I clearly need to become a more prolific blogger. I can't believe it's been over a year since my last post. However, I try to wait until I have something well thought out and theoretically compelling to share. That seems more important than quantity.
Ongoing debate across the countless gaming forums out there exists regarding which console generation was the best. My personal feeling has traditionally been that the 16-bit generation (including the 8-bit PC Engine) has had a stranglehold on that title for two decades now. However, I've come at the question from a different perspective recently, and that thought process has yielded a different answer.
Perhaps the most recently (almost) completed generation actually staked its claim. Though there are compelling arguments regarding the PlayStation 3's feature set and exclusives, the Xbox 360's re-introduction of classic arcade and console games, and/or the Wii's incredible market penetration, those aren't the path I took to get there.
Over the many generations of consoles, reaching back over three decades, another type of hardware has almost always set the standard for horsepower. For about the last six or seven years, consoles have played second fiddle to PCs, and the increasing number of multi-platform games has made this even more one-sided. This power differential has led to the coining of the term "PC Master Race," describing a subset of gamers that is willing to pay a little extra when necessary to get the optimal experience.
At the other end of spectrum, console ports tried and largely failed to live up to their arcade counterparts for decades. Despite frequent claims of "arcade perfect," that was very rarely the case. Whether it was a reduced color palette, shrunken sprites, or even blue shadows, there was typically a "yeah but." Even among the plethora of sister arcade/home hardware platforms, such as Sega's ST-V and Saturn, Microsoft's Chihiro and Xbox, and Nintendo's Tri-Force and GameCube, they weren't identical twins. The obvious exception is SNK's Neo Geo, albeit with a relatively limited yet underrated genre diversity.
For a brief time, the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 managed to avoid both of the hardware bullies, Many arcade games were still running on platforms based on the previous generation of consoles, such as the PlayStation 2-like System 246 from Namco. Intel, Nvidia, and AMD hadn't yet blown away the proprietary PowerPC and Cell architectures found in the consoles either. Thus, as many of us fired up early games from this generation, such as Dead Rising, we were truly riding the cutting edge of horsepower from our couches for perhaps the first and last time.
This rare occurrence enabled two branching conclusions for me to draw. First, from a certain objective perspective the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 represent the best (half) console generation we've seen from an optimization standpoint. Second, while the "Master Race" appears primed to rule this argument indefinitely going forward, gamers with a respect for both optimization and history really must add the arcade boards of the past with the GPUs of the present and future. The word "boards" is critical, because MAME simply doesn't cut it. Optimization and emulation rarely mix.
You may be running the "Master Race" with just your PC, but you're not going to win it without reaching back into gaming's past, grabbing hold of joysticks, and flipping from dip switches.
Sunday, June 14, 2015
Friday, April 18, 2014
The Hidden Value of Metacritic
Metacritic has taken a lot of abuse from the development and editorial communities recently. These negative comments have come from some of my most highly respected sources, including Warren Spector. While they have valid points, Metacritic does have value, albeit an underutilized one.
The problems with Metacritic are numerous. The two most basic seem to be the choice of included reviews and their "black box" weightings. I would prefer to see Metacritic scale back its population of mined sites and limit the list to those sites people might actually go to when making a purchase decision. That would then help enable the fix to the second issue. Metacritic's score weightings need to be transparent. A consumer should know if IGN's score is being given 10x the weight of the very likely better written and better informed Edge score for example.
These two issues and their partners in misinformation do not however preclude Metacritic from serving a very specific and important purpose. It is the most objective yet readily available way to compare the relative portfolio strength of competing platforms. Everyone can point to examples where an individual game is overrated or underrated in composite, but these cases likely even out by the time hundreds or even thousands of games are reviewed and indexed throughout a system's life cycle.
While it's unfortunate that Metacritic doesn't go far enough back to objectively demonstrate that the Genesis absolutely did what Nintendidn't, we can draw similar comparisons for more recent console wars. Queue Huey Lewis and the News; we're Going Back in Time.
Last generation was one of the more competitive ones ever in terms of hardware sales. All three consoles had very strong showings, with each carrying the greatest momentum at some point between 2006 and 2013. If we define a "quality game" as any game receiving a green indicator -- awarded for a composite score of 75 or better -- on Metacritic, Nintendo's one-time sales juggernaut, the Wii, was home to 199 quality games. Microsoft's Xbox 360, which will pass the Wii in total global sales sometime soon, can count a comparatively staggering 686 quality games. Finally, Sony's PS3, my personal favorite console of the last generation, weighs in at 589. This distribution makes sense to me. While the PS3 had a better exclusive lineup, especially late in the generation, the 360 was home to the majority of better multiplatform versions, which would give it a relatively slight edge in total.
