Oh man I can't wait for this game. It's like Tim Schaefer is only allowed to produce Concentrated Awesome and if he doesn't he gets sent to jail, so he has to hit projects out of the park to stay out of prison. He should be the posterchild for brilliant game design. Activision has no idea what it's done.

Bizarro piracy, or Is it still piracy if you pay for something?

Now, apparently this isn't all that new but it is new to me - the short story is: People buy CD keys from... less than reputable places online, which allows them to 'legally' play some games online. For all intents and purposes, they own the game, since they still own a CD key, albeit a heavily discounted one that originated from another country.

We all know that for the longest time, CD keys were pretty much the only obstacle blocking the way of game pirates from playing online - after all, online play is one of those benefits dangled tantalizingly in front of gamers, so they'd pony up the dosh, leaving those filthy, barnacle-encrusted game pirates high and dry - everyone wins!

But now, since it's easy enough for someone who wants to play online to get a much cheaper CD key (how they 'acquire' the game is, of course, another matter), the question is whether or not it's still ethical. After all, the developers are being compensated - the games stripped of their CD key in a different country, are, for all intents and purposes, still moving off the shelves, putting money in the devs' pockets. Just not quite as much as they'd get in the original country to begin with.

Does this prove, then, that Price is a major deterrent? Should games be sold at a standardised price?

For further reading:
http://savygamer.co.uk/2009/07/question-of-what-is-right.html

Yes, we've heard of the song parody video. But when the parody uses the complete same video to make fun of it that takes it to a whole new level.

IT COMES BACK, said the Sleer, with satisfaction in its smoke-tendril voice. IT ALWAYS COMES BACK.
- The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman.

And so it is, as it always is. Maybe I should never have stopped. Part of the fear of blogging is just being afraid of being seen as self-important and self-absorbed, writing about how many times you brushed your teeth, how many times up and down, how many times to the side. But maybe it was just being silly.

Of course it's nice to make the excuse of Facebook and Twitter doing it all for you. First from Facebook giving a more complete picture of your life, and then Twitter basically being micro-blogging. But then again words are the craft, the clay in my thickening, callousing fingers, and if I don't enjoy writing, I may as well bind my fingers and hands together and form big meaty clubs. I think you can still eat with those so maybe it won't be too bad. (A lot harder to pick your nose, though.)

I'd almost forgotten how liberating it was to blog.

I suppose it's somehow odd that the more connected the world becomes, the more of our lives we share, the more afraid we are to live in it. The world's changed so much in the past 4 years. NS this, and Uni that, but the world's changed ever so much. Carving out your 15 megabytes of fame on the internet just gets more and more intimidating. But somehow, like the San Francisco Gold Rush, even though you've missed it by years and years, it's not too late to stake your claim.