Purkake

No one is saying that all indie games are great. My point was there are good indie/cheap games as well as good full-price games. Same for bad ones.

The official NA release date is the 15th of September, but some places are apparently selling it now. Too bad we, Europeans have to wait till October 9th If you have a DS and live in the States this is the one game to get. Here's a pic from the launch courtesy of NeoGAF:

I wasn't disagreeing with you, I just don't think that they are comparable. Also, the movie cost and length is pretty consistent compared to games. Basically it comes down to good games vs bad movies and the other way around.

Whether they are indie or not they cost ~$20 or less. Do you want us to list all good games that are below the retail price to convince you? How are any of the games we listed "mainstream", other than TF2 and Portal perhaps?

Looking at all the games MORE than 95% of full-price games are crap. Have you seen how many Wii games there are? There are plenty of cheap, but awesome games on Steam like Osmos, Audiosurf, King's Bounty, World of Goo etc. Not buying games because they are cheap is beyond ridiculous. EDIT: *high five* cronicler!

At the end of the day it's a janky and overcomplicated system that doesn't help anyone. One reason to not buy the game would be to vote with your wallet and not support games that have this kind of DRM.

Dare I ask why?

'Should have been in the first game?' Because a custom AI for each teammate is now standard in Western RPGs? I don't think that expecting decent AI from an AAA game is too much to ask. No, it's not. But that's not what you said. You said that giving each companion a unique AI should have been in the first game. That implies you consider it a standard feature that was missing from ME, but I can't think of any RPG were that's the case. Usually the most diversity is 'aggressive/protective' and the player toggles that. You could alter the AI way more in NWN2. Also ME was way bigger than any other RPG at release which made me expect more in terms of actually functional gameplay.

Unfortunately you'll have to track down a copy on eBay or Amazon, they're not on any DD service ATM. You can still get the demo of AvP 2 I think.

This is probably a test to see if you REALLY want to play it.

The Prancing Pony? There's like ~20 inn names in the Wheel of Time and probably an online randomizer for more.

Opening anything is a bad idea, especially now. Call it the "Downturn" or "Bankruptcy Now" or "Guess What'll Be Here Next Week?"

But you're letting the terrorists win...

Caf

That's the best I could do

I don't buy 20$ games. Because they are beneath you and you only buy awesome full-price games because of their guaranteed awesomeness? Never played Portal or any indie games?

It also makes for some good games. That's what you get with a closed platform. From what I've seen you really need to do things differently to stand out in the ever-growing crowd. People are/were excited for games like Scribblenauts, Borderlands and Mirror's Edge even more so than for Halo and other big franchises because they did something new of different. Just releasing a good game isn't enough sometimes(especially when all the damn games come out in ~2 months). If someone were to create a horror/RPG that didn't look too horrible, give it a distinct style, some interesting gameplay mechanics, decent writing and released it DD-only in one of the emptier months like June, it would get as much attention as any AAA title in the Fall. If it doesn't have any glaring flaws it would probably sell pretty well.

As I said, times have changed, the old business model of $60 retail games only works for AAA-titles. You can still make money on a lower budget DD-only game. It would be pretty fun to see a real developer make something IE-like with today's technology, but focusing on the story/writing/characters instead of combat/graphics.

And you can make customized DVD/CD versions that are just liek the ones you might buy in the store! Didn't know that, I hardly write any CDs/DVDs these days, memory sticks and external HDDs are just so much more convenient. Trying to bait Lord of Flies with that signature?

I still don't buy the time argument. Comparing the cost to the length does not work across mediums. You don't pause the movie half way through and continue on later. All movies have a definite ending. Measuring the time you actually have fun in a game as opposed to grinding levels/running from place to place/etc is pretty hard. I like to compare apples to apples and so on.

Blizzard and Valve used their capital wisely and built something that will guarantee them income for years to come. They were by no means in an unique position, however. I agree that times have changed, but there is still a place for innovation in the market, no one is forced to make $60 games for at least three SKUs. Other options do exist.

Hurlshot is probably the only one who can tell you anything about it. All I know is that it's an MMO with hobbits and playable instruments. Maybe it's like this:

How come no one has suggested LoF being Volourn's alt? He is pretty much the WOT's Volo.

What if they're 6 hours but they only cost $20?