This use case of Metacritic passes the sniff test for one generation, but is that a fluke? Let's dial our time machines for 2006-7 and the end of the previous console generation. The PS2, which sported one of the best exclusive lineups of all-time, measures 516 quality games. Given that this was a shorter generation and without the additional opportunities presented by DLC, that seems like a solid number. The PS2 distant competition somewhat predictably couldn't measure up with the Dreamcast, GameCube, and Xbox contributing only 66, 189, and 329, respectively. An interesting aside is that the PS2 and PS3 each beat the combined total of the GameCube and Wii. Microsoft came close to the same feat.
With Metacritic going two-for-two in reasonableness, let's head back to the first generation where composite scores are available and the battle between the discs of future and cartridges' last gasp raged. Horrifically, Metacritic ignores the existence of Sega's Saturn, while the Nintendo 64 coughed up just 55 quality games. That of course left the door wide open for Sony's original PlayStation and its 110. The combination of the last number seeming low and the Saturn's absence makes me question the completeness this far back, so maybe it's good that we can go no further.
There is, however, one last untapped vein of Metacritic gold: portable games. Data in that area goes back to the Game Boy Advance, which was home to 195 quality games against essentially no competition, especially in North America. The Nintendo DS followed that with 232 quality games, edging out Sony's PSP, which had 181. If you're surprised that one was as close as it was, (a) you shouldn't be and (b) hang on to your hats for the grand finale.
The last pair of portable pugilists a lot of people have interpreted quite poorly. Leading off was Nintendo's 3DS, which launched on February 26, 2011. In its three-plus-year lifetime-to-date, it has seen 76 quality games or roughly 25 per year. Following almost a year later to the day in North America was Sony's PlayStation Vita, already home to 83 quality games or just about 41 per year. If you've ever said, typed, or even thought, "The Vita has no games," you are absolutely incorrect but not alone.
The Vita certainly is not the most impressive number available by looking at Metacritic this way, however. Whether you're wearing Mario underwear, have a poster of Nathan Drake on your wall, or just think Halo is a great FPS, bow your console-filled head in shame and be awed at the PC's 1,345 quality games. Metacritic can even objectively crown the Master Race.
The problems with Metacritic are numerous. The two most basic seem to be the choice of included reviews and their "black box" weightings. I would prefer to see Metacritic scale back its population of mined sites and limit the list to those sites people might actually go to when making a purchase decision. That would then help enable the fix to the second issue. Metacritic's score weightings need to be transparent. A consumer should know if IGN's score is being given 10x the weight of the very likely better written and better informed Edge score for example.
These two issues and their partners in misinformation do not however preclude Metacritic from serving a very specific and important purpose. It is the most objective yet readily available way to compare the relative portfolio strength of competing platforms. Everyone can point to examples where an individual game is overrated or underrated in composite, but these cases likely even out by the time hundreds or even thousands of games are reviewed and indexed throughout a system's life cycle.
While it's unfortunate that Metacritic doesn't go far enough back to objectively demonstrate that the Genesis absolutely did what Nintendidn't, we can draw similar comparisons for more recent console wars. Queue Huey Lewis and the News; we're Going Back in Time.
Last generation was one of the more competitive ones ever in terms of hardware sales. All three consoles had very strong showings, with each carrying the greatest momentum at some point between 2006 and 2013. If we define a "quality game" as any game receiving a green indicator -- awarded for a composite score of 75 or better -- on Metacritic, Nintendo's one-time sales juggernaut, the Wii, was home to 199 quality games. Microsoft's Xbox 360, which will pass the Wii in total global sales sometime soon, can count a comparatively staggering 686 quality games. Finally, Sony's PS3, my personal favorite console of the last generation, weighs in at 589. This distribution makes sense to me. While the PS3 had a better exclusive lineup, especially late in the generation, the 360 was home to the majority of better multiplatform versions, which would give it a relatively slight edge in total.
