least until E3, why can’t I shake the feeling that even though the console was revealed in the UK, absolutely everything appealed almost exclusively to American audiences.

But before we get to that, let’s talk about the name. Xbox One? Okay, that’s kinda cool. Different. Strange. Unexpected. But I’ll take it. It seems almost like a parody of sequels and reboots, doesn’t it? As if it’s that child in your average classroom which keeps making jokes, gets into trouble, and then continues making jokes regardless. In that way, it reminds me of Fred and George Weasley, from the Harry Potter series. So I’ll have that.

So that’s all great, but what about the rest of the reveal? Well, that’s where it all goes to pot.

Picture-in-picture television, NFL, Forza, Call of Duty, and fucking Halo… Always fucking Halo.

Now I was not unimpressed by the Reveal in its entirety, on the contrary I quite enjoyed watching the presentation from start to finish, even while listening to Azhar and Adam groaning away on Mumble. The truth is, I fully expected a home entertainment system which fights not just to win over gamers but rather anyone with a living room, who wishes to experience media. To that extent, it was a great success of a showing, which didn’t always show brand new stuff but did show cool new ways that they work together with the proper brand new stuff.

However, I did not appreciate how outrageously American everything was. I mean really now, how many people in the world are going to be able to enjoy half of what’s featured in that Reveal? Being able to switch over from television to gaming and back again is great, but will it work locally? Who knows. And NFL? Say what you will about the local fanbase, it is nothing compared to the likes of FIFA and Call of Duty. At least the latter had you guys covered, but then everyone knows that Call of Duty is huuuuuge in America.

And of course, fucking Halo.

I don’t want to talk about this for too long because chances are we’ll be spending a great deal of our podcast talking about it, when we record tonight, but I just wanted to get this off my chest, so to speak. Why oh why is the Xbox One so heavily focused on one region? One audience? What of the rest of the world, Microsoft? Are we meant to wait for E3? Do you realise I turned down what could have been an awesome evening out, to watch your Reveal?

Oh well. ‘Merica, fuck yeah!

[UPDATE: To further emphasise how focused Microsoft's Patriot Show Reveal was, here's a new source which confirms that the TV functionality will be US-only for the moment. Really, Microsoft?]

I love binary. Not just because it is the language of a PC but because it can be represented as exponentials of the number 2. This week we record episode 32, which can be represented in binary as 00100000, or 2^5. That’s 2x2x2x2x2.

Now go impress your colleagues and friends with your insane maths skills.

So the Xbox Reveal is done, the world is slowly settling down again and we’ve got a lot to talk about. You’ve hopefully caught up by now and know what’s going on with the world. As a result of last night’s reveal, together with life stuff (lol) we’ve had to delay our podcast recording by a night, but only a single night. This has the benefit of everyone having now watched the Xbox Reveal, hopefully, as well as giving us some time to really think about what was shown.

Now here’s your chance to ask us some questions. It doesn’t have to be about the Xbox Reveal, obviously, but we’re probably going to be spending a considerable chunk of time talking about it anyway. Failing that, you might want to ask us about other games, or something that’s going on in your life at present. Ask us whatever you’d like and while recording, we will get around to answering all of your questions. Just, keep it somewhat PG, please. We don’t want a repeat of the last two weeks, now, do we?

Then be sure to check out either the site, our Libsyn page or our RSS feed later in the week for the podcast, which will have all the answers and more.

Squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee[goes on for a while]eeee!

Ahem.

Confirmation has come through from Microsoft that your GamerScore will carry over from the Xbox 360 to the Xbox One — seriously, wtf is up with that name — along with your GamerTag and avatar.

So that’s GamerTag continuity confirmed, courtesy the company’s UK marketing director.

If everyone would kindly join in me in doing a collective, across-the-world, simultaneous, celebratory star-jump. In 3… 2…

The first brand new exclusive IP revealed for the Xbox One is Quantum Break, a very unique offering from Remedy Entertainment. You might know them for the little-known titles Alan Wake and Max Payne.

Produced by Microsoft Studios, Quantum Break will merge a TV show together with gaming, creating what Remedy is calling a “revolutionary entertainment experience,” which is, as always, open to interpretation. According to Remedy, “how you play the game impacts the show, and the show informs you how to play the game.”

The reveal trailer doesn’t show that much at all, in truth, but it’s still pretty cool to look at. Plus, a ship totally crashes into a bridge! Spoiler alert.

Check it out and let us know what you think.

A new generation calls for a brand new series, but who needs new series when you have successful, established franchises which aren’t in need of reboots in order to feel fresh and exciting. Am I right, Sony?

Welcome Forza Motorsport 5 to the world, the game every Xbox 360 racing fan knew was coming, and the obvious explanation for why Forza Horizon released last year instead of the namesake for this article. Check out the reveal trailer above, which is apparently gameplay.

Maybe it’s just me but that seems inferior to GRiD 2 quality. Still, it looks amazing and we trust the team at Turn10 Studios to churn out something worthy of a next generation console. What do you think of Forza Motorsport 5, from what has been shown thus far?

The Xbox Reveal, now done and dusted, ended off with a trailer for Call of Duty: Ghosts, Infinity Ward’s next big game in the long-running series which takes things to the next generation of consoles, and brings updated and fresh visuals.

Naturally then, we decided to start off with it. You know, because unlike Microsoft we don’t hold off on all the gaming until last. Just kidding, Bill…

Check out the reveal trailer above and let us know what you think.

Admittedly, I laughed at the mention of a dog in Call of Duty: Ghosts, half expecting Peter Molyneux to pop up and talk about feelings and attachment. And it does look as if it was made for the current generation as well, doesn’t it? I mean, it’s nothing really breath-taking, is it? Still, it does look quite nice and it’s a step up from previous CoD iterations if anything. So we’ll go with it.

How about you?

We’ll probably know by the end of the day, whether or not this shall actually be a thing, but on the brink of the Xbox Reveal which takes place later tonight, perhaps it’s time to look not only at the future but also the present.

The Xbox 360 in its current form offers two options for gamers who wish to experience online interactivity. The first is the Free service, which allows gamers basic connectivity as well as the ability to download from various Marketplaces, however there are certain offers and capabilities that are reserved for Gold members only. These include weekly sales and specials, multiplayer in games, and subscriptions to various services. To become a Gold member, you simply purchase a prepaid subscription and redeem the code, for however long. The cost varies depending on where you purchase your subscription but an annual Gold subscription averages R400.

Allow me a moment for emphasis: You need to pay to play online.

This compared to the PC or PS3, granted each of which have their own issues, which allow you to play online for free. Sure with both you have to deal with patches, firmware updates and all sorts of other things but eventually, when you get the game functioning, you can just hop online and that’s that, no further charges apply. But on Xbox 360 you need to pay for a subscription which allows you to play online.

It would be unfair to not also mention that paying for a Gold subscription offers certain advantages that make it worth the asking price. Things such as the ability to create parties, either for chatting and socialising or playing games with friends, which matchmaking prioritises so that you always end up in games with the rest of your party on your side, assuming you all fit. This on its own makes for a very competitive service compared to the PlayStation which went a long time without simple offerings such as in-game chat and the ability to play games with friends.

But that was before and now Sony are offering a far better service with their PlayStation Plus subscription which costs around the same as Xbox LIVE Gold and offers a few neat extras to the basic offering on the PS3, which mind you, packages multiplayer. So let’s get this clear: Regardless of whether or not you opt to get PS Plus, you can still play online. When there aren’t any firmware updates, of course…

The big thing about the PS Plus, which really sets it on a level higher than Xbox LIVE Gold, even with its party capabilities, is that each month a list of games gets put onto, let’s call it a service tray, and you the PS Plus subscriber may then download and play those games over the course of that month, entirely and completely free of charge, apart from your obvious subscription fee. You may play it for the entire month or for five minutes, Sony doesn’t care. But at the end of the month, you lose access to that game. Still, if you liked it enough you could just go and buy it (unlock it, whatever) from the PS Store or buy a retail version from somewhere. But with this system, effectively, for the price of the PS Plus subscription you could save potentially thousands of dollars per year.

Xbox LIVE Gold simply cannot compete any more.

Offering all sorts of other media subscriptions isn’t going to help either, with the advent of the Smart TV and all its bundled functionality. I do believe that if Microsoft keep going in the direction of making the Xbox 360 an entertainment centre rather than simply a gaming console, okay kudos for diversity, but they’re going to then add another bunch of competitors to their ranks, together with Sony and Nintendo (lol), and that’s makers of Smart TVs, the likes of Sony (again), Samsung and LG. And why would they want to do that?

Whatever, though. All I’m asking for is that with the next generation of Xbox, we get a better Xbox LIVE Free service, at the very least one that offers multiplayer as standard, and then a more beneficial and competitive Xbox LIVE Gold, which would give the PS Plus service a run for its money. Maybe monthly games, maybe hardcore specials, maybe some other gimmick, but something geared towards gamers, not media enthusiasts. Sure we in SA do have bandwidth issues which limit our enjoyment of something the likes of PS Plus, but that can be fixed in time with better infrastructure, and until then, such services can remain an option to us.

But wouldn’t it be the coolest thing ever to get five free games for a month, on our Xbox whatever-they-call-its?

Another day is almost done and my activities of the past hours since waking up form a blur of gaming news, gaming media, Game of Thrones and gaming lust… you know, since there never seems to be any time to just settle down and play games, creating the inevitable desire to do so which stays with you all week until finally, at long last, the weekend approaches and you get your chance, only the week’s exertions have left you so tired that all you really want to do is sleep. But I digress.

This is that part of the day where half the readers will stop what they’re doing, put on their judgement caps and start to proclaim their superiority over everyone else. Let’s ignore them, shall we?

On an average day, I would say that my life practically revolves around gaming, whether it’s writing about it, reading about it, looking at memes about it, talking about it when I find someone who’s willing to do so, and of course, playing it. In terms of consumption, a lot of my day is themed around gaming. More so than even that. For example, while writing about gaming, I sometimes opt to listen to a gaming soundtrack, or watch some gaming trailers between paragraphs. Sometimes while having a meal, I’ll watch a Let’s Play, Angry Review or ‘WTF Is’ episode. When gaming, especially grind-y games which can sometimes suck the fun out of the experience, I will put on a podcast and listen to it while playing. When I’m studying or need to concentrate, I swear by my beloved Skyrim soundtrack. There is so much of gaming consumption above and beyond simply playing a game or talking about a game.

The phrase, “Eat. Sleep. Game.” might well apply.

Even in other aspects of my life, gaming consumption can be seen. Every wall in my room is covered in gaming posters, I have shrines of games and gaming magazines, and of course, tattoos. Now I’m not trying to come across as boastful, I mean really, who would boast about such a thing knowing full well that the only responses one might expect would be along the lines of, “You need a life,” or, “Get a girlfriend,” or, “Are you trying to repel women?” These are of course the aforementioned judgemental ones, whom we’re currently ignoring.

Like Tyrion Lannister once said: “Never forget what you are. The rest of the world will not. Wear it like armour, and it can never be used to hurt you.”

So my question to you all for this week, is this: How far does your consumption of gaming extend?

Do you only do gaming news websites? Do you also do gaming opinion sites and other niches? Do you listen to podcasts? Watch trailers, Let’s Plays and vlogs? How about soundtracks? Posters? Tattoos? What’s your ringtone? So on and so forth. There’s no need to be ashamed about it. We are all varying degrees of obsessed about gaming, aren’t we?

Comments section, go!

Last week we shared the news with you of Electronic Arts finally doing away with its silly online pass system. This came on something of a rollercoaster day of good news, especially so for myself, who took this news so well because, after all, if you’ve been paying attention, I’ve kinda gone to war with Electronic Arts over online passes.

Two weeks ago I shared an article with you all about EA possibly shooting themselves in the foot with their online pass system which has devalued their games and led to consumers opting to rather wait out the initial release period in the hopes of a bargain a few months later. I for example, paid a fraction of the price of Dead Space 3 for Xbox 360, only a few months after it released.

Now I’m not going to presume to have made an inch of a difference here, nor will I step up and claim any sort of glory for myself, but I do want to call a hearty, happy, “Checkmate,” to Electronic Arts. War’s over guys, we’ve won.

At least for now…

Before I continue with this, I do want to sincerely thank Electronic Arts for removing online passes. I’m not exactly sure what it means for current games which require the silly 25-character codes, but I am sure that there must have been someone at EA who was thinking straight, either in terms of business or customer service, and I want to applaud them for that. It’s kind of like that meme about the worker who has an epiphany, which the boss then takes to heart and a week later, sees pay dividends. You know, instead of throwing him out the twenty-fifth floor window.

And now the conspiracy theorist in me comes out to play. We know that publishers are all about money. Electronic Arts took a ‘Worst Company In America’ award for the second year running in their pursuit of the almighty dollar, so why would they cede an inch of ground to consumers they know will pay for their systems regardless? Has the vocal outcry become too much? Has the online pass system come to harm them, as is my belief? Have they finally seen the error of their ways?

Or, and I’m just spit-balling here, is this the same as a Queen’s sacrifice in chess, where you give a little to get a lot? What if in future, we don’t just have an online pass in our games but, let’s say, an Origin Pass? Same basic principle of 25-character codes, only this applies to all of EA’s games and shuts out the entire game to anyone who does not own an Origin Pass? This effectively means that if you belong to a household with more than one person who plays games, each of you will require a copy of the game, rather than being able to share.

Sounds silly? I sincerely hope that it is considered too silly to be marketable, because if experience with the gaming industry has taught us anything, it’s that if you get good graces, you ought to watch out for what they’re not telling you, as well.

Maybe it’s just me, though. Maybe EA genuinely is looking to repair its reputation.

I don’t actually know which seems more farfetched.

What do you think about it? Let us know in the comments.

Surprise, surprise…

If you ask the ESA about game piracy, it will claim that there are some ten million illegal downloads of over two hundred games per month.

However a new, immensely massive, study has found that that data is inaccurate, by quite a long shot. Effectively, this means that game piracy is not nearly as widespread as the industry might claim it is. Is anyone really surprised by this?

Academics from three separate universities have gathered three months worth of data from a large-scale, open-method investigation into torrent downloads. They are calling this “the largest examination of game piracy via P2P networks to date,” and it has found that 173 games were downloaded by a total of 12.6 million people during a period consisting of ninety days.

The paper, which you can find through the source link, claims that there is “very little objective information available about the magnitude of piracy,” going on to state that the ESA is “potentially biased, partially due to the interest of the industry to reduce piracy and thus potentially over-estimate the problem.”

That’s kind of like when your parents tell you they’re broke to make you feel guilty, while they actually are not, as you realise the next time they go on a shopping spree with money that could have been better spent. Or when Nintendo tells the world that they’re running out of Wii consoles, creating a demand that shouldn’t actually exist.

Anders Drachen of Aalborg University said that it was important to remember that despite the lack of objective data, game piracy does remain a key problem. “First and foremost, P2P game piracy is extraordinarily prevalent and geographically distributed,” he explained. “However, the numbers in our investigation suggest that previously reported magnitudes in game piracy are too high. It also appears that some common myths are wrong, eg that it is only shooters that get pirated, as we see a lot of activity for children’s and family games on BitTorrent for the period we investigated.”

I want to add my own opinion to this and discuss it further but I think that would undermine the finding of the study, somewhat. Although granted, the study does not seem to take news servers into account, but it’s still a decent reflection of P2P traffic so we’ll work with it. Doesn’t it make you wonder what else the games industry is lying to us about?

Recorded: 14 May 2013

Now a weekly occurrence! Welcome to episode thirty one of the eGamer Podcast, certifiably the only podcast in the known universe which has Dean in it. We think… This week’s got the usual cast around together with a recurring role special guest, once again. We try to talk about games, end up actually talking about games, and then it all goes to hell. So, the usual, then.

Here’s the shownotes for this week:

• Peloma is back for more… we don’t know why, either.
• We begin with a sexy voice. (Not Peloma.)
• Poetry and gaming.
• Preview woes and Wikipedia pages.
• Exam time stress-relieving gaming and other activies.
• Game of Thrones, and the series’ progression thus far.
• Dean falls asleep halfway through… (And we’re not talking bout the podcast.)
• Meet Rhino, from The Amazing Spider-Man 2.
• Why Gwen Stacy needs to die.
• Azhar goes full fanboy with Batman: Arkham Origins.
• Why can’t we have nice things in our Spider-Man games?
• Alessandro makes a concerted effort to talk about games… and mildly succeeds.
• Our interview with 2K Marin, on The Bureau: XCOM Declassified.
• Cool movies to look out for in the coming months.
• Adam cannot name his favourite actor.
• Live long and scissor!
• It’s Dean’s birthday this week, and boy does he have plans.
• ALL the awkward silences.
• We discuss the Ranger Mode in Metro: Last Light, and why Tody’s opinions are warped.
• Who even plays in cockpit mode?!
• Comparisons are drawn to Metro: Last Light and gay marriage.
• AG is secretly his mother. (And should not be allowed to cut his hair.
• Cavie wants to colour his hair green.
• We share our ideal names for the new Xbox (which might actually be called Infinity).
• And now for a quote: “What the fuck is actually going on?”
• Trolling with microtransactions in Curiosity.
• Peter Molyneux’s great delusions of grandeur.
• We answer your questions. (Sigh.)

