Ross Scott

I don't really understand how i'm a little baby. I feel kinda offended.

You wouldn't be the baby. His expression resembles my own to what you're saying. VTM Bloodlines is a longer game than Half-Life.

 

$10 a month...go! I think the next time I get a raise (which I expect March, probably) I'll raise it to $20.

 

I've always felt a little guilty watching the downloaded copies of Freeman's Mind, since I know you worked hard on them yet aren't getting any compensation, so I think this will assuage that. (And, yes, I know you put them out voluntarily, they're not illegal rips or anything, so I really shouldn't feel guilty, but I still do a bit). And hearing how little you make compared to me, and how awesome you just seem in general, you definitely deserve something.

 

Also, about Patreon, have you considered you still might get more through them, simply through more people donating, rather than going through PayPal? I don't know what the actual numbers would be, so I could easily be wrong, but it's something you could consider.

It's possible, but I didn't like how it had to be done as a service, which affects my taxes, plus the additional fees + their recent public perception after being hacked didn't help either. Besides, if people really don't want to use Paypal, they can always email me or I have the bitcoin option too. It's like the video said, my heart really isn't into business stuff, I look at it as a means to an end. I only want money to the point I don't have to worry about it.

It's considerably shorter than Freeman's Mind

 

Hey, just a heads up, if you do decide to live-stream, try using some kind of RTMP server. I cannot stand watching Twitch with live commenting when we're all 30 seconds behind you. That's no fun, because everyone's losing their minds about stuff you did 30 seconds ago, not what you're doing now. You could try to get AWS involved- I can get a ridiculously powerful instance for my gaming for about seventy-five cents an hour. Sure, that adds up, but with the same amount of money it would cost to buy a rig that could match that, I could play nonstop for 222 days! (4000/0.75 then divide that by 24 for the number of days)

Prepare to be disappointed. I'm expecting there will be so many comments that I'll probably be 5-10 minutes behind what people are writing and I highly doubt I'll get to everyone for the first livestream. I haven't settled on what service I'll be using, but if you're expecting an answer as soon as you type it, you may be competing with thousands of others. This will be semi-anarchy at first, but I'm thinking over time we'll get a better semblance of order going.

Would annual donations result in a smaller number of fees?

Yes, so I get to keep more of $12 once a year than I do from $1 monthly. I didn't want to point that out in the video because I wanted to minimize the "look at all the ways you can pay me" infomercial crap. This was honestly a rough script for me to write since I was fighting a lot of my nature with it.

 

Also, Ross, have you considered taking up a career in mugging?

 

You can like or dislike Patreon, but this hack business would be a very foolish thing to hold against them in particular. So many huge companies have experienced data breaches that you should flat out expect that EVERY company you deal with online will leak all your data. Data breaches are the rule, not the exception, and that's just based on the stuff we know about because it was found and publicized.

Yeah, but wow, the timing sure worked in my favor.

 

Edit, SUGGESTION: Seeing as you're willing to spend more time gaming on RGD, why not make at least some of it on a schedule and do a stream? I don't know how much Twitch is paying, but it can help a bit while you wouldn't have to change much for it, maybe the screen cap to not include the chat. It might even bring in people who are not aware of Accursed Farms to watch your videos, so it it might trickle down to more YouTube payments.

I'm not sure what people have in mind, but I think it would be pretty underwhelming. Not always, but a lot of the time it's mostly me going in with a list of notes of what kinds of shots I want to grab, screencapping them, then exiting and processing the clips for editing and repeating. Additionally, I try to free up all computer resources when recording higher resolution games to minimize the possibility of any stuttering. While I do have a multicore processor, I don't always have full faith in Windows' ability to manage things without any bottlenecking at all. That and I'm usually not giving any sort of performance while I'm doing this stuff, I'm typically trying to get the footage I need as fast I can and I don't think it would be very interesting to watch.

 

Nice to see someone not spend their donations on an overpriced and overrated alienware computer and actually be smart with them.

Well I confess, even before the fundraiser, I've been holding out for Pascal next year. I usually only upgrade one part at a time and make it last as long as possible however. That and the Oculus Rift (or Vive, whichever ends up being better), since I look at that less as an upgrade and more of an escapism portal that I've been wanting for a decade or so. But yeah, I've actually never bought a full desktop system. I assembled my first one in high school (for $400 including monitor) and have only upgraded incrementally since. Even then, I never buy top-tier stuff since the premium is so high and it depreciates rapidly.

 

Why doesn't anyone remember Falcon Northwest? They were the first and are still the most elegant.

I believe VoodooPC predates them.

For a fundraiser video that was VERY fun to whatch, always maintaining excelence with your videos.

 

I've seen in the youtube comments that you promised to do something for FM at one point. May I have the audacity to suggest something?

You created Freeman's Mind originally to do something that took less time to do than CP at the time, eventualy it turned into a chore anyway, however keeping with that philosophy, why don't you take advantage of the current situation freeman is in? Some sort of Freeman's Dreams or something in the lines that is a SUPER SHORT (no more than 2 or 3 min of footage, maybe even less) of freeman having a fever dream that translates into him being in a particular situation in a rare videogame. For isntance let's look at a random rare videogame like "God of Thunder" for DOS made by software creations and have freeman confront a situation like this one right here:

(go to min 4:00-4:30). I was originaly hoping to suggest this videogame along with other Software creations games for DOS for a Game Dungeon episode, although I don't know if the material would be enough for an episode of those, but it would certainly go well with an idea like the one I'm presenting to you. Maybe taking advantage of things like this with the Freeman character could do well for breaching the gap between HL and the moment you finaly decide to go with HL2 for the series and it would make sense within the context of his current situation.

 

Another possibility could be to just do HL2 Lost coast, but that has the dissadvantage of probably taking the same time as your traditional FM videos, my other suggestion has the possibility of being easier, shorter and it could take less time.

