C&C 4 and the rise of Video Game Communism

[sgtmyers88]

***OFF TOPIC POST BUT VERY IMPORTANT!***

 

I hate to sound cynical, but this C&C4 online only thing (and the world of PC gaming as a whole) is getting beyond ridiculous! For starts recently, it is being said that EA is removing (or simply not including) LAN Gameplay for C&C4! (as if I am really excited about getting or playing this game as-is anyways) :/

This is unconfirmed but I have even been hearing and reading about speculation about possibly even killing the skirmish mode with AI players altogether. The excuse from EA to justify these actions is with the BS about the player progression stats. Who really gives a hoot!? I believe I can speak for all and say that we just wanna have a good time playing a good game anytime... anywhere! I have played the Beta and I do not like how it is setup one little bit. I feel the impression like EA could be probing my computer all the time. For all you know they could download malicious spyware and adware into your system through this game and then make you buy something to fix it and give it a innocent identity like the notorious game patch that is supposed to fix everything that was wrong with the initial release. Mark my words this will happen one day if it is not happening already!

 

Of course in all irony, there is the wisdom of the saying: "If it ain't broke don't fix it! But do they (the video game companies) listen... NO!!! They have to go and screw up things that were more less totally fine with the audacity of calling the changes an "improvement"! It is a prime example of total mindless heresy I tell ya!

 

 

 

It is clear that it is all about the almighty dollar and not your enjoyment, not the fans wishes and preferences. Another reason why the C&C Modding community continues to get stronger as each subsequent C&C game that comes out becomes less and less enjoyable and lower in quality. EA has raped and milked the "C&C Cow" long after its death. Do not support EA by buying this game! If they want to stifle the fans and even casual gamers than they can just go bankrupt and rot in the grave of so many other greedy companies before them! I had wanted to pursue a career in video game development and even thought of the idea of going to college for getting a career with EA but not no more if this is how video game developers "ethics" really work! Anti-piracy my arse! DRM and restrictive online only dependence on THEIR servers is not my idea of enjoying a computer game! I miss and greatly enjoyed AI skirmishes WITHOUT internet support because I could play a game ANYTIME, ANYWHERE if I wished without worrying about locating a stable internet connection! EA  (and several other major video game companies including Blizzard who apparently are doing the same things for Starcraft 2) sounds more and more like the Borg (ala Star Trek) by hooking you into their collective and enslaving you to their rules and commands! (their servers)  These examples are (in my opinion and should be yours) not included in my future of both console and PC gaming! I will instead stick to the classic (sometimes forgotten) games that were purely fun and ethical that VALUED my freedom and desire for a high quality product that offers my enjoyment anytime, anywhere! You too have that right! Do not let these greedy video game companies COMMAND AND CONQUER YOU!!!

 

HONOR YOUR GAMERS BILL OF RIGHTS!

HONOR YOUR PC'S FREEDOM INCLUDING YOUR OWN!

DO NOT SUPPORT THESE GAMES OR COMPANIES!

 

 

WE OWN OUR GAMES!

 

WE DO NOT RENT OR BORROW THEM FROM GREEDY COMPANIES!

 

See these links below:

 

http://www.gamepolitics.com/category/topics/gamers-bill-rights

 

http://www.videogamesblogger.com/2009/06/30/starcraft-2-will-not-have-lan-multiplayer-only-online-via-battlenet.htm

 

 

***DO NOT MILK THE GREEDY COMPANIES "CASH COWS" AND BUY THESE GAMES!!!***

[Tore]

What the hell has this to do with communism? It sound more like capitalism for me.

 

As for StarCraft 2, I don't think Blizzard is milking the StarCraft Universe.

Consider this: Blizzard announced SC2 in 2007 and they have been working on it for a long time before that. There has been 3 years SC2 was announced and Blizzard is still working on it I think this shows that Blizzard really cares about their game as they always do. Blizzard wants StarCraft 2 to be perfect!

 

As for StarCraft 2's modability have you seen the [noembed]StarCraft 2 Galaxy Editor[/noembed]? 