Don’t forget that you can subscribe to the RSS feed so you never miss an episode. Enjoy.

Direct Download | Libsyn | RSS

Of gamers in the world, there are many different types. Some play games casually; some play games more than anything else that they do, including sleep; some call themselves hardcore and some, such as the ones in this article, take their passion to entirely new levels of dedication.

If you were to ask me what the defining identifier of a ‘geek’ is, I would simply say, “Obsession.” Like that, there exists a sub-culture of gamers who are obsessed with gaming and proud of it, to the point that they will do some crazy things to show their passion to the world. Not hide behind a façade of socially accepted convention.

Examples of this range from gaming apparel — which I endearingly call ‘virginal assurance’ — to badges on bags or clothes to posters on walls to a shrine full of games that friends would envy to figurines and collectibles. I am guilty of all of these except for the latter, which I am working on. Sometimes, though, we make a… more permanent move. Sometimes we go and get our bodies inked, all in the name of our beloved pastime.

A few weeks ago, I was playing around with designs for a tattoo idea I have, and I realised that I’ve never actually seen an article about gaming tattoos in South Africa. In fact, I don’t actually know of that many people (nobody in Durban, certainly) who boast gaming tattoos in the first place. And so I figured I would attend to this, and draw some attention, no pun intended, to the devoted gamers among us. Yes, I’m also going to use this feature to show off my own tattoos. I never said I was modest…

I started out by getting our resident Community Manager, Sherwin, to ask on social networks if any gamers are proud owners of tattoos, who wouldn’t mind sharing images of their creations as well as some back story on how they came to be. I then asked some friends of my own to chip in. This feature then, forms the collection of what I got back from the community. If you would also like to submit your tattoos, then feel free to email them to Sherwin and I might well make a second article on this, effectively preserving your permanent mark, digitally, forever. Or at least until the internet dies a slow, agonizing, painful death at the hands of My Little Pony.

This Darksiders-inspired tattoo belongs to Jason, also known as PossesedclownZA on Twitter, who simply states that he is a huge fan of the Darksiders series (he has to be, since he’s got a Darksiders-inspired Twitter background as well) and thinks that Death looks epic.

Unfortunately that’s all the commentary he offered on his tattoo but given the epicery of the image, I think it’s fair to say that the picture speaks for itself and he said only what he needed to. Awesome, right?

Now imagine how long that must have taken, how painful it must have been, and how much it must have cost to complete.

Dedicated gamer alert.

 
 
Here’s one from a community member whose name so ideally fits the game he’s opted to have inked onto him. His name is Sebastian Stroud (cousin of Anya, perhaps?) also known as FLS Sovereign, and he’s got a Gear of War tattoo. Here’s his story, in his words:

“So I had this one done about 2 years ago when I was in Grade 12. I thought I’d get the Gears of War logo as my first tattoo because I really love it that much. When I played it for the first time I couldn’t believe what I was seeing on my television, the graphics, gameplay and just about everything were phenomenal! It was also my very first Xbox game and is still my favorite video game series to this day. I am part of FLS Legion (FLS Sovereign), the team that won the first official Xbox South Africa sponsored Gears of War Judgment tournament so the Gears tattoo reminds me that I’m finally an official Gears champion :)”

As if that’s something anyone can forget. Awesome tattoo, dude.

 
 
Next up is someone everyone knows, or should know, Glenn Alexander, also known as GlennZA on Twitter, who has an Xbox logo on his arm. He opted to share an audio clip as well as the following story of its origin, together with those of other tattoos:

“I received my first tattoo back in 1995. It is my Chinese Zodiac sign, The Fire Dragon which is up on my back on right shoulder blade. Then in November 2011 I won a radio competition on Good Hope FM which included having a tattoo done LIVE on air in studio. When I heard I had won the competition I immediately knew I would be having the Xbox logo done on my left arm. Why the Xbox logo? Well I’ve been a gamer for over 3 decades now and gaming is a massive part of my life. It is in actual fact a passion / hobby that I’ve now managed to turn into a career and lifestyle. In December 2010 I was appointed as one of two Xbox 360 South African Ambassadors so having the logo on my arm for all to see is simply just an extension of my adoration for the brand. Having the Xbox logo in plain sight is a great ice-breaker or conversation starter which naturally revolves around gaming. I don’t plan on getting any more tattoos anytime soon, however the 2upGamers logo is now calling my name :D”

And we look forward to seeing it on you, Glenn. For you shall then be known as Mister 2Up, which would be a commentary on both your gaming-event hosting and your performance as a male… wait, what?!

 
 
And now we come to my own tattoos, which are around two months old.

First, the Assassin’s Creed logo. This one is part of a larger design which will span most of my upper back by the time it’s complete. I initially went in to get my other tattoo done but since I could afford it at the time and had the design with me, I decided to begin on my back tattoo, which is something of a ‘bird of prey’ design inspired by Assassin’s Creed.

I’ve always been a huge fan of the series so it felt almost natural, to have a logo on me somewhere. Why not as part of a larger, more intricate design? After all, nothing is true, everything is permitted.
The second image is that of my first tattoo, which in fairness was only started about an hour before my second tattoo, but it was my originally planned tattoo and one that I’ve been looking forward to getting, for ages now. It’s no secret to the world that I am a BioWare fanboy of sorts. Granted at first it started out as a joke but the truth is, I really love the Mass Effect and Dragon Age franchises. Specifically, I love doing the right thing in these games and being a genuinely benevolent hero, because it makes me feel happy and fulfilling and [gets nauseatingly gay for a while] Krogans… so of course I went and got a Paragon symbol on my left arm.

In the Mass Effect series, the Paragon symbolises all things pure and good, always doing the right thing without harming others. In terms of Chaos, this would be the exact opposite, Order. It’s on my left forearm because, of course, a paragon interrupt in any of the Mass Effect games is done by pulling the Left Trigger. So naturally…

I have considered getting a Renegade tattoo on my right arm, not because I ever pick the Renegade decisions but rather because there must be balance (Star Wars reference here) and right now, it’s still something I’m mulling over. Apart from that, I have three other tattoos planned, which I will share in due time.

 
 
And that does it for the first part of these articles, featuring gaming tattoos from dedicated gamers who take obsession with a passion to entirely new levels. If you have your own gaming tattoos then feel free to share them with us, or email our Community Manager together with a short back story of what inspired it, and we’ll be sure to add you to the next instalment of this feature.

For the rest of you, let us know what you think about gaming tattoos in the comments. Would you ever get one? Are you perhaps planning to?

Little boxes on the hillside, little boxes made of ticky tacky.

I don’t remember the last time I walked into a gaming retailer, looked at a pretty box, and thought, “I must have this!”

Unless of course I knew exactly what was in that pretty box, in which case it wasn’t the pretty box that made me want what was inside it. This also says a lot about why I’m currently single.

Pretty boxes are created to attract people to them, and most gamers would be quite content to purchase a blank piece of paper as the cover of a box if it included their favourite game inside. And so, the idea here is that those people who would be attracted by the pretty boxes are either inherently not gamers, or prone to falling prey to pretty boxes.

These are the types of people who will pay serious money for a game that has an alien from James Cameron’s Aliens on the cover, because Aliens… and we all know the folly of that action.

Recently there’s been some discourse on the subject of game covers, specifically related to two games coming out this year which have female protagonists. (Incidentally both of these games feature protagonists voiced by Troy Baker. Random factoid ahoy!) I want to talk about both of these games in this article, explaining what the problem or issue was, and why it’s retarded. Because it is retarded, if you ask me. Which you haven’t. But… let’s just go with it, okay?

The first game I want to talk about is The Last Of Us. Now, while it’s difficult for me not to draw comparisons to I Am Legend, only with a white man instead of Will Smith and a small girl instead of Sam, that ever lovable female dog, I do remember what the covers of both the movie (spoiler: it was based on a book) and the book looked like. So when I look at the cover for The Last of Us, I don’t really see the problem.

However, the problem, apparently, is that the female you see in this picture, your AI companion through the game, Ellie (or: A young Ellen Page — seriously, why is Sony so hard for Juno in the first place?), was not meant to be on the cover at all. At least, not as far as the publishers are concerned. The developers of The Last of Us, Naughty Dog, had to fight tooth and nail in order to reach approval status, for that box art. And why? Is Sam not on the cover of the movie version of I Am Legend? A companion character who is more than a companion in a game (not sexual, I hope promise) frankly deserves to be on the cover of a game’s box. Because after all, they are as much stars of the game as the protagonist.

If anything, as my next example will describe, sometimes they are the stars of the game.

But before we get to that, let’s first note that eventually Naughty Dog managed to reach a consensus and Ellie will be appearing on the cover of The Last Of Us, which has pleased fans of the series immensely. Now I’m going to ask you to assume that you have no knowledge of what The Last Of Us is, nor what to expect from it. You are simply strolling through a videogame retailer and stumble upon this box in the PS3 section. How would you interpret that box art, and would it tempt you to part with your hard-earned cash for the game?

Be realistic here. I’m asking you to assume you know nothing of The Last Of Us, Naughty Dog or Ellen Page. Nothing whatsoever. What would you do?

Now let’s look at the second game, which attempted to reach some compromise between attracting newcomers and appeasing fans of the series.

Behold, the two covers of BioShock: Infinite. Side by side, they’re both quite awesome to look at, and both tell a hell of a lot to the prospective player. On the left we have the original box art that will be seen if you stroll through to your local videogame retailer, while on the right we have the alternative cover hidden beneath, for those artsy hipster types.

You know, the ones who enjoy retro post-modernism (that’s not an actual term… yet) in their gaming. You might be forgiven for asking why on Earth Irrational Games ever even bothered to do a double-cover in the first place.

And the answer is simple: Fans clamoured for it. Quite a nice reason, don’t you think? Admirable, certainly. But let’s look at the reason for gamers clamouring in the first place. Early on, when initial box art for BioShock: Infinite was released, many gamers expressed dismay at ‘yet another brown-haired, white-skinned male protagonist looking menacing on the cover of a game’s box’ with Elizabeth relegated to the back of the box. Now make no mistake, Elizabeth is the star of this game, through and through, but Irrational Games wanted to push sales and according to common publisher belief (perhaps they have statistics that prove this hidden somewhere?) having a woman on the cover, even when she plays a bigger role than the protagonist himself, is not how you sell games. So she went to the back of the box, instead.

To appease gamers, Irrational offered a second cover based off artwork voted for by gamers, which looks quite cool, I have to admit, if not for one very simple fact: How often does anyone actually ever look at their game covers?

And therein lies my reason for asking the titular question: How much do game covers really matter?

I mean, let’s think about this for a second. As much as I adore staring at the box art for Dark Souls or Assassin’s Creed III, the lone silhouetted figure behind an ominous background does look quite enticing to me, I’m not going to be looking at that box art while playing the games, nor am I going to look at that box art while playing other games, nor even while doing other things. It’s literally only when I reach for the box to pull out or put back the game discs, and that’s it. Even then, some people use disc cases instead, for spacing reasons. You know, the ones with, say, fifty little pouches for discs to slide into, that zip up like wallets for easy storage.

So why, praytell, do box covers matter so much to gamers?

We have established that they’re not meant for us, and we barely look at them. What’s the worst that could happen? An unsuspecting casual gamer purchases BioShock: Infinite and gets the ride of their life? How unfortunate for them, right?

And again I will ask, how much do game covers really matter?

It’s now past a year since Mass Effect 3 released to the world and taught the gaming industry a valuable lesson on fan engagement. But the Mass Effect series didn’t quite end there (had to) with a few downloadable packs releasing thereafter, concluding with something of a series send-off DLC entitled Citadel — which I still have to play…

But now that all is said and done, and Shepard’s story seems more or less concluded for the moment, the obvious question for everyone is, of course, “Where to, next?”

Well as much as I’d love to sit and share all of my ideas for the next Mass Effect iteration in the series which is now very much a franchise (I’d stake my paragon tattoo on it), I won’t need to just yet, because a few BioWare developers, who have previously been keeping quite mum about their future plans, have come out and spoken of their ideas for future spin-offs, in an interview with OXM.

Would you like to hear some of them? Of course you would.

“There’s so much that could be told in the Mass Effect universe,” said Casey Hudson. “It’s be cool to do something completely unrelated to the larger storyline, like a story about a private investigator on the Citadel. Or maybe something detailing Garrus’ time in C-Sec.”

Hudson wasn’t the only person in favour of a Garrus-featured spin-off.

“While being one of Shepard’s most loyal friends, Garrus has also had some of the most driven personal goals,” said Dusty Everman. “He’s a hero in his own right, as Archangel and beyond. Who wouldn’t want to see the further adventures of the bold, charming Garrus Valkarian (there’s a lot of guns out there to calibrate).”

I feel odd about the fact that I noticed he misspelled Garrus’ surname, being the developer and all that. It’s Vakarian, bro. (Fanboy alert.)

Back to commentary, Preston Watamaniuk said, “A game centred on the brutal Krogan combat with more of a melee focus could be pretty exciting,” to which we agree fully. Especially if it was set in, say, the Rachni Wars, or the outbreak of the Genophage, a battle ultimately lost by the Krogan.

Mac Walters was the next developer to add a comment, struggling to make up his mind on which of the various characters he favoured: “Aria. The Illusive Man. Kai Leng. Any henchman. The list goes on. I think most of them could have successful spin-offs of their own in some fashion.”

Some best left as DLC, I feel. I mean really, a full-length game about Kai Leng? Pass.

The final developer to add a comment was Mike Gamble, who said, “Following the story of Javik a little bit more would be pretty cool. As the last remaining member of a lost race, I think that we could tell a lot of stories about his adventures in the Milky Way, and coming to terms with his place in the new Galaxy.”

The next Mass Effect game, powered by Frostbite 3, is reported to be currently in development at BioWare Montreal so it won’t be too long before we find out what BioWare has in store for us, but I have to see, even just musing on possibilities is quite exciting. The prospect of a Garrus-starring game is especially high on the list of desirables, so too a game about Miranda Lawson, although that’s just a personal one.

What would you like to see in future Mass Effect spin-offs?

Not many people have played Batman: Arkham City as much as I have. Now that’s not some declaration of my totally actual gamer superiority or anything, but rather, I need to set the scene for a moment before I break all the rules and introduce the plot twist in the very first paragraph of this here article. Here it is: I didn’t fancy Batman: Arkham City at all.

Cue dramatic M Night Shyamalan twist music.

The truth is, I was entertained by the story and I appreciated the risks that Rocksteady took, but in my mind it felt like a Batman story a little too jam-packed with characters, much in the same vein as that Batman movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger as Mr Freeze, or: the bad one. Now that’s not to say that the game was bad. Not at all, it was actually quite good, especially being a licensed game. But it just felt so busy and disconnected at times, as if the story was some hindrance on your scavenger hunt to try and see how many famous villains you can find and dispose of, interrupted at various points by ‘The Joker’s Latest Trick’ which took you right off your path towards whomever you might have been gunning at the time.

And then in a strange contrast, the open world of Arkham City only went and felt sparse and underpopulated, almost under-saturated in fact, if that makes any sense, because an open world game suffers if there is no continuity in it and for the most part you simply existed in this world to fight things and solve stuff. Once you fight enough things, the things get replaced by more things, but once you solve stuff, the stuff remains solved. There is nothing else to do. Effectively, then, the open world begins to show its lack of depth as you spend more time running around in it.

Not that anyone cared since they were too busy gliding to notice.

But you know what? As much as these are my opinions of Batman: Arkham City, and they are just that, opinions, I still hold it up as one of the most ‘true’ gaming experiences that I’ve had.

It’s rare to find a game that you can consider a ‘game’ by its truest definition of the word. A game which keeps you playing long after you’ve completed the story, long after you’ve completed everything else, long after that 100% statistic has been reached. I don’t know many others who, like me, have completed the game to 100%, but I can tell you that every person I know who has, did not stop there.

That is mostly why I adore the Arkham series. They are not the most entertaining games you will find and they regularly dip between trying to be action, adventure, beat-em-up and sandbox, effectively resulting in some nasty amalgamation of nothing in particular, but they feel right. No combat mechanic is as satisfying as that of Arkham City’s. No exploration mechanic is quite as entertaining as being able to glide around the map, using the odd grapnel point to prolong your stay in the air. That’s what made PROTOTYPE so fun, as well.

And Assassin’s Creed for that matter. Another game which I enjoyed far more than most, enough so that I actually went and collected all of the flags, I repeat, all of the fucking flags, in the first game on PC, and still continued to play it. Perhaps this is why I enjoyed playing Assassin’s Creed III when so many others did not. For me it wasn’t about the story or the discovery but rather the exploration and the mechanics.

When you can play a game and enjoy the gameplay in its barebones form, without any story or other convolution, then I think that the developers have won. I think that a game that, at its roots, is an entertaining experience, is the best kind of game. I’ve recently played and been blown away by Far Cry 3 and BioShock: Infinite, but I don’t see myself going back to those if not for future DLC. But give me Arkham City and will happily play it right now, even without the prospect of new achievements or further completion.

