Thursday, March 29, 2012

ORC's biggest mistake

Just a weekend ago, I rented a copy of Resident Evil Operation Raccoon City. Wondering if it would be worthwhile to play, letting things be aside. Played it, indulged for the first few missions. And questioned "this is it, right?" Only one side of the team is opened to be played, can't be. Turns out, many voices have been clamoring together, that this title is a mess because the entire game is locked out. (and those cries are coming from consumers who actually bought the title, not renting it)

Since my 2nd play time, I wanted to actually finish the game, and foresee what the outcome was choosing to save Leon & friends. Turns out, your own teammates would turn against you. Supposedly the adjoining sides would work together. Oddly enough it actually foreshadows what is going on in the real world as well. Tons of people in the industry are losing their jobs. Some reporting of job growth (where is that really? out of a magician's hat?

Even Kotaku and other net journalism sites are pushing the awareness of how bad things are getting. From QA jobs sucking the life force from some in desperate places. Or an entire team losing due to some messy financial issues with the people upstairs. I understand that I may be a lowly drone, and not a full fledged writer or tech analyst. But I tell you what, I feel for all of those hard working people. They work with others to make a product that people will buy, add interest with good PR, and hopefully the fish bite. But as things have been occurring across cyberspace or the printed page, there are too many people losing jobs.

What also doesn't help is the add-ons of another next gen cycle. That our current stuff is obsolete, and the new setup could mean the end of disc based media. Adding to that, I am not a fan of that idea at all. I enjoy actually holding a disc in my hand and being able to play its content. Whether it be a game, movie, or music. It makes me sad sometimes just to think that all of those options could be gone in the next few years. I don't favor the idea whatsoever, it makes me uncomfortable seeing people doing all sorts of stuff with their smartphones as it is. (and its worse that when I'm actually going somewhere, that the person on the road might be playing Angry Birds because they are bored and don't care that other people are nearby.)

I understand that the term of ownership means a license that a person has with the content's owner. But from what press and other media are dishing is that everything we were used to is going to change even more. I'm using RE-ORC as an example because it is what's next for games from now on.

1) Shorter campaign = separate modes can only be unlocked by purchasing them (how is this a good idea?)
2) All content that will be unlocked at later dates is already stored on the disc (someone bought the game full price, they do deserve  access to that don't they?)
3) Patches fix everything (keeping up with the Capcom forums, it turns out there are hundreds of bugs, including some that lock playing the game online with others)
4) Said content can only be played with those who also buy the content via their account (yay for progress)
5) Turns out that its lacking features for more options offline with co-op or multiplayer (seriously!)

I learned my lesson with Marvel VS Capcom 3. It just made me feel like giving up altogether. Only to find out that it would be re-released with the rest of the roster. (which should have been unlockable, and not a total lockout fest) And its even made worse by the fact, that its $30 less than its original purchase price, and it still had blocked content data. SFXT is also sharing the pain, everything is there, just locked away data until some time later this year (and then Ono-san got sick, I wonder if this is why)

I honestly don't know how they will be able to keep this up. But its beginning to take over more and more

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