Strangeparty » Gaming

Time is short. (Or why piracy is not the problem)

Anton Piatek — Tue, 10 May 2011 19:46:41 +0000

We are constantly being bombarded by claims that the music and film industries are being destroyed by rampant piracy eating away at their profits. This whole argument really annoys me, and partly because of the following really well illustrated point.

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I pay for a DVD and then waste loads of time being told not to pirate DVDs. If I had pirated the DVD, I wouldn’t have had to put up with all that.

So how does that fit with a title of “Time is short”? Well… You may have noticed that I did not write a single blog post last month – I haven’t had the time. I also haven’t had the time to go to the cinema, the last film I saw was the penultimate Harry Potter and it not only cost an arm and a leg, but a drink and some nibbles nearly cost me the other arm.

I also have not bought much music in a while – I haven’t heard much I particularly like on the radio, and haven’t really had time to go out looking for anything new, so just stuck with my iPod. If I did buy music, it would probably be a digital download for only a few pounds per album.

You might have guessed that I haven’t bought a DVD in a while – My lovefilm subscription gives me two DVDs a month to watch, and that keeps me busy enough with a little trashy tv.

I have bought a few X-Box games, and am likely to buy some more – Quite shocking really, as they are about £40 or £45 each. So that is eating up a lot of my time as I work my way through Crysis 2 (which is a truly awesome game) and try to resist handing over my wallet Portal 2.

I am also hacking away at Arduinos, rebuiling my media PC and hanging out on twitter and facebook. I wish I could say I even read some of my friends blog’s, but sadly the only items in my reader feed being read are lolcats, failblog, dilbert and xkcd.

As I have already said my blog barely gets updated as it is.

I bought a kindle a few months ago, and so have been reading a lot of books, which really is fantastic and of course consumes huge amounts of my time.

And next month (or possibly sooner) I will be a father, so that will take away all the free time I had for all the above activities!

So where am I supposed to find the time to watch all these films and DVDs that the industry says are being pirated? Piracy is not the problem – Crap films, high prices and, yes, time. They are what is causing me to spend less money on films and music. Instead I am spending more on games, books, gadgets, toys, and soon children.

Top 10 Most Pirated Games of 2008

Anton Piatek — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 10:00:03 +0000

Even with the terrible DRM shipped with Spore – 1.7 million pirated downloads in 3 months is one hell of a figure…

Top 10 Most Pirated Games of 2008 | TorrentFreak
As 2008 is slowly moving toward its end, we start taking a look at the most pirated titles in various categories. First up are games. As expected, Spore is by far the most downloaded game on BitTorrent, in part thanks to the DRM that came with the game.

I wonder when software publishers are going to try selling big title games without DRM to see how that compares?

Only 10 days after the game’s launch date, already half a million people had downloaded the game.

EA Hit with Class Action Lawsuit over Spore DRM

Anton Piatek — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 12:22:43 +0000

EA Hit with Class Action Lawsuit over Spore DRM

…a class action lawsuit has been filed against Electronic Arts in federal court, which alleges the company defrauds its customers by not disclosing the installation of SecuROM copy protection as part of Spore’s installation.

…

“Consumers are given no control, rights or options over SecuROM,” the complaint continues. “The program is uninstallable. Once installed, it becomes a permanent part of the consumer’s software portfolio. Even if the consumer uninstalls Spore and entirely deletes it from their computer, SecuROM remains a fixture in their computer unless and until the consumer completely wipes their hard drive through reformatting or replacement of the drive.”

I wonder if I can join the lawsuit? I only use my windows image for playing spore, so probably don’t care that the copy protection software is not removable. I am more bothered that I can only install Spore 3 times (ever), as I will likely delete windows (hard disk failure?) and then later decide I want to play spore again (at least I have with all other good games – Quake II, StarCraft, Diabo II, etc)

Isn’t SecuROM the same software that Sony had problems with? Or am I getting confused. Sony lost their lawsuit (though it was DRM on a music CD), so I wonder how much chance EA has…

Spore

Anton Piatek — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 17:46:13 +0000

I have had spore nearly a week now, and have been totally hooked. The game is absolutely fabulous, and I am really enjoying it. My only complaint is that the first 4 sections (cell, creature/pack, tribe, civilisation) are shorter than I would have liked, though the final stage seems to have huge scopt.