 

I hope I'm not being too daring with this suggestion, but it came to my mind that at least it had to be said.

 

Can't wait for the next Game Dungeon and good luck with your movie!

Maybe, these both seem like things that sound easy in concept, but seem like they could get suspiciously longer. I tend to be more cautious the easier something to do is also, since I don't like the videos to dip below a certain quality level.

 

 

Great video, Ross.

I've created this account just to tell you this, and, I felt I had a little spare money, so I've decided to donate, I never donated to anyone before, so, as you can see, you're pretty special.

My credit card expiration date is almost ending, but as soon as I renew it, I'll start doing monthly donations

 

Best of luck to you.

Oh well thanks a bunch man. Again though, don't feel obligated if you're scraping by yourself. That's part of the reason I told everyone how much I make, so some people would certainly go "well damn, I'm making as much as that working the grill, I think I'll keep my money afterall". I don't want to exploit or deceive anyone. Besides, even if you never donate a dime, coming back after a long time to see more videos is always appreciated.

 

If I had money, I'd definitely give it all to you

No worries at all, it's not like I'm handing out donations myself. Again, I really look at the situation as me pressing my luck, so don't worry about it.

 

I'd like some more information about Paypal monthly donations. Your chart was very helpful to me, but do you experience higher fees if I use an amex credit card vs a visa card vs a bank account? I've avoided having a bank account tied to them, because if I want to use my 2% back on everything credit card, they give me multiple pester popups about using the bank account instead on every single purchase forever. Obviously I don't want you to soak 20% higher transaction fees though.

 

Also, if you're gonna use Andrew Sega's music, I hope you'll be doing In Pursuit of Greed or Crusader or at least talk about tracker software.

No, it's all the same as far as I know. It might be less for directly from another Paypal account, but that's it. As for mod tracker, I talked about that in moon gaming actually, but edited it out since there was so much other stuff.

 

Definitely donated, I may be able to give more later on, is there a way to increase the monthly payment amount after I've done it?

Not that I know of, I think just cancel the old one and do a new one instead.

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New video! This one probably isn't what a lot of you were hoping for, but I admit this is one aimed at a real minority of the audience. I tried to make it as enjoyable to watch as I could. The short version is this is a fundraiser video and I'll be happy for any donations I can get. There's no obligation to donate anything however, you'll still get all the videos. This is another experiment of mine to stay afloat, like many others. If you are interested in helping out though, the donation page has been updated to make it a little easier to use + now includes stat tracking!

 

Donation Page

 

I was originally going to use Patreon for this, but for reasons discussed in the video, I decided against it (them being hacked recently reinforced the decision). For those wondering, I'm unfortunatley going to be pretty empty-handed regarded prizes, although if there's something you really want that doesn't take a lot of time, I can consider it. It's mostly an issue of time more than anything else. If you've ever wanted to know what my financial or work situation has been over the years, it's all in the video.

 

Something I was considering saying that's not it the video is if anyone has alternative solutions to my situation also, they're free to suggest them. I was a little hesitant about saying that on Youtube since a lot of suggestions might not be so practical ("You should live in a dog house, it's much less expensive, woof!").

 

One big news item in the video that's worth repeating is I plan to be setting up monthly live video chats in the near future, so anyone can communicate with me and I can let everyone know what's going on. Ideally, I'd like to start this sometime late October, but realistically, it may not happen until early November. I'll have details posted here once things are worked out.

 

For the time being, next up, regardless of how the fundraiser goes, is going to be as many Game Dungeons as I can cram in for October. There will be a bit of a delay, but expect several for late October and of course, a Halloween episode. While the overall future of my videos is a little like the Magic 8 ball answer "reply hazy, try again later", for the time being, there's a bunch more coming!

 

- - -

 

ADHD version: Did you know Ross accepts money? Also he'll be doing live video chats in the future!

 

COMMENTS

The video will explain everything. If nothing goes wrong, I should have it up within 24 hours.

Okay things DID go wrong, it will probably be within another 24 hours.

 

 

I always wondering do you have any outtakes/funny records between takes from FM or CP?

 

I have on my phone outtakes from Leet World and this is sometimes funnier than actual machinima, and because CP is in my top5 it would be nice to have outtakes from it

There's barely any from FM, it's very robotic to record. There are some from CP, I'll get around to releasing them at some point.

I REALLY want to see someone make a video using all the quotes in contex, I listened to them at random and while a lot of them are funny, I have a feeling they'd be much better actually being used in the game.

 

Also I think i missed something, what's this fundraiser for?

The video will explain everything. If nothing goes wrong, I should have it up within 24 hours.

Download links on FM 1-48 are redirecting to the main page, not to the download. FM49-68 are working fine.

Hell, that'll get fixed ASAP.

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Goodies! In anticipation of the fundraiser campaign I should have coming out soon (expect a video + more info in 1-2 days), as a good faith gesture, I'm releasing all the stuff I've been meaning to for months!

 

DOTA 2 VOICE PACK RELEASED!

 

While my original plan was to sell this in the Steam store, I've decided to release all the files to the Freeman's Mind Announcer Pack I was working on for DOTA 2 for free. The reason I didn't follow this thing through was because midway through its production, Valve changed the rules, which made about half my lines unusable. This was a huge morale killer and by that time I was able to resume work on the videos again, so this pack remained in limbo for a while. Truth be told, I'd rather just make more videos than spend another month or two working on this again. Ironically, I'm not even that big a MOBA fan (though I do like RTSs and action RPGs individually), this was more of a fan request thing that never quite made it. Still, I put a whole bunch of effort into this and I'm sure you'll find some lines entertaining.