This use case of Metacritic passes the sniff test for one generation, but is that a fluke? Let's dial our time machines for 2006-7 and the end of the previous console generation. The PS2, which sported one of the best exclusive lineups of all-time, measures 516 quality games. Given that this was a shorter generation and without the additional opportunities presented by DLC, that seems like a solid number. The PS2 distant competition somewhat predictably couldn't measure up with the Dreamcast, GameCube, and Xbox contributing only 66, 189, and 329, respectively. An interesting aside is that the PS2 and PS3 each beat the combined total of the GameCube and Wii. Microsoft came close to the same feat.
With Metacritic going two-for-two in reasonableness, let's head back to the first generation where composite scores are available and the battle between the discs of future and cartridges' last gasp raged. Horrifically, Metacritic ignores the existence of Sega's Saturn, while the Nintendo 64 coughed up just 55 quality games. That of course left the door wide open for Sony's original PlayStation and its 110. The combination of the last number seeming low and the Saturn's absence makes me question the completeness this far back, so maybe it's good that we can go no further.
There is, however, one last untapped vein of Metacritic gold: portable games. Data in that area goes back to the Game Boy Advance, which was home to 195 quality games against essentially no competition, especially in North America. The Nintendo DS followed that with 232 quality games, edging out Sony's PSP, which had 181. If you're surprised that one was as close as it was, (a) you shouldn't be and (b) hang on to your hats for the grand finale.
The last pair of portable pugilists a lot of people have interpreted quite poorly. Leading off was Nintendo's 3DS, which launched on February 26, 2011. In its three-plus-year lifetime-to-date, it has seen 76 quality games or roughly 25 per year. Following almost a year later to the day in North America was Sony's PlayStation Vita, already home to 83 quality games or just about 41 per year. If you've ever said, typed, or even thought, "The Vita has no games," you are absolutely incorrect but not alone.
The Vita certainly is not the most impressive number available by looking at Metacritic this way, however. Whether you're wearing Mario underwear, have a poster of Nathan Drake on your wall, or just think Halo is a great FPS, bow your console-filled head in shame and be awed at the PC's 1,345 quality games. Metacritic can even objectively crown the Master Race.
Sunday, August 28, 2011
My Kingdom for a Standard Platform
For years I have a yearned for a way to play all the games I wanted the way I wanted without having to fill a room with various devices. The good old PC has been creeping closer and closer to this ideal, as most multiplatform games make their way to PC these days, even if some are inexplicably months late (I'm looking at you, UbiSoft). Thanks in large part to Microsoft's DirectX and Valve's Steam service, PC games are somewhat like a console but with improved horsepower and flexibility. In other words, the platform has been flirting with perfection.
And then two of the biggest releases of the year occurred and sent everything to circle the bowl.
First, there was Crysis 2. Now that the dust has settled on this one, it appears that a piece of the Steam terms for publishers is that they cannot sell DLC directly in-game. Obviously, Valve is motivated to tie that back into Steam, though GFWL abortions are also available, since you have to go to that awful client or, now, xbox.com to get that content. I have no doubt that EA was aware that they intended to cross this line with Crysis 2 and then again with Dragon Age 2 later on. It's a classic EA pissing contest, like the one they had (and unfortunately won) with Sega during the Dreamcast era. The net is that you can no longer buy these games from the largest digital distribution platform on the planet, and I will never buy them at all. EA had broken what was a beautiful situation where all of my PC games were purchased and available from a single client, console style.
Several months later, and with nowhere near the fanfare, Square-Enix released the long overdue Deus Ex: Human Revolution. I was all over it day one, thanks in part to a sale and coupon from greenmangaming.com in the UK that allowed me to get the Steam code for $34. So I fire it up on the fateful afternoon of August 23, 2011. I look through the settings and can't turn stereoscopic 3D on. I stare at my 3D Vision receiver. It provides only a blank stare in return. I hit the sometimes necessary Ctrl-T to turn it on. Nothing happens. I exit the game and search for new nVidia drivers. Sure enough, there are some. I install those, enable 3D Vision, and go back into Deus Ex. Success... or so I thought. The title screen is clearly in 3D, so I start a new game. Once I get in-game though, everything is a little off. Every light in the game has this weird glow, almost as if it's being drawn twice but not picked up correctly by the 3D Vision drivers. I play for about half an hour before deciding that I wasn't willing to put up with this from a game of this caliber anymore.
