The good sides of digital delivery
The incoming future of video games will not be streamed, in the cloud, or in social games available on-line for free, and this is a fact that I have tried to explain before. The topic of this post, conversely, is the series of positive novelties that the success of digital delivery as a supplementary tool for releasing games has brought to the industry, the developers and to whom must purchase these games in the end. In that sense, the lack of a physical copy of the gaming software is widely repaid by a greater range of choices for everyone.
Casual gaming? A parallel market
What do the (relatively) recent exploit of Nintendo’s Wii console, the iPhone popularity and the videogaming velleities of social networks like Facebook share? They all are facts which have contributed to open the video games market to a broader and broader audience, establishing the principle that casual gaming, that kind of ludic activity which does not force you to know the magic sequence “WASD” or the difference between a hack’n slash and a “pure” role playing game, is a growing phenomenon that will eventually shape the entire industry alongside its traditional technological and commercial models.
Links & Suggestions # 7: videogame birthdays, pirates, industry assholes, nanometers and super-consoles
If technology is inclined to constantly project itself onward leaving very few room for remembering products that were so popular just some time before, Jake Gyllenhaal acting as the Prince of Persia is convincing as a cactus in a melodrama. If Doom is an historic videogame that deserves to be remembered for its birthday, pirates once again prove to be the only ones capable of saving the media world from the current DRM madness. And if the reading of this paragraph has a meaning for you then I would suggest to make an appointment with a psychiatrist, but a good one. Or the reading of a good grammar book. I am dispensed from the second, at least 
Will Stardock’s security solution kill the DRM?
He is a long-time supporter of the utter uselessness of intrusive protection technologies against videogaming piracy, and now Brad Wardell, Stardock’s CEO, takes up the challenge turned to him by the industry by working on a minimal security system that could be good for the labels and at the same time would satisfy the users’ need to not to be pointed out as pirates dangerous for society and business.
Link & Suggestions # 5: slotMusic, videogame class actions, mafioso states and P2P
Can a multimillionaire industry rely on stupid asses insomuch that there isn’t the awareness of being on the edge of extinction? Of course. Can a sovereign state blur with the organized crime to such a degree that you can’t possibly understand anything of that nation without knowing in details the history of crime through time too? Absolutely. Can George Lucas reduce himself to endlessly recycle an old character because he’s painfully short of ideas? Hum…
Dario Argento involved in videogames?
No, not yet, but a brief collaboration with the videogames multinational Electronic Arts shows the keen interest of the auteur for the interactive entertainment and its expressive imagery. Dario Argento, one of the true masters of Italian and international motion pictures will give his voice to a characters of the localized edition of Dead Space, the survival horror game with which EA prepares to challenge Capcom and Resident Evil within the next October.
Electronic Arts videogames? Unfinished and full of draconian DRM
Electronic Arts, the videogames multinational dedicated to the production of endless sequels and to the havoc of creative energies within the small and talented software houses, has once again been able to break up a potential masterpiece and to change it into a chance for controversy, criticism and furious debate about the usual copy protections useful only for losing customers.
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