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  • IGN - A Credit Card Leaching Honey Trap of Death

    Jere 10:58 am on April 8, 2006 | 1 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: games

    This is just a buyer beware -

    IGN is a credit card leaching honey trap of death.

    Once you sign up for an account you join a vast network of “free” services – and I mean a lot of services – honestly you could have just bought into the largest network of age verification porn keys – it’s crazy.

    Then they store your credit card information and send it to all of these guys – and if you want to cancel your account or even just delete your credit card information – you can’t! You have to contact customer service directly between 9 and 5 Pacific Time!

    Although, in the fine print of the service agreement they do finally admit that some users may feel uncomfortable with their personal information being stored on IGN servers and may want to remove it more immediately, for whatever reason, and so “although not generally recommended”, editing all of your account information to false information, would be an alternative way to effectively cancel you account- which is totally lame, but it was what I had to do.

    So for a good time on the fraudulent Amex card I made up, head over to any IGN affiliated site and log in as ignsucks@ignsucks.com, password: ignsucks.

    Anyway, all this because I couldn’t find ES IV Oblivion anywhere in Hong Kong today (I live in Hong Kong), so I thought Direct2Drive might be a good way to go – it wasn’t – they wouldn’t verify my US visa card because I’m in Hong Kong – I get that a lot – so then I thought “oh well, better delete the account” or at least my credit card information – found out that was impossible – and here we are.

    Bottom line: stay away from IGN – their days as a useful game service run by friendly Nintendo fanboys are far behind them (sorry Peer, but you know it’s true) , so steer clear and head on over to NextGen or 1up.com – free content that’s better than IGN or GameSpy on their best day – and no more endless premium subscriptions, bonus offers, irritating pop-ups or other annoying porn-like scams.

     
  • Online Upgrades = $$$ / Oblivion Follow Up

    Jere 12:27 am on April 6, 2006 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: games

    Pimp your (Oblivion) ride

    Just another example of what people are willing to spend for additional components and upgrades for their in game persona.

    (In this case apparently 200 points (or $20) for a horse armor kit is a little too steep, but you get the idea.

     
  • Nintendo Posting Profits

    Jere 12:13 am on April 6, 2006 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: games, nintendo

    If you were worried about Nintendo in this Sony/Microsoft dominated market, well you can relax… for awhile anyway, thanks to that gimmicky wonder that is Nintendo DS.

    Slashdot | DS Design = Nintendo Profits

    Personally, I don’t really care for the DS, but luckily for Nintendo, I’m in the minority it seems.

     
  • Next Generation - Analysis: The Rise and Fall of Franchises

    Jere 12:09 am on April 6, 2006 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: games

    Slashdot also has a link to this, but I wanted to say a little more about Next Gen’s analysis:

    They spend more time on their general theory of the evolution of games than they do on the death of any franchises. On the franchise predictions: sure movie franchises will sink once the movie’s have been on DVD for a year or so, and yes GTA and Tony Hawk are getting stale, this is obvious stuff…

    On their general theory – I disagree with both of their premises – firstly that the evolution of gaming is a march towards realism – it has been since the “next generation” consoles – but wasn’t to start with (pac man and space invaders had nothing to do with realism) – and won’t be forever -

    Graphics will progress to photo realism, surely, but then what? The market may snap up cinematic games with photo-realistic graphics just like they scarf blockbuster movies all summer – but surely developers can do more with this medium than choose-your-own-adventure movies.

    On the progression to online – not all games are good online games. That doesn’t make them bad games. Gaming isn’t a sport (or shouldn’t only be) – it’s also an artform – and like a good novel, some forms of it will always be best enjoyed individually, or at least non-competitively.

     
  • Elder Scrolls: Oblivion

    Jere 1:34 pm on April 1, 2006 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: games

    As the most ambitious PC RPG in years – the fourth entry in the Elder Scrolls series, Oblivion has an uphill battle ahead of it according to 1up.com.

    Their feature on the game is actually a pretty in depth analysis of Western vs. Eastern RPG styles, that also explores the limitations of both the MMO and (single player) RPG models and the potential for the former supplanting the latter.

    Could MMO’s replace RPG’s?

    Well, for me they already have (Eldred on Warsong…) – but that’s not to say they go unmissed.

    Something about a world where you have to wait in line behind exhalted heroes with god-like powers at the bank, sort of makes being one a little less exciting than it used to be in Dragon Warrior. (The fact that I was 8 years old then might be part of the reason, but I don’t think that’s all of it.

    For this reason, while they might be early frontrunners, I think ulitmately, Sword’s and Sorcercy won’t prove the best traffic for the massively multi-player stage – Spore may be a lot closer to what the genre really calls for.

     
  • Second Anual Game Developer's Rant

    Jere 7:24 am on March 25, 2006 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: games

    See the full transcript below:

    Wonderland: GDC: Game Developers Rant II

    (Also has links to last year)

     
  • Spore!

    Jere 2:51 pm on March 8, 2006 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: games

    Will Wright at the Game Developer’s Conference on SPORE… full hour with gameplay footage.

    (36 minutes – just gameplay footage – same talk)

     
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