 

DOTA 2 Freeman's Mind Announcer Pack (51MB)

 

You're allowed to use these files for anything you want, under the following conditions:

1. Don't sell this as a voice pack.

2. If you make something substantial with this, please credit me (Ross Scott) for the lines if possible.

 

While this pack is free, donations are still welcome!

 

 

ALL WEBSITE LINKS UPDATED!

 

Besides the DOTA 2 files, all the links to the videos on the site should now be updated, making it easy to find anything you may have missed. In the future I hope to have an overhaul of the site to make everything easier to access, but in the meantime, info on all the videos can be found here in the movies section. Additionally, all Freeman's Mind episodes are now available to download from the episode pages, and I've also updated the archive of all my isolated voice tracks for Freeman's Mind. You can download the updated pack HERE (680MB).

 

That's it for now, the fundraising video is next, followed by as many Game Dungeons as I can get done for October!

 

- - -

 

ADHD version: Dota 2 files released! Freeman's Mind voice files + downloads released! Web links all updated! Ross is having a fundraising campaign soon, donations are appreciated!

 

 

COMMENTS

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New Game Dungeon! I think this might be the shortest one so far, but I promise I didn't skimp any on the quality. This game certainly had things to talk about. I originally was going to start working on the Patreon campaign next, but after the muddled reaction to Moon Gaming, I felt like I should get another Game Dungeon out first to let people know I wasn't abandoning other videos. On that note, I think I'm going to discontinue Moon Gaming as the response to it wasn't what I was hoping. While I think it has potential to be better, I don't think it would be a LOT better than what was already seen. Since that's been scrapped, after Patreon is set up, my new plan is to get as many Game Dungeons out for October as I can. I have a couple smaller episodes planned and at least one larger one for Halloween, but I'll just see what's doable. More stuff coming!

 

COMMENTS

Well the overall feedback on this looks pretty clear. In honesty, I was pretty happy with how this came out, but it could be because I had someone else to comment also so I wasn't in a vacuum just spouting out my own thoughts. Apparently me spouting my own thoughts is enough however! For everyone talking about it improving, I can see it improving somewhat, but not a LOT. So in light of that, I think I'm going to discontinue the series. My new plans now are to get a Game Dungeon out ASAP (I have a short but good one in mind) to sort of make amends for everyone disappointed by this one, then I'll be working on Patreon. I'm still figuring out what I want to do for October, but in all likelihood it will be as many Game Dungeons as I can manage.

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EDIT:
The reception to this video has been rockier than I was hoping and it definitely affects future plans. I want to get a better bearing on what people think of this. Please give some feedback below:

[poll id=11]

New series! Welcome to Moon Gaming, the only gaming show that takes place on the moon (I think)! I've been wanting to make this for a while now and while we ran into a lot of technical issues, I'm more or less pleased with how it came out. This series is going to be composed of "Let's Play" sessions. Normally I'm not very interested in "Let's Plays" myself, because it tends to be a lot of dead air or talking about nothing particularly interesting. Moon Gaming hopes to solve those problems by editing it down to just the stuff worth talking about. So even though this is technically a Let's Play, I guarantee every shot in here is one that I thought belonged. If anything, I may have been a little overzealous about this first episode and cut a little too much, but the playthrough ran on a lot longer than we intended. We originally planned for only one episode, but we had so much to talk about it ballooned into three. I think future episodes will go much more smoothly. I'm very optimistic about this series as the turnaround time is definitely faster than Game Dungeon, so it can hopefully buy myself some more time to work on the movie.

In this inaugural episode, I'm joined by Tom White of the show Weird Video Games. I met him from being on TGWTG network and I generally recommend his videos; some of my favorites being https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xB8fWRD-p5c and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjsGXnTBvB8. Tom will be returning for future episodes and I have another guest lined up also. As for other videos, my next focus is going to be setting up a Patreon campaign, along with an accompanying video. If I'm lucky, I'll have another Moon Gaming episode for this month, but if not, expect several for October as this show format allows me to squeeze in more videos than I normally would be able to and I'd love to have more Halloween-themed ones. I'll try my best to have a Game Dungeon for October too. Busy!

COMMENTS

I'm actually not sure if the knuckle joint always corresponds with completing the level, I just decided to assume that for the sake of the video.

I don't feel like retaking the test, but I've done these before and I'm INTJ. I'm borderline I/E, real high marks in NT and moderately low J.

1) To those more knowledgeable. Do you feel like helping me out with good sources of how bad it actually is - at the moment, most of what I've seen have been scattered among various blogs and while I'm not calling people liars, some of the claims are just too outlandish to believe without some damn solid evidence.

 

2) Is there anything we can actually do about it, if it's really that bad? I mean, games are supposed to be fun, and I always had this naive idea that it was a fun sector to work in.

I'm really not trying to bum people out with this stuff, it's more like I don't like how invisible it is.

 

For #1, I can't say for certain, though with my own "escape from machinima" entries, that was really bad for me and everything on there (not counting my google speculation, since that was just speculating) was true. So it's VERY easy to imagine it getting as bad or worse in the actual industry.

 

For #2 I'm kind of cynical so I don't think it can be changed through populist or democratic means. If I did, I would endorse boycotts, but there's a history of gaming boycotts not being effective at all. I guess the upside is not ALL games are like that, just higher profile ones it's more common.

 

 

And that is just what the programmers USE to get exploited. We could talk about Nike factories exploiting children, the meat industry or anything else.. but that's just to prove that point, when it comes to the actual gaming industry I think that when this ''slavish ethic'' gets stereotyped in a field, such as programming or others it is very difficult to eliminate because part of the responsibility falls on the workers themselves wanting to work those hours (because we all need to eat), so there will always be another guy willing to crunch those hours for less money because he needs the experience or the money. and companies take advantage of this to make it a standard, save money and make bigger profit. It happens from DJs in bars and clubs to programmers in video game companies. I don't know how it can be called. .

