Copyright Madness!

Today I want to talk about copyright infringement. The 'why pay for something when you can get it for free?'-mentality. Yes, i'm talking about downloading software, music, films, books, games and other things that are normally sold for alot of money. You could call it thievery, or you could be someone who does it all the time. As a matter of fact, I think nobody can say he or she never downloaded a piece of music or software before. 

Electronic Arts, a giant game developer, known for their 'battlefield'-series, Is soon releasing a new game. Battlefield-Heroes, a cartoon style shooter, accessible for everyone because it's free!

That's right, it's completely free. And by free I don't mean hurrying yourself to your nearest torrent or warez-site and downloading it. Free as in legally free. 

Getting things for free is rare these days. Every company wants money. The more the better. 70 euros (102 dollars) for a newly released PC-Title? No wonder people start downloading things. 

You're probably wondering how EA games will succeed in making a profit from this title while they're releasing it for free. This is what they say themselves: 

[The game is] free to download, free to play business model which generates revenue through advertising and micro-transactions.

This translates into in-game advertising and the ability to buy new 'looks' for your character.

I'm glad EA is doing this, and hopefully alot of other game producers will follow them.

Think with me here: If companies start dispensing their games for free, and they can make money trough advertising and small 'luxury-items' players can buy, isn't that a better alternative for what's happening nowadays? 

The industry (that's movie, game, music, etc -industry) loses billions and billions of dollars each year to people who download this stuff. I think they should sit down for a second and think about how both business models compare to eachother.

In my eyes, it would be a better world for both the consumer and the companies.

That's it for today.

-Delta out!

Conquer The Galaxy with Spore!

Hi there!

Today, I got my copy of Spore. The video game by Electronic Arts that has some controversy around it. The game's DRM or Digital Rights Management, which makes sure the user doesn't spread the game amongst his friends and family, is a little 'tight'. Gamers can only install the game 3 times. Worst case scenario, a user has to re-install the game 4 times, and has to make a phonecall to EA's office, to ask for a new 'key'. 

That's basically the story. Everyone around the internet has been complaining about this, and that's not the only thing not right about this game. Atleast that's what the community tells us. 

"It's not complete"

People are totally mad at EA because it failed at 'completing' this game.

Allow me to give you a short introduction... 

This video game let's you play the whole evolution of mankind (or Creature-kind).

At the beginning, you need to create this unicellular creature which only goal is to either eat plants or other unicellular creatures, and survive (this includes not getting eaten by bigger unicellular creatures.).

Then you have to select a pair (or more pairs) of legs. You attach them to your creature (mine named 'Hysth') and he learns how to walk. You form a tribe, and your race (the Hysth-race) needs to become the 'king' of your habitat. You can do this by forming alliances with other tribes (by challenging them to a dance-off, an american-Idol-contest or a miss-universe-election) or by simply demolishing them.

Once you accomplished this, you then move on to a few other phases, in which you create your own buildings, town centre, aircrafts and ships.  

This all happened during the first 2-3 hours of play. Now let the games begin.

You enter the space-phase. This is where the real fun and addiction kicks in. You have to conquer space. Doing so you encounter tons of planets, solar systems, species, artifacts, suns, stars, comets, other civilisations, paint-guns, laserbeams, beam-me-up-scotty-devices... 

This space-phase is immense. It's soooo big that, when looking at all the different solar systems, one might get a bit dizzy. This game is one of the most immense things I've ever encountered.

"It's not complete"

Let's put our toughts with Robert Begley of Chambersburg for a second.

Robert has the largest collection of bar towels. He has no less than 2372 different bar towels. That's impressive, especially because I have... well ... no bar towels. Is Robert's collection complete? Nope. His collection is far from anything near complete. But his collection is still big, immense. Just like this game. Incomplete, but immense. And the best thing:

IT'S TREMENDOUS FUN!

That's right. Spore is fun! It's so much fun that everytime I get home I can't wait to go back to conquering space! And when I'm destroying planets in favor of my beloved allies, I sometimes think about all the people who are so negative about this game, and why they fail to understand that it's just a game. They should enjoy it. Just like I do.

Has E.A. failed putting 10 billion years of evolution into this game? Yes!

Has E.A. created a game that's fun to play and very original?  Hell yeah!

That's it for today!

-Delta Out!