What about you? Do you have games such as these which you find yourself happily going back to every now and again, just to enjoy running around in the game world and doing nothing in the way of progression? Share yours in the comments.

That’s right. This week.

If you had a listen to last week’s podcast then you would have heard that we’ve officially brought everyone’s favourite (and only) eGamer podcast into a weekly schedule, meaning once a week, every week.

Further, we’ve got a special guest once again this week. Recurring role, or brand new face, you may feel free to guess.

Now here’s your chance to get involved in the podcast. We want you to ask us questions, related to anything you’d like. Ask us about life, ask us about gaming, ask us about anything and everything and nothing and something. When we get around to recording the podcast later tonight, we’ll be checking back on this article and answering every question posed to us, within certain limits of decency — seriously guys, last week was a bit much.

Then be sure to check out either the site, our Libsyn page or our RSS feed later in the week for the podcast, which will have all the answers and more.

It’s a slow news day and there’s not that much to talk about, so instead of thumb-sucking some arbitrary video or story from some site somewhere, which has existed for months, I’ve opted to thumb-suck a comical image from a site called Memebase, which has existed for days. The image, not Memebase. That’s been around since time immemorial.

I’ve made no secret of my thoughts on microtransactions, specifically those found in Dead Space 3. I think the fact that they’re optional means that only an idiot is a victim if they opt to partake, and really, who is at fault there? Like how Steam’s primary point of sale is convenience, not games, so too are microtransactions a means to an end, not the end itself. What I’m trying to say is: You are not a victim of EA, but rather you’re a victim of your own idiocy if you indulge in such activities.

Now of course, in the ideal world we would not even have such things, since after all, whether or not we partake, someone else will, and then Electronic Arts, in this case, is the one that benefits where it ought not to. But then if we were a little more hardcore about it, then chances are Smith & Wesson would be out of business too. Only we all admit that: Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.

Technically bullets from guns cause haemorrhaging or worse and bleeding out or organ failure is what kills people, but I digress.

Here’s a quick anecdote on the situation:

What’s that, critics? Do I hear a collective scream of touché?

Share your thoughts in the comments.

Or: How Suspension Of Disbelief Is So Nineties.

Picture if you will, you’ve just arrived at a predetermined location with your ally in tow. Opting to look around rather than head straight to your objective marker, you head towards a nearby trash can and opt to look inside. Only you don’t look inside it at all but rather a small window flashes into your view, showing its contents: money and food. Without so much as a second thought, you decide to grab both, at which point the money magically appears in your wallet together with the sound of coin falling onto coin, and the food goes straight from the trash can and into your mouth accompanied by a few seconds of chewing. The meal is over in record time and you begin to feel slightly healthier.

Of course, this entire scene would be ridiculous in real life with so many things that are so wrong about it that it makes you wonder which fool would even consider doing such a thing. Yet this is, basically, a fair portion of BioShock: Infinite, which I’ve just described to you.

Ludonarrative dissonance is just a big and fancy term for something quite easy to explain. Which we’ll get to, but first, since I have your attention, allow me to use this opportunity to teach these words to you all. (Assuming you don’t already know it.)

Ludonarrative is the mix-up of ‘ludology’ which is the academic study of games, and ‘narrative’ which requires no further explanation. It relates to those parts of the narrative which are player-controlled, and so entirely reliant on player interaction, and is an essential part of any videogame. If you think of player-controlled narrative, think of exploring an underwater city and discovering audio logs left behind by various inhabitants, and you’ve got a better idea of what ludonarrative is all about. It’s about showing, and not telling. A golden rule of gaming which allows the player to do and discover.

Dissonance is of course a clash of some sort, which results from usually two opposing factors coming together. It can also relate to music but for the purposes of this column, we’re referring to games. Specifically, we’re referring to in-game presentation versus real-life logic.

When you put them together, ludonarrative dissonance is the error in logic between what is shown on screen and what you know to be true.

For example: Eating out of a trash can and regaining health in BioShock: Infinite. Ludonarrative dissonance. In-game, you wouldn’t once question such an action but in real life, you’re thinking, “what the f-…”

Actually that’s not quite spot on, see, ludonarrative dissonance, strictly speaking, relates to a slightly different form of logical fallacy. That of a conflict between narrative and gameplay. The term was actually coined by a former Ubisoft employee known as Clint Hocking, who in an extremely interesting blog post, explained how the first BioShock promoted the theme of self-interest through gameplay while promoting selflessness through narrative, effectively creating a dissonance. Somewhat ironic then, that it was BioShock: Infinite which brought about the creation of this particular column, on the same topic.

Since we can’t really redefine the term, we could probably call it something else. Perhaps ludonarrative befuddlement. But the original term works well enough, I suppose, if we take narrative and gameplay and put those together, then add in logic. So instead, we’re going to say that my definition of ludonarrative dissonance is a conflict between narrative and gameplay and logic. *

Let’s use some examples to further illustrate this definition:

• You’re fighting a war with your allies. You take damage while running to cover, but once behind that cover you simply stand there for a few seconds, and you’re magically back to full health. Meanwhile, you’ve emptied five clips into your commanding officer and he hasn’t yet fallen.
• You’re running through a nuclear wasteland, carrying at least twenty weapons you’ve picked up through your adventures. All in an invisible knapsack which carries that plus thousands of rounds of ammunition and a full set of bobbleheads. Then you pick up a piece of paper and can no longer run, from the combined weight of it all.
• You are about to climb up a ladder, so you look at it and move forward and magically scale the ladder. Neither your legs nor your arms actually grasp this ladder but somehow, as if willed on by the universe itself, you reach the top of the ladder while making climbing sounds, without actually touching it.
• Strolling through a massive city in the sky, you discover something that grants you fire powers for no understandable reason, but only after drinking it, not knowing what would actually happen to you at the time of consumption. It is never questioned nor explained, how a law-abiding citizen could be allowed to wield such powers.

All of these examples speak for themselves.

You know, it’s at this point when the differences between non-gamers and gamers become so dichotomous. And annoying. A non-gamer will instantly point out that you just took food out of a trashcan and didn’t get ill or fell from a height of 10m and didn’t so much as feel it, while you sit there asking them to just go with it, as if a suspension of disbelief is required in order to enjoy games.

Are we still in the nineties era of gaming?

Now sure, I’m not saying that games need to be the most realistic simulations of everything always, where if you get shot in the game you start to bleed in real life, but it’s been so many years and we’ve gone so far in terms of narrative, plot structure, and everything else that we can get away with doing in games. Why are we still running around in first person shooters without feet?

This is something of a glass-shattering revelation to those who seem to always ignore it, as well as a dual-role declaration of hope that with the next generation of consoles we might see less of this type of ludonarrative dissonance in our games. I want my character to do certain things that won’t require a suspension of disbelief. And I’m not talking about ‘aliens don’t look like that’ suspension of disbelief, I’m talking about, ‘guns have weight’ or ‘I can’t eat out of a trash can’ and so on. That’s not asking too much, is it? Certainly, it might lend some authenticity to games, if we play a first person shooter and can actually see our character’s hands and legs, or reflection in mirrors (which was the case in Doom 3, mind you) or just feel as if we’re tangible in a world, not just a floating pair of hands with a gun attached.

It might actually feel, after all these years, like progression.

* I just want to emphasise that my definition of ludonarrative dissonance is a loose interpretation, not the exact definition of it as set forth by Clint Hocking.

At the time of writing this (yesterday, if you’re reading this around publish time) I decided to head onto Twitter and ask my Followers if there was anything they’d like me to talk about. Cue insinuations over pretentious, egotistical nature. I have a venerable treasure trove of ideas but what point is there to just talking about things I want to talk about when we’re a site dedicated to discussing things as a group? So I asked, and here‘s one of the responses I got:

@cav1e does anybody really believe that the Wii U is a “next-gen” console? I mean, it can barely render CURRENT gen games!

— Ford Prefect (@Hiro_ZA) May 9, 2013

Fair enough, this should actually be quite a quick article then.

Straight up, the next generation of gaming is imminent and whether Microsoft are gunning home entertainment or gaming with their next-gen Xbox, you can rest assured that it will be a powerhouse in terms of tech, just like the PS4 from Sony. And so Nintendo finds itself in the awkward position of once again having inferior hardware but also now, competing with itself.

Let me explain.

If you’re a Wii owner who owns no other gaming console, then chances are you’re a casual gamer. Or you bought your gaming console (lol) for casual gaming. Maybe you have a family or something. Now in this situation, what exactly is going to persuade you to buy a Wii U? I mean, you already have a Wii, right? Why would you need something that plays what you already can play, and hardcore games as well? You don’t want hardcore games, that’s why you got a Wii and not an Xbox 360.

And if you’re a hardcore gamer, are you seriously going to pick a Wii U over an Xbox 720 / Nextbox or a PS4? Seriously?!

And so Nintendo have rock / hard-place syndrome, where it’s in an unenviable situation and faced with the prospect of gross losses. How will it handle this? Maybe it might make up for those drops in game sales with the 3DS. Maybe it might get some shitty ports of games releasing for next-gen consoles for the next few years, but after that, then what? Maybe it might cut off the supply of Wii titles, at which point it will gamble on whether those consumers will actually buy a Wii U or not.

A lot rests on its business decisions and with the lack of decent first party titles releasing for Wii U this year, and no showing at E3 as well, what could Nintendo possibly pull out of its bag at this point in time that will prove sufficient?

The comments section is ready.

It was a few days ago on Twitter, while posting my ninety-eighth tweet of the morning, when I noticed a tweet from a local online retailer which stated that stock of a limited edition of some game had been replenished and the game was once again available for sale.

Wait, what?!

I don’t think you realise what limited edition means.

Anyway, that got me to thinking and after trying many different ways to incorporate an Inigo Montoya reference, I decided instead to write an article about it. This is that article.

Here’s the thing about limited editions: They’re limited, and so they have an inherently greater value because of their scarcity. If you are replenishing stock of a limited edition, then is it really limited? Is it? Really? I believe what you then have is a collectors edition. And what do you even get in these limited editions these days, anyway? The obligatory artbook and some DLC codes?

Granted, I would kill babies in their cots for the full collection of Assassin’s Creed collectors editions which include the figurines for each game. I do so adore gaming figurines, or maybe that’s the perpetual child inside me. (Not a sexual statement.) Either way, I wouldn’t stoop to paying exorbitant prices for such collectors editions at retail because I could quite easily get figurines I really wanted off eBay or BidOrBuy, so why bother with all the stuff I don’t really need? I mean, give me a collectors edition with a figurine, a poster and a t-shirt and I’m yours.

What the fuck even is a lithograph, in the first place?

So while collectors editions are easily explained — they’re versions with lots of unnecessary loot because some gamers are hoarders — what of limited editions? We’ve established that they’re not limited, so what’s the appeal? If it’s being able to tell people you have the limited edition, then what version do you think they have? If all the world was an orange, then an orange would be the average, it would be mediocre, run-of-the-mill, nothing special nor unique. Likewise, limited editions with replenishing stock.

Now on the other hand, when we review games we get promotional copies of games. They don’t come with much in the way of documentation or extra content, just the game discs and a watermarked cover together with an online pass if required. Sometimes review copies do come with extra content for review purposes or as part of a review bundle, but not in South Africa, or at least not for us. (This is me secretly hinting at more gaming t-shirts, distributors, you know I love you all.)

But you know what? Only a handful of South Africans own promotional copies.

They’re limited editions of games.

Sure you can’t really sell them because they have the giant sign on the front saying, “Not for resale” — although that doesn’t stop people from trying, or indeed trading, grey areas and all that — which effectively makes them valueless. And yet they have more value than any limited edition because they are, in fact, scarce. It’s for this reason that I prefer to hold on to my promotional copies, when they’re for really great games. Oh, you have a ‘limited edition’ of Borderlands 2 with a gold-embossed cover? Here, have a look at my promo copy. It’s not much, is it? But you know what? It’s the only time you’ll see one of these and get to hold it in your hand.

Basically what I’m saying here is: promo copies are the real limited editions.

Quote me.

(Or Is It Pure Genius?)

I have the most sinister smile on my face right now.

You know, for a very long time I have defended Electronic Arts and their practices, sometimes opting to look the other way in favour of all the good they’ve done for gaming. (You may laugh now.) Then a few things occurred to me, a few more transgressions were made that were slightly less forgivable, and of course, a certain statement about DRM was made, and I finally gave up trying.

Like the bad parts of a person you have feelings for, sometimes it’s difficult to see them or admit to them being there. But once you do, then the floodgates open and suddenly everything they do begins to irritate or annoy and nothing is ever the same any more.

Hi Electronic Arts.

You broke my heart.

It all began when you introduced online passes but it seems that I get to have the last laugh. Or at least some pleasure in the past few years of grief. I forgave you for Origin, after all, Valve’s new terms of use for Steam necessitated that. I forgave you for bringing Criterion on to do Need For Speed titles, because you also brought on Slightly Mad Studios, one of the bigger development houses with a South African branch. I forgave you for micro-transactions, after all they’re entirely optional and anyone who actually uses it deserves to be exploited.

But my beloved EA, there are some things that I just cannot forgive. I still blame you for Dragon Age II. I still blame you for BioWare’s co-founders retiring. I still blame you for Mass Effect 3′s endings. I still blame you for putting unrealistic pressure on Visceral and Crytek to perform, resulting in poorer experiences by the iteration. I still blame you for defending always-online practices as “not DRM” when it abso-fucking-lutely is DRM. And I still blame you for online passes.

How ironic then that you fall to your own actions. So Dead Space 3 and Crysis 3 haven’t sold well this year, and those are your only two titles released thus far? Well now. That’s not looking so great, is it? Why is that, do you think? Maybe it’s because the games are so ridiculously dumbed down for mass appeal? No, that can’t be right, how can appealing to the masses not appeal to the masses? It must be something else, right? Maybe it’s the microtransactions and DLC policies of the games that have put people off? But then you’d be making more money per sale, effectively upping your profits, so it can’t be that, right? What could it possib– Oh, that’s right. Gamers have wisened up to something.

Allow me to share:

Ever since the introduction of online passes, the resale value of EA games has plummeted. I dare say if you own an Electronic Arts game that’s more than two years old and requires an online pass, you’re better off using it as a coaster because nobody will want to pay you actual money for it.

Dead Space 3 released brand new for R600, internationally. Crysis 3, for R500, locally. Today I can get both of these games for sub-R300 or less if I look hard enough. And it’s what, three months later?

No wonder publishers have gone to war with the gaming resale market. It’s the very same market that they have now empowered. And I believe they’ve finally realised it. Games with online passes have a horrid resale value, meaning that gamers are tempted to rather not buy them brand new because they cannot resell them, and retailers are forced to drop prices quickly to compete with the resale market since those who did buy the game brand new are selling it for next to nothing.

And so we have entered a time when Electronic Arts, in all its efforts to extort (and that’s really what online passes are) gamers for all they’re worth, have actually encouraged (smarter) gamers to hold off on pre-ordering or purchasing games at retail because why would they, if in a few months they can get the game for half the price?

But then I start to think a little more about it and wonder: What if the game sales are not as representative of total sales as they claim? What if, in fact, their ridiculously high sales expectations are just a means for them to confess losses, using the extra money that comes in to ‘recuperate those losses’ if you know what I’m getting at, here. It wouldn’t be the first time a large firm has done such a thing. And it certainly won’t be the last.

Further, what if they are making all of their money back with the sale of online passes? What if, say, a million people purchase online passes. Sure it’s not as much as the game itself, but it’s still pure profit and it’s undeclared profit, insofar as, nobody’s writing articles about it. They’re not telling you sales figures for DLC or anything online-related, are they? No. Just retail sales, and we know there are other channels for income now. I’d like to know, for example, how much EA made on micro-transactions in Dead Space 3.

Mostly though, I just hope that EA are making genuine losses. It won’t last long, of course, later this year they’ll put out another Battlefield DLC or something, and FIFA 14, together with the rest of their sporting title lineup, and they will make all the profit.

Oh well… I’ll take this as a small victory. After all, I just acquired Dead Space 3 for next to nothing, I have no plans to purchase an online pass nor partake in micro-transactions either. And it’s all thanks to EA and their ridiculous money-grubbing schemes.

The things you do to me, EA…

Recorded: 07 May 2013

Another week, another episode. And with episode thirty, we are well and truly into this adventure. The eGamer crew are out in full force tonight, and we’re joined by a special guest who managed to find some time away from Call of Duty to come and laugh along with us, as we endeavour to never talk about gaming, ever. The result is an epic win, with much ensuing hilarity in one of the busiest episodes we’ve done so far. Try and not laugh yourself to tears, we dare you.

