The root of the problem is that I don’t understand what the advantage is in having these games launched from your browser.  The browser is just another layer of bullshit that can cause problems.  You have to install the proprietary plug-in for each game anyway, so it’s not like there’s a convenience or quick access factor.  And at least in their current state, every time they do an update you have to manually reinstall the plug-in.

I guess the idea is to have a social networking web 2.0 package around these games to make them more appealing to people who normally wouldn’t care.  Maybe that will work, maybe it won’t.  Either way, there has to be a better way to do this.

For instance, what would be wrong with having the game installed and launched like every other game and application on my computer?  You can still have a website with stats and community features.  You can even render that website inside of the game.  And another plus would be that people couldn’t block your advertising with browser plug-ins like AdBlock.

Maybe someone can explain their logic to me, because I can’t figure it out.

You plug it into the wall and the USB port on your computer, and the conveyor belts inside the thing move in sync with realtouch-enhanced pornography.

I don’t know.  I don’t really want to stick my dick inside anything with “dual belt drives.”  The anti-DRM crowd may not like this device for other reasons, as it requires an online activation.

Having said all that, DRM is not that big of a deal.  I’d bet that 99% of people will never even notice its there.  I only know it’s there because I notice an occasional activation dialog or disc-check indicated by spinning disc cursor thing.  I’m not saying no one has ever had a legitimate issue with DRM, just that it’s not any more likely to be a problem than any other aspect of software.  It’s almost equivalent to complaining that DVDs can be scratched or broken so it’s not acceptable for stuff to be put on DVDs.  There are some things you just have to live with, and for now DRM is one of them.  So can we stop making a big deal about the DRM for every PC game that comes out?

Which leads me to the inspiration for this post.  This two page Q&A about GTA4′s DRM is probably one of the dumbest things I’ve seen on IGN recently.  Although I suspect the entire Q&A was written by Rockstar, despite IGN acting like they took the initiative to ask Rockstar these questions.  And I can see why Rockstar would want to get this information out there in a way they can control.  So I guess it’s not that dumb really.  They do sort of attempt to answer the question of piracy making DRM pointless, and their answer is better than what most companies come up with.

In the seemingly inevitable event that some dirty pirate manages to crack GTA IV PC and make it available, what are the advantages and disadvantages to using a legitimate copy over a pirated one?

Rockstar: Aside from the fact that warez are a great place to pick up a Trojan or key logger, using a cracked copy of GTA IV PC will result in varying changes to the game experience. These can range from comical to game-progress-halting changes.

Rockstar Games rewards loyal, paying customers and will offer incentives and downloadable content that will only be available to registered users of the game, running non-hacked copies, via Rockstar Games Social Club.

The second part of the answer I’ve got no issue with.  That should be the only protection a game needs, post-release support exclusive to paying customers enforceable with online registration and a serial number.  As far as the first point, I’ve occasionally heard about a bad crack that can interfere with game progress, but they’re usually fixed very quickly after discovering problems.  Still their answer is not totally off base.  The only problem is this doesn’t address the pointlessness of DRM.  I guess maybe you could stretch the logic that if pirates have to crack the DRM they’re more likely to screw something up and introduce new bugs into the game, but that’s not a good thing for anyone.  Someone who downloads a badly cracked game and encounters a bug probably isn’t going to blame the crack, unfair as that may be.

There’s nothing new or surprising about the DRM Rockstar is using, if anything it’s more lenient than most DRM schemes these days in that it allows unlimited installations on an unlimited number of computers.  And yet you can see the comments on IGN or anywhere else this story was posted, almost every single one of them is acting like this is terrible and they’re not even going to buy the PC version now (most of them already weren’t I’m sure).  People are dumb and I hate them.  This is nothing new, I think what annoys me about this is they’re not entirely wrong to have a problem with DRM.  They’re just taking the wrong angle on it, and overreacting.

Awake has a premise that seems interesting but they just use it as a backdrop for a mediocre thriller.  The premise is that a small percentage of people are paralyzed but still conscious when they are given anesthetic for surgery, so they stay "awake" for the whole surgery.  In the movie the guy getting a heart transplant stays awake to hear the doctors expositing their plan to kill him during surgery (by injecting his new heart with some killing-dudes stuff) so that his wife (who is working with the doctors) will get his hundreds of millions of dollars and they’ll all be rich.  Whoops I just spoiled the “twist,” but don’t worry it’s irrelevant.  I think the writer forgot that you have to give a shit about the story before a plot twist means anything.

I’d say the best part of the movie is Anakin Skywalker (aka Hayden Christensen)’s humorously bad acting.  Especially when he’s getting his ribs spread open, it’s on par with the “NOOOOOOOOOO” from Star Wars.  I think he literally says “Oww.  owww. ouch.”  Speaking of bad actors, Terrence Howard sucks.  He’s not as bad as Anakin but he picks the most boring characters and he has the same low-key delivery in every movie.  He’s also under the mistaken impression that he can sing and that people want to hear him sing.  Like his acting, it’s not that bad it’s just kind of a “why are you doing this?” type thing.