Yeah, just to be clear, there are WAY more serious issues going on globally than anything in the realm of gaming, but the more you question our most harmful practices, the more you have to question our whole system overall, which I think a lot of people aren't really willing to do mentally. I just figure gaming is an easier realm to tackle overall.

 

Also for the record, anyone working on a game who deliberately pushes themselves I don't see as a problem, that's just their motivation. The problem is companies exploiting or demanding that type of behavior with EA Spouse crunch time hours, no overtime pay, routine layoffs, etc. Imagine if EA had to pay time and a half for every hour over 40 that a person spent on a game, it would drastically change their approach to things.

I tried the NVIDIA 3D mode on some games again after watching the video, and I can certainly see what you mean. I did get an increased sense of depth perception on a lot of them, which looked awesome, especially on Half-Life 2, but I only got the "sticking out of the screen"-feeling on Just Cause 2 with a first person mod since that game was made with NVIDIA 3D vision in mind. I used the red/cyan 3D glasses, which messed up all the colours and made it hard to see a lot of times, but I still think it was cool.

I think the game that immersed me the most with 3D mode would have to be Dirt 3 though. I used the first person perspective and I literally felt like I was inside the car. The track I raced on was really dark and the glasses made it even worse, but it still felt so REAL...

You know I found something that proves it was more than my imagination:

 

 

Now this is only using anaglyph mode, but back when I had an s-3d setup, I was using page-flipped shutter glasses. Regardless, if you look at these, you can tell there's definitely a difference between the two. Unfortunately it's likely multiple settings are different, but just from that screenshot I think the TriDef one definitely looks better. The roof windows and general perspective just seems better somehow.

Sorry for the slow replies:

 

The best shot for that would be creating a program that allows you to tag any song with any number of user generated tags, and have the user go by each song and each tag manually rating each tag's accuracy to each song it's attached to. This would take a long time to calibrate by the user, especially because I've tried this before and I found myself endlessly calibrating each tag's accuracy and found that I change my mind too frequently. If you have more solid thought processes than me though, then the idea would be for the program to generate a list based off of the tags you searched and order them by most appropriate to least appropriate. The way I did it is I used tags for mood and how the music itself plays, but that came with some problems. A song that's both happy and fast-tempo wouldn't give the exact same feeling as something that's happy and slow-tempo, but it shares the same number of tags as something that's sad and fast-tempo, even when it's closer in mood to the one that's happy and slow-tempo, at least in my experience.

I may be misunderstanding, but I've already tried this, it's not an ideal solution since some songs will get overrepresented. So if you have a song that's electronic AND metal, it appears twice as much on playlists. I ideally want every track to have an equal representation (within its own category). As for custom tags, I really think there's enough within ID3 to work with. I think it would only need 2 different fields max, maybe just one.

 

 

Perhaps this could be what you're looking for Ross...

 

http://betanews.com/2015/06/27/find-similar-audio-files-with-mediapurge/

No, I think that's a completely different thing. That just cleans up badly labelled or organized files. I'm talking about custom criteria for organizing soundtracks so that you can get similar sounding tracks on a playlist.

 

Ross, Watterson, what do you guys think?

Would style (aka genre) + mood + tempo organization work for you?

Yes and no. First, while mood can be very subjective, I think tempo is absolutely crucial towards sorting tracks the way I'm envisioning. Mood or situation for listening could work, but the categories you list is part of the problem. You have things like "energetic" and "poignant" that aren't especially helpful for manual sorting. I want to boil these down into as few categories as possible (but still practical). When you have thousands of potential mood / style combinations like this, it makes manual sorting rather impractical. Besides, where's the benefit of labeling a track "aggressive" AND "angry"? This is way too much. I'm trying to find a system simple enough I can practically follow a flowchart as to how to sort the music and at the end the tracks basically sound similar for that category.

 

Guys, here's the thing: If I know the CRITERIA for how to sort thing, then everything falls into place for me. This is a subjective thing and not everyone will have the same opinions, but the more feedback I get on this, the more I can figure out my own system that works. Lately, I've been trying to put some categories into different moods, and some based on situations where I might want the music. Here are a few examples of what I mean for soundtracks (this all assumes no lyrics):

 

Racing - Rock: Music with a fast enough tempo to be suitable for a racing game with a rock / metal genre overall. Somewhat neutral in tone, without strong "strife" or "angst" overtones.

Example:

 

Frag: Music suitable for a deathmatch or fighting game with pretty constant action. A slower overall tempo than "racing" with more irregularity in the beat also suitable. Generally some variant of heavy metal.

Example:

 

Scary Calm: Music suitable for a horror game, but is generally just mild tension building rather than moods of intense suspense or fear.

Example:

 

Medieval Simming: Music suitable for some sort of medieval sim game. Generally calm pacing, with nothing too soothing or riveting, but has some instrument use or style that suggests a medieval environment.

Example:

 

 

Now the alternative to this would be to have some sort computer-assisted system that could spit out analytics or suggested organizational system that could be refined manually, but I don't know of anything like that. If I have to sort it all myself, the variables need to be as few as possible to still work. I'm anticipating a few dozen categories, but hopefully not much beyond that for soundtracks. Let me know if you have any feedback along these lines. I'd like to know how other people decide what sorts of songs go together (that's NOT based on artist / album).

I saw Avatar 4 times. The first three was in an IMAX cinema. It blew me away! Even after the third time, I was totally lost in the 3D. Several times I felt like I could touch the characters. And the screen was big enough so I can't see the edge of the screen, even in my peripheral vision.

The fourth time was a regular "3D" cinema render. It was terrible. The whole seen was rendered behind the movie screen. So I was barely able to make out the 3D. In fact I was bored.

I saw other movies in IMAX too. Like the one about the Mir space station. It was mind blowing too. So my conclusion is see 3D films in IMAX only. It actually works.

