Seriously, this shit is just too easy sometimes. 

So, how’s everyone enjoying Diablo III? What’s that? You’re not? Oh, the servers are busy, I see. Well, shit happens sometimes I guess. So the online stuff is out of play while Blizzard sort this one out. But hey, there’s always the single player mode to keep you busy while that’s sorted out, right?

What’s that? Constant connection to Battle.net required to play even the single player mode? Well, that’s unfortunate.

So let’s have a resounding “Fuck you!” to the good folks at Blizzard (and, by extension of course, Activision) for this DRM bullshit (cause that’s really what we’re dealing with here for the single player stuff), but also for severely dropping the ball on server performance when they KNEW millions of nerds would be wanting to play this, and they KNEW that they would all need to hit the servers no matter how they wanted to play. It’s amazing how companies these days just love fucking with legitimate paying customers. Why let people play something they’ve paid good money for?

Next thing you know, they’ll call this DLC and make you pay for it. 

“Want the true Diablo III experience? Then for only $5, download the Error 37 DLC, available on day one. Enjoy the realistic waiting. Experience the tension that maybe, JUST MAYBE, this connection attempt will be ‘The One.’ Feel the ever-present threat of disconnection killing your game.”

We’ve seen the face of evil. Hint: It’s not the creatures in Diablo III.

This article on Kotaku (yes, we’re just as shocked to see actual gaming news on Kotaku as you are) reminds us once again why pre-ordering may be the most asinine thing in the history of the world. Australians who pre-ordered Diablo III through troubled gaming retailer GAME have been left with their dicks swinging in the breeze after GAME went into administration. Administration being another word for “oh shit, we’re fucked financially.” You might know it better as bankruptcy.

So, not only are these folks not getting the game (publishers for some reason don’t like sending stock to failing retailers), but they aren’t even getting their pre-order money back! That’s right folks. It’s the oldest business scam in the world. Pre-orderers, gift card holders, and other folks who basically have pre-paid money at a store are considered unsecured creditors and are always the last in line to get money out of a company that goes tits up. And since financially troubled companies don’t have much, you know, money to begin with, you have a better chance of finding journalistic integrity on G4TV than you do of ever seeing that pre-order money again.

So kids, the lesson to be learnt today is: pre-orders are stupid, and you should never give up your money for one. Instead, send that money to us. We can guarantee we’ll make better use of it. 

Remember the good old days when you paid people for a completed product and got it right away? Remember when you had to present a publisher with a solid business plan to get funding for your game? Remember when making anything was a risk? With Kickstarter, you can skip all that bullshit now. Got an idea for something revolutionary? Don’t want to deal with business loans, vulture capitalists, or investing your own cash into it? Kickstart that bitch. Cause apparently people on the Internet have money, and are more than willing to give it up for promises of cool products and rewards.

We can thank Tim Schafer and Double Fine for this shit, by the way. People had heard of Kickstarter before, but it really gained notoriety in the gaming world when Schafer (a guy so loved by apparently everybody that he didn’t need to go this route) decided to Kickstart a new game on the service, tentatively called Double Fine Adventure. The Internet never had a chance. Buoyed by all the free publicity he could eat courtesy of slobbering gaming fanboy journalists, they exceeded their initial $400k goal, and got over THREE MILLION FUCKING DOLLARS worth of pledges. Suffering Jesus.

Now everybody and their cousin thinks they can duplicate this success and bypass business as usual. And by the way, we’re okay with this really. It’s never a bad thing to find a new way of doing stuff. At least, that’s what D’Arcy always said. If Kickstarter means we get a chance to see new games that we wouldn’t have gotten to play otherwise, that can only be a good thing. But we are getting a little tired of the constant stories about this Kickstarter or that Kickstarter. WE GET IT!

Here’s where we’re going to try to channel our inner Ben Paddon for a moment (yes, it’s as scary a thought as it sounds). Let’s take one particular high profile example from recent days in Republique, a game promising a AAA experience for iOS. (Fuck you, we’re not putting in that stupid accent shit. Deal.) We saw a TON (perhaps literally, cause Jim Sterling was one of them, HAR) of journalists pimping the hell out of this one because it has a lot of Metal Gear Solid DNA in it. Which is terrific. We can’t WAIT for this game to come out and for all these journalists to give it the fair and impartial review that we’re SURE they’ll give it. 

