Whoa, it's been a while.

My Korea trip turned out a lot more hectic than it should have been (mainly because, uh, I forgot to apply to graduate school early), and the Alley's been swatting flies. In a highly abstract sort of way. But I'll finally be home next week, and this place should start rolling again. I'll probably clean up that previous post, too - what a ramble.

Some things have happened in the last month that I might have talked out, such as the increasing dominance of the new Securom (badder, stronger, etc) or the aftermath of Fallout 3 actually coming out. Maybe I might get on that, or talk about some wackier things. Like AMVs. Or Mods.

Until then, my little furry friends.

And you guys.

Ten days in Korea, and well, it turns out I don't have internet. Not yet, anyway. So I got very little in my head right now, besides several personal concerns.

Anyway. Korea. Interesting place. As I expected, and as a lot of you probably know, a lot of internet cafes. A lot of kids and some adults playing... Starcraft, World of Warcraft, Warcraft 3, Lineage, and maybe some football games and whatnot. It's not too surprising, actually. If you're going to play in internet cafes ("PC Bang"), then you're always going to gravitate towards multiplayer games where you can hold mini-LAN parties. I've been heckled by more than one gang of high-school buddies who rent out a section and scream and yell for hours over counter-strike or such. Sitting here, it would feel kind of weird to play a traditional single-player RPG or longer-paced games like Civilisation.

Man, time flies when you're not updating your blog.

I'm actually busier now I've graduated, and I've hardly read up on what's going on. No read = no material. I've had to shelve my dreams of a fantasy happy fairyland that awaits university graduates, where I would caress my degree while rivers of honey flow from above. Instead it's a whole lot of forms and applications everywhere.

I'll be visiting my home country (Korea) for the first time in 8 years this coming friday, and stay there until the end of November. Doesn't mean the Alley will die though. I probably won't be able to keep as up to date, but I'm hoping to take the opportunity to take a first-hand look at gaming culture/opinion in Korea. It's not a business trip and I don't have that kind of network over there, so I probably can't get any juicy inside goodies or anything, but hopefully I'll pick up a thing or two. At least, I'll watch one of those Starcraft channels, huh?

So yeah, I'll try and post as much as I can. I mean, I can't miss that massive volcanic eruption of the intarwebs that is the FO3 release, right?

So, I've been busy. Or, rather, Briosafreak has been busy. The Portuguese is a well-known figure in Fallout fandom, engaging in a lot of amateur/fan journalism over the years. Recently he's been updating Fallout 3: A Post Nuclear Blog, and is among the staff of the newly launched PlanetFallout website.

The interview is chock full of stuff on Fallout fans, Briosafreak's own involvement / perspective and the industry in general. See page one and page two. An excerpt:

6. What kind of impact do/did Fallout fans have on the production of Fallout, whether with Interplay or now with Bethesda? Do you think they've been able to influence the way the franchise has gone/is going?

The way they followed the original is still available in the old newsgroups, but much of the FO2 data seems to have been lost forever.

The Interplay message boards during the Tactics days was a great loud party, with the AtheistsforChrisT (as in Chris Taylor) like Killzig or JC causing all sorts of trouble, Saint_Proverbius making some great posts, and the Baldurs Gate and Fallout fans always picking at each other.

The devs interacted with the fans there, and lobbying was made in the fansites. There was a bit of a lack of informal channels though, that caused many misunderstandings, a lesson I learned it should be avoided in the future.

Later, and after two cancellations of the development of Fallout 3,that were kept in secret, the fans were tired of waiting...

Thanks Briosafreak!

This post is a response to Dan 'Shoe' Hsu's recent series of posts on the Sore Thumbs blog, detailing some of the less savoury affairs 'behind the scenes' in gaming journalism. Link to latest one, which in turn has links to previous entries. In this series, Shoe has candidly described numerous ways in which game journalists and their editors interact with game developers and publishers. There're stories of expensive 'gifts', making deals behind the scenes, censure and, basically, corruption that ranges from mild to worrisome. It's all things most people suspect at one time or another, but having it float around in the public consciousness like some urban myth is one thing, and receiving (more or less) confirmation is another.