That might be the problem then. I only went to normal 3D theaters. Literally the whole time I was watching Avatar I was thinking it needed more depth (except for the scene with the alien pollen or whatever it was). I liked the transparencies from the glass, but it was still too flat.

 

Fuck you, Creative labs!

Always.

 

Ross, you NEED to try it.

Oh I will, I'm just waiting for the first generation consumer versions. If I thought DK2 was as good as it was going to get, I would have one by now.

The difference between "This game is expected to die on dd/mm/yyyy (but it might live on)" and "This game requires an online connection" is that we have a time frame. We have a guarantee and we can hold the company for liability. And we can have industry standards - the same way people don't shell out $60 for a 4 hour game, people will be reluctant to buy anything, whether it be the game or microtransactions for a game that'll disappear in 1.5 years. That way, short-lived games will also be phased out, because they would become non-profitable.

I think that even 4 years is an outrageously short time. My hope is that this practice be eradicated bit by bit, or that we'll at least have games that run for a decade. That's enough time for reverse engineering.

Well like I said on the video, I know I'm on the extremist end. I think killing any game intentionally is unacceptable. I see a longer lifespan as just a stay of execution. Besides, that only allows reverse engineering if there's enough programming masterminds interested in the game to do so. It does nothing for less-popular ones. I think anyone who wants to keep some sort of media preserved should at least have the opportunity to do so. I mean hell, I have couple soundtracks I'm not sure many others on the planet have. That's because there wasn't a parent company intentionally corrupting the music file that I saved after a length of time.

 

Actually, your version is also kind of good. I'm guessing it can be worded into a lengthy law in which the game doesn't rely on any external data or modules to run, provided that the company still has the source code. But they can half-ass it, and if the game was sold to it by another company and some of the assets were lost in the process, we're screwed - though in that case, we may be screwed either way.

Anyway, while I'm against forcing a company to do something against its business model (because they'll do it the worst possible way and leave everyone with a bad taste in their mouth), I think that it's a good compromise if you think that this practice cannot be eliminated.

I would argue it's very debatable if it's against their business model or even hurts profits. Having old games still in play can keep a franchise relevant and still profits. Even for the games that are meant to be directly replaced, they could just withdraw support and still not outright kill the game. So if a game goes from requiring a central server with lots of social media features / full support to having only private servers with no official support at all, the game has arguably lost value. But they can KEEP SELLING IT and potentially draw people towards the latest game in the franchise which has full support. I guarantee you whatever they're doing EA is making NO money on Battleforge currently.

 

Planned obsolescence isn't just sabotaging a product so it'll fail after a certain time. It can also be leaving out an integral component or feature for future updates.

We're just arguing semantics now. For my purposes, planned obsolescence has a very specific meaning, which is that is artificially designed to no longer function properly after a certain length of time. This aspect you're mentioning is sort of a subset of that, where it's simply DIFFICULT to use the product in the future or it's less relevant. For sake of clarification, I'm referring to situations where it is IMPOSSIBLE to use. Betamax tapes and 8-track players are now obsolete. It's still POSSIBLE to use them though if you can hunt them down and get them working. Maybe they're not obsolete for your purposes, like if there's a specific movie or music on that format that you can't obtain in another way. When I'm arguing against planned obsolescence, I'm talking about situations where it is impossible to keep them going, by design, and an artificial one at that. I hope that clears up any confusion.

 

And I'd have to say Ross, you've struck me with FEAR

Good, it's a fool's errand on my part trying to raise awareness, but I at least want SOME people to realize what's at the end of the rainbow of online-only games. As for Guild Wars, you're probably safe since I think that game would have the "critical mass" to get an emulator functioning if it died. As for The Sims, you're probably aware that EA has had and killed The Sims Online also.

I'm going to bet that it didn't make enough to keep it running, or at the very was projected to lose money. Either way, EA would have made a sequel or any other supplement to fill in the gap if it were successful enough, just like NfS World - It was killed just in time for NfS 2015. But due to the model of planned obsolescence, it was meant to die from the get go, even if they botched things and didn't have a replacement.

But it doesn't really matter. We all agree that prematurely killing games is bad, it's just that I don't think that it can be outlawed, and I'm opting for the easier solution which may have an easier integration in the law - expiration dates and informing the public. In the short term, it'll focus technical people on which games to save. In the long term, I'm hoping it'll just discourage companies from doing it.

I don't see this as any more effective or less impossible than simply making a law that holds the company financially liable for discontinuing a product that people have paid for. I mean here are the issues I see with what you're advocating:

 

1. (except for the rare cases like Molyneux's game) No company is going to ADMIT they intend on shutting the server down. On the contrary, if it's making LOTS of money, they have incentive to keep it going, not kill it. The company can't predict exactly how successful it will be, thus, they can't predict its lifespan. Look at Tabula Rasa or Hellgate London. Each of those only made it 1.5 years before it was shut down.

 

2. We're already doing this in a way, and it's clearly not effective. All these games (for ones that were sold in retail anyway) say on the box "this game requires an online connection." Since this practice is only INCREASING, that's not enough.

 

3. Gamers have demonstrated they're willing to take abuse after abuse if the game they're playing is good enough. What if, against odds, your labeling law was passed and all online-only games state "This game is only guaranteed to function for 1.5 years" on the box, then gamers STILL buy it at about the same rate they do now? It would legitimize this practice, which again, is a nightmare scenario for me.