[Nyerguds]

Communism is sharing in the community... basically, open source software, freeware and heck, software piracy, that's communism

[CrazyGoat]

and many more share your feelings, sgtmyers88, towards EvilAgency and the wrecked c&($)c franchise that got butchered and mutilated by them, over and over... and the screw up to the gamers (and not only them, Ubisoft too) with their "be online to play offline"... I mean WTF?! Hackers will easily crack that kind of copy protection easily, even if the publishers would host exe files on internet (for example, exe wouldn't be installed with the game, but you connect with browser to the publisher site, they authenticate you and allow you access to exe file so that it will run your game locally... if i remember correctly, similar was tried with a mmorpg, and it failed miserably). So this is no against piracy, cuz pirates will just kick this copy protection too in the groins, and distribute wares all across the world... and what about paying players, who bought their games?! They'll get stuck with lousy copy protection that will destroy the good gameplay feeling and many will (and no one can judge them) migrate to warez version of games, so they can enjoy singleplayer/offline content without worrying about internet connection getting interrupted, authentication server overload, coffee spilled over hubs, Al Qaeda or any other reason to deny them playing their game.

 

Thus, the PC gaming will be left to indie developers (like you sgtmyers88) with occasional megahit hitting pc... only hardware manufacturers can step in and start developing games if they are willing to stay in bussines (nvidia and AMD/ATI, Intel etc.)... cuz Microsoft doesn't care if the sales of windows drop due to dying pc gaming, when they milk out for licenses of those developers making games for XBoxLive 360 thingie.... Only hardware makers can save pc gaming by injecting resources in game development... because, if pc gaming dies, who will be buying new hardware? I won't, most likely

[FekLeyrTarg]

That's what I always say: You can forget official games nowadays. If you want to play a good game, then you have to rely on the fans to develope those games or mods for existing games.

 

But I think one of the biggest problem is the fact that there isn't enough time for developing. Think about it. How many games have suffered from rushed releases? I'll name a few: C&C: Tiberian Sun, Star Trek: New Worlds, Star Wars: Rogue Squadron 3: Rebel Strike and many more.

I think that C&C4 will suffer from the (in my opinion) far too early release date, too.

[sgtmyers88]

TO FURTHER ELABORATE:

 

Communism com·mu·nism

   /ˈkɒmyəˌnɪzəm/ [kom-yuh-niz-uhm]

 

(As taken from Dictionary.com)

 

1. A theory or system of social organization based on the holding of all property in common, actual ownership being ascribed to the community as a whole or to the state.

 

2. A system of social organization in which all economic and social activity is controlled by a totalitarian state dominated by a single and self-perpetuating political party.

 

Sounds familiar eh?

 

EA wishes to force DRM's and "Always Online" (particularly translates from the 2nd definition above with "controlling social activity") on the general public and they hope to eventually make this the standard for ALL future PC games. In the case of C&C4, they are removing LAN and offline skirmish/singleplayer games under the guise of "anti-piracy" and "player progression stats" and "MMORTS" in what is in my opinion plain and simple bullshit. Blizzard is already doing it as well (as I said in my initial post) by forcing all players to use battle.net for Starcraft 2 so there is the removal of LAN which is only be the beginning if allowed to persist by the players/customers.

 

As for the capitalistic part, yes perhaps it is evil too when you have greedy and corrupt organizations and corporations that take away little by little of the value of the product they make and sell. This is usually how they do it to start out with, but then as they can see that their customers are "stupid" and continue to buy into the products that are cheaper and are giving them less for more then the corporations can keep pushing to see how far they can go to deliver a mediocre product for a inflated price with little or no resale value. I work in retail (Wal-Mart) and I see this terrible reality all the time in our products we sell. This retail company I work for is guilty of it itself especially in recent times. Sam Walton the founder of Wal-Mart would be spinning in his grave to know how his company is operating and supporting such things now. His quote was "The ultimate boss of our company is the customer, our number one goal at Wal-Mart is to serve the customers needs! If we fail to do so and betray and lose our customers we are NOT going to be in business!"

 

EXAMPLE: A 10 pack of Snickers mini candy bars used to be an average retail price of $0.98 in 2005 here in the USA. Come to 2010 it is $1.25 and you only get 8 bars instead of 10 per package. There are countless other examples I could go on and on about that most customers do not pay attention to seem or not care about. If you let the school bully keep having his way with you and you do not fight it or report it, he will continue to harass you and may even get worse with doing so, YOU SHOULD INSTEAD FIGHT IT OR REPORT IT! The same thing applies here to where EA, Blizzard, and several other commercial game developers are screwing the customer once again with mediocre, overpriced, and overrated products and now they have taken the next step to remove our freedom to choose how and when to use and enjoy the product that we buy from them.

