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Reason #2 Why I Didn’t Buy BF3

From Destructoid’s review of Battlefield 3:

As well as proving an unnecessary barrier between player and game, Battlelog is simply poorly designed. Its unintuitive system makes a mystery of handling friend requests (you need to manually import your Origin friends, for example, by finding the correct web page) and obscures some very basic settings. It’s also full of useless “explanation pages” that seem to exist only to tell you how great Battlelog is and need to be manually clicked through each time they’re accidentally opened (which is easy to do, since the veritable army of links on every page can take you to all sorts of unforeseen places). Fortunately, there’s a prominant banner for the Battlefield shop on the main page, so if you don’t know how to send friend requests or set up voice chat, you can at least go buy yourself a T-shirt!  The Battlelog is a crucial, unavoidable part of the Battlefield 3 experience and it does nothing but get in the way. It’s a weird, proprietary attempt to turn a videogame into Facebook and it’s so forcefully imposed on the player that it chokes everything else. Once in a game, everything’s okay, but the overall experience is constantly hampered by this awkward, shoehorned “service” that nobody asked for.
Reason #1 is that I’m not a fan of the Battlefield series, but yikes!  I thought UIs and server browsers were intended to be as unobtrusive as possible?

When Indie Devs Go Bad

The words Minecraft, Notch, Mojang, and various other related terms seem to bring up a romantic like sense of wonder and awe in gamers.   The indie company that rose to fame on their now famous block building game is a company that to most people can do no wrong.  So, of course, when a big company like Bethseda sues them, people do generally tend to side with the little guys.  But in this case, is it a case of ignorance and assumption leading people to believe that Bethseda is in the wrong?

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October Apple Event Predictions

Well, time for the release of the new Apple iPhone in what is usually the fall music event.  Of all the events that Apple did, I usually enjoyed the iPod events the most, mainly because those have been the only products I’ve cared about.  However, I doubt we’ll see much of anything iPod related, much to my dismay.  But still, an Apple event just isn’t an Apple event without me making absurd predictions about what will come from it, so here we go: Read More »

Metro Style

“Tablet interface + app store + seamless integration with computers + stability would certainly be a winning formula.”

I wrote that about half a year ago in response to some initial reports of Metro UI styling in an alpha build of Windows 8. Fast forward to today, the day after the initial keynote on BUILD, and it’s looking to become a very real possibility that Windows 8 tablets could take off. Heck, I’ll even be happy to buy one based on initial impressions as well as knowing the possibilities that lie with a full operating system on a tablet. Read More »

Why People Hate DRM

All the stink that both Diablo III and Ubisoft are causing on the “always-on” DRM made me have to double back on my opinion of it. And actually, an article by Ars Technica released yesterday actually helped me change my mind from being neutral on the matter to being against it.

Yes, I used to be on the side of “When the hell aren’t you connected to the internet, so what’s the problem?” camp. Everywhere I am, I have Internet access, even to the point of I can turn my phone into a hotspot. Hell, I don’t even have to worry about caps on either landline or mobile. I have no reason to care if I’m connected to the Internet or not, because it’s so incredibly easy to do.

But, over the past couple days, I’ve noticed more and more just how problematic DRM is. It doesn’t make life easier for those who buy it, it complicates matters and punishes you for buying the game. The truth of the matter is that pirates will always find a way around DRM in games, music, and movies, and will end up with a product that, while illegal, is incredibly easy to use. Read More »