One thing I did not realise is that the game only allows 3 installs per cd-key before locking it down. This seems quite extreme, and I am not the only one to think so – BBC NEWS | Copyright row dogs Spore release
The reviews on Amazon are incredibly bad, most of them simply because of this DRM restriction.

Physics Games

Anton Piatek — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 13:03:52 +0000

I have been wanting to write about this for a while (well, since Roo first wrote his post) but wasnt sure whether to just point to Roo’s post, or whether to repeat the contents of it here. I have decided that posting the 4 videos would feel too much like plagarism, so check out Roo’s post: rooreynolds.com: Physics Games

It is a collection of Physics based computer games – “Boring” you may think, but in fact they are quite cool (very cool in fact). Don’t think about out, click the link above and watch the videos. I have downloaded Phun, and it is indeed a lot of fun. The thing in common with all the games is that they all have somewhat realistic physics engines (in fact that is the main part of all the games).

Linux Gaming

Anton Piatek — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 20:48:08 +0000

It seems like linux gaming is finally becoming a reality. So far most games seem to be simple ones (not that that makes them bad – the linux card games are far superior than any windows ones I have seen) or multiplayer based (few have good AI’s).

Linux Gamers have a review of Open Source 3D Shoot-em-ups

http://www.linux-gamers.net/smartsection.item.81/comparison-of-free-software-shooters.html

While Linux Journal has a more general review of Free Games for Linux

http://www.linuxjournal.com/node/1000435

I really need to get my 3d card running properly again, as some of those mutliplayer shoot-em-ups look rather good, and I definitely need to try out that racing game!

Duke Nukem Forever Teaser

Anton Piatek — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 11:39:37 +0000

I remember playing the old Duke Nukem’s. They were great fun. Duke Nukem Forever though has been a long time in the making (11 years I think)…

Everyone is wondering if it can live up to the hype… 3D Realms Site: Duke Nukem Forever ®

AtomFilms: Animator vs. Animation

Anton Piatek — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 15:41:24 +0000

I came across these two animations today, and they are brilliant – When you get a minute check these out:

AtomFilms: Animator vs. Animation
AtomFilms: Animator vs. Animation 2

There is also a game you can play if you are really bored (Yes it is damn good too)

Too many worms

Anton Piatek — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 19:17:05 +0000

I think I have figured out what takes up all my free time (which could have been spent blogging). My girlfriend bought a copy of Worms 4 Mayhem (I am sure that there have been 4 worms games before it, but hey) for the Playstation 2. It is much like the other Worms games, but is 3D. The animation is pretty good, though could perhaps have been better (maybe I am too used to 3D PC games?). The weapons are mostly the same, but there are some weapons not in this version, and some new ones. You can create your own weapons which is fun, but ultimately there was probably something similar in the other worms games – you can tailor it for exactly what you want though.

The game is immense fun, and we have only really played the one game stye (normal deathmatch, you also have games with bases and I think a king of the hill style game). It is the first game for the playstation we have found that we both enjoy so much. It is quite likely to keep me occupied for a long, long time.

StarCraft II

Anton Piatek — Mon, 21 May 2007 09:29:41 +0000

The future of games – user created content

Anton Piatek — Tue, 08 May 2007 17:52:34 +0000

At work at Hursley there is an annual event organised called Hursley Techincal Exchange (HTX). It aims to inform the lab about some of the new technology being developed both inside IBM and in the rest of the world. I went to one talk today which was mostly about the Cell Processor and other “next gen” (well, current gen now) consoles. It gave some background on the hardware architecture of the top 3 consoles, but specifically looked at the PS3. At the end was a video from a demo of a new game being developed for the PS3, called Little Big Planet

The video below gives an idea what the game can do, but the basic idea is that all the objects and levels are easily user created. It is quite a demo of what the Cell processor can do as a complex physics engine

It also reminded me about Spore, which is also based around the idea of user created content. Not the levels, but the creatures within the game are all either randomly generated by the computer or pulled down via the internet from another players computer, giving some truly interesting characters. The big idea in Spore is that however your creature is designed it will develop a unique way of walking, using tools, eating etc. The videos give a better idea (The long demo will take a while to watch, but is definitely worth it!)

