On Nintendo and YouTube

There is a lot of controversy surrounding "let's play" (LP) videos on YouTube. In a "let's play" video, someone records themselves playing a video game - sometimes edited, sometimes not. Sometimes with commentary, sometimes not. Frequently an LP video will be part of a series the usually involves that user completing an entire video game. Some game companies are completely cool with the idea of  LP videos, seeing them as free advertising. Others claim that LP videos displaying a game in its entirety violates copyright law and issues take-down notices by the thousands.

Who am I kidding. I'm talking about Nintendo. Nintendo, famous issuing a take-down notice if so much as a sneeze sounds like Mario, has created a revenue-sharing platform that will enable them to receive the advertising monies generated by a YouTube video of their game. They will potentially share some of this revenue with the YouTube uploader, but only if the video is properly licensed and registered with them. A lot of users have cried foul (like they have for years with Nintendo-based LP videos). At the moment there is no indication of any change from the game company.

LP videos are incredibly useful for people contemplating purchasing a game, or who are stuck in a game at a certain point. I don't own a Playstation, nor will I in the immediate future, so I am happy to watch The Last of Us via an LP video. But on the other hand, the core part of any video game is the experience the game provides. YouTube "let's play" videos share that experience. Is the experience copyrighted? No, it is not. Because not everyone will have the same experience, even in a linear first-person shooter. The game that generates the experience is copyrighted, but not the experience of playing it. And this is what is shared via YouTube LP videos: one version of the experience of playing a game. There is no interaction with an LP video, aside from clicking Play. Nintendo's attempt to receive money from users' recorded gaming experiences is greedy, grasping, and controlling in the extreme. 

The issue goes further. "Let's play" videos are not reviews of the game, but in Nintendo's over-reaching desire to be in control of everything that mentions their products, they frequently lump Review channels in with LP channels (and hit all of them with take-down notices). Whether you're talking about an LP from PewDiePie or a review from AngryJoe (or even, in that later's case, a preview video that he had Nintendo's permission to make!), Nintendo wants to control the dialogues on YouTube that people have about their games. 

If I see a game via an LP and like it, my first step will be to go out and see where I can purchase it for myself (because pirating is for, well, pirates). I'm not thinking I experienced a game because I watched a "let's play." I shared someone else's experience, but it was not MY experience. This is how LP videos drive sales. On the other hand, what if someone watches an LP and decides they don't want to buy the game? Shortsighted companies see this as a lost sale. Which it is, but take the thought one step further. What comes after someone is disappointed in a game? The negative review. LPs actually help filter out people who would otherwise provide negative reviews of a game, helping it keep a positive reputation. So yes, a sale is lost, but so is the bad press.

As someone who was thinking of doing a few LPs and streams (seriously, though, do Twitch and YouTube need another LPer?), this story gave me pause. I'd rather I could just share experiences of my gaming without the need for all this legal mud, but unfortunately that's not the way the world (or YouTube) works. I genuinely believe that people do "let's plays" because they love the games they play. When a company like Nintendo starts acting like an evil dictator, they spit on that love and do their best to tear it down, to cover it up. Almost like they are saying, "We don't care how you feel, so long as you don't share it with anybody."

Surely we as a society are better than that.

Too Much Digital Entertainment

A wise woman once said, "We will only know what is of over-mastering importance when it has over-mastered us." If nothing else, the sheer amount of time spent engaging with digital entertainment seems to indicate its over-mastering power to occupy and thrill people all over the world. If you are working in entertainment, there are more opportunities than ever before to get your work out there - to get it heard, seen or experienced.

I love playing video games. There are so many that I frequently don't know which one to play. Mass Effect (3 games), The Witcher (2, soon to be 3), Just Cause (2, soon to be 3), Assassin's Creed (9 games), Dragon Age (3 games), Deus Ex (4 games), Batman (3, soon to be 4), Alan Wake (2 games), Dishonored, Saints Row (3 games), Tomb Raider (6 or 7 games), Red Faction (4 games), Civilization (I have 3 games), Thief (4 games), Bioshock (3 games), Prince of Persia (5 or 6 games, I think), Far Cry (4 games), Metro (2 games), Total War (I have 6 of the 9 available), Max Payne (3 games), Elder Scrolls (3 games), Half-Life (2 games), Portal (2 games), Age of Empires (2 games) - and that's not even getting into some of the many other less-famous titles that I have in my game library. In total, the number of games available to me totals over 400.

I have played barely a fifth of them. And by "played," I don't mean I played them from beginning to end. I mean I played them until I lost interest. For about two dozen titles, I have played them to the conclusion. The rest - well, I don't know if I will ever return to them. I experienced them once, and was not impressed enough to finish them. Why would I want to return to them? There are so many other games to play...