The movie ends with some ridiculous crap where Anakin’s mom figures out what’s going on because she looked through the wife’s purse and found an envelope from a nursing school.  I don’t know.  Anyway so she calls this other doctor she knows, then kills herself so that Anakin can have her heart.  But before they move the heart over, Anakin and his mom are talking to each other in we’re-both-dead land, and Anakin’s mom forces Anakin to remember that she killed his father right in front of Anakin when he was a small boy.  Which for some reason makes Anakin want to live again and thus the heart transplant is a success.  Hooray.

Redbelt is a David Mamet movie, which means it’s full of theater-performance supporting actors with fake-sounding dialog and the story involves an overly complicated conspiracy to screw somebody over.  Chiwetel Ejiofor is the main reason the movie is not completely worthless.  He’s really likable in everything I’ve seen him in.  Like the anti-Terrence-Howard.  You might know him as The Operative from Serenity, or the black leader guy from Children of Men.  His character here is kind of one dimensional, but it sort of makes sense because he’s a Jiu-Jitsu instructor and I imagine those guys have a pretty one dimensional outlook on life.

The real problem in the movie is the plot.  It totally falls apart and loses all coherency in the last third, but even from the beginning there’s a lot of holes and obvious set-ups.  I still have no idea why his attorney slapped him in the parking garage, or why he had to fight his way back to the ring, or why the old dude gave him the red belt at the very end.  Or why Tim Allen was in this movie.

War, Inc. is a screwball comedy masquerading as a political satire.  Pretty similar to Idiocracy in some ways, but less obnoxious.  They both carry a message that’s a little too obvious and heavy-handed, which probably would be ok if they were really funny movies.  But they’re not.  War, Inc. is a slightly humorous movie.  There are ideas that seem funny but actually aren’t so much in practice.  Like tanks with Golden Palace ads on them.  Ok… should I be laughing when I see that, or is it just supposed to elicit a kind of “oh.  that’s cute.” reaction?  That’s how most of the movie goes.  There are a couple genuinely funny moments, and John Cusack and Marisa Tomei are pretty likable actors which helps carry the movie.  Also I just found out on IMDb that the whoreish pop star was played by Hilary Duff.  That’s surprising, she was good then.  This movie didn’t really suck, it was just ok.

This would be awful anyway, but I’m also sad to see Michael from The Wire in a new version of 90210.  On the other hand his acting here is pretty awful.  Maybe he’s lucky to have any part he can get.

As much as it is possible to hate a man I will never meet and that has not killed a close friend or family member, that is how much I hate Denis Dyack.  And that was before I saw this interview with him on OXM (via Destructoid).  This is the part where he’s explaining why people didn’t like the Too Human demo:

But what we’re also seeing is for the people who don’t like it, generally just don’t get it. And it’s because we’ve created something so innovative and different. It’s ironic, it just shows that human nature of if you don’t understand something, you immediately attack it. It’s pretty interesting in that regard.

Really, I could pick any paragraph from this interview to explain my hatred, but this one in particular is so… so awful.  I would jokingly say that this would only make sense as some bizarre social experiment to see what happens when you act like the ultimate douchebag but… Dyack has actually used that excuse before.  This man… I hate him so much.  I wish his ability to communicate was violently removed by a rabid baboon that recently escaped from a nearby zoo.  That he has this level of control over my emotions only makes me hate him more.

I’m not going to shit on Silicon Knights for making bad games, they appear to be a competent group of developers.  I liked Eternal Darkness when it came out, though I think that had more to do with me only owning a Gamecube and being starved for games, rather than the game being of exceptional quality.  The Too Human demo was not fun or original in the least, but it wasn’t a broken game or anything.  I was able to kill dudes with no major control issues.  The Silicon Knights guys ought to form a mutiny and throw Denis Dyack overboard.  Literally.  Rent a boat for the day if you have to.

UPDATE:

My mistake, the proper way to deal with Denis Dyack and Too Human is extreme sarcasm:

The sarcasm here is so thick.. I’m not 100% sure it is sarcasm.  But let’s pretend that it is, either way.

I guess I could just ignore that feeling.  I mean there are already a few things you have to ignore when you’re writing a blog.  The main thing is that nobody cares, or will ever care, what you think about anything.  Maybe your friends take some kind of interest but like I was saying you already talk to them through other means.  And trying to move that conversation onto your blog would just make you look like an asshole that has to be the center of attention.  Not to say that there is no point in blogging; there is something to be said for being able to completely flesh out your thoughts without worrying about how it will start/affect a conversation.

And to redundantly point out the layer of redundancy contained in this very post, I did already talk about this subject on IRC before writing about it here on my blog.

No but really April Fools sucks.  I will admit that a very small percent of the jokes are funny and well done, but most of them (even ironic ones like mine) are awful.  And even the good ones it’s like, what, today is the day that your corporate owners decided it’s ok to have a sense of humor?  And tomorrow we’ll go back to being the humorless assholes we really are?  Fuck that.