Here’s the shownotes for this episode:

• We begin with questions. (PLOT TWIST!)
• Introducing our special guest: Peloma!
• Some minor echoing in places… aces… es…
• AG is the most dangerous Indian on eGamer, if not the entire world.
• Return of the squeaky Tody voice.
• Nobody really likes Superman… unless he’s played by The Rock.
• Dean doesn’t know where to find the podcast questions.
• Azhar wants to harvest all the organs.
• Even AG’s dreams are dangerous.
• We discover Dean’s version of Durban.
• A wild vortex appears.
• Cavie puts on his sexy erotica voice.
• (Seriously, sorry about the echo issues.)
• Call of Duty: Ghosts, and why it might actually be good.
• Peloma becomes the anti-Cavie.
• The Sims 4 is coming, and our virtual families are ready.
• Our thoughts on EA getting exclusive rights to Star Wars games.
• The new Wolfenstein reveal is a mixed bag, but thank goodness for Jimmy Hendrix.
• Metro: Last Light is on its way, and we want to play it.
• We take a few minutes to share how much we hate Assassin’s Creed III (sigh).
• Trolling with the Oculus Rift.
• Look out for Among The Sleep, later this year.
• Plants Vs Zombies 2: It’s About Time is our tentative Game of the Year.
• Comparisons are made to New Girl characters.
• It’s Revenge Of The Echo, again.
• Who’s coming to rAge this year?
• Our Durbanites talked about the DBNGamers Dead Island Event.
• We share a grand announcement — you really want to hear this.

Don’t forget that you can subscribe to the RSS feed so you never miss an episode. Enjoy.

Direct Download | Libsyn | RSS

If you type “define catch 22″ into Google, you will get the following as the result: “A catch-22 is a paradoxical situation in which an individual cannot or is incapable of avoiding a problem because of contradictory constraints or rules.”

A paradoxical situation. Contradictory constraints or rules.

Want to know what I think gaming’s greatest paradoxical situation currently is?

Half-Life 3.

Do you know why Half-Life 3 is currently gaming’s greatest paradoxical situation? It’s simple, really: If Valve were to opt not to release Half-Life 3, fans would clamour for it forever and they would ultimately be the bad people who left a devoted fanbase wanting, but if Valve were to opt to release Half-Life 3, it would most likely never live up to the unrealistically high expectations of every fan currently clamouring for its release. Effectively, in both scenarios, Valve is well and truly fucked.

Now I’m taking it for granted that if you read this, you’re a gamer. I don’t want any of that pretentious “oh but we don’t call ourselves ‘gamers’ because movie watchers don’t call themselves ‘movie-ers’” crap. Yes, that’s true. I’ve championed your cause as much as anyone. But it serves as a point of reference, or would you rather I call it ‘person who plays videogames’ each time? So. Gamer. Most likely if you’re reading this, you are one. Splendid.

Recently it’s become plainly clear to me that a catch-22 exists in gaming, related specifically to the gamer. Let’s call it the ultimate catch-22, since it applies to every single person who plays games, ever. Now a fair amount of you are already plainly aware of this catch-22, however, and I was surprised to discover, some are not, and more to the point, some are perpetrating this catch-22 without even realising it.

Allow me to explain with a personal anecdote.

A few weeks ago, I made mention of picking up and trying out Dark Souls but opting to leave it for a future period when I have enough time to dedicate to a two-hundred-hour game. This was not me quitting the game but rather putting it off until I could make the time for it. Still, this didn’t stop a few people from hurling accusations at me of being a n00b, a poor excuse for a gamer, a quitter and so on. Fair enough, I passed up the opportunity to play a really difficult game and people thought it prudent to be derisive about it. I won’t judge like they do.

Then a few weeks later I posted about finishing DmC: Devil May Cry on the highest standard difficulty (Dante Must Die) and mentioned that I was almost at 77,000 GamerScore and halfway through BioShock Infinite on 1999 mode and had hardly died, and you know what? I got more abuse. This time along the lines of me being a lifeless recluse with zero ‘real life score’ who only sits around and plays games all day, and why don’t I go and get some actual life achievements instead of worrying about meaningless gaming ones, and so on. Life.

So let me get this straight: If I claim that a game requires too much from me, currently, I get abuse. If I claim that I am really good at a game, currently, I get abuse.

Is there no winning?

You’ve seen all the memes and internet funnies, surely. Of gamers being hypocrites or never owning up for their actions, or what have you. I could post hundreds of them in this very article, but why bother when a quick visit to Memebase can do it for me?

It gets worse. There are people who actively judge others for talking about games they’ve played.

As an example, if you didn’t enjoy the same games they enjoyed, then your opinion is immediately inferior or negligible. If you didn’t play the game on the same difficulty they did, then who are you to speak? It’s just like those Halo 3 veterans who judge anyone who hasn’t finished every Halo game on Legendary, who suddenly hush up or find other excuses when you beat the games they challenge you to complete on Legendary (Reach, in my case) and still claim a disliking of the series.

And I have to say, although none of it is new, it is downright disgusting.

The damned if you do, damned if you don’t mentality ought not to exist in gaming. Suddenly everyone else is better than you always, and there’s always a reason why you are wrong in the way you choose to play a game. Play it on easy? Filthy casual. Play it on medium? You don’t challenge yourself. Play it on hard? You have no life. Play it on nightmare? How does it feel living with your parents.

Stop this, guys. Please. We’re all gamers, we’re all in it for fun, and for fuck’s sakes, I will get around to Dark Souls when I can…

A few weeks ago a rumour dropped about the next-generation Xbox which claimed that it will be always-online, among other things.

Discussion over whether the world is ready for always-online or not escalated to the point that a Microsoft employee took to Twitter to voice his opinions regarding the matter, and was subsequently fired from the company.

We of course maintained that if the rumours were true, Microsoft would be shooting themselves in the foot. However a new rumour has now surfaced which states almost the exact opposite, that the next-generation Xbox will function offline. Although in truth it does specify ‘single player games’ meaning it’s still entirely possible that some other games might need always-online to function.

But the thing is, these are just more questions raised without answers, just yet. And sure, that’s great if you’re the type of person who enjoys just discussing things with others and speculating over the truth, but there are people making some serious decisions based off these rumours. And why, when they’re just rumours?

The thing about rumours is, sometimes they can be true. And because of that, they are typically assumed to be inevitable rather than just somewhat possible.

Developers, publishers, manufacturers, all know this.

So let’s play two scenarios here.

1. A developer wants to prototype a product it knows will not be met with great happiness, and so it leaks a rumour regarding the product. Entirely true, but presented in the form of something to be taken with a pinch of salt. Then it simply sits back and gauges responses. Are there people defending the rumour? Is there a decent number of supporters? Is everyone properly against it? Will it succeed, should the rumours prove true? And so on. Then, based on all of this, the developer can come out and either deny or confirm those rumours, and they have zero accountability. Plausible deniability, friends. Imagine if you will, then, that Microsoft wanted to field test the response to always-online, so they leaked the rumour, watched how the community reacted, and have now decided screw it, let’s plug that hole.

2. A rival developer wants to pull off some espionage but doesn’t want to get caught, so it leaks a rumour about its rival which it knows will cause some trouble. The rumour could be entirely falsified but is believable enough that even the rival might consider it something to ponder, yet anyone with half a brain knows that it’s a bad idea and that the rival is playing with fire attempting to defend what is obviously not actually a thing. In this case, let’s think of Sony and their rivalry with Microsoft. Now what if, after the PS4 release, knowing that Microsoft was planning something, Sony released a rumour about always-online and Microsoft, instead of immediately denying the rumour, played it out to watch how the community reacted? Again, plausible deniability on both sides.

Of course, all of this is just me allowing my imagination to run free and I have no proof of any of it, I am quite honestly just posing a few scenarios that I thought interesting.

Nevertheless, regardless of what rumours currently exist, the truth will be revealed in just over two weeks from now, and surely enough a lot of people are going to have egg on their faces when their parts in the rumours prove to be unfounded. Oh, you defended the implementation of always-online and it’s not even a thing on the actual console? Well, you look like a genius, don’t you?

I cannot stress how much we should be taking rumours, shoving them into some gaping abyss and pretending they don’t exist, if for nothing else than for the sake of our collective sanity. And of course, for the job safety of Microsoft’s employees.

That should come as quite an obvious statement, shouldn’t it. After all, you can push a billion pixels at a time but if none of them have any real purpose or differentiation then what’s the point?

However I am coming from a slightly different angle, so bear with me.

I recently purchased a 23″ Samsung LED monitor which has two HDMI slots, so that I could use both my PC and Xbox 360 simultaneously, in full HD. Previous to this, I used both platforms on an older 19″ 5:4 monitor (also a Samsung — I’m a fan) which had VGA and DVI slots as input, but a console on VGA is like an athlete wearing body armour. Not only was my console severely restricted but having just the one monitor, the constant switching over at times was taking its toll on my hardware. Now with the new monitor in place, I have a dual-screen setup at long last (quite honestly like I’ve always dreamed) where the older monitor now forms the extended display for my PC, connected through DVI, while the new monitor is my main display. This means that should I opt to switch over to console on my main monitor, I simply switch on my second monitor and use that for other things, the likes of Firefox, Skype, Mumble or anything else. It really comes in handy when I’m following collectible guides or taking notes while playing a game (I do this, sometimes).

Anyway with the new monitor my PC now runs at full 16:9 1080p, which anyone with a half-decent knowledge of HD should know implies a 1920×1080 resolution at 60Hz. The refresh rate might be a bit low for my tastes, but it’s sufficient enough for allowing me a Full HD experience in my games and media. So for the first time, I’ve now been playing games at 1080p. Some games look absolutely amazing at higher resolutions while others, unfortunately, don’t. Some games are bafflingly laggy on my otherwise adequate PC, such as GTAIV which drags along even on low settings whereas I can play Crysis 3 on medium and BioShock Infinite on high. Badly coded engine or just a bottleneck in my system? I’ll leave it up to the techies to decide.

Having built my PC a good few years ago now, it is indeed showing its age, however what I’ve noticed across the board of games that I’ve played so far, trying out 1080p, is that it’s not the high resolution and therefore increased pixels on screen at a particular time that is important, but rather how well they are processed. To this extent, I understand that the bit width of your GPU is important, and so that means GeForce cards will always win out over their equivalent Radeon competitors, but I thought I’d explore this a bit more.

See, when I try out BioShock Infinite, I can get a very playable frame rate if I turn off anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering and set everything else to maximum settings. However turning on either post-processing filter severely hinders my frame rate, forcing me to drop other settings until I find a satisfactory frame rate. Now, the game looks gorgeous enough without the post-processing filters and shading and shadowing, both also post-processing methods, are still around to ensure the game looks splendid, but turning on these two filtering methods which have been around for ages now, simply transforms games sometimes. Sure there are games like Infinite which don’t suffer for it, but I dare you to try playing Doom 3 for example, without anti-aliasing on… it’s not that great to behold, by comparison.

The only exception to this rule seems to be The Witcher 2, which has a whole other setting called Ubersampling, which effectively runs the entire scene multiple times, with all other post-processing effects, to create quite possibly some of the most impeccable, hyper-realistic visuals that I have ever seen in a game running on PC hardware. Subsequently, it cripples that PC hardware. Seriously, turning that one setting on will cause a drop in frame rate that is as equally unparalleled as the visuals it brings.

Now my reason for wanting to talk about this today, based off of my recent gaming experiences, is that as far as hardware goes with regards to the next generation of consoles, and from what we’ve seen of next-gen engines thus far, the focus seems to be more on pure processing power rather than refinement. I think this is the wrong direction to go, because for all intents and purposes, we are in a golden age of visuals right now and while I’m sure there is a much higher potential for graphics, I’d sooner see the focus shift onto post-processing and creating easier methods for filters.

Think about it for a moment, even if you’re going to be gaming on a 70″ screen, if you’re doing it at 1080p — and this is assuming the game is actually running at the full 1080p, which is usually not the case — then you’re playing the game at a resolution of 1920×1080 at 60Hz. So why bother with hardware that can support, say, double that resolution? Why bother with something that pushes what will never be used? Why not instead focus on refining the experience at that resolution?

If your card can handle 1080p gaming, then surely it should also be able to handle post-processing filters of all kinds, so that we can turn on all shaders, shadowing, anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering. Hell, we might as well be able to turn on ubersampling as well. Am I the only person who feels that now that we’ve reached an upper limit, rather than reaching for an even higher limit let’s first make this current limit comfortable?

When I upgrade my PC later this year, I am not going to bother with the fastest in terms of pure processing. No. I’m going to look at what works best at 1080p with post-processing filters enabled. And we’ll take it from there.

It’s mid-life crisis time for our podcast and you lucky gamers get to experience it happening in real-time when the eGamer crew kick back later tonight to record episode thirty.

The thing about a mid-life crisis (I keep typing ‘crysis’ ffs) is that it’s a period of deep introspection and self-reflection, which usually brings about some sort of change, but not before acceptance is reached. Now we’re not going to get introspective or we’ll surely go insane, so instead we’re going to skip ahead and bring about a change. What is that change, you might ask? Well… it’s a secret. Kinda. Okay no, but we’re holding back until we record. And then you all shall know. We promise.

In the meantime, why don’t you ask us questions about life, the universe and everything? Hell, ask about gaming if you’d like… you know, if that’s still a thing we talk about in the podcast.

We will endeavour to answer every question posed to us at the time of writing and, oh! One more thing! This episode has a special guest. Can you guess who it is?

Let’s pretend nobody knows and instead, you guys can ask random questions for us to pose to our special guest, who totally may or may not already be known to everyone. That should be interesting, right?

Then be sure to check out either the site, our Libsyn page or our RSS feed later in the week for the podcast, which will have all the answers and more. Loads more. Seriously, you just do not know.

There’s very few places that I’ve been to where I can go in and immediately consider myself at home, where the faces are familiar and friendly and the foes are few, where I can just go ahead and be myself and nobody will judge me or think me the lesser person for it.

One of these places is DBNGamers, a more-or-less-monthly gaming-centric get-together which brings to Durban a camaraderie and sense of togetherness not previously known for the city’s gaming socialites. Even friends from neighbouring cities join in on the fun and games, from time to time. And this particular DBNGamers, called the DBNGamers Dead Island Event, was quite the same.

There were a few differences to the usual formula, however.

• For the first time since its creation at the end of 2011, we have our very own closed venue, reserved just for us. The Westville Athletics Club played host to a solid gathering of gamers and geeks, and was warm, comfortable and spacious enough for everyone, and that’s not even counting the massive sports field right outside. Here’s hoping we see more events at this, or other closed locations in Durban, where it’s just a whole bunch of gamers getting together and having fun without getting in the way of others or having them get in the way of us, as was sometimes the case at restaurants. Thanks goes to Mountain Dew, Apex Interactive and El33tonline for acquiring pizza and Mountain Dew bottles to sate the cravings of our hungry gamers. There was even cake!
• Another first for the event was cosplay, where attendees were tasked with dressing up either as a zombie or a survivor, to coincide with the recent release of Dead Island: Riptide. This meant that the event had a theme to it, and allowed many gamers to really show off what they can do with some clothing and a bit of make up. I’ve posted a picture below of the cosplayers present at the event, some who really brought the awesome. Special mention to Noelle Adams who came up with a modified Lara Croft cosplay she’s been working on, which I’ve endearingly dubbed Zombie Tomb Raider.
• Finally, although not for the first time but still awesome, and a direct result of having a closed venue, we got some games to play at DBNGamers. Now granted, I was holding thumbs for Metro: Last Light, but that was unfortunately not the case. However there was some Dead Island: Riptide to try out, as well as, probably before many others in the world, Persona 4: Arena on PS3. The games in question don’t really matter to me, though. What does matter is that we now have gaming on offer at a gaming-centric get-together, and that has so much of potential. Imagine if you will, some Guitar Hero, or Dance Central, or even a first person shooter which allows for cooperative. These possibilities exist, now.

Alexia Scotten and Quinton Davie were the usual suspects down from Joburg on behalf of Apex Interactive. They brought copies of Dead Island: Riptide, Sniper: Ghost Warrior 2 as well as that playable demo of Persona 4: Arena. They also brought other goodies which were given away during the event, to attendees. All while showing us some trailers for upcoming games, including Metro: Last Light, the new MotoGP and more.

There were also prizes given to the best-dressed cosplayer, one for male and one for female, and many, many pictures were taken. Unfortunately I lacked the decent imaging equipment for pictures of my own and most, as you can tell from the few I’ve uploaded here, didn’t really come out too great. Still, they tell the story at least, right? And those who are interested in this article surely didn’t just open it to see pictures only. Don’t worry, next time the imaging issue will be fixed, or your money back.

In all, though, it was a triple-win for gaming and DBNGamers specifically, as very little went wrong, if at all, and so much went right. With this latest DBNGamers event, I feel we’ve reached a solid point where it can only go from strength to strength now. Certainly if the venue and styling of the next event is kept intact, we’ve got ourselves one hell of an event. RPG cosplay for the next event, anyone? I’m going as Hawke…

Not to be confused with The Walking Dad.

A few weeks ago we told you about the standalone compilation of The Walking Dead episodic game from Telltale Games, previously only a North American release but soon headed for SA via European release.

Well now thanks to local distributors Apex Interactive we have some solid confirmation of both pricing and availability, for the five-part game which was voted Game Of The Year at the VGAs last year, and our own winner for Best Story of 2012.