I remember when all I had was a handful of titles that sat on my bookshelf. I played them over and over. Then, when I got tired of them, I discovered mods to renew their attraction. Now, I have so many games, I worry I won't be able to play them all. The days of relaxing with a game and getting lost in its world are long gone. Now I hop into one game, play it for a bit, then hop into a different game, trying to experience everything. And in the process, experiencing nothing. With new sales happening almost weekly on Origin, Amazon, Steam, Bundle Stars, GOG, and other websites, the temptation to add to my library is huge. The other day I purchased a game for Origin from Amazon called Syndicate. I watched the beginning of some "let's plays" on YouTube, and it looks like a cool game. I really want to play it. But when am I going to have the time to do that? Right now, the Sniper: Ghost Warrior Trilogy is on sale. The first Sniper game is a classic. But when would I play those games, if I purchased them? They would just go on the already-long list of games that I haven't played that I want to play. And some games on sale look cool, but I haven't bought them simply because I have no idea when I would play them, if at all.

I love watching good TV. Friends is a favorite sitcom of mine, as is Community, Cougar Town, Parks & Rec, and many others. Then there's adventure TV like Battlestar Galactica and Arrow, dramatic TV like Game of Thrones. If I kept up with all the shows I want to see, I wouldn't have time to do much else with my life. Then there's the question of whether I want to own the shows on DVD or Blu-ray so I can be "liberated" from the shackles of network programming and / or internet Flash ads (plus all those cool extras that fans love). But what is left after all that vicarious living?

Music is everywhere. On our phones, our tablets, laptops, in garages, on street corners, in shops - it has literally never been easier to find music to listen to (I'm listening to some right now as I write this). Online platforms like Spotify and iTunes make the task even easier. I have over a dozen different recordings of Beethoven's 5th Symphony. Brahms' 4th Symphony is equally well represented, and that is not even getting into the violin concertos, piano concertos, cello concertos, string quartets, piano quartets, piano solo, violin solo, and other genres that absolutely clogs my listening queue. There is my playlist with Aerosmith, Scorpions, and AC / DC. There are other playlists of movie soundtracks, game soundtracks, Poets of the Fall, Simon and Garfunkel. Thanks to modern media platforms, the entire discography of Huey Lewis and the News is just a few clicks away. Now, when I DON'T have music pouring into my ears, multiple songs wage a noisy battle in my head for which one will ring in my ears for the next few hours. Sometimes I would listen to music, but I just can't anymore.

It's the same story with movies, books, pictures, even YouTube - there is simply too much media in the world today. I can tell that there is a lot of good stuff I am missing - and that, I think, is what fuels the constant consumption. I am so scared of "missing out" that I compensate by hoarding whatever I can grab cheaply. I've heard The Wire was an awesome show, but I'll probably never get to watch it. I've heard Alicia Keys is an awesome singer, but I'll probably never get to hear her. I've heard Guardians of the Galaxy was a fun movie, but I'll probably never watch it (not soon, anyway). Each movie competes with a new album, which competes with a concert, which competes with a video game, which competes with a TV show, all of them fighting amongst themselves for that golden trophy which is used to judge every entertainment - time. The time people take to experience the thrills and excitement that they have to offer.

There is too much media for anyone to enjoy it all.

Side-Quest: Getting Crysis to Run on PC (64-bit)

Despite having poured thousands of hours into my favorite games, I somehow missed out on Crysis (the first one). So, when it was on sale on Steam over Christmas, I picked it up.

Then I tried installing it. Dun dun dun... CRASH! Repeatedly. Turns out this is a common problem.

There are lots of problems getting the game to even launch. Then there are problems using the 64-bit executable. Now I have no trouble executing some complicated "back up x file, then change setting y" type of stuff, but there's some consumer outrage whenever I have to do that. I paid for a working product. It darn well better work. If it doesn't, the question becomes whether I want to go through the trouble. For Crysis, there are some simple steps to follow that result in a working game without having to modify any game files.

You will need an Origin account.

1. Purchase Crysis on Steam or on disc (if you purchase on Origin, go to step 3). The game has been steeply discounted during major holidays, so wait until for a sale if possible.

2. Activate the game's license key with EA, so that it will appear in your Origin library. The tricky part here is that if you try to activate Crysis using the Origin software, you could get an "Invalid Key" error. To activate it, you have to enter the key on EA's support website. Activating here will successfully add Crysis to your Origin library.

3. Download and install Crysis from Origin.

4. You might think you're done, but the minute you try to launch the game, it will crash once again. You might think that the game is simply broken, but that is not the case.

5. Navigate to the folder Crysis is installed to (in my case, F: > Games > Crysis

6. I want to run Crysis using the 64-bit executable, so go into the Bin64 folder.

7. Double-click Crysis.exe to launch the game.

(This solution only works on computers with 64-bit operating systems.)