 

Does anyone see the importance of the moral and ethical issue at hand here? Its a raping of our products and of the customers rights and freedoms which translates into YOUR rights and freedoms!

[Nyerguds]

communism as political theory is flawed, because the definition itself states that not the people, but the government holds power over all property, which is just the same as a dictatorship. So I'm ignoring that. Actual communism is a total sharing of all owned goods.

[Tore]

[......] Blizzard, and several other commercial game developers are screwing the customer once again with mediocre, overpriced products [......]

 

I see how EA fits in to this category, but Blizzard? I think not. Blizzard always takes their time to create high quality products, bugs and other issues at release in Blizzards games are minimal.

 

But I agree that restrictive DRM sucks, I like the old combination of CD key and disk check.

 

In the 1990'es developers and publishers where much opener. Westwood made multiplayer between people possible with only one copy of a game, it was even part of their marketing "Another disk for you are your friends to destroy each other" this even applied to one disk games like Dune 2000. Even Blizzard allowed this too, you could use one copy of StarCraft for a local 6 player game using spawned installs and as far as I can remember you can even do this with WarCraft 3.

 

Many new PC games today require a constant internet connection, it isn't only Blizzard and EA who plans to do this other publishers such as Ubisoft, SEGA, THQ, Activision have all released games with restrictive DRM schemes.

 

I'm happy that there still is honest and great developers and publishers out there like Good old Games they sell old games cheap and DRM free and they have a lot of extra content and compatibility with newer systems.

Bohemia Interactive are also great, they listen to their fans and the latest patch for their newest game removed the little DRM the game had (which was a simple disk check). As you see real game developers still exist

 

as for the 2nd definition of communism that is what it became in real life, corrupted and twisted by power hungry leaders. They wanted to achieve a system of trust and equality after being abused for years by a totalitarian capitalist regime.

 

This post has little to do with Tiberian Dawn Redux

 

Unstickied and moved to the Barracks

[MrFlibble]

I see how EA fits in to this category, but Blizzard? I think not. Blizzard always takes their time to create high quality products, bugs and other issues at release in Blizzards games are minimal.

Thant's right guys, let's not badmouth Blizzard. True, they hooked half the world on their WoW crank, but they produced so many excellent, influential games like the Warcraft (RTS) series, Starcraft and so on, can't we be more tolerant towards them?

 

Communism is sharing in the community... basically, open source software, freeware and heck, software piracy, that's communism

I also did not get the communism reference, all the negativity on the side of the game-making companies as described above perfectly fits into the good old capitalism pattern.

[sgtmyers88]

And again I respond by saying:

 

Because EA in particular is forcing people to conform to their system "always online" and not respecting the rights and freedoms of the customers who OWN a copy of the game which they paid their hard earned money for! They should have the right to install/play a game anytime anywhere with or without an internet connection!

 

Blizzard is already starting to put similar restrictions on Starcraft 2 beginning with no LAN and battle.net only for multiplayer!

 

*sighs*

 

 

[Jeod]

C&C3, imo, is where it all ended. I'm looking forward to the C&C4 mod, the rightful C&C4. I think every fan out there who despises what EA has done should get together and make the REAL epic conclusion.

[MrFlibble]

Because EA in particular is forcing people to conform to their system "always online" and not respecting the rights and freedoms of the customers who OWN a copy of the game which they paid their hard earned money for! They should have the right to install/play a game anytime anywhere with or without an internet connection!

Well, you could have called it "totalitarian policy" or "totalitarian attitude". Communism is, essentially, an utopia that turned into a dystopia thanks to inept attempts at making it a reality.

 

Blizzard is already starting to put similar restrictions on Starcraft 2 beginning with no LAN and battle.net only for multiplayer!

Since I don't play online, I'm kinda fine with it.