This is the problem. All these gaming sites were essentially providing PR on behalf of developer Camouflaj (yay fer spelleen!) to their readership, doing everything short of sending hired goons to twist their arms for money. They weren’t just saying, “here’s some established gaming folks trying to Kickstart a game,” they’ve been monetarily supporting it and liberally encouraging readers to do the same. This isn’t journalism, this is advertising. (Yes, you can make the argument that all GARME JERNALIZM is glorified advertising, and we’d have a hell of a hard time arguing with you.) We can’t wait to see how this one gets reviewed. These guys have too much invested in it.

Oh, and anytime the Kickstarter fad wants to die out? Go right ahead. We’re already tired of it. It could well be at the same time the best and worst thing to ever happen to gaming.

In a story that is really a case of stupidity on both sides, we learn today of a little problem with the highly anticipated Xbox 360 port of Minecraft. Despite claiming local offline co-op for up to four people, it turns out you need an High Definition television to be able to do it, even though it’s not clearly mentioned at all by Microsoft. And now we have people bitching because they can’t do local co-op on their old-ass antiquated televisions.

We can sympathize, as we can’t afford a fancy new television and do our gaming on a 22-inch black-and-white tube TV that we found on the side of the road somewhere. But then we realize that Microsoft (who are being dicks on refunds, BTW) aren’t the only idiots in this story. A few thoughts that we trolled from around our offices (aka a dive strip join in South Cackalacky)…

• “You know, it would have been nice if Microsoft had actually, you know, TOLD people this before they bought the game.”
• “Who the FUCK still games on old-school tube sets?”
• “Even if it worked, it’s not like the non-HD sets are huge, how the hell did they think it would have looked even if it did work?”
• “People are retards.”
• “Sir, you have to pay for that drink.”
• “You’re going to play local split-screen on a 32 or 36 inch set AT BEST. Yeah, that’s gonna look AWESOME. Fucking dopes.”
• “It is ironic in a sense. The game is intentionally old school, but won’t work on old school TVs.”
• “Minecraft can suck my balls.”
• “And now Notch sees what it’s like working with a middle-management soaked big corporation. Sell-out.”
• “This is shit I would have expected from Sony to sell more HDTVs. Microsoft are clearly dropping the ball here.”
• “Move out of your mom’s fucking trailer you stupid loser. Get a job. Get your own place. Get a real TV. And then don’t come home til after 8, because I’ll be there fucking your mom.”
• “Please stop touching the dancers.”
• “What an AWESOME way to get people to buy into digital distribution. That ‘no refunds’ thing looks to be a bit hit.”
• “Minecraft must look terrible in standard definition.”

In a move that absolutely SCREAMS “fair and balanced coverage,” Major Nelson today announced that IGN is coming to Xbox Live. It’ll have gaming previews, reviews, videos, IGN shows, and more. This partnership between a major game console manufacturer/publisher and one of the biggest gaming “journalism” sites on the Internet doesn’t raise any concerns about impartial coverage and won’t add ANY fuel to the already out-of-control fire that is the common belief that IGN has a pro-Microsoft bias.

This will certainly end well.

Goddammit, we hate what the game business is becoming. We are getting sick and tired of greedy-ass publishers and developers trying to shoehorn multiplayer modes into what used to be great single-player games. Uncharted? What the shit? Assassin’s Fucking Goddam Creed? Are you shitting me? And now, God Of Motherfucking War gets a multiplayer mode? 

Why do they insist on taking away precious development resources that COULD be used to make the single-player games better, and instead use them to make pointless multiplayer fragfests? Does EVERYTHING have to be Call Of Duty now? To semi-quote the great Surly Truck Driver from the movie Spider-Man “It stinks and we don’t like it.”

Sometimes a game can just be a great single-player game, why does it have to be something more? Oh, right. Cause a multiplayer mode discourages trading in the game when you’ve finished it for somebody else to buy, thus reducing used game sales. God we hate these people.

Sony lost a fuckton of money. Now Nintendo (NINTENDO!) have posted their first annual loss in, what, forever? Nintendo, remember them?

Even profitable Microsoft has seen a decline in their gaming division, with lower Xbox 360 sales and reduced revenue. What the shit is going on here?

