I lol’ed.

I’ve been a Quietdrive fan for a long time. Since 2002, actually. The band recorded their first EP in my buddy’s basement in Minnetonka, MN. It was a six-track post-grunge romp. I’d be willing to bet most current QD fans have never heard that album. I still queue it up sometimes: “KB” and “Something That I’m Not” still bring a smile to my face. Did you know there was a mix of “Something That I’m Not” that had Kevin Truckenmiller singing “Brandon’s gay” at the end of the song? That’s just to put into perspective how long I’ve been a fan. Not as long as some, but longer than most. Anyway, even then they were a really promising act. Smart, good-looking kids with a knack for writing hooks.

Quietdrive really hit their stride with their 2003 Demo. It has the track “Handsome Devil’s Benediction,” which builds to one of the most powerful climaxes in modern rock, and my favorite QD track, “Irreversible.” They still play these songs at some shows. Honestly, this was when I was most excited about QD. They really seemed to nail the kind of sound that so many bands try so hard to do – catchy, sophisticated and edgy.

I first heard Sneaker 2 Bombs when I was home from college. It was a side project that Kevin had started up with Matt Kirby. The stuff they wrote was catchy, simple, and lighthearted. It was like Dashboard Confessional had taken over QD… but in a good way. I really liked “Take a Drink,” and “Both Ways.” But, I always preferred the grittier sound of Quietdrive proper.

I was overjoyed when I heard about them signing with a major label. Then there seemed to be an identity crisis in the band. Many of you may remember how they struggled to find themselves a new name in light of a change in musical direction and a new phase in their career. They cycled through a couple of different options; first dropping the Quietdrive moniker altogether and becoming Sneaker 2 Bombs. Then there was some nonsense about becoming “The Neverending…” Eventually, they settled back on Quietdrive. I took this as a good sign that the edgy rock I’d heard on the 2003 EP was going to be refined and be the primary sonic direction of the band. I was completely wrong.

Instead what we got on When All That’s Left Is You were reproduced (see the tempo changes on “Get Up”) and slightly dumbed down (see the change in lyrical content of “Rush Together”) versions of a number of Sneaker 2 Bombs songs, plus a couple of new decent tracks, and a Cyndi Lauper cover. I like When All Thats Left Is You… as a Sneaker 2 Bombs record. You could hear what had been Quietdrive trying to sneak through on “Rise From the Ashes,” but other than that it was largely absent.

Sometime later, at a bar in Minneapolis, I tagged along with the same kid who recorded their first EP to see them. I asked one of them (don’t remember if it was Droo or Brandon) how being on a record label was going. Whoever I was talking to was generally dismayed about the lack of control they had over the first record, and indicated a desire to return to some of the old sounds of Quietdrive. I was heartened by this talk! Could it be that the band I was so keen about would actually deliver on that promise they made in 2003?

When I first heard “Pretend,” I was hopeful. The tune still wasn’t as edgy as I’d have liked, but I decided to give the guys the benefit of the doubt. I still really like the song, and have listened to it countless times. It was a really solid rock song. When a buddy told me the title track for the new album was up on their website, I typed in the URL, crossed my fingers, and waited.

As “Deliverance” washed over me, my hopes were dashed to the floor. This was not Quietdrive. This was some other entity that had stripped itself of what was unique and had replaced it with something mundane and cavity inducing. Still, I forgot about the song and moved on with my life. When the album was released, I came back, hopeful again that I’d find something inspiring in the ashes. When I heard “Believe” my spirits were lifted. The title track even grew on me a bit. But as I listened to the rest of the album, I slowly came to understand that Quietdrive would probably never again offer me what I want from a band. The lyrical content of this album is mostly drivel. And believe me, I know drivel. The tunes, while catchy, aren’t exactly sophisticated. I can only figure that this is a band that doesn’t want to be taken seriously. They write songs about being in love with or losing the ubiquitous unnamed girl, and that express emotion on the most remedial of levels. To be brusque, their intended audience seems to be teenagers or others with naive or simplistic ideas about love and life.

Perhaps for some that’s enough. I demand more from my music for the most part. I want allegory and entendre. I want insightful lyrics about the struggles of being in a relationship, and making it through the day to day shit. Not a bunch of BS about getting shit-faced and forgetting a nameless girl’s birthday. I can liken it to the step backward that Story of the Year took on In The Wake of Determination. What’s particularly alarming to me is the verbiage on the QD website about how proud they are of this record. They may have worked tirelessly to create this album. But for me, and for a lot of people who aren’t hopelessly devoted, it falls tremendously short of expectations.

Above, Germany’s box art for Left 4 Dead. Below, everyone else’s:

Via Kotaku

Everyone gets that we need some level of protection, or we’re going to be in business for free… [But it was] a minority of [anti-DRM] people that orchestrated a great PR program. They picked the highest-profile game they could find. I respect them for the success of their movement.

