One of thestories that has been going around the gaming magazines and news sites is Mircorosft’s new “Games for Windows” initiative. In addition to some stuff that will be in Vista, it basically ammounts to that magical word, “advertising,” and that other magical word, “branding.”
The Holiday 2006 issue of PCGamer has a coverstory about “Windows Vista and the Future of Gaming” that discusses the Games for Windows initiative with some industry people. Scott Miller of 3D Realms has some surprisingly candid things to say. In response to the question whether or not this initiative will do any good he quite wisely says that the best thing to do would be to make Windows suck less. On the other hand, when asked if he was excited by the prospect of Microsoft buying shelf space at stores for games, Miller has an odd response:
“All of this is frivolous. If Microsoft really wanted to help the game industry, [it would] lobby to instate a legal window whereby retailers cannot resell games within two months or so. (31)
So Miller thinks that more laws and not selling used games would be the solution??? Call me crazy, but I think his first quote makes a lot more sense than his second.
Case in point, Call of Duty 2. Sunday I went to the store to buy a game and because it was on sake, I deceded on Call of Duty 2. I got it home and opened the box only to see that the game came on 6 cds. SIX! What??? That is just insane. A DVD drive can be bought for something like $20. I think it is time to get rid of multi-cd games.
So I start to install it and I get some random error that it can’t find msvhs30.dll or something. I search around online and find that people are saying that Windows Defender is the cause. So I’m going to have to uninstall itbefore I casn even play the game. I imagine that most people would have just given up without even looking the error up on Google, but having to uninstall a program to get a game to install? That is just plain crap.
Because I figured that Windows would want to restart after uninstalling Defender, I was hesitant to uninstall it. On a whim I right clicked on the cd and started the installer instead of the crapy “autorun” program and guess what? It installed without a hitch. So the problem wasn’t the game, but the stupid autorun splash screen thing. Even more lame.
Of course, as any PC gamer knows, the lameness wasn’t over yet, because the stupid game insists on having the cd in the drive in order to play the game. Sure, because I love th sound of my drive spinning up when I start a game… So I have to go online and download some hack to get rid of the cd check.
And some people think selling used games is the problem with PC gaming???
It seems like ever PC game I’ve bought lately has been screwed up by everything that goes along with the game and the hoops one has to jump through before you even get to the game. No wonder people pirate games.
I’ve had to download a pirate copy of a game that I bought couldn’t get to run because of all this crap and I’ll admit I’ve downloaded a couple of older games that I wanted to play for my research. You know how much trouble I’ve had getting those pirated games to run? Absolutely none.
Maybe there’s a message in there soemwhere…