They Just Don't Get ItLet's suppose for a minute that "The Man" is north American. He would have you believe that PC gaming is dying, and were I to take a walk through my local EB I'd be inclined to agree. So why is this once powerful platform withering away - at least in the mind of "the man"?
They'd have us believe that piracy is to blame. Clearly, people who are willing to spend thousands of dollars bulding their dream PCs are nothing more than digital thieves.
I have a different theory for why the likes of Ubisoft are seeing a decline in their PC sales. It's no accident that I've singled out Ubisoft as a company that just doesn't "get it", their latest announcement of draconian DRM coupled with an inflated price for Assassin's Creed 2 points to an overall lack of understanding of ...
Confession: I Was Once A PiratePiracy is discussed often on the internet, and news sites, but it seems like the only way it's ever approached is with a stern look and a black mark on pirates. If the numbers for piracy are to be believed why aren't more people admitting to it? Certainly some of these game journalists must have snatched a piece of code at some point in their lives, before they had all their games just handed to them as review copies.
Well I'm coming out of the captain's quarters as it were; I was once a software pirate. Once, but not anymore.
So what changed? Why did I give up the life of illegally downloading software for free? Read on to find out.
My reasons for piracy seemed simple enough at the time - why pay for something ...
Shattered Horizon Reviewed
Shattered Horizon is unlike any game I've played in 2009, and most likely anything else I'm going to play in the near future. In a genre (multiplayer team-shooter) where each game is trying to distinguish itself in some significant way from Modern Warfare or Team Fortress 2, Shattered Horizon takes a truly novel approach. You get one weapon with three attack modes, there is no gravity, and you're in a true three dimensional environment. At first glance the game seems to have very little to it, but there are many hidden subtleties that make Shattered Horizon a winner.
The back story is as follows:
Quote: Shattered Horizon is set 40 years from now. Man is back on the Moon and the companies that took him there are reaping huge profits. Their greed soon leads to the largest mining accident ...
My Top 10 Games of 2009As the year comes to a close I reflect back on the games I enjoyed playing the most in 2009. There were a ton of releases in 2009, some were big names and many really just sprung up out of nowhere. Read on to see what I thought were the ten best games of 2009.
10. Batman: Arkham Asylum
Batman didn't disappoint; the game was beautiful and lots of fun the whole way though. I felt it was a little on the long side and although I enjoyed the game, the combat did become repetitive towards the end. Although repetitive it was incredibly satisfying to punch out dudes again and again. You always felt like a bad-ass, like Batman. Swooping around with your cape and sneaking up on bad guys to take them out silently ...
Quickload: Buying Electrons in 2010
More than any previous year, 2009 was the year that Digital Distribution truly started to establish itself. Being the service that kicked the whole thing off, Steam has naturally been leading this charge, with some fairly impressive marketing and sales designed to encourage more and more people to give DD a try. However, this year also marked other distributors and companies finally starting to come into their own. Taking a leaf out of Valve's playbook, services like Direct 2 Drive and Impulse have started adopting tactics such as snap sales and bargain bundles in order to generate hype, and in general have been starting to make a name for themselves. After all, at least for now there's still room to argue over who's
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