I’m guessing that half of them were pirates, and the other half were people caught up in something that they didn’t understand. If I’d had a chance to have a conversation with them, they’d have gotten it… There are different ways to do DRM; the most successful is what WoW does. They just charge you by the month.

[INSERT FURIOUS RANT HERE]

via Game Politics | via Not funny… ever

The following is excerpted from Yahoo! Media & Money’s coverage of EA CEO John Riccitiello’s while at the Dow Jones/Nielsen Media and Money Conference.

– On DRM: In September, EA lifted some of the DRM protections on its popular release Spore after players began posting complaints on Amazon (NasdaqGS: AMZN – News) and other sites. Riccitiello said he felt the controversy was blown out of proportion, but he does acknowledge the inconvenience to users that DRM creates. “We’re still working out the kinks. We implemented a form of DRM and it’s something that 99.8 percent of users wouldn’t notice. But for the other .2 percent, it became an issue and a number of them launched a cabal online to protest against it.  I personally don’t like DRM. It interrupts the user experience. We would like to get around that. But there is this problem called piracy out there.”

Translation: “If you guys would just stop pirating software and stealing money from us, we wouldn’t have to use DRM. It’s all your fault we have to resort to this.” It’s almost like the “we only hit ya ’cause we love ya,” defense.

Once again, we have the industry rationalizing its use of stringent DRM that hurts ONLY legitimate consumers by pointing the finger at the ever-present threat of piracy. I’d love to see some solid numbers on how much money EA lost due to piracy, explicitly because people who were stoked about Spore refused to subject themselves to its overbearing DRM. To boot, you tell us that only a small number of people were upset at all. Which doesn’t do much to explain the Amazon rating of the game…

It’s been said before, and far more eloquently, but go f-ck yourself EA.

Yahoo! Finance | via Kotaku

There’s been a lot in the industry news lately about the pirating of software. In the spirit of the RIAA, Activision has taken to suing individuals for owning pirated copies of Call of Duty 3. In most cases the individuals pleaded guilty and settled with Activision. How did all those lawsuits work out for the Recording Industry? I’m pretty sure it didn’t strike fear into the hearts of pirates everywhere, though Activision is reportedly bullying those they’ve sued into settling.

Then we’ve got this little gem regarding from Ubisoft Shanghai director Michael de Plater regarding the delayed release of the PC version of Tom Clancy’s EndWar -

“To be honest, if PC wasn’t pirated to hell and back, there’d probably be a PC version coming out the same day as the other two,” he said, talking of the voice-controlled RTS.

“But at the moment, if you release the PC version, essentially what you’re doing is letting people have a free version that they rip off instead of a purchased version. Piracy’s basically killing PC.”

He’s essentially saying that if they released the PC version on the same day as the other platforms, potential customers would just download the pirated PC version instead of buying the console version. That’s right, not only is piracy killing the PC platform, it’s depriving publishers of console sales. So, de Plater is saying that PC gamers are all a bunch of pirates who will always choose to steal the game instead of legitimately purchasing a copy, even for their console, given the choice.

First of all, I call shenanigans. I think Game Politics hit the nail on the head -

So, PC piracy is affecting sales of console editions in a significant way? Does that even make sense?

Did game consumers throw down $300-600 for Xbox 360s and PS3s in order to play bootlegged versions on their PCs?

I have no statistics to back up this claim, but I think I’m part of the minority of gamers that has both a current-generation console (the Wii doesn’t count) and a powerful “gaming” PC in their home.

When I make the decision about my preferred platform for any given title, it mostly boils down to genre, and to whether I have the extra $10 to give to Microsoft for an X360 game. For the most part, I play first-person shooters and strategy games on PC, and pretty much everything else on X360 (third person action, platforming, turn-based RPGs, Sports, etc). In my opinion the respective control schemes, mouse and keyboard versus gamepad, and respective screen size, 21-inch monitor versus 40-inch television, are the deciding factors. It’s NOT about whether I can pirate the game or not.

The Spore DRM fiasco is the manifestation of this line of thinking – that PC gamers will download any given game for free if they can. So we’re all treated like pirates and theives. As consumers we are expected to put up with limits on the number of times we can install the game, needing to have an internet connection to register and play the game, faulty registration servers, etc. Meanwhile, the pirates are laughing at all the poor saps who wanted to support the industry, because they’ve already cracked the DRM and have been playing for weeks.

We’re still waiting for the gaming industry to provide reliable and accurate figures on how much money they’re losing to PC piracy, since their using it to justify their waning support for the platform and their treatment of its proponents.

Here’s the kicker, though. This past week the story broke that Fallout 3, which is going to be a serious Game of the Year contender, is already available for download on the torrent sites – for X360.

Also see Stardock President Brad Wardell’s blog post on this subject.

I mourn the long summer months when the big releases dry up. But at least when the odd game is released, either because it’s been pushed back from the previous Christmas season, or a publisher wants to capitalize on the lack of competition, you can generally afford to pick it up right away.