 

Consumer laws are not unheard of. If the industry recognizes a practice is harmful enough, laws can be made to prevent it. While I don't see mandatory refunds as the only option, I believe there needs to be SOMETHING to give games a fighting chance to survive. I would even consider something as nebulous as

 

"company is required to make a 'best effort' to allow the game to run without their servers in the event they shut them down, or face anti-consumer charges and pay corresponding fines"

 

You might see that as an excuse to worm out of it, but something like that would be a MASSIVE improvement to what we have now. They could release partial source code, a patched client, the point is, they would be required to do SOMETHING. The way it stands now, they not only kill the game outright, but literally do NOTHING to try and make sure paying customers can still use the product. Now every company will have a different definition of "best effort", but I think the law can be pretty clear that doing NOTHING is not a "best effort".

 

I might have described it inaccurately. Most of those inventions were actually known and integrated into certain cars as a safety measure, but weren't marketed to mainstream customers mainly because of their cost. So most cars in the time between said inventions and widespread integration were a case of planned obsolescence.

Again, that's not planned obsolescence, that's just phasing the product out. If you make a product you know you're going to discontinue, that has nothing to do necessarily with planned obsolescence. Look at videocards or CPUs. If I buy a computer parts that's 5 years old, the company probably isn't manufacturing those anymore, they've been phased out as they're now making more powerful ones. This doesn't mean the part I buy is DESIGNED TO DIE. I could buy that part and it could serve me as advertised for 30 years. Planned obsolescence would be if the car or computer part was specifically engineered so that it would fall apart after 5 years, without fail. Printers are a good example of this. All the parts could be in perfect working order, but the software will activate a killswitch after x years, so that the printer will no longer work and you're forced to buy a new one. You may have some confusion on terms. "Planned obsolescence" does NOT mean a product is outdated or been replaced by newer ones (that can be a side effect of planned obsolescence, but it's not the definition). It means it was designed to die after a certain period of time and weakened artificially.

 

Psychology buffs like to claim that business types are power-obssessed sociopaths and the online-only stuff appeals inherently to that mindset. Possibly, but I don't think the people in charge care enough about their products to really understand what their minions on the ground are doing. I highly doubt they pay enough attention to their fanbases to lord over their control of a product like that. These are people who mainly care about numbers, and what improves their numbers and detriments their competitors' numbers.

Ha, I would argue BOTH are true. The tendencies are sociopathic AND they don't know how / care they're affecting people on the ground. Like you said, they don't care about the product. That's why ideally the noise on this practice would be so loud even management would hear it, but I don't think that's going to be the case.

 

Unless I'm missing some huge advantage here I'd go as far to say that online-only games are some kind of industry trend more than any kind of specially engineered marketing tactic. Someone big in the industry started talking about it and everyone tried to cash in on it despite having no real motivation. "This was successful for the other guy and I hope its successful for me." Does anyone know who the first big company to start shouting about this was? I mean the ones who started trying to market it, not just the ones who started quietly using it and pretending nothing had changed.

Online-only games CAN stop piracy dead in their tracks if done right. I'm pretty sure Battleforge had a 0% piracy rate, that's a claim not many companies can make. They can also reduce hacking and allow control of the economy with stores or auction houses, that sort of thing. As for first BIG successes with online-only, it varies. I could be off, but here are some I know of:

 

First big MMO to use online only: Everquest 1999, though World of Warcraft 2004 became much, much bigger.

First big non-subscription multiplayer game to require a central server: Halo on Xbox, 2001

First big single-player game to (artificially) require an online connection: Half-Life 2, 2004

First big single-player game to (artificially) require an always-online connection: Assassin's Creed 2, 2009

First big online-only game to make large use of microtransactions: Farmville, 2009

First big single-player game to REALLY require online-only connection: Diablo 3, 2011

 

I would also give an honorable mention to Modern Warfare 2 since I heard it bucked the trend of previous games in requiring a central server as opposed to allowing private ones. These aren't the first games to execute this stuff, but they are the big ones I'm aware of.

First of all, "The Company" DOES want old games to die. From a business perspective, it makes absolute and total sense - planned obsolescence basically forces the customer to buy the same product again, even if you haven't improved upon it or even damaged it (to a reasonable degree).

See, again, I don't think this argument holds up. When Battleforge died, EA had NOTHING to fill in the gap. They cancelled another RTS they were working on and I'm not aware of one they've created since. I mean this is a line I left out of the review, but we don't even know if Battleforge was still making a profit or not. It certainly had a lot of die hard fans when they killed it. All we know is it wasn't making ENORMOUS profits, which is typically how EA's management mentality works. Even then, I don't think this justifies the practice. It would be like destroying all copies of 1987 Robocop because 2014 Robocop had been released. Each game is a unique artistic experience, not something like a retooled screwdriver. In this case, instead of trying to maintain a smaller, but loyal demographic, EA was basically herding its RTS fans towards their competition, away from them.

 

Above all, I think the most obvious example is Peter Molyneux's Curiosity. It was designed to have a definite end (which was defined by whenever Peter Molyneux wanted it to end) and micro transactions. It was very simplistic, but it was designed to die by its creator with the promise of a prize at the end. Everyone involved wanted that game to die, and so it has.

Cases like these are extremely rare and I consider them more performance art pieces rather than a common practice. I'd be willing to take a bet that 99% of developers who put time into a game that had been killed would want future people to be able to see their work if they wanted to.

 

We've actually had someone in uni do something like this, he hung a bunch of Doritos from the ceiling and begged people not to eat them until he did his presentation. Point is, it's stupid, transient and can't be sold - that's why you don't hear much about it.

Again, this is basically performance art. There was no artistic vision in making Battleforge (or the vast majority of games) die. If it had still been raking in enormous profits, they would never have killed it. Sorry for the troll accusation, it just felt you were conflating something dying off naturally with forcibly destroying something. In the case of games, that's a completely false analogy and it feels like an unsupported rationalization for a practice that just shouldn't be happening. I feel like you've been making a strawman argument by trying to merge the two concepts.