After some research, I discover that there was a deal between Square-Enix and ATI to focus on the HD3D platform, which no one actually owns, during development. The official story (and it may be true) is that this was not done at the intentional expense of the de facto standard, 3D Vision. In any case, the developers don't seem tremendously motivated to patch the game to allow for better 3D Vision performance. In turn, I am not tremendously motivated to play their damn game.
And, thus, the beginning of the end is upon us. Thanks to egos and business deals, the PC's pursuit of platform perfection (say that five times fast) has been spun off course like Vader's TIE Fighter from the Death Star trench. Buying games from multiple sources and then taking a flyer on whether they work well with my hardware sounds an awful lot like PC gaming of the last millennium, as opposed to 2011. And this isn't the good kind of retro revival like all the new Transformers toys or Pac-Man Championship Edition. This is like bell bottoms and tie dye.
Where do we go from here? The answer seems to be in the hands of the console hardware makers, who have some easy choices that they'll somehow make hard between now and the next generation in late 2012 or 2013. If Sony can follow the PS3 with another region free, upgradable (from a storage perspective), well powered, large media (25+GBs per Blu-ray rocks), traditional controller but with available pointer controls, 3D supporting console, then I think I'm all in. The diminishing returns on power should be evident by that point, so the PC won't be leaps and bounds ahead of consoles like it traditionally has been. And at least I know there won't be multiple PlayStation Stores or 3D solutions. With any luck, the days of the console exclusive will be dead as well, except for the obvious first and second party games.
WTB: A way to play all the games I wanted the way I wanted without having to fill a room with various devices.
And then two of the biggest releases of the year occurred and sent everything to circle the bowl.
First, there was Crysis 2. Now that the dust has settled on this one, it appears that a piece of the Steam terms for publishers is that they cannot sell DLC directly in-game. Obviously, Valve is motivated to tie that back into Steam, though GFWL abortions are also available, since you have to go to that awful client or, now, xbox.com to get that content. I have no doubt that EA was aware that they intended to cross this line with Crysis 2 and then again with Dragon Age 2 later on. It's a classic EA pissing contest, like the one they had (and unfortunately won) with Sega during the Dreamcast era. The net is that you can no longer buy these games from the largest digital distribution platform on the planet, and I will never buy them at all. EA had broken what was a beautiful situation where all of my PC games were purchased and available from a single client, console style.
Several months later, and with nowhere near the fanfare, Square-Enix released the long overdue Deus Ex: Human Revolution. I was all over it day one, thanks in part to a sale and coupon from greenmangaming.com in the UK that allowed me to get the Steam code for $34. So I fire it up on the fateful afternoon of August 23, 2011. I look through the settings and can't turn stereoscopic 3D on. I stare at my 3D Vision receiver. It provides only a blank stare in return. I hit the sometimes necessary Ctrl-T to turn it on. Nothing happens. I exit the game and search for new nVidia drivers. Sure enough, there are some. I install those, enable 3D Vision, and go back into Deus Ex. Success... or so I thought. The title screen is clearly in 3D, so I start a new game. Once I get in-game though, everything is a little off. Every light in the game has this weird glow, almost as if it's being drawn twice but not picked up correctly by the 3D Vision drivers. I play for about half an hour before deciding that I wasn't willing to put up with this from a game of this caliber anymore.
After some research, I discover that there was a deal between Square-Enix and ATI to focus on the HD3D platform, which no one actually owns, during development. The official story (and it may be true) is that this was not done at the intentional expense of the de facto standard, 3D Vision. In any case, the developers don't seem tremendously motivated to patch the game to allow for better 3D Vision performance. In turn, I am not tremendously motivated to play their damn game.
And, thus, the beginning of the end is upon us. Thanks to egos and business deals, the PC's pursuit of platform perfection (say that five times fast) has been spun off course like Vader's TIE Fighter from the Death Star trench. Buying games from multiple sources and then taking a flyer on whether they work well with my hardware sounds an awful lot like PC gaming of the last millennium, as opposed to 2011. And this isn't the good kind of retro revival like all the new Transformers toys or Pac-Man Championship Edition. This is like bell bottoms and tie dye.