Surrender!

Anton Piatek — Mon, 07 May 2007 11:04:45 +0000

Saturday was spent paintballing with 7 friends from work down at Delta Force, Romsey. I have been paintballing several times, but not in the last few years. The center was very nice, and well run. The game areas were fabulous, though much smaller than Skirmish, Lasham where I have mostly played.

The games included a wonderful bridge game (3 bridges and no other way across) first thing in the morning, which Pete and I stormed across, flanking the other team and completely destroying them. Another game had the purpose of gaining control of 5 huts, in which we excelled as well – not to mention being fantastic fun. After that, the marshalls were looking to move some people from the winning team to the losing one, as the teams were hardly balanced. I persuaded them to move the four of us that had been split up back into one big group on the losing team, and that balanced out the teams a bit. We ended up losing the day but we were there for the fun, not the certificates.

The day was not paricularly cheap, and comparing to Skirmish’s website, they might have been cheaper (though much further away). The lunch was dissappointing, so bring your own – Skirmish once had a whole hog roast for lunch, but then they seem to have a huge number more people as well as much bigger game areas to play in.

Overall though, it was a fantastic day out and only left me with one nasty looking bruise and a few sore spots.

Too much time on your hands?

Anton Piatek — Mon, 12 Jun 2006 08:37:58 +0000

If I have ever seen a case of too much time on your hands, this would be it: Quake Done Quick and Quake II Done Quick [Google Video]

They are actually very, very impressive but I cannot help but wonder if they were actually done by a person, or if they were scripted as the rocket and grenade jumps are so perfectly timed.

What powers the Xbox 360?

Anton Piatek — Sat, 27 May 2006 13:54:56 +0000

I know the article is old, but it still has some details of the Power-based chip for Microsoft Xbox 360

3 identical multi-threaded PowerPC-based CPU cores operating at 3.2 GHz enhanced with specialized function VMX acceleration for gaming applications and high speed 128 bit vector unit

1 MByte Shared L2 Cache with custom logic for high-speed data streaming for graphics and system applications

5.4 Gb/s per-pin Front Side Bus (with an aggregated bandwidth of 21.6 GBs)

Highly configurable and programmable utilizing e-fuse technology

User-generated future for gaming

Anton Piatek — Tue, 23 May 2006 14:57:48 +0000

A while ago I wrote a post on Spore, now the BBC have posted on it. There is a link to a video interview with the creator of spore at the top of the page, but I will have to wait until I get home to watch it and see if it is the same . . . → Read More: User-generated future for gaming

Revolution’s Horsepower

Anton Piatek — Thu, 30 Mar 2006 13:15:22 +0000

There is an article over on IGN about the Nintendo Revolution’s Horsepower. As you cannot buy a next-gen console without buying an IBM chip, it is interesting to see how Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft are playing their cards. Nintendo is the only one not going for sheer processing power, so maybe they will put the effort into getting some great games made for the console. The cheaper price will certainly tempt me to buy one over the other two.

The Best Computer Game Ever?

Anton Piatek — Mon, 20 Mar 2006 16:29:00 +0000

I have been Google Desktop Search through work, and have to say I have found it really useful. It also has a section of “hot stuff”. I have no idea where the data for it comes from, probably the popularity of searches. Anyway, I clicked on a link there called Spore and was pleasantly surprised to find a video on google on what has to be the coolest video game I have ever seen.

Maxis have excelled again with Spore. They have taken the feedback from people playing The Sims and gone and written an awesome fully precedural computer game.

It is difficult to explain exactly what all this means in laymens terms, but an article on gamespy might help (But watch the above video!! It is incredible!).

This is the one game that I will most defenitely buy, and those that know me know how reluctant I am to part with hard earned cash for computer games. This game is like all their others in that there is no end or winning point, but it is so freeform that there seems to be absolutely nothing that you can’t do in it.

WATCH THE VIDEO (NOW!)