[CrazyGoat]

I believe that sgtmyers88 by communism meant centralized control of one supreme power over everyone and everything else (in communism it is the central party over citizens and party members and it is even above government, with privacy invasion techniques in order to achieve/maintain tight grip/control; in this case it is EA above it's users/customers and, judging by the privacy invasion, it is above the laws and governments).

[MrFlibble]

in communism it is the central party over citizens and party members and it is even above government, with privacy invasion techniques in order to achieve/maintain tight grip/control

The "communism" you're talking about was called Ingsoc, wasn't it?

[Revolutionary]

Yea the description he gives matches the fictional socalist party in Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984), by George Orwell, Ingsoc (“English Socialismâ€)

 

computer game Fascism (the other end of the political spectrum), computer game totalitarian or Computer game Corrupt-Communism

 

when it comes to new policies and DRMs/ other programs i dont understand what was so wrong with install/online code and disc in drive needed to play

 

***DO NOT MILK THE GREEDY COMPANIES "CASH COWS" AND BUY THESE GAMES!!!***

in order not to sound hypocritical you would surely have to, like me, not use steam who in-force such things as you describe, there servers could go down over night and never can back, suddenly you cant play any games from them and they have parted with your cash.

 

i honestly belive nothing should have to much power i belive in certian communist and socialist ideals how ever i would rather see a nation splinter than for one centural power take control, The problem is the big companys.

 

Microsoft can't controle the PC as a platform so they turn to the xbox where they are in control, and since the software compaines have the threat of modders who might show them up, hackers/cheater who may show them the faults in there perfect game and ilegal downloaders who are the minority and might cheat them out of cash all add up to them want ing control they dont care in the end about the product just making money and ALL the big companies have don it recently EA, Blizzard, Activision...

 

the pc is turning in to a platform which is only good for retro gamming and indie games and even then the big companies what to try to controle that...

[pichorra]

If EA remove the LAN of C&C4, THEN i will not buy it anyway!  :ranting: i will download it only for play the single missions, and unnistall it, forgive it, erase it, format it... (well, i think you understeand).

 

Edit: as far i know, Comunism is a part of Socialism, and socialism is:

 

Everyting belongs at govern, and distributte an equal to the population.

 

if this is true, thinks how copyes will need to be selled to the govern to distribute to the population... they will never get it.

 

It not have ANYTHING to do with communism... how nyer said, it have more to do with captalism.

[CrazyGoat]

Didn't read the mentioned book, though it does sound interesting. What I had in mind is, let's say, communist government in china/north korea that are quite informational control freaks (though I hear Australia is on track with 'em , though if we want to be completely open and fair - many countries maintain control over informational flow, to a certain extent and/or degree).

 

And yes, I didn't mean to badmouth communism or socialism, since I personally like some of the ideas elaborated there. I'm just badmouthing dictatorships and communist regimes that are using (in the absence of better word) "evil" methods of control. We can all wait for sgtmyers88 to prove me wrong, though I understood him that the closest resemblance to the "communist" word he used meant "evil" dictatorship/communists regimes (like in the countries I mentioned above)... let's not forget, for example (correct me please if I'm mistaken, thank you in advance ) Sweden, though being a monarchy, not to mention many capitalist characteristics, it does retain certain level of socialism, which  makes it one of the most attractive countries in the world...

[pichorra]

the idea of socialism is good, but, in pratic... i think is not good than the idea.

[Revolutionary]

@pichorra  Comunism is extreme Socialism so yea Comunism is a part of Socialism

 

as for LAN, lan is dead, video game companies cant control LAN play as strictly as Online play just like being able to walk in to a shop and buy a boxed copy of a game its harder for the Totaltarian Games companies to control things like piracy, how much money they are making etc

[Tore]

LAN is dead you say? *Starts LAN game in Arma 2*

[videogameget]

FUCK EA its messing up EVERYTHIGN  :ranting:

 

im out for ea games seriously...

 

Dark spore? WTF

 

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EA ONLY CARE ABOUT GRAPHICS THATS IT!

[Ferret]

Last reply on March 07, 2010, 08:21:07 AM CT...

 

Old topic broski.

[sgtmyers88]

Yeah I thought this topic got closed a long time ago or something.

[G-Max]

Blizzard used to be good, but they've sucked ever since being bought out by Vivendi.

[Tore]

Well...that was a bump of more than two weeks.

 

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