 

Well, there's cars. Do you know all of those lead-fueled death machines of the past? They were basically all killed (stopped manufacturing replacement parts and providing maintenance) again and again after the invention of seatbelts, airbags, ABS, urea-injection etc. But to be honest, it's also abused when every year a new model comes out for the same car with tiny cosmetic adjustments, so it's not all sunshine and rainbows.

But as you've described it, that's not planned obsolescence, that's cycling out an inferior product. Again, this feels like a strawman argument, it's trying to equate two different concepts. If EA had simply retired Battleforge, but old players could continue playing it, I never would have made this video.

The problem with that example is that's also very easy to circumvent. Whenever you want to publish an always-online game, just publish it under some dummy company which can declare bankruptcy at any time and sell the franchise to the parent company.

Well that would be a workaround, although you would think the subsidiary would inherit the debts owed by the child company. Regardless, I'm sure lawmakers could come up with something more bulletproof if the incentive was there to fix it by those with influence.

 

After thinking this through, maybe we need to be more mature about it. Movies and paintings disappear all of the time. That's the nature of some forms of art - it's up to the creator to determine its fate. Sometimes that doesn't fit our needs or is fair, but after all, it's not our vision we're talking about - it's the creator's. And if the creator is a douche, well, we're at fault because we chose to participate in and fuel that douche's ambitions.

The destruction of art is used traditionally as the final act of creating art. Now it's just used as a means to save money. But still, you can't ban a practice that might be legitimate because some people abuse it. But you do need to counteract it with another law.

See I don't accept this at all and see it as a false comparison. An obscure game becoming extinct because of lack of attention or interest, that's a natural death. Sometimes it's a tragedy, sometimes its value is quite questionable. That lies in due dilegence of the consumers or players, not on the creator. They created the game, then released it. I don't see any further responsibilities being required of them.

 

What I'm talking about is night and day compared to that. It was killed BY DESIGN. So from Day 1 it was on life support with no backup plan whatsoever. It's a deliberate death that nobody involved wanted. The players sure as hell don't want this, the developers don't, and management almost certainly doesn't care in the first place. It's something that shouldn't be happening. In these cases, the company is FORCING the responsibility to keep it alive on themselves, then is utterly negligent. You say "some people abuse it", the VAST MAJORITY of games with online-only requirements go down this way. It's the standard, not the exception.

 

If you say games are an experience, like dining, can you really blame them for having an expiration date? If you order a dish at a restaurant and eat it bit by bit for a week - do you really expect it to stay the same? It needs some maintenance for you to have a consistent experience, and in the end, it'll still go bad. Shit dies and you can't blame anyone for it. That's the way the world works.

I think this is a completely disengenous example that borders on trolling. Food rots naturally. Games don't die naturally, they have to be specifically designed that way AND be enforced to prevent them from being restored (afterall, the company could just release the server software as-is). It's deliberate as can be. The comparison should be made to books, music, and movies. We're still hearing about The Odyssey thousands of years after the fact because it's a good story worth hearing. Games are akin to this, not fruit. I'm not aware of any parallel to this in media outside of performance art (which are often designed to shock anyway).

 

Now, I'm against planned obsolescence, but I cannot deny that it's sometimes used for good

I'm not aware of any good use of this practice, maybe you know one I haven't thought of. Food doesn't really qualify, we don't design food to spoil, it happens naturally.

 

Well, that's kind of my point with putting "Gamer" in quotation marks. This is a phrase that's been repeated a lot, but just the act of playing games doesn't really make you part of a unified culture. I think the same thing applies to movies and books as well. There's a very specific stereotype that comes to mind when you describe someone as a Literary Type or a Film Snob. The people who get into the minutae of the medium and seem to be more interested in timelines, important dates and big people in the industry than what said industry actually seems to produce. Gaming is kind of the same. No major outlet ever shuts up about how far graphics have come the same way I occasionally sit through an art student lecturing me about pigments and paint-bases.

 

That's not to say that stuff isn't interesting, I actually read about those sorts of things a lot on my own time. The point is more that the culture is overwhelming focused more on the production than the product. If movies and literature are any indication then this might just be a universal aspect of the way people consume media. In this particular issue, all the money and descision-making power is tied to the prople who only seem to care about production. The product itself is tantamount to trash after the novelty wears off. I see this so much that I've gone way past the point of being shocked and now its just unfathomably alien to me.

Yeah I get what you're saying now, people who play games aren't exactly a collective. I dislike that mentality of focusing on something because it's new as opposed to trying to see if it has some lasting merit, it feels very hollow. Game Dungeon is absolutely devoted to games that manage to retain something worth looking at (good or bad) even after time has passed.

 

I get it. It sucks that we have to lose things that people care about. If things were easier I'd have no disagreement with the idea that art needs to be preserved at all costs. But as it stands in the present day I think everyone needs to stop and consider how impossible that demand is. Also, consider that the destruction of art after its novelty has worn off is pretty much the general outlook the average person has on art. Its always been like that. The stuff people have preserved only ended up like that for very specific reasons or in the case of extreme luck. To some extent I'd go as far to say that the idea of universal preservation of art is an entirely modern viewpoint.

Guys, I think you're obfuscating the real distinction here: This is being destroyed BY DESIGN. If a painting is destroyed, it's due to lack of diligence, or an accident. It's not because the painter secretly built in a timed explosive upon its creation. The average person is absolutely powerless to prevent it. I am not advocating everything needs to be preserved, that's not really practical. I'm saying we shouldn't be designing art for profit that is ARTIFICIALLY destined for death. To me that's all the difference in the world. Battleforge obviously had a devote fanbase wanting (and still wanting) to play it and now it's dead because a company that was paid money deliberately killed it. Comparing that to a game that gets lost to time and people forget about isn't the same thing at all.

