Hurlshort

Most definitely. Actually TOR has some of the best cities I've seen in games. The can still feel a bit underpopulated, but they nailed the size and scope of some of these cool places.

Actually I thought the Dwarf city in DA1 was a lot better than Denerim. It felt fairly massive.

Temple of Elemental Evil is actually pretty bad in terms of story and character development, so I'd steer clear of that one. It does have one of the best turn based combat implementations ever though. Arcanum is my favorite on the list.

Baldur's Gate was pretty easy to get around, but it still had a sense of being a city. Denerim was a market with four merchants and a few houses.

Most of my art is from my 5 year old daughter.

LC, I live behind a High School and I get a fantastic firework show during Homecoming. It's a bit late for that, but it could be a holiday kickoff thing? December 1st usually has a lot of those.

Agreed, when I reached Denerim, which was built up as a big deal, it was a huge letdown. It was empty and super tiny.

This crowdfunding stuff is awesome, but it is completely unreasonable to expect it to take over the economic model of how media is developed. The customer is taking on too much risk. The customer is expected too wait to long for the reward. The appeal of crowdfunding lies completely among the hardcore fans. Call me when we get anywhere near a million backers on a project. Are we going start paying writers to write all the books we want directly, and then wait for years while they miss their deadlines? I love George RR Martin, but I'd be furious if I had to wait for seven years after paying for a book to get it. Are we going to start choosing screenplays that we want to get funded, and then fund what actors we want in the leads? That actually sounds like a cool idea, but the average movie costs tens of millions to produce, and then it's only a couple hours in length. Do you really think there are going to be enough fans to raise that type of money? It sounds crazy because it is.

To be honest I have no issue with DRM, I always buy my games so I can't recall a time where a form of DRM effected my gaming experience? I am supportive of any measures to reduce pirating. But remember that resources go into creating and implementing that DRM, resources that could be better used in so many other ways.

That's a great explanation of why DRM exists, FlintlockJazz. No one here likes DRM, I hope everyone understands that. I've never seen anyone post about wanting DRM.

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Piracy-Rate-for-the-PC-is-33-to-1-Says-Bohemia-Interactive-235392.shtml See how he phrased that? 3 legitimate buyers for every 100 pirate attempts. Now this is a crazy number, but he is very clear with what he is saying, unlike the Ubisoft quote which is unclear.

Am I the only one here who thinks that way of interpreting the interview makes absolutely no sense? I mean it would be nice if the interviewer clarified whether he was talking about copies sold versus copies played, but it seems like common sense that the CEO is going to be talking about sales numbers instead of some weird 'played' number that would make no logical sense. He tripped up when he started talking about the f2p numbers, but this interview refocuses on the initial statement, which is more simply 90-95% of certain games are pirated. They are talking about 90-95% of copies sold. http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/09/05/ubisoft-drm-piracy-interview/

Anubite, I'm not arguing with the statements by the Ubisoft CEO, he clearly made some bizarre statements in interviews and never backed them up with solid numbers. I'm arguing with your bad math. 90% of a number is less than that number. 90% of 3 million would be 2.7 million. It is not 60 million. That is simply bad math. Hey, I think 2.7 million is still too high of a quote for a piracy number. But it isn't quite as unreasonable as what you are saying.

Hey, he called your words wise Alan, relax Seriously, nkkkk didn't seem to be gunning for you or making a threat, I think he is just hopeful that DA3 will be better than DA2, and find success because of that.

While I absolutely love the idea of crowdfunding, and it does change the landscape of the publisher/develop relationship, I don't see how it affects copyright. Obsidian still owns the rights to Project Eternity, by crowd funding it we've just freed them up from having to share that copyright or give it over completely to a publisher. Obsidian is promising to release a DRM free version, but that still doesn't mean by funding the game you now own the IP. Also I think you are overstating the impact crowdfunding will have on gaming. It gives a developer leverage in their business practices. It gives a studio like Obsidian a chance to do a project that publishers won't touch. But there are two problems here: 1. We, as the crowdfunders, have now taken on the risks of the publisher. If the game stinks, or fails to get finished, we are out of luck. 2. The Project Eternity numbers are still nowhere near as impressive as a major game release. Obsidian got 70,000+ backers and over $4 million dollars, that's awesome. But those numbers still don't compare to what a typical blockbuster does in their first week of sales.

I finished watching The Wire, all 5 seasons. It was pretty awesome, and I think I can navigate the mean streets of Baltimore now. There were a lot of episodes that made me not want to be a cop, but the way it ended made me feel that it would be a pretty great career if I had to choose something else to do.

Making friends in the new forums, I see That's why I stay out of all the subforums!

Where do you think Walsingham disappeared to? He's in Nepenthe's closet right now.

Are we really yearning for the glory days of Crysis?

You are assuming he is referring to number of people playing the game. I assume he is referring to number of copies sold. It would be simple for the interviewer to clarify that, but unfortunately it didn't happen. But logically it makes more sense that he was referring to numbers sold, as that would match the piracy numbers given out by other developers like Blizzard. Starcraft 2 sold 3 million and was estimated to be pirated about 2.2 million times. That's about 75%.

So I just read that interview from last August from the CEO of Ubisoft. He is saying two entirely different things in it. 1. Piracy rate is 90-95%. He doesn't actually state whether he is saying played or sold. I would think it would be reasonable to assume he is talking about copies sold, which means for every 10 games sold, 9 are pirated. 2. Only 5% of players pay for the games. The problem is he is talking about f2p, and he's explaining that percentage compares to how may people pay for f2p, and then awkwardly saying they are about the same. These two statements are contradictory. Honestly it's a bad interview, where the CEO is clearly stumbling over the numbers, and the journalist does nothing to correct or address the problems. Where is the follow up interview, by the way? This thing is posted all over, but this is the closest I can find to a follow up. http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/09/05/ubisoft-drm-piracy-interview/ This is the closest thing I found, and they stick to the first statement, which makes more logical sense.

No, it is basic math that 95% of a number is not more than that number. You are looking at this in a very weird way. Now if we are looking at this as total copies of Skyrim played, rather than bought, then it changes the math. But how are they even getting a firm number of copies played? 50 million out of 5 million is 1000%

Do you have a quote for that?

Yeah, that's a killer burger Shady! Sounds delicious.

He is definitely right, but that doesn't mean you can't challenge gamers anymore. The popularity of games like Demons Soul are good examples of that. It's more about making the controls and gameplay intuitive