But now comes the deluge. The anticipated releases of this calendar year will increase from a trickle to a flood over the next two months, and I’m already getting anxious about the decisions I’m going to have to make. I’m banking on games that are going to give me a lot of playtime and replay value to get more bang for my buck, e.g., Fallout 3. But then titles like Gears of War 2 leave me salivating. I guess renting is an option for some of these, but good luck finding a Blockbuster that’ll have these titles in at all during the first six months after their release. Besides, a number of them are PC games. What is a poor gamer to do?

My wish-list follows, in order of release date.

• Civilization IV: Colonization – Sept. 22 – PC
• Silent Hill: Homecoming – Sept. 30 – X360
• Sonic Chronicles – Sept. 30 – DS
• Fracture – Oct. 7 – X360
• Dead Space – Oct. 14 – X360
• Fable II – Oct. 21 – X360
• Far Cry 2 – Oct. 21 – X360
• Fallout 3 – Oct. 28 – PC
• Gears of War 2 – Nov. 7 – X360
• Call of Duty: World At War – Nov. 11 – PC
• Left 4 Dead – Nov. 20 – PC
• The Last Remnant – Nov. 20 – X360
• Chrono Trigger DS – Nov. 25 – DS

The games in bold I’ll almost definitely pick up; all others are pending critical response and available funds.

What are you guys stoked about this Christmas season?

I played both original games, offline only. I couldn’t really get into Resistance, so I didn’t finish it. Story was cool, but the controls felt kinda sloppy and the early weapons in the game felt uninspired. Also, I’m sick of gray and brown color palettes. Ugh. I considered buying a PS3 when I first saw Resistance: FoM, but I wasn’t impressed enough with it to drop the $600.

I actually bought a X360 because of Gears. Some of my best gaming moments came from playing its co-op mode with a buddy. The story was spotty on the details, and the characters are mostly one-dimensional testosterone junkies. But it PLAYED really well. Plus, it has A CHAINSAW GUN. Awesome.

I didn’t play either of the games online. I don’t own a PS3 and I’m a PC gamer at heart, so paying $50 a year to play games online seems like a rip-off. And 60-player online modes may make you console-exclusive guys go nuts, but that kind of capability has been around in PC games for a while. I’m glad the console guys are getting that kind of experience now, though.

Anyway, only time will tell. In the meantime, go laugh at the flamewar.

Haas begins by explaining that although RPG’s are his favorite genre, there are some conventions that need addressing. These are the things that pop up in almost every RPG. Everyone knows they’re outdated methods for moving the story along, but everyone just accepts them as a standard of the genre and there’s nothing to be done about them.

In reality, this is something that plagues the electronic entertainment industry as a whole – most everything is derivative, at least to some extent.

The worst offenders, of course, are EA’s annual sports titles, but they’re an easy target. Every Japanese-style RPG is using methods that are over two decades old. Western-style RPGs have their roots in Dungeons & Dragons, a game that’s been around since the birth of Jesus. Now D&D’s new rule-set is pulling in aspects of the MMO’s that it originally inspired. Yeesh.

I’m not saying that being derivative is always a bad thing. The derivative nature of games allows gamers to pick up a brand new title and play it with reasonable ability if you’ve played a game in the same genre before. You may have noticed this puzzles non-gamers. When I first popped Dark Sector in (I only rented it, don’t worry) to play, my girlfriend happened to be sitting in the living room with me. When I started running around and shooting without any prior instruction, she said, “How do you know to do that?”

Also, take a look at Braid. It is an absolutely wonderful and inspired game. The art direction is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. The puzzles are great, the story is mature and left open to individual players’ interpretations, etc. But, when you get down into the nitty-gritty, the game mechanics, there are clear roots to the game. The platforming comes straight from Mario, the time shifting mechanic arguably from the recent Prince of Persia games. The key here is he takes those two elements and twists them together into something completely original. Spore, which essentially compiles stripped down versions of 5 different games also comes to mind.

We find that the derivative nature of games extends across most mediums – film, music, painting, architecture, sculpture, etc. When is the last time you heard a rock song on commercial radio that didn’t involve guitars with a lot of distortion and a Intro-Verse-Chorus-Verse-Chorus-Bridge-Chorus construction? Or the last time you saw a movie that wasn’t based on a (graphic) novel or comic book?

We are all building upon the creations of the greats who came before: Garriot and Carmack, Picasso and DaVinci, Hemingway and Dickens, BB King and Van Halen. The way that a medium evolves, though, is to recognize the things that just aren’t working anymore. These RPG conventions no longer capture audiences’ imaginations. There must be better ways to show the story and portray the action in this genre and in all video games. Hybridization/genre-mixing has been a recent popular means of creating fresh experiences for gamers. But soon we’ll all be tired of RPG-FPSes (Fallout 3) and Puzzle-Platformers (Braid) and Puzzle-RPGs (Puzzle Quest).

Makes me wonder what the next big splash is going to be.

Via Gaming Today via WeGame.com