 

Yeah, its shitty for a corporation to just toss something in the bin when they're done with it. Bad business? Yes. Short-sighted? Yes. Unneccesary? Absolutely. Grand historical tragedy? Ehhhhhh, no. Unless you factor it into the greater human tragedy of what we lose in the ceaseless march of industry and politics, but that's kind of stretching it. I think people are trying to analyze what is ultimately an existential problem in purely empirical ways.

I was just trying to keep this contained to gaming. There are much larger issues going on in the world of course, but I can't think of one in the realm of gaming. I mean you say an existential problem, but this literally didn't use to exist. If you go back far enough, videogames were never made to die intentionally. This is not a necessary state of things tied to the existence of man. I think existentialism only comes in where if you realize that if we're allowing this to happen, other safeguards in society must be failing prior this.

I guess I have the opposite of your opinion; I find things flying in my face to be a childish use of the tech. All I want is some depth to the scenery, particularly to enhance the feeling of movement given by camera motion.

The stuff flying at my face is just a highlight. The idea is I want the depth so high I can get lost and feel like I'm actually there. With toned down 3D I don't get that at all, I'd rather just have it flat then.

 

I thought the industry had switched fairly quickly from having special 3d cameras to doing it all in software with normal high def cameras because it was cheaper and the equipment fucked up less. I dunno though.

 

I'm one of those people the 3d effect never really worked right on because something about my eyes and i can't tell distances worth shit. I've tried both the red/blue and the newer polarized lenses glasses and frankly I have little hope occulus will work on me.

It's just as much a blessing as a curse. Afterall, way more games are geared for 2D rather than 3D.

 

I can't believe you talked about 3D games and not mentioned the 3DS.

My issue with the 3DS is the screen just seems too small for me to get that "other world" feeling. I'm sure the 3D depth was pretty good, but it's kind of like a pocket hologram; neat, but not exactly a life changing perception. It sounds like you got more out of it though.

This is a blog post. To read the original post, please click here »

 

 

 

Hear the truth about 3D! I've had very mixed feelings about 3D stuff for a long time now and haven't heard any sharing my views, most people seem polarized on it one way or the other; so I wanted to set the record straight as I see it. This may become part of a larger "Ross Rants" series where I pick topics that I really have a lot to say about (and are worth talking about) and go at it. People are welcome to suggest topics they'd like to hear me tear apart as well.

 

This video is coming about a week later than I intended it to since just about everything that could have gone wrong, did. I had to redo the entire recording session, I learned horrible secrets about my camcorder, and getting games from 15 years ago to run ended up being a lengthy challenge in some cases. If I do continue this series, I doubt I'll have as many visual aides as are in this video, but I do hope to improve the video quality in the future. As it stands, I look more like a Star Wars hologram than anything.

 

LINK TO COMMENTS

Gamers (as a whole) are some of the most easily deceived consumers out there unfortunately, ranking a little better than illicit drug users. If they weren't, we wouldn't have encroachments of microtransactions on a full-priced game, literally selling a game ending as DLC, or killing games. I think any study will show the VAST majority of gamers do not WANT these anti-consumer practices, they're just tolerated because consumers are either ignorant, or are so interested in the unique entertainment that they buy them in SPITE of the practices. Again, someone else can probably state this better than I can, but I see these practices as setting the worst precedent imagineable for the art / entertainment world. It says that it's mandated to simply destroy culture by design, which I can't see as anything other than dystopian. Like you said, there's no legal ground to basis this one (except maybe predatory practices), but I'm simply unable to see this practice as acceptable. Venting with this video is about all I can do.

 

I agree mostly, actually. I don't know if I was clear in my original post but I certainly wasn't supporting the system in place. Or even criticising your video, actually, more the idea that there's some kind of easy legal solution to this whole thing. Not mentioned in the video, but its a sentiment I see way too much around the internet.

 

On the topic of gamers being easily decieved, I'd actually go as far to say that the entire foundation of "Gamers" as a culture is wasting excessive amounts of money. You can't really have a unified culture based around just a medium, so like with literature and film the "Gamer" culture caters mostly to snobs with money to burn. I shake my head at the people who spend upwards of $100 on a new edition of a common classic book the same way I shake my head at people who buy online-only games then act surprised when they get shut down. I don't even like to use the word Gamer anymore since it connects to so much idiotic baggage these days.

 

I think more discourse should be spent on why people are willing to support a culture like this, but I suppose that topic is rather complicated and goes way beyond the scope of game reviews. Though for what its worth I consider one of the main attractions of your videos to be your willingness to comment on issues most reviewers act like are unrelated to the topic. Given how much flak political stuff gets on the internet these days I imagine making some kind of politics-oriented series isn't very attractive anyway.

Well the biggest barriers to having the law changed are the encroachment of big money interests in our current systems and the inability of gamers caring enough or being savvy enough to change it. Just because someone can reverse engineer code doesn't mean they know how to gain any influence in Washington D.C. As for theoretical barriers, as with anything, I think if there was enough legal pressure to have the law changed, we would find an adequate solution. I mean how's this for a simple law:

 

Make it mandatory to provide all customers a full refund if they cannot run the game due to reliance on a server that the company has shut down for X time (say 6 months).

 

That means if a company wanted to shut down a game, they damn sure better have SOME sort of patch, otherwise they would literally risk all gross income made from the game. The law wouldn't have to get any more complex than that, the companies themselves would find the solutions. That would cause companies developing online-only games to treat the expenditure as seriously as it should be taken.

 

As for your perception of gamers, that might be true for what gets the most attention media-wise, but I'm WAY behind the curve in terms of money invested. My interest in older games means I could likely find games to play for years without spending a dime, on a very meager system also. While I of course am interested in newer ones some that require more overhead, I just about never touch brand new games because the costs just never justify for it me. I really see games as exploding in every different direction nowadays, so that anyone with interest in it can find something they might like at just a bare minimum cost.