Be Excellent To Each Other

What's the worst game you could think of that EA would try to "monetarize"? The simpliest game. The most out-of-place game to try and turn over those fat MMO dollars?

That's right. Tetris can now be bought as a subscription based "experience". $2.99 a month will allow you access to spectacular DLC such as.... um... new pieces? Er.... new backgrounds to play against? Honestly I've got no idea.

Thanks to all 4 million of you fuckers who have signed up to Call of Duty Elite, by the way. Making sure that this is now the definite future of all releases to come.

I just read that..staggering. Access to 'faster in game levelling'.....in Tetris.

Wait until you see the triangle pieces! Only available to level 153 subscribers.

Their next venture is going to be a subscription based version of noughts and crosses, with the sub giving you access to the crosses...

COD elite is 'free' in that its just stat tracking if you want - the numbers i've seen for people who have actually paid for it are around the 1 million mark ( http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/ga ... -interview )

The part you pay for is basically paying up front for the various DLC and since for all the previous games i've purchased all the DLC i've paid for elite - so i've paid for them before they are released - for other games i dont know if i would but for COD i'm going to buy it anyway so may as well get the discount.

I've come to realise that this "season pass" rubbish that's foisted on us gamers is just a chance to guarantee that the studio's "less good" DLC sells. See Gears of War 3 including the Horde Command Pack in the season pass, despite the levels now being free-to-all for versus and free-to-all Horde if you play with a guy who's bought it. If I'd known that this cunt's trick was going to be pulled I wouldn't have purchased it.

Isn't the Call of Duty one something that needs re-buying each year though?

Why not, they've turned Theme Park into low grumbling noise, like the sound of rocks rubbing together deep in the ground Farmville.

The assumption is that there will be three map packs at around £10-12 each, so on one hand getting them as part of Elite is not *that* bad value for money.
That said, there's no guarantee that this will actually happen so there was no way I was paying that much in advance, especially as you don't really save anything by giving your cash to them in advance.

As soon as it becomes mandatory (or near as dammit when the game is limited without it) then I'll bugger off and play something else

Thats definetly a concern and I do worry that we'll get junk thrown at us instead of them actually working on new maps (I bought before I saw all the notes about re-issuing 'old' maps) - for me this is the only thing like this i've bought and if i'm burnt on this one i'll just buy the various DLC i actually want for future stuff instead



Its a bit misleading , in that they will only produce DLC for a year i.e. we'll never see another bit of DLC for BLOPS and next year when BLOPS2 or whatever the Treyarch game is comes out they will not release anything new for MW3

Its unclear but right now my understanding is if you do not renew Elite then your downloaded DLC will still work you just wont get any more , and you'll go back to just 'stat tracking' in Elite.

However at the same time BLOPS2 (or whatever) will come out and they will then make a big play of "renew your Elite membership" to get the DLC for that 'paid for up front' and if they have done decent DLC and I like the look of BLOPS2 (and it has ZOMBIES!) then i may well renew

FYI The Elite Beta had stuff for BLOPS in it (and the stat tracking / badges / etc is all still there and accessable its just on a different tab)

Well, yes. You have to pre-order without knowing if the game is any good to get the exclusive car/gun/hat/level, and now you can also pre-order via the pass without knowing if the add-on stuff is any good.

I go for the Nigel of not doing this.
Because I'm sensib.

It works for Glastonbury selling out before any of the bands have been announced.

He's a sensib Nigel, he's a sensib Nigel, sensib Nigel doesn't pre-purchase DLCeeeeeees...

It's making a lot of money for your pensions.

Fucking hell I hate EA. $60 for a ride in Theme Park!

Exactly why I didn't bother.

EA's really dropping the ball with some of its iOS products. I saw Theme Park at a recent event in London and it just depressed the hell out of me. They were really talking about the IAP aspect of it, almost entirely ignoring the game. I'm hoping the studios EA's bought (like Chillingo) are shielded from such nonsense.

As for Tetris, that's just staggering. I have a promo code for the game and the desperately sad thing is that the basic game is really good. The prod-based controls at a new spin to the game and work really well. It's not 'GB Tetris good' (obv.), but this could have been a cracking iOS take on the game. But then it adds all the IAP shit and, in EA's infinite wisdom, doesn't link at all with Game Center. It's one thing to use your own network for additional functionality (which Chillingo does with Crystal, and many devs do with OpenFeint) and piggyback on Game Center (so it still gets scores/achievements), but to ignore it entirely? And for a high-score game like Tetris. ARGH.

Since when is Theme Park considered an RTS?!?

Never before, in my experience. But thinking about it now -- it is an RTS, isn't it?

Tower defence ?

I always considered it an asset-management game that borders on RTS. It's like a benign Civ, with candyfloss.

Can you not pause it to build stuff anymore? That was the bit that rather negated the real-time part.

It's a God Game.

Do we not use that term anymore? Am I not street? Not with it?

JBR took your crown, dude.

It drops down to rest on his shoulders though.

I can't think of an RTS where you can't do that, to be honest.

C&C, Total Annihilation... all of them allowed you to start the build while paused, but it wouldn't actually build it?

How much is Elite by the way?

And when did we ever see three MW DLC released? I might be wrong but didnt MW have one and MW2 had two. And a paultry set of maps at that - with half maps you've already played to death.

The Treyarch stuff has always been well supported though.

Eh? You can't pause to build in RTS games! That would be cheating... C&C, StarCraft, TA, etc.

Elite is 4000 Microsoft points (so if you were buying the cards around £15 then its just shy of £30) - I think its £34.99 if your paying 'cash' instead



Blops got 4 (last one was Zombies only and the best one but not many people bought it)
MW2 got just 2 packs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_of_Du ... _Warfare_2
WaW got 3 map packs plus a special single map
MW1 just got 1

So what I said then.

How is it one? You don't have to build a base, harvest resources or construct units to send into battle against another commander. It's an idiot journalist who probably never played it at the time applying the term. Because if Theme Park is an RTS, so are Transport Tycoon, Syndicate, Meat Puppet and SimCity.

They're god games, management games, they are sure as hell not in the same genre as Starcraft, C&C or Total Annihilation.

They're similar in game perspective, and the fact that in RTS games you can control individual characters.

Is Mega-lo-mania an RTS or God Game?

Malc

I wasn't thinking that deeply. I was simply basing it in the fact that Theme Park a strategy game that isn't turn-based. I accept that's not how the term "RTS" is typically applied, but it's interesting to look at the term literally, I think.

Also, you don't build bases or gather materials in Dawn of War II -- is that not an RTS? And I would absolutely say Syndicate is in the same genre as DoWII, whatever that is.

Thinking about what the term could actually mean is one thing, ignorantly saying it is so because of the literal meaning in a news article like that is another.

It'd be tempted to say that DoW2 and Syndicate are tactical games because they don't involve resource harvesting or base building. DoW2 especially is an offshoot of RTS that, a bit like Ground Control, removed the base element.

Isometric Squad Shooter, surely. DoW2 is effectively Cannon Fodder.

I had to download it to be able to play bobby's copy online. There wasn't a choice!

A friend of mine has recently organised a conference on the subscription model of gaming. I'll ask her about it at the end if the month. Certainly, from what I've seen, it is the future.

Nah.

At least, I fucking well hope not.

It's going to be a big part of things no doubt. It's not going to the best fit for every type of game, though. Also they can really only get so much money from people for gaming however they try and dice things up. That said gaming is currently a very cheap hobby/entertainment in terms of £ per hour.