Am I the only one who sees the hilarious irony in making what is essentially a long post complaining about capitalism just to be finished off by saying communists suck? (I know, I know, this is a really simplistic way to view it, especially since you can easily find a comfortable middle margin, but I just think it's funny. ESPECIALLY since it's uninformed about China's economic situation. China is by no means communist anymore. It's state-based capitalism. Closer to fascism, really, though certainly not the same.)

Anyway, setting aside my amusement, I have to agree. I would like very much for Stardock to grow to this extent if Mr. Wardell keeps a nice leash on it and keeps the essence of gaming to what it really is: gaming, and not bloody profit mongering. (I'd say something about regulation here, but could you really regulate what's essentially an art form? As nice as it would be, I don't see how it could reasonably work.)

EA's games i dont mind i just dont like the way they treat them the worst thing they have done to me would be releasing bf2142 and it not working ... for gods sake they had a patch out before the game was even released what happened to bug testing?

I for some reason feel I should point out that EA games (both dev'd and/or published by them) are steadily getting better. When I got BF1942 on the day it came out, I surpassed the system recommended by quite a bit, and the demo worked, but the retail lagged like mad, even on the lowest settings (both on and offline) coupled with a nasty crash bug that was never resolved on that system. Now, we look at games like C&C3 and Crysis, and those are actually (from what I've seen) perform decently on their recommended requirements and are not crash cows.

Give EA another decade or so and I think they may start embracing Stardock's ideals, or at least getting better support.

P.S. I'm not an EA fanboi, especially since, even now, seeing EA in a game's credits makes me hesitate a lot and very reluctant to buy it.

You clearly havent played the Kane's wrath expansion.

Typical EA pattern, make a game, release early, patch it to more-or-less acceptable standards. Then make an expansion based on an older build, release in bug ridden state, make 1 patch, forget about it and move onto the next game so you can repeat the pattern. (they conveniently included initial marketing folders/beta invites for Red Alert 3 with Kane's Wrath)

WESTWOOD!

Again... WESTWOOD!

MafEA buys good companies, makes bad sequels, then swallows them alive!

Check out this post I made on EA's latest attempt to pick your pockets with hype.

Full Version SPORE editor to cost money.

I, for one, do not buy a game unless it is $40 or less

Hollywood is a fairly different problem. They are bloated to the extreme. The entertainment industry as a whole is too lucrative for it's own good. The list of who would want to be a movie star is depressingly large, the list of who will actually be a movie star is necessarily small. It's not constrained to a more reasonable comparison as a janitor is. Often there are fewer people wanting to be janitors than there are jobs available, wages go up in order to attract more janitors to fill the roles.

This is never the case with actors or musicians. If there were ever a shortage in a Hollywood film, you couldn't take a shit without finding a replacement. As a result, only the best, or more frequently, the lucky, get to go anywhere. It's not so much that they have to appeal to the broadest audience to make money, it's that if they aren't appealing to the broadest possible audience, they haven't got any audience. The industry is too lucrative, too powerful, too protective of itself. If they got rid of their guilds, the problem would solve itself rather quickly. The starving artists would quickly become starving artists in actuality, and most of them would quit. Unfortunately for us, those pinko commies will die before they scrap their own social structures.

The gaming industry also suffers from bloat, but it isn't a lucrative, socialist industry killing itself with unionization. It's just being run by morons that can't figure out hype doesn't sell as well as stability does. Half-life was really not that good a first person shooter. It had a pretty good story, decent aliens, but omfg did the weapons suck donkey balls. It was slow too, very very slow. It did have something though, a fucking awesome engine. I played Unreal at about the same time. There was no comparison between them, at all. The net code and graphics were just far superior in terms of stability. It wasn't anything near the game that unreal was in terms of atmosphere. The aliens were much cooler, the weapons were universally more interesting from the pistols up. The unit ai that was supposed to be so advanced in half-life really wasn't that great, as you'd have known right after having a skaarg dodge fire and rush your ass. It was an inferior game all around, except for that damned impressive engine that ran on anything and everything and looked better while it did.

Half-life has been outsold by four games, WoW, Starcraft, and The Sims 1 and 2. It sold because it ran on everything, not because it was the best, or had the best graphics. It wasn't very original, it wasn't ground breaking in any way. The graphics were just marginally better than the previous generation, the game play a good deal worse than some, but it would run on an old computer better than the previous generation did. A mediocre title sold eight million copies as a result. When the pc industry figures out that function comes before form, it will do just fine.

I think that Crysis would have earned alot of more money, if they used another publisher then EA Games.

Birger

Ron, that's Half-Life 2. Which hasn't sold half as well, on account of not being nearly as age friendly towards ones computer. Find a high selling pc game that broke records and required a year old pc or better to run well, and you can disprove my observations.

While I know the number of copies sold is an important number. I, as a gamer, couldn't care less how many copies of the game have been sold. What I want is for the game to be fun and stable. And if it's a multiplayer game, that it has other people online and Lag to be minimum.

Why do some people use that number in order to justify if its a good game? They never played the game, but since this game sold less than that other game, so this game must suck....wtf???

Who said anything about other games sucking? I was pointing out that the industry hasn't figured out what makes a game sell well. Whether they are good or not is entirely irrelevant. I consider the other ones listed to be a blight on humanity, they still have low system requirements, excellent stability, and sold very well.

I don't hate EA, but seeing what they're doing (re DRM) to Mass Effect and reportedly Dragon Age when that comes out, two games I was really, really looking forward to (and now won't be buying)... I could perhaps start to lean that way.