The Walking Dead will be available at retail in stores across South Africa from the 31st of May, for R299.95 on PC and R399.95 for PS3 and Xbox 360. Now considering the age of the game as well as what’s included, you might think that the asking price is a bit steep, but trust in what I say: It’s worth it.

This is one of those gaming experiences that every self-respecting gamer needs to have, it is a quintessential journey through the lives of a handful of characters that every gamer simply has to play through, at least once. Have I sold it enough yet? Seriously though, I’ve been eagerly awaiting a physical release for a while. Not for myself since I’ve played it, but for those who lack internet to download the games, via XBLA or PSN. Now you guys get to play it as well.

If anything, we ought to pay close attention to this game’s sales since that might go a long way to fighting the Always On campaign that publishers and manufacturers are quietly pushing.

Will you be picking this up, come month-end?

When the THQ ship sank a few months ago and all its licenses were sold off, South Park: The Stick of Truth was one of the games which went up for auction, leaving the game’s future temporarily in doubt.

Eventually picked up by Ubisoft along with the rest of THQ Montreal, the Obsidian developed RPG was pretty much done with just a few more months left for development before the game was expected to release. Thankfully, Ubisoft have kept to this schedule and have now stated that the game will be releasing this year, as planned.

As far as a solid release date goes, we’re unfortunately not getting one just yet, however the publisher has assured that it’s releasing in 2013, so here’s hoping it’s the middle of 2013 and not, say, December.

Is this a game you’re interested in? Because I can assure you, it’s a game I’ve been looking forward to trying out for a while, now. Hopefully Ubisoft have had enough time with it to provide some positive influence. Obsidian, after all, do have a shaky record with RPG games. It’s been a mixed bag, shall we say. Here’s hoping South Park: The Stick of Truth is one of its epic wins.

Earlier this week we reported on a class action lawsuit filed against Sega and Gearbox for Aliens: Colonial Marines, claiming false advertising and effectively misleading the public.

You can get more information on the lawsuit through the link above, but right now we’ve got a few statements from the defendants, in which the words ‘beyond’ and ‘meritless’ were thrown around.

Naturally, both Sega and Gearbox are dismissive of the claims, with a Sega spokesperson stating: “SEGA cannot comment on specifics of ongoing litigation, but we are confident that the lawsuit is without merit and we will defend it vigorously.”

A Gearbox spokesperson added: “Attempting to wring a class action lawsuit out of a demonstration is beyond meritless. We continue to support the game, and will defend the rights of entertainers to share their works-in-progress without fear of frivolous litigation.”

Now I cannot speak to the validity of the class action suit in terms of the legal system, but what I can say is that from a gamer’s perspective (I miss Duncan’s column) I understand why this class action suit exists and why it needs to make a big splash. Some of you, in the previous article, were quick to attack the class action suit and dismissed it as typical gamer entitlement or silly because the lawsuit is based off demonstrations, but I think you guys are a little too quick to criticise here.

Let’s first establish that the embargo for reviews lifted on the game’s release day, a solid few hours after the game went on sale. You may read that as: when it’s too late to cancel a pre-order, and many have already gone out and purchased the game at retail stores, or online. Further, if you would take the time to watch this Jimquisition episode on Aliens: Colonial Marines, you will see that the trailer in question, which first showed off the game, is called a gameplay trailer, implying actual in-game footage that was representative of the final product, and nowhere is this stated otherwise. Finally, and here’s the big one, although Gearbox gave us Borderlands 2, they also gave us Duke Nukem Forever, a game that has been universally shunned as an abhorrent creation, but in the meantime Gearbox and Sega ex-employees have come out and stated that Gearbox used Sega’s money, given to them to work on Aliens, for Borderlands 2 development. A claim that Gearbox obviously denied profusely.

However even if that’s not true, it doesn’t take away from the fact that we were essentially lied to. And defending the developer by calling this lawsuit silly is effectively vindicating the actions of the developer, making it seem as if it’s alright to do this in games. And it’s not. So yes, the lawsuit is reaching a bit. Yes, we could have done without it. And yes, this thing might never actually last a day in court. But you know what? Every day it’s around is another day that people are being made aware that developers are accountable for their actions, and for me that’s a win.

By all means, let us know what you think in the comments.

Sometimes when the stars are aligned and the moon is at just the right position above the Earth, we at eGamer experience something transcendental in our staff emails. All trolling ceases and is replaced by coherent, well-structured discussion over this, that or the other topic.

Sometimes we think it’s interesting enough to share it with everyone, and so we have the reason for this article’s creation.

Some background: It all began when our Community Manager, Sherwin, emailed a link to the new Watch Dogs trailer, which then got Azhar and I talking, in what started as a discussion focused around my weariness towards Watch Dogs and moved on to such topics as open world games in general, game stories and player choice, and finally, how on Earth I play games as a completionist who has no time to be a completionist. It was all so interesting that our self-proclaimed ‘Executive Editor’ presiding officer of all things eGamer, Dean, figured it would make for an equally interesting article. At the risk of tooting our own horn, so to speak, I second that notion, and since he’s currently unavailable due to “studying for exams” and stuff, I figured I’d take the liberty of posting the email discussion on his behalf.

What follows is the thread of replies to an email with the trailer linked above, which you can watch through that link. Each reply is copied more or less verbatim, and I’m going to try my best to make this as neat and legible as possible in an article format. As you can tell by now, it’s also quite a long read, coming in at 4,400+ words. This means you should definitely set aside some time, or take this in parts, but we promise it’ll be worth it. Here goes:

Cavie said…

I’m worried about this game. Ubisoft does not do open world games well enough, in my opinion. I will most likely play it and love it, but I expect a glitchy experience. Nothing can convince me otherwise, as pretentious as that might sound. Still looking forward to it, though, don’t get me wrong. But it’s like a dad awaiting the birth of their child, knowing there’s a high chance that child will grow up to become a junkie, or a whore, or worse… a Halo player. But more like a forgone conclusion. I mean, I have never played an Assassin’s Creed game for example, that wasn’t glitched in ways, but I still enjoyed the overall experience each time. That sort of thing…

Tody said…

But you loved Assassin’s Creed III….so why would you be worried?

The part I completely agree with you though is that Ubisoft don’t do open world games well. But I think for different reasons, and that’s because they don’t know how to do meaningful variety (at least from AC’s perspective) and fill a world with interesting, important things. Like Batman: Arkham City. Quality over quantity. Or BioShock Infinite. Of course I know it’s not open world, but it’s filled with a whole lot of things you wouldn’t call “necessary”, yet make the entire game so much more awesome.

Ever since Patrice, the design for AC has just been “throw a shit-lot in there and hope it works”. Terrible structure post-AC2.

Cavie said…

Aaaaaaaand debate:

I would hardly call BioShock Infinite a world with lots to do. Let’s see. I can explore and collect things from bins and abandoned stores, or I can move through an area with tears and fight things, usually sticking to just one or two tears because the others don’t help me based on where I am in that fight. There is also the odd optional area (three in total, through the game) where I must find an object later in the level and then return to an area to interact with another object and get a reward for it. Not exactly the height of keeping a player busy, but to its credit the story does that well enough already.

Further, I think that Arkham City was actually a case of quantity over quality, to the point that the sparse world of Arkham City felt oversaturated at times, and completely devoid of interaction at others. You meet how many super criminals in the world? Loads, right? But what purpose do any of them serve apart from distracting you for a short while? If you give them all your attention, you can be done with them in a matter of hours. Only the Riddler trophies will take you a while (I’m thinking tens of hours, here). And if you collected all the Riddler trophies, good on you, most of them only needed specific gadgets, not much else (although granted some required solid forethought) but what if you opted out of that because you don’t like playing the completionist? What do you have then? Random minions to beat up and a large world to glide around in. That’s about it.

With the Assassin’s Creed games, I have glitched in and out of the world on horseback from the very first game, and in cities which are still open world but somewhat less so than say, the kingdom areas of the first game, or the open area in AC3 the name of which I cannot suddenly recall, I have had a decent amount of things to do when not watching things appear and disappear before my eyes, or being hounded by those annoying beggars. In AC3 you might argue that the activities weren’t as necessary, sure, but I did them anyway. I got up to every view point, I collected glyphs where they were applicable, I bought shops and upgraded them where that applied, and so on. I went and liberated dens and forts. There actually was quite a bit to do, over and above the story itself. Fuck, some times I would get over the story in whichever game and go and collect feathers or flags. It was all up to my whims.

This game holds that potential, however I feel that Ubisoft enjoy showing us what they know will excite us, while hiding away certain truths. As an example, the first showings of AC made it look like an epic stealth action game, whereas the final product was hailed as a boring title by many, because it was just the same things over and over again. I liked that, others didn’t. Unfortunately, I haven’t picked up the latest Driver title so I don’t know how well that open world was done, however I have played prior titles, so I have yet more experience there.

I do remain hopeful, though. I just watch all these trailers and deep down, clench my heart and pray that what I see is exactly what I get…

Tody said…

For BioShock infinite, I wasn’t talking about lots to do. I was talking about a world that you want to explore. There’s hardly much repetitive about the world and its content. AC3 was an open world game, and I barely wanted to see what’s in the world. That’s all down to design. It wasn’t that BioShock had much to do, but it had PLENTY to see and discover, that you wanted to discover. AC3 had plenty, but collecting pages was hardly enticing.

Hmm, Arkham City offered New Game+, Riddler Challenges, Challenge maps, so I don’t think there’s much to debate about quantity. But within the actual game itself, for the Bat-nerd like myself, the cameos and side missions were very interesting to explore your first time around, and they added quite some intrigue to the game in the same way that the “Truth/Glyphs” and Altair’s armour added intrigue to AC2. That’s what I mean basically. Things in the world that make you want to explore it and stay there.

Maybe it’s just us, but out of the gamers I interact with, none could really tell me anything from AC3 that kept them invested in the world or interested to see it.

Hmm, with Assassin’s Creed I feel a lot of that plays to your natural tendency to be a completionist. But I’d like to ask how much value did you really get from those sorts of things? If we exclude achievements, I felt there was a bit too little reward or value to do anything really. But you did say in our last debate about it that sometimes not everything needs a point, and I can understand that, although I prefer to have meaningful variety over just “a bunch of stuff’”. Like bombs.

Fair play, there’s two ways to look at it.

I loved AC1 as well. I felt the story carried it through whenever the gameplay didn’t, and the actual assassination levels were masterfully executed. The build-up really did make them feel meaningful and great. I miss that.

i always found your glitch experience with AC interesting haha, I had the most glitches in AC3, then AC1. AC2 played smoothly, and AC: B was quite solid, as was Revelations. AC3 was the worst.

I think you’re right about Watch Dogs, it’s basically all hype now. But that will change at E3 hopefully when they show off an extended gameplay section.

I think I want to do that hype/avoid disappointment feature now :P

Cavie said…

It’s interesting, I mean, we talk about a game where completion doesn’t really have much of a reward or effect, only we’re talking about a game. A game, meaning something where one could argue, neither does the content itself. It might seem instantly disagreeable since you come out with entertainment, immersion and an appreciation of what you’ve played, sure, but work with me for a moment:

A completionist such as myself or Marko will play a game to death, until we’re done with it. We will search out and explore every crevasse, cupboard or closet until there is nothing left to explore. When we achieve a game’s 100% completion statistic, there is this overwhelming sense of accomplishment and joy, that we might finally resume our lives, or in some cases, wonder what we did before we picked up that game. There are obvious exceptions to this rule, however they number in a minority.

Now your argument is that completion doesn’t bring reward, but it kinda does when you factor in a sense of achievement, actual achievements as well, and that relief when a game is truly complete. Not just the story mode, no, you’ve given a game your all. You’ve played it for all it’s worth. This is why I get upset when gamers criticise games where they go, “I played through half the story and it’s shit! What? What collectibles?” You’ve paid real money for your games, or whatever, maybe you got a review copy, but you won’t give it a chance? Granted not every game deserves a chance. Some games are of course beyond redemption, case in point Blackwater, which I gave three hours of my time before deciding there was nothing else the game could offer me that was worth my sanity. However in other games, even some that underwhelmed me (Halo Reach) or actually angered me (ironically, RAGE), I felt a need to continue onwards and by the end I felt better about it, knowing that I had justified my purchase and maximised my experience.

So completion does in fact have a reward. Sure it’s not as tangible as defeating the Riddler in Arkham City, or getting Altair’s armour in AC2, but it’s a different sort of reward, exactly the same as the one you get by playing games in the first place. The way I see it then, the criticism of game completion contrasts directly with gaming as a whole since you are calling out one person for feeling exactly the way you feel, only about a different aspect of a game. It’s a case of “I’ve finished a game” versus “I’ve finished a game’s story”.

Of course, none of this actually matters in the discussion about Watch Dogs except for this very simple question: How much can you think of in a GTA-like world with hacking, that you would consider to be worthy of exploration?

It might well be the case that we get a decent amount of exploration, such as with Sleeping Dogs where for some odd reason I really WANTED to go out and collect everything, or it might be a simpler case where it’s a populated but ultimately sparse world, where you are tasked with finding certain individuals to fulfill a certain quota or unlock mysteries a la web of intrigue in PROTOTYPE.

Sometimes as you well know, it’s not a case of what a developer shows us but rather what they don’t. That’s the long and short of my… let’s call it apprehension.

As for Assassin’s Creed III, I played through the story and always did the optional objectives. Not only did it look ugly when I couldn’t successfully complete an optional objective, but it obviously affected a later achievement. Effectively, this was just me challenging myself with each mission. Do X a certain way. Done. Most of the optional objectives actually aided the experience quite a bit, where I could have just walked up to a target and stabbed him but instead I snuck through bushes, climbed into a haycart, whistled to get a guard’s attention away from an area, snuck into that area and climbed a tree, progressed along trees and finally fell onto my target’s head with a blade, having not been alerted nor killed anyone. Dishonored style. It was rewarding and made me feel like a badass, at times. With regards to other collectibles, I mean, the only thing that really felt like work was revealing the entire map, because it required me to literally cover all that ground on foot, which as you can imagine, took a while. Hunting and completing the Encyclopaedia of the Common Man were both activities I did in between Homestead missions, each time I returned there. It was absolutely painless for the most part, and when it came to grind-y sections, where boredom threatened to take over, I put on a podcast and listened to it while playing, and any hints of boredom disappeared.

I would probably say that gaming is as much what you put into it as what you expect to get out of it.

In my case, I put in a lot and expect little.

Anyway coming back to Watch Dogs and how it could possibly learn from AC3 and Driver, I think the enemy of the open world is choice. Surprisingly. It’s when you offer alternatives that the player experience tends to differ. Not many people criticise BioShock Infinite’s ending, even though it’s quite controversial, yet how many criticised Mass Effect 3′s? Why? Because “choices don’t matter lol” etc. When you take Watch Dogs and offer players multiple ways to approach a situation, I’m betting that nine times out of ten, the player is going to either thumbsuck or take the easiest possible way. And why not? You will get the few such as myself who opt for a challenge and try to, for example, not kill anyone or not get detected or only interact with the target, etc etc. But if you give A, B, and C routes to a person, most of the time they will take the shortest, easiest one, because that’s human functionality. Effectively then, you’ve gone and convoluted your game with other options that nobody can take, and it ends up looking like fluff. Ubisoft are going to need to address that, or force more linear possibilities and take the inevitable criticism that comes with an open world experience lacking in choices. But Sleeping Dogs did it effectively, so it is possible.

HOLY SHIT I COMPLETELY DISMISSED FAR CRY 3.

Okay… I feel loads better about Watch Dogs now.

Tody said…

Good read all of that. I enjoyed it.

I was mainly asking because I read your column, and I’ve seen that you’ve had very little time for games as of late and maybe felt you were “giving up” core gaming, and it just got me wondering. I may not care about achievements, but I don’t shun them. I wasn’t arguing that achievements have no reward, I was talking about AC3 as an isolated example. Not just personal reward, but game reward I guess. I just can’t see myself giving that much time to a game, as I want to play everything and time is very little, as you’re experiencing this semester (according to your column) when priorities shift and new challenges come.

So when I sit down to play, I really want something meaningful and good. Not something that I have to invest a whole lot in to get something perhaps not worth the effort.

I look at it like my studies actually. It’s really not worth the effort to kill myself studying to get high marks for certain subjects (like Ecos or something I do once and never again), so I settle for 60s and even 50s in those cases, as long as I pass comfortably. Because the journey isn’t worth the end result (everything else I have to give up), especially with time as a factor.

Of course it’s different for everyone, and there may be so much value for you in completing a game. But I was very curious to see how you (a completionist) would be handling it now that you perhaps don’t have the time (or rather prefer not to make the time because there’s other things you need/want to do) to complete every game you play.

As for Mass Effect versus BioShock, you really can’t compare that because BioShock Infinite wasn’t personal. Player had no control. Mass Effect’s was just faulted writing, where BioShock Infinite had better execution.

I’d like to type a lot about Watch Dogs and good open world design, but then my email would become unreadable (in b4 it already is).

