A few bullet points to show why digital distributions of game software will continue to be customer(*1) unfriendly and risky business Why haven't I received a confirmation email? Why can't I download the file? The download cancelled and now I can't download the game, why? Why is it asking me to enter a serial number and a CD key? Why didn't the installation program ask me for an activation code? Activation Activation of the Game Automatic Activation Manual Activation ...

Why is DRM a good thing you may ask yourself? The answer is simple: http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2009/01/pc-gears-of-war-drm-causes-title-to-shut-down-starting-today.ars More such implementations will surely manage to piss of enough consumers that they go over to a totally DRM'ed solution/lockdown system such as the XBOX 360 Console (Which lets you install games to hard drive, but NOT play without the game cd) and the Playstation 3 (If it ever got any content... ). The trick is...

A few hours of surfing and you end up with a huge history file, and lots of useful links, and even more useless ones. Some of them end up in your 1000+ bookmarks, whereas others are just lost when you accidentaly close a browser tab you shouldn't have closed -- and consequently forgotten. This is where this blog posting comes into play -- it gets them saved -- and since I took time to write it down, I might actually remember to check it out later on, and perhaps others will find something ...

So, after being rather 'lax' when it comes to "closely" following Microsoft betas for the past few years... (ever since I started working with their software as a fulltime job really...) I decided it was time to get up to speed with the recent Windows 7. And lo and behold, I discover that January 9th was the day that build 7000 (beta 1) would be made available for Joe Public (or user in this case). I happily click the most prominent link I could find, only to discover that I was too late, ...

Dear Games Developer & Publisher using Tages Activation die!   Happy new year.      

So the day has come finally, July 1st, the day I attempt to undo years of MMO gaming with a console game. The plan is to add Wii-Fit into my daily routine, coupled with a few other physical exercises, such as taking up Wing-Chun again, jogging, swimming and doing some old fashioned muscle workouts at the gym. Funny to think about it, but it seems like World of Warcraft is one of the things that have had the biggest impact on my life up to now. In that it ruined 2 years of staying in shape ...

Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures A meview of the game. This game had everything going for it. A well known backstory, a "year" for itself (LOTRO came out in 2007 and WAR is delayed), a lot of guilds waiting for it who have grown tired of WoW/LOTRO/EQ2, a release many months ahead of Wrath of the Liche King and most importantly Arnold being the barbarian (and probably a ganker in order to protect tinseltown against movie pirates). So how did it  fail to capture so many (that ...

So I am doing it again. " What ?" I pretend I hear you ask. I am reinstalling my operating system(s) to get a clean installation once again. " But wouldn't a clean OS installation require you to reinstall all your usefull applications and exciting entertainment products ?" you ask in followup. The answer to that question is -- True. Unfortunately it is often required in the state of computing to reinstall the operating system you have been using. There are many reasons for this be...

While driving to work today I was thinking about Starforce and how it is being applied by Publishers and Developers to software titles many gamers are interested in purchasing, and how gamers attempt to combat it. But is it Starforce we should blame, or is it the industry as a whole, spesifically targeting the Software Publishers & Developers who decide to utilize it. There is no doubt to anyone that Starforce is a very strong restriction technology that can be applied to software, b...

It should come as no surprise to anyone who have in the past read my "blog" or to anyone I have talked with on other forums that I have a ... issue.. with regards to games requiring cd-in-drive, games that install hidden drivers on my operating system(s) or offline games that require internet authentication/validation and contain time-consuming validation processes to install/extract the game [not to mention being difficult to operate in a no-internet-lan environment]. (To cover all bases, th...

I am too addicted to the game to type anything longer than a few lines of text here.. but it needs to be put down into writing, so people, when they find me clutching my mouse and doing a cosmos autoupdate in 7 weeks dead from having had no food or water [out of game] with my level 60 character will know what happened... .. I think WoW is a great game, although the administration of the game is shoddy [Euro] and I fear they will cave in and listen to the whiners who claim everyone els...

I remember [Well, actually I dont, but I will pretend I remember and describe something..] many years ago, when I woke up one Saturday morning. The sun was shining through a small opening in the curtains and the birds were happily sending their 'THIS IS MY TERRITORY!' or 'HEY GIRLS!' signal to the surroundings. I stood up, and I was happy. Happy because today I was going to take the bus into the city and purchase a new video game for my computer [AMiGA at the time] from the local game...

Despite a few emails to Blizzard and VU France regarding the issues with the NA Version of World of Warcraft, and having seen the form-reply "it will be great, kkTHXBYE!!^^" I have mixed feelings regarding tonights (00.00) release of World of Warcraft in Europe. Having experienced the severe loot lag in the US Beta... read all the threads and the official statements regarding the issues that have appeared on the US servers.. and having experienced the EXACT same issues in the European Be...

The below "piece" is actually a reply to a poster at http://forums.avault.com regarding Julia Roberts new twins and their names... -------- What is even worse is that google got 3.200 hits for this! Is'nt there anything else that would be more interesting to search for? Lets see: http://www.google.no/search?hl=en&q=Chernobyl+Dome+Crumble&btnG=Search Only 61 hits for the Chernobyl Dome that is crumbling. http://www.google.no/search?hl=en&q=Chernobyl+Sarcophagus...

If Tom Clancy was dead, he would be rolling in his grave about now. For one of the worlds best selling authors in the 'techno-thriller/action' genre it must be infuriating to see his Rainbow Six [book & PC game] title be reduce to this: http://www.3dgamers.com/dlselect/games/rainbowsix4/rainbowsix4_teaser_us.zip.html I will let the video speak for itself.