Where do we go from here? The answer seems to be in the hands of the console hardware makers, who have some easy choices that they'll somehow make hard between now and the next generation in late 2012 or 2013. If Sony can follow the PS3 with another region free, upgradable (from a storage perspective), well powered, large media (25+GBs per Blu-ray rocks), traditional controller but with available pointer controls, 3D supporting console, then I think I'm all in. The diminishing returns on power should be evident by that point, so the PC won't be leaps and bounds ahead of consoles like it traditionally has been. And at least I know there won't be multiple PlayStation Stores or 3D solutions. With any luck, the days of the console exclusive will be dead as well, except for the obvious first and second party games.
WTB: A way to play all the games I wanted the way I wanted without having to fill a room with various devices.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
The Lesser of Evils
As a Sega fan of more than a decade, I was irate when Electronic Arts provided Sega with the ultimatum of giving them exclusivity to the sports genre on the Dreamcast or miss out on EA Sports' lineup entirely. To this day, I believe this was a thinly veiled attempt to avoid direct competition with the clearly superior 2K series of football games (There's always next year to beat ESPN NFL 2K5, EA). Obviously I don't mean from a sales standpoint, as people who don't understand the game of football drag their knuckles to GameStop every year like clock work to support the continuation of an inferior product. But from the important consumer angles, playability and authenticity, EA stood no chance.
Several years later, EA went even further and monopolized the NFL license in 2004. For those unaware, this deal was just renewed meaning more years without a good football game. I can't get my head around this decision from an NFL standpoint. How does a sports league not understand competition? Scratch that. These are the same clowns who instituted revenue sharing and a salary cap. Taking that into account it makes perfect sense. In any case, I'll hold tight to my aging copy of ESPN NFL 2K5 and my PS3 and 360 copies of All Pro Football 2K8, while looking forward to Backbreaker, the XBLA Tecmo Bowl remake, and the end of the EA/NFL deal, no matter how far away it may seem.
In short, I hate EA. The company that made the undeniably awesome NHL Hockey series on my beloved Genesis betrayed me, and full forgiveness is unlikely. But EA is not the villain of this tale. On the contrary, EA is the subject of the title, The Lesser of Evils. Truth be known, when I set Madden aside, EA has been on the up tick in terms of portfolio quality. Acquiring (and amazingly being smart enough not to ruin) BioWare was brilliant. Mass Effect was brilliant. As soon as all-DLC-inclusive Gold editions of Dragon Age and Mass Effect 2 are released, I am confident I will find them brilliant as well. EA also published Valve's Orange Box and Left 4 Dead titles for those too dense to buy them on Steam. It's hard to argue against a lineup that contains those two developers, even if I have to see an EA logo to get to the games.
So who are the villains you ask? Who could be beat EA at the hatred game? Believe it or not, there are two such entities. The first is Activision. Aside from their merger with Blizzard, I am not sure they have a redeeming quality. Hell, I am not sure they have had any since the release of Pitfall!... in 1982. Flash forward to the last year. Activision becomes the first publisher to try to fly the first $60 PC game, Modern Warfare 2. What did suckers who paid that get for their extra $10? The removal of dedicated servers and their associated mods. You've heard the saying "less is more?" Someone saw Activision coming.
Unfortunately, Modern Warfare 2 sold tremendously well on all platforms, proving that Activision was right; their customers really are that stupid. The votes, in the form of dollar bills, were collected and counted, and the message was received loud and clear. Activision celebrated by firing the two gentlemen largely responsible for the Call of Duty series. Nothing says "class" like sticking it to your customers and then your employees while your CEO whines during a public appearance. I'm not sure what my last Activision! purchase was (Enemy Territory: Quake Wars maybe?), but I know it's going to stay that way for a while.
When there is more than one party involved in wrong-doing, put your money on the french being one of the culprits. If you had, you would have won the bet, thanks to the completely fallible UbiSoft. I remember the days when UbiSoft was essentially Rayman, a wonderful Jaguar platformer that was ported to everything under the sun and followed by a great Dreamcast sequel. But those days are so long ago.
UbiSoft is now the second publisher in the $60 PC game club. In their case, the extra $10 gets you the most ridiculously punitive DRM on earth. Want to play your Assassin's Creed 2? Better stay connected to the internet. If you don't, your game will pause until you reconnect or until the well overdue repeat invasion of france takes the servers down for good. This "protection" will cover all releases in the foreseeable future, including the next entries in the Splinter Cell and Ghost Recon series. Maybe Tom Clancy can write a spy thriller about cracking UbiSoft's DRM. After all, punishing the innocent is the best way to stop the guilty. Maybe that could be the title. That's Yoshi, Mr. Clancy. Please spell it correctly on my royalty checks.