Mebe podcast debate that.

Cavie said…

It’s interesting, I mean, on the one side I still want to play every game I can get my hands on, but on the other side, I know that I’m not going to be able to dedicate enough time to a game that asks for tens of hours from me, any more. A friend who commented on my column called it ‘mid-core’ where you want to play good experiences, not just casual games, but you cannot afford to spend hundreds of hours in a game. I have all the Skyrim DLC now, but I dare not start any of it until I am sure that I have all the time in the world to play the game.

If you look at previous games I 100% completed, I started ACIII during my study break in October / November and played it through some of my exams and it took me around three weeks to 100%. Far Cry 3 took me all of a few days because I was relentless, it being the Christmas period where I didn’t even need to do articles or anything. DmC, I still have a few more achievements for but I’ve acquired all collectibles and unlocked all difficulties (I just need to finish the game on Hell and Hell now) and then Adam wanted to borrow the game so I lent it to him. It seems that if I borrow a game, my propensity for 100%’ing is somewhat diminished, or rather dictated by time. I borrowed Hitman: Absolution and left a few achievements still locked because I didn’t want to keep the dude’s game forever.

As far as my current living state goes, BioShock Infinite took me all of three weeks, but would have taken me far less time if I obviously had more time to myself. I played through the game in three days, I think, while I was home with the chicken pox and so had nothing else to do besides articles, and then the second playthrough took a bit longer. I managed to complete 1999 Mode and get all collectibles with a very helpful guide courtesy Rudolf via Marko.

Tonight or tomorrow, I’ll probably start up Dead Space 3 or force myself to play more Dark Souls, because that’s game I have borrowed for far too long. Another game which will take hundreds of hours of my life away, that I just don’t have to give any more.

Anyway, I think that’s enough about completionism.

I do feel that it’s obviously different per person and a lot of what you take away from your experience of a game is dependant on who you are as a person. If you enjoy cheap thrills and instant gratification, if you long for an escape from your real life, if you owe more than just your entertainment to gaming, and so on. In my case, I grew up playing games and from a young age, I have had equal amounts of fascination and respect which have afforded me an understanding of games and how they work. It’s how, for example, I know that a game is just tricking me into doing something with clever placement of objects, or something to that effect. In any case, this then allows me to experience games basically half based on what they give me, and half based on how much I give the game.

I think the lack of time is not going to make me rush through games but rather put off games a lot because if I start it, I’ll want to 100% it, but if I don’t, or if I procrastinate, then I get away with it for the moment.

As for the Mass Effect / BioShock example, I actually think that you’re interpreting things more the way you want to, here, than the way I meant it. You could argue that in Mass Effect 3, the player had minimal control over the story and while it might have felt as if it was theirs, the truth is, it was BioWare’s story to tell and they just gave you some branching choices to make you feel involved. Likewise, BioShock Infinite poses you Irrational’s story, with equally minimal control on the player’s part except for a few meaningless choices. Clever, hey? That little metaphor. In both cases the story hits you hard, and in both cases you play other people. Granted in one you can actually see the person.

I’m actually interested in talking about Watch Dogs some more, but I know that you guys will probably be like, “Just shut up and let Ubisoft talk about it more when they want to, your discussion is pointless right now.” So fair enough. :P

Tody said…

I’d love to talk a lot about Watch Dogs, but I feel that would make for a good podcast discussion. We could really talk a lot about open world and that, and I feel the discussion would be all used up in this email. It’s something interesting to talk about now where there’s barely anything to chat about. So it’s not a case of waiting for Ubisoft so much that it’s “I want to bank this, it could be great”.

For Mass Effect/BioShock, true that you don’t really dictate the entire story, but I think to the player it feels very personal because you create your own character, romance your choice, (the fact that you actually make choices matters a lot to the player) and characters live or die through games depending on how you play.

But if we take a step away from the actual game itself, the outrage was a lot because of BioWare’s false advertising and lies, which can’t be defended. They really did lie, and they really did fail to deliver on what they hyped themselves and promised. And the reason we still talk about it is because it’s such a big wake up call to the industry on so many subjects, such as be careful how you advertise and what you say, the power consumers can have, and the debate of whether “editing” post-release is a good idea (which I still dislike).

Hmm, I think I get it a bit more now. For me though, I wouldn’t want to give up the games, as I really do want to play everything. If a game is good enough that I want to play it again (BioShock, Far Cry 3) I’ll wait for the time and then really devote to it and take my time with it.

I guess that’s the main topic of discussion. What makes a game valuable to you. There are naturally exceptions (such as gaming for escapism when you’re feeling down one day), but mostly I think there is a consistency behind how you value your experiences. I.e completion, or for me something good and meaningful that deserves credit and time (Unless it’s just an indie game or couch FIFA I’m casually playing),

Similarly, I do study games while I play them. Game mechanics, how things work, the story, all of it. And I think a combination of time (lack of it), desire to play everything and my personality has just set my standards really high and I’d rather get mild or good, casual entertainment from a TV show than a six hour average or decent game.

In many ways it can also be a bad thing that I don’t get the most possible out of every game I play, but I suppose that’s subjective.

Anyways, I’d like to chat about Watch Dogs and open world and Ubisoft in our podcast.

Cavie said…

Fair enough, we shall leave it for the podcast then.

Just to offer one final commentary on the topic of games and coming back to them, I maintain that there are some games which I enjoyed thoroughly, which I never want to play again.

Right now, recent entries into this group include Far Cry 3 and BioShock: Infinite, the latter which I am still considering or not to get a season pass for.

They’re obviously good games, I did say that I enjoyed them thoroughly, and I will always have a happy place in my heart for them. But right now, I really want to play some more of The Orange Box, or Mass Effect. Fuck it, I actually still want to finish Batman: Arkham Asylum on Hard.

Sometimes a game can be adequately amazing and you feel a sense of finality, closure or what have you, where you are happy with your experience and can walk away from it knowing that you enjoyed it to its fullest. Other times it’s not the game at all, but just a fervent desire to experience more of that universe. A la Half-Life 2.

It might make an interesting feature, some day, if it hasn’t been extensively covered already.

And that was the discussion done. If you got to this point in the article then well done, and thank you for showing that much of an interest in our meanderings. Do note that we will in fact be continuing the discussion in the next podcast if you’re keen for more of our nonsense, so definitely keep an eye out for that.

Also, let us know what you think of all this and perhaps provide your own input and discussion in the comments below. Let us know if you’d like more of these behind the scenes insights into all things eGamer. We promise, it won’t always be like this. Most likely, it’ll be more trolling than anything else. Seriously, the other day Azhar emailed a picture of a Halo 4 console and called it the ultimate gift for me… but I digress.

It had been a while since I last played this game, at least a few weeks and because I was lazy I didn’t bother to practice either. Too late. The match was about to begin, and my shaky hands grasped at my controller as I spawned into the map. I turned a corner, saw an enemy player and advanced towards them, dodge-jumping just behind them before clicking my Right Trigger and watching their body explode into bits. “Okay, that wasn’t too diffic– OH FFS.” Before I could finish my sentence, another player had tagged me with a grenade, causing my death. I couldn’t mash “A” to respawn, hard enough…

I was hooked. Irrevocably, unequivocally, hooked. Line and sinker. I wanted more, desired more, and I got more.

And this from someone who has openly admitted to outwardly avoiding online multiplayer…

When I had originally heard about a local tournament for Gears of War: Judgment hosted by Mweb and organised by Xbox SA, I was quite keen to get in on the action. After all, according to my friends I was more than good enough to play competitively and it being a South African competition, I wasn’t likely to get much more than a “vokoff poes” out of the local gaming crowd. Unfortunately those friends were unwilling to participate as well, emphasising their desire to keep their gaming casual and friendly without competitive gaming ruining all the fun. So naturally, I signed up for the Lone Wolf segment of the tournament.

The tournament itself allowed players to either play in free-for-all matches for personal glory or team deathmatches as part of a clan. These modes work well in Judgment since each type of play style favours a certain player, meaning a team could effectively combine spot grenades and sniping with stim grenades and rushing close-rangers, and so on. Likewise in free for all, you are left to your own devices with regards to how you approach a situation so you could be the stim-wielding gnasher-crazy rusher, or the ink-throwing annoyance on my life seriously why can’t you just use something less hax for the love of Marcus.

I was unfortunately knocked out of a really hardcore second round fight which included these names:

If you’re cringing at the thought of that match-up, yeah, exactly. Also, kudos on actually knowing the local Gears of War scene. (And lol at me being touted as a favourite in the livestream.)

However after losing my match-up and feeling still quite proud of myself and yet frustrated at how close I came against such big names, I did something I haven’t done in many, many years. Not since the twilight of my DotA addiction when I decided that since I’ve already given this much of my life to Warcraft III, I might as well go semi-pro and join the IHL. (I laugh too.)

I went online and watched the livestream.

Granted it was quite beneficial, I scored two XBLA game download codes, so hell yeah, but it was also just such fun to be a part of things in this way. Sure there were those who took the competition way too seriously and became annoyingly wet blankets, but it was nothing a quick /ignore couldn’t fix, and I spent hours just enjoying some very well shoutcasted matches of Gears of War featuring players I knew, and some I didn’t. Kudos to the shoutcasters by the way, you guys were great.

When I decided to do this article, I tweeted a few players and shoutcasters for their comments on the tournament thus far. This was before the finals, which are now over, but more on that in a bit. Two players, both friends, who belong to the same clan which made it all the way to the finals (so proud), played along and emailed me their thoughts on the tournament with regards to, well, everything. Would you like to read what they had to say? Well too bad, we’re doing it anyway.

The first of these players is Henry Fourie, or BogusHenry on Xbox LIVE. With regards to his previous tournament experience, he said:

I played and sponsored prizes in the Xbox Reel Wingman tournament. A great tournament that was well organized. Great clips followed from it and I think overall it was a great success. Pity Xbox Reel closed its doors as I think the right people were there to make it happen.

Also played in the Xbox Gears 2 tournament which was the beginning of my CMR experience. This was also a fairly well organized tourney. I think the rules were a little loose and I had a lot of personal calls at night trying to assist with some of the decisions and issues that occurred. Also the prizes in that tournament were a mess and people waited very long for them. I think the organization was not great and a lot was left to the community in terms of hosting and resolving issues.

Played in the CMR Gears 3 tournament. This was a great little tourney and I think we got a lot of support from the community. Enjoyed the little involvement I had and I think if we had a lot more backers and support it could have been very big.

As for the Judgment tournament, he had the following to say:

Organization seems to be good. I think more communication wouldn’t hurt. Website is not the best and not updated as frequently as they should. We (CMR) are currently doing a week in review after each week which I would have thought would come from the organizers of the tourney. Also a poll for the days the games are to be played might have worked better as a lot of people find it hard to play on weekends. I love the Twitch channel. This just means we can see the action. The commentating is also very good. They have made a few interesting mistakes, but then it is live commentating so all is good. I am enjoying playing and the referees are good. Games start early except last night where they had the complete wrong CMR team. Prizes are good as well, but it would have been good to have a LAN final. Also not sure how or if they are checking for non ADSL players.

Before I add my own input, let’s move on to Jody Williams, known online as jGLZA (the ‘j’ is silent), who also responded to my tweet and had quite a bit to say. Let’s begin with his previous tournament experience:

AGASA (now DGL) hosted GOW1 and GOW2 national tournaments, won by Ghost Squad and Hi5 respectively, both teams returning in this GOWJ tournament.

I never entered those as I was a very late starter on console, only getting my Xbox 360 somewhere around 2009/10 and jumped straight into the last GOW2 Tournament – the Festival of Gears Tournament hosted by Xbox360Gamer. I think we made it to the 2nd round only but I think that was the first time that a 4-man FLS team (not called FLS back then) won a tournament.

I then formed CMR to enter the DGL GOW3 Cup (the biggest GOW3 tournament) which FLS won (as FLS) and we managed a respectable top 5 finish. After that CMR hosted their first tournament, the zaKOTH
tournament which I never entered but administered, was also won by FLS. And just before GOWJ released we hosted the GOW3 Grand Finale Tournament in which I entered with one of our CMR teams and we made it to the group stages, the tournament was once again won by FLS.

Now, to his thoughts on the Gears of War: Judgment tournament:

My thoughts on the current GOWJ tournament are quite positive. I’m extremely appreciative that Microsoft & Xbox 360 ZA have come on board to support the local console and Gears of War communities because frankly support over the past few years has been severely lacking.

The tournament has been run really well so far, communication has been efficient and the infrastructure in place for the tournament has been top class as far as SA tournaments go. And considering that the organisers are new to Gears of War, I appreciated that they reached out to the community for help with regards to rules and game settings. I made it clear in the beginning that Crimson Moon Rising (CMR) and myself would be on hand to assist with any admin or shoutcasting if they needed help. Unfortunately with us in Cape Town we weren’t able to help with casting but we did provide some assistance with regards to the rules and settings.

Xbox 360 ZA had previously hosted the successful Halo 4 tournament which attracted high numbers and was able to secure a LAN event for the Semi-Finals and Final. Unfortunately it was revealed on Saturday past that the GOWJ tournament hasn’t produced enough numbers to get a LAN event. I’m slightly disappointed at this as I imagine GOW to be a much more interesting game from a spectator point of view. At least we got them to stream the matches which was one of the biggest requests from the Halo tournament.

I think what they haven’t gotten their heads around though is that the competitive GOW community is very small which I am putting down to the very steep difficulty curve to get to a competitive level which is why we tried to keep all the match settings as default as possible to keep it as accessible as possible and we’ve seen quite a few Halo teams enter which has been awesome. However despite the small community size, watching the streams I saw quite a few non-gow people watching.

My biggest wish though is that they don’t rest on their laurels and continue to support the console competitive community, they don’t necessarily need to host more tournaments but assistance with prizes, advertising and streaming infrastructure would be much appreciated as the community already has members that are willing to do the heavy lifting such as standardised rulesets, more game modes, team registration, etc.

And as they get more involved I’m sure they will get better at setting up the rules and Terms & Conditions as there are some points that I think they may have slipped up on. However if they listen to the feedback they are getting I’m sure future tournaments will iron out these minor issues.

Finally, some general commentary from the man to round things off, which I feel should be emphasised:

This isn’t really related to the tournament but seeing as I have your ear, I’m concerned about the local eSports community and how they support each other or the lack thereof. The PC community has become pretty self-sustaining, they can create enough numbers by just having themselves watching. But when it comes to the console communities, the communities don’t support each other. For example, when MWEB streamed their CoD tournaments we tweeted out the streams and encouraged the GOW teams to go and watch them to get numbers up but now when we are streaming GOW I don’t see similar support from the CoD guys. The bottom line is that all communities need to support each other.

Okay, so, the reason I first wanted to show what they had to say (and I thank you both for taking the time out to type out such detailed replies) — mostly unedited, in their own words — is because before I got to what I thought of the tournament, I wanted to present the viewpoints of players who had previously experienced a tournament atmosphere and partaken (partook?) participated, so that we are clear, moving forward, how the veterans felt, before we move onto my feelings as a first-time tournament entrant. Now granted, I’ve played in DotA tournaments before, but nothing on Xbox LIVE and certainly nothing related to Gears of War. Onto my thoughts, then:

To be honest, I felt that this tournament could have been a lot bigger if the game of choice was Gears of War 3. Now, granted there isn’t exactly the best infrastructure in place for a Lone Wolf mode there, and of course, some clans have been playing Gears 3 since it released, which would make it quite one-sided at times, so Judgment did offer a better prospect for the competitive nature of a tournament, however the lack of early adopters of the game meant that many who could have participated in the tournament, did not, because they either did not purchase Judgment or were more comfortable playing Gears 3.

This is a bad thing when you’re hosting a tournament. But thankfully it didn’t stop a lot of players who did buy Judgment from registering online and taking part. Although, to those players who registered for the tournament and were online for their matches but opted not to play, responding to game invites from referees with, “Go away.” Fuck you. Please do the world a favour and be less of a douchebag in future. Or die, either way.

What the tournament did show is that we have a pretty awesome local community of gamers who, even at their most competitive, are still usually nice people who know it’s more about the fun of the tournament than winning. There are few exceptions, of course, but then the number is far less than certain other Xbox-hosted tournaments. Cough cough. If anything, with the excellent shoutcasting, the willingness of adjudicators to listen to the players and the support of the community, we might well get to see another tournament of this kind in future. We don’t need big prizes either, most of us are just itching for a chance to play some competitive Gears, better still that we get to do it from the comfort of our own homes.

I would recommend, however, that Xbox SA definitely look into a Gears of War 3 tournament rather than a Gears of War: Judgment tournament in future. Maybe Judgment for the Lone Wolf section, but traditional Gears 3 for the clan matches. We can keep the rules standard, make the barrier to entry as low as possible, and just get some advertising going for the tournament before it begins (sites such as eGamer will help, have helped) and we can most definitely get large numbers of players interested. After all, the Gears community in South Africa is huge. I would dare say larger than the Halo community, or at the very least, far better mannered, and that’s worth far more to me.