I mean, Sony has been fucking the dog for a while, so that’s not a huge shock. Nintendo are calling for this to be a blip on the radar as they expect to be profitable again next year with the help of a more mature 3DS and the Wii U (which is probably going to be too little, too late to market). Microsoft, we don’t get it. 

My God, is this really happening? Is it possible that gaming on Facebook and on our phones is really starting to make a dent in the “real” gaming space? WHO LET THIS HAPPEN?!?!?!?!?!

Still bending over the traditional gaming industry from beyond the grave.

If we could offer one piece of advice to the Big Three console makers:

Sony: Treat your customers with some goddam respect for once! The name Sony doesn’t mean nearly as much as it used to. Stop trying to rely on your brand selling shit on its own and come up with something people actually want and won’t hate you for.

Nintendo: At some point, you need to do what SEGA did. Fuck off with the hardware (beyond handhelds, you clearly can’t keep up) and allow your army of IP to be ported to the other consoles and handhelds. How much easy money are you leaving on the table?

Microsoft: Start breaking more Xboxes or something. Do something with Kinect that will make core gamers actually want to use the thing. Throw more money at publishers for exclusives, either timed or outright. 

Too bad everybody there’s too busy watching StarCraft tournaments to notice.

It baffles the mind how anybody can lose 6.4 BILLION DOLLARS in a year and still be a going concern. We get 6.4 THOUSAND dollars in debt and we’ve got people screaming at us, harassing us with credit collection calls, and whoring our wives out for pennies on the dollar to pay for our shit (at least, that’s what D’Arcy’s telling me). Isn’t there a point where Sony declares bankruptcy? Shouldn’t the stock market be punishing these idiots?

Oh wait, they’re cutting 10,000 jobs. Cause if there’s one thing that will placate the heartless, soulless, corrupted, purely evil, sicko, worthless, brainless, dickless, scum-of-the-earth, bought-and-paid-for, piece of shit Wall Street ANALysts, it’s mass unemployment and less people with money to spend on shit. Fuck you, Wall Street ANALysts. And that’s not a playful fuck you. It’s a heartfelt, “we hope you die a painful death” fuck you.

But we digress.

We’d like to feel sorry for Sony, we really would, but they brought this shit on themselves. You don’t accidentally lose that amount of money, you have to reeeeeeeaaaaaallllllllllllyyyyy fuck up to pull that off. See, Sony used to be the shit. They were a big name in TVs. They were a name in cameras. They continue to be a player (albeit arguably a third place one) in gaming. They invented the fucking Walkman for Christ’s sake. But things change, and Sony didn’t. And that’s why they suck balls now.

What do you think of when you hear Sony TVs? We think “overpriced and overmatched by Samsung and LG.” (And Panasonic if we get out of pure LCDs.) Well, apparently, they’re going to refocus on the TV division. Maybe they should refocus OFF the TV division. If I’m buying a new TV (and I’m not, see above), it’s very likely not a Sony.

Cameras? I’m thinking Canon and maybe Nikkon. Sony’s not up there either. Though they think they can still focus on this as a core profitable business. Here’s a thought, get rid of the goddam proprietary Memory Sticks and support SD cards like almost everybody else. Oh wait, that would involve respect for the customer, something Sony clearly is not in favor of. 

Mobile? They seriously think they can be a player in mobile? Are you shitting me? This is just delusional. They’re just another player in the crowded Android family, with Samsung (them again) at the head of that table. And there’s also that little company you may have heard of called Apple in the game too. Sony’s not much more than a rounding error in mobile, people.

At least we think they’re doing gaming right. Comparatively. And y’all know what we think of them in this area. They pushed too hard on the bleeding edge 3D technology (probably to try and prop up their failing TV unit), continually showed an inability to delight their users, and in fact have repeatedly shown contempt for the end user with endless system updates, proprietary storage formats, online passes, and questionable pricing decisions. 

So, our old buddy Kaz Hirai has his work cut out for him to turn this turd around. We don’t want Sony to fail, but we’ll dance on their grave all the same if they do. Just on principle. Sony have done this to themselves with horrendous mismanagement and a lack of respect for their customers. Now they want to turn things around.

Good luck with that.