In a world where evil is relative, and the lower priority threats are often befriended to defeat the higher priorities, EA is no longer public enemy number one. Thanks to an attractive coupon, I even ordered The Saboteur (R.I.P., Pandemic) from the EA Store. So while I wait for the NFL license to free up, my money will still flow to EA. It will not, however, go anywhere near the house that Pitfall Harry built or france. Unless of course the cheese-eating surrender monkeys run from DRM like they do everything else.
Several years later, EA went even further and monopolized the NFL license in 2004. For those unaware, this deal was just renewed meaning more years without a good football game. I can't get my head around this decision from an NFL standpoint. How does a sports league not understand competition? Scratch that. These are the same clowns who instituted revenue sharing and a salary cap. Taking that into account it makes perfect sense. In any case, I'll hold tight to my aging copy of ESPN NFL 2K5 and my PS3 and 360 copies of All Pro Football 2K8, while looking forward to Backbreaker, the XBLA Tecmo Bowl remake, and the end of the EA/NFL deal, no matter how far away it may seem.
In short, I hate EA. The company that made the undeniably awesome NHL Hockey series on my beloved Genesis betrayed me, and full forgiveness is unlikely. But EA is not the villain of this tale. On the contrary, EA is the subject of the title, The Lesser of Evils. Truth be known, when I set Madden aside, EA has been on the up tick in terms of portfolio quality. Acquiring (and amazingly being smart enough not to ruin) BioWare was brilliant. Mass Effect was brilliant. As soon as all-DLC-inclusive Gold editions of Dragon Age and Mass Effect 2 are released, I am confident I will find them brilliant as well. EA also published Valve's Orange Box and Left 4 Dead titles for those too dense to buy them on Steam. It's hard to argue against a lineup that contains those two developers, even if I have to see an EA logo to get to the games.
So who are the villains you ask? Who could be beat EA at the hatred game? Believe it or not, there are two such entities. The first is Activision. Aside from their merger with Blizzard, I am not sure they have a redeeming quality. Hell, I am not sure they have had any since the release of Pitfall!... in 1982. Flash forward to the last year. Activision becomes the first publisher to try to fly the first $60 PC game, Modern Warfare 2. What did suckers who paid that get for their extra $10? The removal of dedicated servers and their associated mods. You've heard the saying "less is more?" Someone saw Activision coming.
Unfortunately, Modern Warfare 2 sold tremendously well on all platforms, proving that Activision was right; their customers really are that stupid. The votes, in the form of dollar bills, were collected and counted, and the message was received loud and clear. Activision celebrated by firing the two gentlemen largely responsible for the Call of Duty series. Nothing says "class" like sticking it to your customers and then your employees while your CEO whines during a public appearance. I'm not sure what my last Activision! purchase was (Enemy Territory: Quake Wars maybe?), but I know it's going to stay that way for a while.
When there is more than one party involved in wrong-doing, put your money on the french being one of the culprits. If you had, you would have won the bet, thanks to the completely fallible UbiSoft. I remember the days when UbiSoft was essentially Rayman, a wonderful Jaguar platformer that was ported to everything under the sun and followed by a great Dreamcast sequel. But those days are so long ago.
UbiSoft is now the second publisher in the $60 PC game club. In their case, the extra $10 gets you the most ridiculously punitive DRM on earth. Want to play your Assassin's Creed 2? Better stay connected to the internet. If you don't, your game will pause until you reconnect or until the well overdue repeat invasion of france takes the servers down for good. This "protection" will cover all releases in the foreseeable future, including the next entries in the Splinter Cell and Ghost Recon series. Maybe Tom Clancy can write a spy thriller about cracking UbiSoft's DRM. After all, punishing the innocent is the best way to stop the guilty. Maybe that could be the title. That's Yoshi, Mr. Clancy. Please spell it correctly on my royalty checks.
In a world where evil is relative, and the lower priority threats are often befriended to defeat the higher priorities, EA is no longer public enemy number one. Thanks to an attractive coupon, I even ordered The Saboteur (R.I.P., Pandemic) from the EA Store. So while I wait for the NFL license to free up, my money will still flow to EA. It will not, however, go anywhere near the house that Pitfall Harry built or france. Unless of course the cheese-eating surrender monkeys run from DRM like they do everything else.
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