So to Mweb, Xbox SA and Tera Co, I want to say thanks for hosting a really great, enthralling, captivating tournament that I had fun playing in and was proud to be a part of, and to the winners of the Clan matches, FLS Legion, as well as Lone Wolf winner Shadow Vaatjie, who totally follows me on Twitter, congratulations on rising to the top, and enjoy your prizes. Thanks also to the shoutcasters, event organisers and referees who ensured that the tournament was a tight ship with no leaks, as far as possible.

To the players, and anyone reading this, I want to say that you really ought to support these types of tournaments. Not only are they a blast to be a part of, but even if you can’t partake, at least try and help to promote it, so that we might get more people in on the livestream, or get more tournament entries, or even get the relevant hashtag (#GearsZA in this case) trending on Twitter, and really catch the eye of both the international gaming crowd as well as Xbox, you know, the original HQ. Just a little support couldn’t hurt, could it? Who knows, it might yield some amazing boons for everyone, depending on which eyes we end up catching.

Here’s hoping we get more of these awesome tourneys in future.

There are a few reasons why you should head to DBNGamers this Friday, if you’re from Durban.

The first of these is obvious; you’re bloody well obligated to support local gaming because it supports you more than you know.

The second reason, and usually the guiding reason for many, is that there will be cool giveaways which means you can leave with things (or people, I guess) you didn’t arrive with. Everyone loves winning things!

But more specific to this particular DBNGamers, which I believe to be the fifteenth although I stand corrected, I’ve lost count (take it as a compliment, Pieter), is the third reason, which is that this event is going to be themed around everyone’s favourite: zombies! Who doesn’t love zombies, really? If it’s not The Walking Dead, or Zombieland, or Shaun of the Dead, it’s Dead Rising, Resident Evil or… and to the point, Dead Island. This month’s DBNGamers event is going to be themed around zombies to coincide with Dead Island: Riptide’s launch.

As such, you can expect to see Apex Interactive, the local distributors of Deep Silver published titles (such as Dead Island: Riptide) as well as Mountain Dew, who feel themselves adequate to the task after spending far too much time dying in DayZ. There might also be other sponsors appearing, but those are the ones we know for sure, right now.

Further, and here is the fourth reason, for the first time since inception (the creation of DBNGamers, not the movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio) DBNGamers will be held at a closed venue, specifically the Westville Athletic Club, on Maryland Drive. That’s right, no more crowded restaurants filled with judging faces, now it’s just gamers and gaming enthusiasts, and of course, the odd curious passer by. Everyone’s welcome, no judgement. Unless it’s Gears of course, in which case it’s spelled ‘Judgment’ for some odd reason, silly People Can Fly…

The main attraction for the event is of course the zombie cosplay, where attendees are tasked with cosplaying either their favourite zombie or a survivor from Dead Island: Riptide. I’ll be cosplaying myself since I’d totally survive an actual zombie apocalypse based on all my gamer knowledge, leadership skills and how little I actually eat. However that’s not all, thanks to Apex Interactive being around, gamers will get a chance to check out and maybe even play some as yet unreleased titles. I’m holding thumbs for Metro: Last Light, myself.

If you’re interested in attending, and really if you’re from Durban and a gamer or cosplayer then why wouldn’t you, then you need to head over to the Facebook event page and check that you’re going. This is so the organisers can adjust accordingly for attendance figures since Mountain Dew has limited caches of the free liquid supplies they’ll be offering to everyone. Because of course when the zombies come, we’ll need the rest…

You can also get full scheduling and directions off that Facebook event page, so definitely check if out if you’re keen. And I’ll see you all there. Bring help…

If this news comes as a surprise to you, then you are either a woeful optimist, perilously senile or you’ve been living under a rock. A very large rock with no windows or even air to speak of.

Aliens: Colonial Marines is arguably the biggest flop this year, certainly in terms of a high billing that completely failed to live up to expectations, but it did well enough in sales, mostly because reviews were embargoed until release day so reviewers were powerless to warn consumers, many of whom had already pre-ordered the game. That obviously left a lot of people feeling cheated out of their money after the final product proved to be a piece of shit with absolutely nothing to redeem it.

And now they’ve taken action.

Reports claim that the class action lawsuit — filed in a Californian court on Monday by law firm Edelson LLC on behalf of Damion Perrine — which was brought against Sega and Gearbox alleges that the companies falsely advertised Aliens: Colonial Marines, stating the demos exhibited at events such as PAX and E3 were not indicative of the final product.

“Unfortunately for their fans, [the] Defendants never told anyone – consumers, industry critics, reviewers, or reporters – that their ‘actual gameplay’ demonstration advertising campaign bore little resemblance to the retail product that would eventually be sold to a large community of unwitting purchasers,” reads the lawsuit, which claims that the enforcement of the press embargoes I mentioned above meant that early adopters were unaware of the differences between the demonstrations and the final product. The lawsuit then goes on to claim damages for those who either pre-ordered or purchased the game on release.

I think that’s quite fair, don’t you?

Even Gearbox president Randy Pitchford, who has lost a lot of respect following his reaction to criticism of Aliens: Colonial Marines, which can eloquently be expressed as Block ALL the haters, was mentioned in the lawsuit as tweeting shortly after the game’s launch that complaints were “understood and fair” among other things, effectively vindicating the issues players were experiencing regarding the game’s shortcomings.

The truth is, Gearbox could have avoided all of this if they were just a little more upfront about things and didn’t just pretend that all was well. All they needed to do was have the words watermarked on the bottom of their gameplay demonstrations saying that what was being witnessed was not actual gameplay footage, or maybe they could have come out before the game launched and taken a slight hit in sales but gained the respect of the gaming world by admitting that the final product was inferior. As it stands, they opted to keep quiet and take the money of consumers and now it seems they will be made to pay for that transgression, and rightly so.

What they did is swindling, of the highest degree. And by law, they can be held accountable. So if you’ve pre-ordered or purchased this game on day one and you’d like your money back too, definitely keep an eye on this lawsuit’s progress. You can find out more through the source link.

Rockstar Games has released three new trailers for Grand Theft Auto V, each showing a particular protagonist from the game. But we’re lazy, and nobody wants to view multiple trailers in a single article, so here’s all three in a single compilation.

The first trailer follows family man and mobster Michael as he gets to grips with a dysfunctional family and a mid-life crisis of sorts. The second trailer is a little more nostalgic, taking things back to the hood with inner-city gangbanger Franklin. The third and final trailer shows hillbilly, reckless, loudmouth drug dealer Trevor.

The GTA games are no strangers to three-way stories. (Not like that.) After all, we had GTA III, San Andreas and Vice City before we got GTA IV, and of course with GTA IV we experienced Niko’s side of the story as well as the sides of two others, in The Lost and the Damned and The Ballad of Gay Tony DLC expansions.

But to have all three protagonists in the same game is definitely something unheard of, for the GTA series, so it’s going to be interesting watching how all of that plays out, especially when all three protagonists eventually become acquainted and start working together during the course of the game.

We’ll let you know more on all of this when we do, but for now, are you going to be picking up GTA V when it releases, September 17th? Better question, if you’re not, then why on Earth wouldn’t you be?

Don’t look at me in that tone of voice. It’s true.

Look, I get that the gaming world is currently over-saturated with modern day military shooters and they have fast become the bane of any gamer’s existence, because publishers will force developers to make more of those instead of encouraging proper games with actual innovation and stuff. I get it. I do.

But that doesn’t stop me from enjoying pretty much every Call of Duty title to have released, as well as Battlefield 3′s singleplayer component. I understand fully, where each game errs and at times I understand when a game is downright bad. And yet this form of game is entertaining to me, far more so than some other genres, although that might just speak to this time in my life. After all, I do currently fit the demographic of young male adult, that publishers target with games such as these.

Perhaps it’s the glorification of the military in modern media, where we have almost romanticised the idea of someone fighting for their country, to the point that we don’t question their actions as long as the overall intention is freedom or peace, and any subsequent debate is grounds for treason since those troops and their actions are always above reproach. Or, and to quell the sudden political direction of this article, maybe I’ve just watched too many military-inclined movies, the likes of Saving Private Ryan and Black Hawk Down, to the point that I have romanticised the notion of being part of such a thing.

I certainly don’t like taking orders, I’ll say that much.

And yet when Captain Foley tells me to move to the objective and secure that bunker, I do it. With a smile on my face. Because it’s just so damn fun to play pretend, as if you’re a part of an actual war or battle or whatever. I’ve had a lot to say about the Call of Duty and Battlefield games in the past, but I have never taken away from their fun factor, especially personally where at times I will spend hours in the multiplayer playing a specific class and just enjoying it (I did this as a special ops class in Battlefield 2) and at other times I will play and replay the singleplayer campaign and delight in all those really cool moments where I feel part of a squad who are fighting not just for their countries or its people, but for bare-knuckles survival. To see the next day.

Call of Duty 2 used to have the following quote as one of its death screens: “There are no atheists in foxholes” is not an argument against atheists; it’s an argument against foxholes.

Kudos if you know who said that. Double kudos if you know how they actually said it, because I can’t quite remember if it’s exactly like that.

Nonetheless, the point is that I’m not quite done with military shooters just yet, as I’m sure, are a lot of others. I’m all for open world RPG experiences and playing games that innovate in various ways, but every now and then I need the instant gratification that can only come with holding an assault rifle in my hand and firing at enemies because my commanding officer told me to.

How about you?

Or: The Whims And Woes Of A Core Gamer.

Why do we hate the ones we love? Why do we treat them with animosity and disdain, then turn around and claim to cherish them? What is it about us as humans that makes us act this way? When we would profess adoration of the same people we cannot go a day without showering in contempt. Is it because we associate them so closely with ourselves that our base insecurities become attached to them, and our self-hatred is reflected onto them as a result? Perhaps we are so comfortable around them that we stop caring about how they feel, the way we don’t care about how we feel unless external forces act on us. Maybe that’s why we can remain entirely silent right next to a loved one and then wonder what they are talking about when they say we treat them as if they’re not even there. We are a hurtful species.

I’ve recently been doing a lot of thinking about my gaming. Which is to say, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about what my gaming once was, and what it is now. I think it was a few columns back when I mentioned it in passing, but of late I have not been able to get in a lot of gaming time, at all, whatsoever. Last year, around this time, I averaged two to four hours of gaming per night on week-nights, with a fair bit more over the weekend. That amounts to some twenty-plus hours a week of gaming. There were various factors in play, including university, eGamer of course, and social interaction (although having just come out of, let’s call it a commitment, I did find far more time to myself than I otherwise would have) but for the most part I managed to get an adequate number of hours of gaming in and survive all other exertions without much headache. Except for actual headaches.

This year it’s basically the same factors in play, however it’s the amounts of each that have really affected my gaming. I now spend more time at university, owing to a different travelling routine. This affords me far less time at home, some of which must be dedicated to eGamer and some of which must go to university work which has increased this year. The result of these extra exertions means that some days leave me with barely a half hour to myself, and that’s really not enough time for games. I don’t know how the working class manages it.

Most recently, I had the most jarringly shocking thought since that time I imagined myself in a threesome with Jim Sterling and Claudia Black (I joke… it wasn’t that shocking). I considered the possibility that I was over games, that I could go the rest of the year (and subsequent follow-up years) playing barely anything and I would be fine; after all, I was so busy doing other things that it made logical sense to skim on something, and why not my most expensive hobby, which consumes the most time of anything I do, with arguably the least reward for me at this point in my life?

And then I slapped myself.

Right now I like to think that I do quite a bit. Too much, some might argue. My university, eGamer and travelling exertions aside, in terms of media consumption, I also partake in many television series (I can count five off the top of my head), YouTube video series, movies, music, podcasts, actual books, ebooks and finally, comics. This is over and above gaming, which has taken a drastic hit this year in favour of the aforementioned other forms of media. But then, at the beginning of this year when I had a glance at the games that would be releasing… DmC: Devil May Cry, BioShock: Infinite, Grand Theft Auto V. Those were the only games which tickled my nether regions and made me gleeful with delight. The rest of the games, Dead Space 3, Crysis 3, Tomb Raider and so on, I figured I could quite happily pass on and pick up much later at a discounted price and be none the worse for it. And so far, that mindset has worked out exactly as expected, where I have played and thoroughly enjoyed two of the three titles I’ve anticipated for this year, opting to play random things from previous years in between. However for the most part it’s been more of all that other media I mentioned above, which has consumed what time I do have to myself.

The thing is, it’s just difficult sometimes for a completionist such as myself to even start with a new game, knowing that I’m only going to get X amount of time in a week to play, currently sitting at around half an hour per weekday if at all, with up to eight hours on Saturdays if I utilise my time efficiently. What if I’m playing a game that takes more than ten hours to complete? It’s going to require more than just a week, at my current rate. Whereas I could consume other media in smaller chunks. I read a chapter of a book and an issue of a comic each night before bed, for example. Far easier to stop and then pick up where I left off, the following night, compared to erratic gaming sessions that sometimes take twenty minutes and other times take two hours plus. So in that respect, it’s actually easier to forgo gaming in favour of either a little more rest (sleep is invaluable) or some other form of media.

Now anyone who knows me will tell you that as far as hardcore gamers go, I rank right up there. While I lack the obnoxious nature of most puritans, I do possess the fervent desire to ‘play ALL the things’, as I have put it so many times before. And as far as pure gaming consumption goes, at least according to my past, not many can keep up with me. So it’s not to say that I am not usually your typical core gamer equivalent, who gets in far more hours of gaming than is healthy each week. Except I am not, any more. In fact, although I still crave it, still desire it, I sometimes actively ignore gaming either in favour of other activities which require less investment on my part, or sleep.

Have I, with this mindset, then, inadvertently retired from core gaming?

Is that even a thing?

I remember Jake once saying in a column how he no longer plays everything and opts to play casual games instead, only picking up those titles his heart truly desires. Unfortunately I don’t really like most casual games, nor do I have the time for them in any case, so it’s not exactly the same. But I think that the most blatant ‘tell’ in front of me right now is the fact that I have had the option of doing something or playing games, and I chose the thing that wasn’t playing games.

Surely I can’t be the only person in this situation and if you are too, then feel free to relate your own stories in the comments, but I have to admit that this is distressing. Not just because I am technically a gaming writer who happens to also edit a gaming podcast and surrounds himself with so much gaming (seriously, you should see my room… and my tattoos) that it is impossible to be anything but a core gamer, but because I am supposed to have this fervent desire, this ostensible lust for gaming, this insatiable passion that would cause me to, ten times out of ten, forgo social interaction of all egregious forms in favour of a night spent gaming.

And here I am, turning it down in favour of other things.

I love gaming, some have claimed unhealthily. And yet I neglect it so. How is this even a thing? Why am I not forgoing other activities in favour of gaming every time, like I should be? I mean, I can’t seriously purport to loving either film, literature or music as much as I love gaming, a venerable amalgamation of all of those, with the added benefit of interactivity. I understand what it means to be a gamer and I am proud to call myself one. I hold it up as an admirable trait, a training in so many handy skills including quick reaction, tactical thinking and artistic appreciation, and yet I cannot make myself play games because… well, why bother if it’s just for a few hours in a week?

Whether this is ‘all or nothing’ syndrome or a gross mishandling of my greatest affection, I am still trying to figure it out. Maybe this is my primitive male conditioning which is manifesting in a lack of desire to play games so that I might eventually be encouraged to go out there and procreate, instead. I can’t quite place what it is, but I can say that more and more of late, I am questioning what it means to call myself a gamer, considering how much of gaming I actually do. What does it mean to play just a few hours of games a day, or stick to just a few games a year, or be like I usually am, and ‘play ALL the things’? All of this introspection and I have no answers besides, “Who knows…”

I don’t want to quit gaming but right now, I have to say, it seems like an easy decision to make.

There, a far more personal column for you all. Comment away.

Postscript: I started and completed this column in one go, last week Saturday. Since then, I have experienced something of a resurgence in my desire to play games, unfortunately still kept somewhat under relevant restriction because of workloads and everything else I mentioned. However I believe the resurgence to have been caused directly by this column, call it a catharsis of sorts, as well as the recent acquisition of some new games. So, game on for now. Assuming I find the time for it…

Or: I Thought We Were Done With This Shit, Developers?

Let’s paint a mental picture, real quick. You’re looking forward to buying a game this month; it could be a specific title or anything that sparks your interest. Maybe you’ve been awaiting a certain game’s release, or maybe you just went with one at random from three possible options. Either way, the release date approaches and you head online but there is nary a review to be found. Not the big sites nor the small sites nor even Metacritic have critic reviews, and there are just a few user reviews on the latter, all of which seem overwhelmingly positive.

Now, allow me to break this picture for a second to say the following: This is the point where you ought to start to panic.

However, let’s resume this mental picture and say that you opted to ignore the lack of reviews out for the game, and you went and paid full price for the game on release day. This translates to, maybe R350 on PC or R500 on Xbox 360 or PS3. A mild estimate, but we’ll go with it for the purposes of this mental picture. So there you sit, home at last having just purchased your new game. You pop it in, install if necessary, and begin playing. And surprise, surprise. It’s shit.