The man(lady?) on the left looks like a traffic officer. A corrupt traffic officer.

I'm back from the dead (again), after that rather distasteful little sick-note. There, below this one. See? Just terrible. I was going to throw in an interview to plug the gaping hole in the update wagon, but then he said he was busy. Pfah. All he does is work insane hours and manage websites and whatever people who have wife and children do instead of answering my questions. I stomp my feet in your general direction, interview-man.

Anyway, I said I was coming back to the topic of Fallout 3 after the two posts on selling the 'new' to the masses and the 'silent majority'. I'm not entirely sure if I picked the best game to use as example for these stories: some of the responses I've read online (in Soviet Russia, the blogger stalks YOU) fell into the same old cycle of "OH GOD STOP WHINING ABOUT FALLOUT 3" or "THIS IS STUPID, ITS JUST A GAME". What with the current climate, of course I'm not surprised. (It's not necessarily stupid, either.) That does make me avoid the stock debates about the game like a plague, though. I love the games so I have an interest and an opinion on FO3's quality or what constitutes a good sequel, yeah... but I like to think I can keep that sort of apart from these discussions, to which that central debate is really a tangent.

Today I wanted to look at the actual press treatment of the games. Or probably, start looking, then finish later, because I'm a long-winded nut.

I wanted to find a picture of a long, winded nut... but that was probably too much.

Sick, again. Probably will be for a couple of days. Would insert hilarious internet meme here, but about to faint and fall off seat

Sorry!

It's been a week! A full week! Where the hell were you? Nobody could get anything done, the place is a mess! ITS ALL FALLING APART. WE NEED YOU!

That's what you guys were saying, right? Right?

I would have a long string of excuses here about my lazy, lazy neglect, but I used to hate that when my favourite webcomic artists would do that. You think oh my God, an update, then you click, then you see a black screen (or even worse, a photo of their face bloated with a flu or something) and some long-winded literature about how they fell over the veranda while fighting terrorists on a plane filled with snakes and gosh, just couldn't update. Which is what I'm doing now, really, but shh.

Sorry, Mr. Old Lady

Some stuff about Spore after the click.

Great. Just as I posted the discussion about Spore DRM below, EA just had to come and announce a lot of changes and info about Spore DRM. Bleh.

Most significant change seems to be that EA is allowing 'de-authorisations' to make the installations limit more flexible. Which is great! But when they provide stats to show that most people never activated ME or Spore on more than one computer, well... firstly, maybe they are a lot more wary about activating elsewhere because of the limit? And secondly, if it were me, my source of activations wouldn't come within the first few weeks of the game's release. It would come after months and years. Their stats are bereft of logical context, and thus are misleading - to EA's benefit of course. Standard PR stuff.

Furthermore, EA refused to answer questions about why you couldn't buy a copy of Spore for your family and make multiple accounts for your family members. Essentially, while EA has made some good changes and must be credited for that (you have to suspect that the online protests had some hand in this), the core problems do, by and large, remain. The depressing part is that many people will, again, 'latch on' to EA's soundbite stats about "less than 1% wanting more than 3 activations" or their partial concessions, and extrapolate that to say that all future criticisms of EA and its DRM are unfounded. We're going to see arguments of "shut up about the DRM now, EA fixed it" and "nobody wants more than 3 activations anyway", when neither of those are necessarily true!

And that's the power a major corporation still has, no matter what anyone says about the 'democratic' nature of the internet. A carefully worded press release can work wonders (For them).

I promised, right? Here we go, back to Spore. I'll get off my ass and continue that Fallout 3 series (number one and number two) later this week, as well.

So the other controversy regarding Spore was with its DRM. I shouldn't need to go over the basic facts. EA releases Spore with an 'upgraded' version of the Securom DRM, which limits paying customers to 3 installations (before they have to call to 're-authenticate', whatever that involves), and replaces the cd-check with a one-time online activation. Reviewers get concerned; people get angry. Angry enough to refuse to buy the game, and for +6000 people, angry enough to leave lengthy 1-star reviews on Amazon. Phooey.

While a visual representation of DRM would be appropriate, that was too hard. So, spore!