tempest in a teacup

I spent most of the day at PAX today, since I’d never been to a gaming convention and there were a few games I wanted to check out. I actually didn’t get to play too many of them (the lines were way too long for me to be standing around) but I did get a reasonable idea of how some of the games I’m looking forward to are shaping up.

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I’m a big fan of the SimCity games…or at least I was, until the two-pronged attack of SimCity DS and SimCity Societies made me retreat to the safe haven of SimCity 4, sobbing like a schoolgirl. The handheld iteration of my beloved franchise was nothing short of a shoddy port to a platform that couldn’t handle the complexity that SimCity fans demanded, and Societies pretty much did away with everything that made SimCity what it was, while providing absolutely nothing to make up for it.

I suspect EA and Tilted Mill Studios are well aware of this, because last week they released a demo of the game, based on the most recent patch of the game, that supposedly adds a new strategic layer to the game. I decided to take it for a run, and for some context, I decided to compare it to another recent city simulator, City Life by Monte Cristo Software.

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EA scales down copy protection for Mass Effect and Spore

Angry people on the Internet actually caused change…I WA SHOCK!
The new scheme still limits you to three installs, which is lame, but the need to activate every ten days has been replaced with a check every time new content is downloaded, which is more reasonable. It’s not quite perfect, but it’s about where BioShock’s copy protection was, which is slightly annoying but acceptable.

In other EA PC gaming adventures, both this and this are looking really cool. I don’t know what’s more surprising - the fact that DICE is making something that isn’t a Battlefield game, or that said game is an Unreal Engine 3 game whose predominant palette colour isn’t brown.

I was hoping that I could write about something unrelated to gaming today…it’s not like I’m lacking for topics in any way.

But then EA goes and pulls a stunt like this with two of the biggest upcoming PC releases; games which I had been very much looking forward to.

I guess the appearance of security (and mind you, it is only for appearances - the probability that this copy protection will be broken by an enterprising hacker is pretty much 100%) is far more important than customer goodwill.

(BTW, anyone who suggest I should buy a 360 to play Mass Effect can go die in a fire)