So far there have been two games this year which have fumbled with embargoes, either setting them on the actual release date for the game, or not even having review copies at all. One of these is Aliens: Colonial Marines, a game widely regarded as the biggest flop of the year so far, which had the review embargo set for the game’s international release date, a few hours after the game went on sale. A steaming pile of turd if ever there was one, for 2013. The other one, which lacked review copies entirely, is Star Trek: Into Darkness, a license tie-in to the latest Star Trek movie which portrays Sylar as Spock, something I still can’t quite wrap my head around. Also: lens flare.

Now if ever there was a poster game for why you should always wait for reviews, I mean you know, apart from Aliens: Colonial Marines, it’s Star Trek: Into Darkness.

The game has since released officially, and now people are discovering that there are glitches en masse in the final product, and more than that, a significant chunk of the game is quite simply broken. Specifically on the PC version, with regards to the arguably more appealing co-operative mode, it simply does not work. That’s the long and short of it. You cannot find a server, you cannot play with a friend, and the developers are doing amazing things trying to cover this up, claiming that only a minority of PC gamers are experiencing this problem, whereas the actuality is that the vast majority are having issues.

As far as shady business practices go, the in-house game development studio at Paramount Pictures is really taking this to a new level. It began with a lack of review copies, which they stated was brought about by a high demand for the game, however when big sites the likes of Destructoid don’t get a review copy, where is this apparent demand coming from in the first place? Then we had the co-operative issues and the downplaying of the severity by the developers. It goes even further than that, when a developer of the game actually had the audacity to go into a Steam forum thread and claim that the co-operative works fine for him, blaming the Steam servers for what is obviously a developer-side fuck-up. And that’s not all.

Diving a little further into the originally existing Metacritic user reviews, it was discovered that the reviews submitted by each user were questionable at best, with the positive reviews, at times giving the game a full 10 out of 10, sourced to users who had not reviewed a single other game on Metacritic. Some of these users reviewed the game on multiple platforms as well. How much more obvious can you make a fake account?

The video I’ve embedded above comes via Angry Joe, an American game reviewer whose reviews I enjoy watching and whose occasional vlogs I also check out from time to time. This particular vlog highlights in explicit detail, just how much is wrong with this game, and just how questionable the developer practices have been, from the lack of review copies to the fake reviews on Metacritic to more. He also shows some of the game’s many glitches, discovered after spending just two hours with the game. Watch it, and enjoy the rant.

I’ve also taken the liberty of embedding another video below, this one courtesy Jim Sterling, who did his own article on this, which I promise I only discovered a few paragraphs ago, when I decided to go and check if Destructoid has a review out for this game yet. Check out his satirical take on the non-functional co-operative mode on PC:

It upsets me when developers do such things thinking that they can get away with this. And it makes things even worse to consider that this game will sell well, has sold well in fact, based purely off its license. Many consumers won’t bother to read a single review because hey, it’s a Star Trek game, and that’s all they really care about, and they’ll be served this piece of shit instead of something more deserving of their money. Something like BioShock: Infinite, or the proper gamer equivalent of Star Trek, Mass Effect… kinda.

Please don’t be one of the gamers who falls for this shit. Always wait for reviews of a game before purchasing, don’t be a retard and pre-order games unless you are absolutely sure that if it’s bad — and trust me, any game can be bad, just ask the BioShock: Infinite haters — that you won’t mind and will enjoy it regardless. Think a bit more about what you spend your money on, and don’t give developers such as these the time of the day. They obviously don’t give a fuck about you, after all.

But mostly, we’re focusing on that bit about achievements.

According to rumours, the next-generation Xbox will introduce new social networking elements, video capture functions and, importantly, ‘cross-game’ Achievements. Achievement whore says what?!

The reports that have released thus far, paint a picture of Microsoft aiming to closely position Xbox LIVE in its current form with social networks the likes of Twitter and Facebook, adding the ability to ‘follow’ other users, for all the stalker-types that will bring to LIVE, as well as, finally, removing the cap on friends, for those popular gamers among us. Marko. Cough cough.

Also a reported feature of the next-gen Xbox is that of video capture, allowing users to record gameplay and share it online, similar to the PS4′s share button, further allowing users to review captured gameplay and select highlights. The function can be turned off or, alternatively, set to automatically record during certain in-game events such as FPS headshots or specific Achievements, although no word has been given on how exactly what will work. It seems like quite a tall order, to me.

On that note, the biggest news for me with regards to this report, involves that of the extended control and creative freedom that will be afforded to creators for how Achievements work on the new console. This effectively means two things already: We might get to keep our Gamertags and current GamerScore, and Achievements will still be around in some form.

Fucking A.

In any case, developers will be able to add new Achievements to games post-launch without requiring DLC updates, and can tie Achievements to a broader set of events such as weekend challenges and cross-title accomplishments, for example finishing the first chapter of two different games by the same company. I shudder when I think of the implications. ‘Seriously 4.0′ could require achieving all other ‘Seriously’ Achievements…

Now this is all rumour, of course, so it should all be taken with vigorous amounts of salt. But the way I see it, it’s just nice to finally have something from the Xbox stable, over the months of silence that have preceded the recent reports. We’ll find out how much of these hold true come May 21st, so, until then!

I’m not usually one for advocating the purchase of a game at launch without even actually having played it myself (this isn’t a PR site, after all) but I think this one time it’s okay to make an exception, assuming you enjoy two things: Poker and cameos.

Poker Night 2 is out now on Xbox 360 via Xbox LIVE Arcade, PS3 via PlayStation Network and PC via torrents Steam.

Telltale Games has released a trailer for the game which features Claptrap from Borderlands, Sam from Sam & Max, Ash Williams from the Evil Dead franchise, and Brock Samson from Venture Bros, with dealer GLaDoS from Portal. Also totally a thing in Poker Night 2, scores of unlockables which may be acquired by completing challenges and meeting goals. Some unlocks can be carried over to other games, including Borderlands 2, Team Fortress 2, as well as Xbox 360 avatars and PS3 themes.

Pretty epic, right?

Go download it. Now.

Recorded: 22 April 2013

We’re back, with a brand new rap episode of everyone’s favourite podcast, now with seventeen percent more hashtagging. Welcome to episode twenty nine, where we talk about geeky things and sports, because those always go well together. There’s also some other actual, gaming-related conversation, but who really listens for that? The crew return to their usual antics after last week’s special BioShock-themed episode which you should totally check out.

Here’s the shownotes for this episode:

• We start off with bad chicken pox jokes.
• A pen is in Alessandro’s mouth.
• The world finds out about Jerry.
• AG nearly kills someone.
• How to properly carry out gamer first-aid.
• Injustice: Gods Among Us, and our favourite heroes in the game.
• Never drop your chocolate popcorn.
• Cool anime fighting games… yeah, don’t ask.
• We share our favourite graphic novels (they’re comics).
• Iron Man 3 is out soon.
• Everyone but you-know-who disliked Iron Man 2…
• Our expectations of the Marvel Phase Two rollout.
• Not everyone is excited for The Evil Within.
• The problem with cross-compatibility.
• Why catering to next-gen and current-gen simultaneously is a catch-22.
• Cavie gets uber technical… to overwhelming crickets.
• Our thoughts on the PS4′s launch titles.
• Gaming engines, and which ones really suck.
• Alessandro gets set on a rage-fit by AG.
• When university staff create unnecessary problems.
• Adam makes a funny joke.
• Our YouTube channel is growing!
• Azhar explains the origins of his nickname.
• The Suarez biting saga.
• We dare to explore the #TrebzzEffect.
• Alessandro’s bad spelling is finally explained.
• It all devolves into a football commentary.
• We answer your questions.

Don’t forget that you can subscribe to the RSS feed so you never miss an episode. Enjoy.

Direct Download | Libsyn | RSS

By now you probably know that the next Call of Duty, technically unannounced at present but nonetheless an actual thing, is coming to the world later this year, and it’s called Ghosts. Inspired by Azhar’s latest video about why The Evil Within is great for the gaming industry as well as my love for all things ethereal, I’ve decided to do my own article about why Call of Duty: Ghosts is great for the gaming industry.

Unfortunately, I lack the talent, charisma and bowlishly-shaped hair to record a video like he did. Also lacking are time, a webcam and proper editing software, but we’ll call those pedantry and move on, shall we? Hence, this very serious article about why I feel Call of Duty: Ghosts is a welcome addition not only to gaming but the world as a whole, especially after those atrocious Paranormal Activity movies made a running joke out of all things ghostly.

Let’s start off with the facts. Rumour has it the game is being developed by Infinity Ward, whom we know and love for the Modern Warfare series and for fucking over their two top personalities a few years ago, causing many other employees to leave following the high-profile departures. So we know they’ve got it going on in terms of workplace happiness, which always leads to a great game. Further, the game will branch out from the Modern Warfare series, meaning it’s still Modern Warfare but a different kind of Modern Warfare, the same way one branch of a tree is still from a tree but not the same as a different branch from that same tree.

That’s the sort of technicality that kept Eve out of hell, you know.

Set in the not-too-distant future, Future Warfare Ghosts involves a worldwide devolution of military grade equipment which forces the use of modern day weaponry, meaning you’ll be fighting in a futuristic setting with your regular old faithful M16A1 assault rifle. Further, given the futuristic setting, there will be changes to the ways players can move while playing, for example the ability to dash and enter into a slide while shooting. And they say Call of Duty games don’t innovate! (It was totally in Crysis 2 first, but this is Call of Duty, bro. This is where it’s at.) The absolute pinnacle of innovation at Infinity Ward has finally been reached, with players now able to peek around corners and roll while proned.

Do I even need to continue?

Are you not already foaming at the mouth?

If that’s not enough to have you salivating from your genitalia, multiplayer loading screens will reportedly be interactive, replacing traditional loading countdowns with little mini-games allowing players to enter maps in different ways including rappelling in from a chopper or, we’re assuming, popping into existence in the upper atmosphere of an alien planet alongside a large sperm whale.

And that’s not all, Black Ops Infinity Ward Ghosts is also going to be removing Spec Ops mode in favour of a brand new game mode, to be revealed at a later stage, featuring destructible environments and interactive environmental elements, which we’re taking to mean being able to answer a phonecall at a callbox, mid-fight. It might be important…

Of course, all we have right now are rumours and promises with nothing concrete shown but if the PS4 reveal is anything to go by, it’s enough, and many gamers are already sold. I mean how can you not be? A developer need not even show you a final product in today’s world, in order to have your money. Am I right, GTA V pre-orderers?

Call of Duty: Ghosts is definitely going to change the way we look at first person shooters forever. Modern Warfare? Please… Now it’s Future Modern Warfare.

Watch this space.

I’ll bet that is a title you never expected to see.

Or maybe those dreams we had ever since watching Back To The Future are finally coming true? Either way, you will soon be able to order pizzas from your Xbox 360.

That’s thanks to Microsoft partnering with Pizza Hut in order to launch an Xbox LIVE app which allows users to pick from the entire available in-store menu, customise their pizzas via Kinect motion controls, voice commands or controller, and then order and have their pizzas delivered to their doors.

Users may either use their GamerTags or their PizzaHut.com accounts to save order settings for future purchases, and of course, this being 2013, share their choices with friends via Facebook.

“We’re always looking at ways to give our audience more of what they’re interested in,” said Larry Hryb. “If you look at our audience, they love pizza. I mean, who doesn’t? It has international appeal, and Pizza Hut is a recognized brand that matches up well with the Xbox brand.”

While a local release has not yet been confirmed, the fact that we do have Pizza Hut franchises available locally means it’s only a matter of time.

Expect gamers to be leaving home a lot less, now.

Dead Island: Riptide releases later this week, and we’ve got a launch trailer for you.

Enough said? Yeah, we’re not like Deep Silver. We won’t show you some harrowing rendition of a family dying to zombies, all played backwards in slow motion with sad music and tears. This is a far more honest trailer, albeit entirely full of fluff that nobody who buys the game will actually care about.

I mean really, who is buying this game for its gripping story? Four player cooperative, friends. That’s what it’s all about.

Dead Island: Riptide is out this Friday. Will you be picking it up?

I’m not exactly sure how to say that better, but my confession for this week involves a certain predisposition I have towards achievements, and how that has helped me to get past some otherwise monotonous endeavours.

Now before I continue with that, let me just say that some games were extremely painful to play through. Most recently, I played through RAGE on the Nightmare difficulty and I hated it. Not because it was difficult, because it wasn’t, I never died, but because it was just so damn unimaginative. Post-apocalyptic wasteland meets light RPG elements. Could you rip off Fallout 3 and Borderlands any more, iD Software? Even those apparently amazing character animations fell flat after ten minutes, for me.

So it’s not to say that this applies to all games. However.

I’ve been noting that a few months later, nobody really professes great things about Assassin’s Creed III. Sure there are those who’ve played through the game and enjoyed it, but for some it’s taken them months to complete the game because they couldn’t get stuck into it, or for others it’s been a case of slowly soldiering on through it, no pun intended. And yet I played through the game in a matter of weeks, non-stop, until I had achieved 100% sync.

I think a large part of that was just me enjoying playing an Assassin’s Creed game. I’ve loved them to bits since the first one, where I collected all the flags everywhere, and on the PC version which had no achievements — back then I didn’t even know what an achievement was. But larger still, was the part that drove me onwards, made me do some stuff I wouldn’t necessarily even bother with in a game: I wanted to unlock every achievement in the game.

Effectively then, the achievements gave the game some sorely lacking sense of purpose. And I believe that’s why certain games never bored me, where others could not wait to be done with them.

If you played Assassin’s Creed III on PC, for example, or even PS3, you don’t care about achievements or GamerScore or anything of the sort, so why would you bother? You would blitz through the story and rush off to declare the game Ubisoft’s greatest failure, the death of the series, a massive disappointment and so on. Meanwhile, someone such as myself is still heartily enjoying the game because there are a few more achievements to unlock. Granted the game needed to do enough on its own, for me to enjoy it that much, or I surely would have also enjoyed RAGE. And yet, it was the combination that worked absolute magic.

I could use other example of games where this applied, but I do feel that my point has been served. Can you guys relate to this at all, or is the idea a silly one? Perhaps we’ve finally found some tangible positive of achievements: it allows us to get that much more value out of our games. Or you might still dismiss them as meaningless, arbitrary numbers that do nothing.

Discuss.

Okay, well, it’s not exactly a trailer…

Across the GTA games there is a fictional religious cult called Epsilon, which has its own website and everything, including a Twitter account, and this viral marketing video is portrayed as one from the Epsilon Program.

That’s about it really, so if you were hoping for some gameplay, unfortunately you’re out of luck.

“The cult first emerged as a teaser site for Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and [was] later referenced numerous times on radio stations and by pedestrians in the game itself,” says the GTA Wikia. “The cult is an obvious scam, intended to gain money by brainwashing its followers into paying large sums of money, parodying the real life Church of Scientology.”

This cult is making its way to GTA V, although whether it will be background fluff like in previous games, or a legitimate influence on the game’s story in some way, remains to be seen.

You know what really gets my proverbial goat? Halo. Apart from that, I also get really annoyed when developers make proclamations that they think are bold and brave but the rest of the world knows to be plain idiotic.

Take for example, FIFA 14 produceer Sebastian Enrique, who has predicted that their upcoming football title will outsell FIFA 13′s 12 million units by targeting the Call of Duty audience.

Say what?

“We have a very strong feature set so I am very confident that we can do better in terms of sales and numbers than FIFA 13,” he said. I mean, I’m all for confidence in your brand and you cannot successfully market a product with negativity so fair play to you for overwhelming positivity, but let’s be realistic for a moment, please?

FIFA 14 does face the very real challenge of an upcoming PES title powered by the Fox Engine, courtesy Kojima Productions, but Enrique seems up to it. Why, you might ask, is he so adamant that the game will be a success?

“I respect Konami a lot and they produce good games. A lot of people have played their games for ages. I think having competition is a good thing but we don’t consider competition to just be Pro Evolution Soccer. Call of Duty is also competition.”

I’ll give you all a moment to stop laughing…

“People that are playing Call of Duty are not playing FIFA. We want them to play FIFA and we achieve that by creating the best possible game that we can create. That’s what we focus on.”

Dude, that’s like going into a lesbian bar and hoping you can turn one straight just because you’ve had a shave and tweezed your eyebrows.

Seriously, what is with every publisher and their fervent desire to cut into the Call of Duty crowd? We get it. It’s a huge market and Activision really does not deserve the money. And targeting them with other popular titles is actually a smart idea, but maybe people play Call of Duty because they want to shoot at things that aren’t goals? Most likely if someone is heavy into Call of Duty, they don’t even have goals… what, too far?

While I’m sure that FIFA 14 will be a stellar offering that sells amazingly well and makes EA tonnes of profit, as always, I really, really can’t help but feel that targeting the Call of Duty crowd is a bad idea. They’re not playing Call of Duty with a secret desire to play football… or maybe I’m wrong and there’s a secret echelon of FIFA-crazed fans, stuck in their Call of Duty rut. By all means, let us know if you exist, closet FIFA fans who only play CoD.