The game should launch. Exactly why the game launches directly from the executable and not from Origin is a mystery to me.

If you use this method for Steam (install Crysis via Steam, go into the Steam Crysis folder and launch using the executable), the game will still crash. A bait-and-switch move to get more people to use Origin? Who knows. The Origin version of Crysis does use a patched version of EA's infamous Securom DRM; it now uses your Origin credentials to verify ownership. So you DO need to be logged in to Origin to run the game.

Crysis runs smooth and solid now, and still looks amazing for an older title.Unfortunately the multiplayer component is off-line, but hey: what price nostalgia (or, in my case, discovery)?

Quest Completed.

Bonus: EA's support site activation service will also work with Crysis 2 and Crysis Warhead.

Side-Quest: Disabling V-Sync in Mass Effect 3

Waiting for my graphics card to get back from its second warranty repair (c'mon, Asus, you're better than this!). Meanwhile, I'm getting by with my backup video card, a Radeon 6670 with 1GB of GDDR5. Needless to say, graphics performance is greatly reduced, to put it mildly. People wouldn't need "backup" graphics cards, of course, if their primary hardware functioned as it should.

Having to turn a lot of settings down, but one thing I don't want to compromise: resolution. And right there, I am really limiting myself, but there it is. My monitor has 1080p native, and if I go with anything else in a large number of games, the visuals simply look like crap. So 1080p it is then. That means lots of jaggies and screen tearing, unfortunately, because Vertical Sync causes a lot of lag on an under-powered system.

TL:DR.

Mass Effect 3 has appreciable stutter and lag when running on my 6670. The problem is that the card is not powerful enough to render the game at a constant 60fps, so all that needs to be done is to disable V-sync. But there is no option to disable Vertical Sync in its options menu. It is still possible to turn it off, however, by editing the GamerSettings.ini in the Config folder (always back up core files before altering them!) Thanks to user evilsofa on hardforum.com for this solution.

1. Find GamerSettings.ini, and open it in Notepad.
2. At the bottom of the [SystemSettings] section, add these three lines:
UseVSync=True
SmoothFrameRate=True
MaxSmoothedFrameRate=62

I only need the V-sync setting, so I guess you could just add that without the other two. Since it was listed as part of the solution, though, I'm including it.

3. Change the "UseVSync" value from True to False. Click "save" and exit Notepad.

And voila! Stutter eliminated. Mission accomplished.
Collateral Damage: Screen tearing is now omnipresent.

Welcome to My Blog!

My name's Abe.

I like video games.

I enjoy a lot of other stuff, too. Cake (screw you, GLaDOS), chocolate, movies, music, daily news and events. But mostly games. Sometimes I'll post a lot. Sometimes I might let weeks lapse between posts. I expect I'll post a little bit of everything here.

But still, games. I guess it's best to give my gaming history.

I loved hanging out in arcades when I was a kid. No surprise that I play a lot of video games now, I guess. Though it's taken me a while to get here (I'm over 30). My first game was Quake 2, which I first played in 2002. Then I tried out Age of Empires II (with the Conqueror's Expansion), and played nothing else for a while. Next up was the Total War series. The first Medieval Total War was a great companion; I have no estimate of the number of hours I whiled away while dealing with yet another resurgent Papacy. Then Rome Total War launched, and I played a bit of that. Probably my most-played title was Medieval II Total War. I really got into the whole mod scene. I tried out one mod after another, never really playing them much, but awed at the amount of variety.

And that takes me to 2013. I had a lot of events happening in my life, and contracted pneumonia in February of that year. A lot of things changed. I decided to explore more things that I might enjoy, instead of constantly trying to please other people. I discovered YouTube "let's play" videos of people playing video games. One of the first games I started to observe was a play-through of an old game called Assassin's Creed. The game plus its sequel was cheap on Amazon, so I bought it.

So it began.

Playing games started as a distraction. It was still a new experience to me, so every time Al-tair made a jump I was slightly elated. Every time he lost a little bit of sync, my hands would scrabble around my keyboard, desperately trying to do better. Still a distraction. Then I played Alan Wake. Now, Alan Wake has its limitations, as anyone who has played it will know. But I never knew that games could be like that. That they could have gripping stories, beautiful scenes, and moving characters. Even now that I have played many more games and realized that Alan Wake has a linear story-line and repetitive combat, it still holds a special place for me.

From there, it was a hop and a skip to more games of even greater caliber. The Assassin's Creed franchise has some superb moments (Black Flag is one of my favorite games). The Batman Arkham series is forever installed on whatever computer I am currently using. So is the Mass Effect trilogy (almost have a maxed manifest in Mass Effect 3 multiplayer). Dragon Age Origins, The Witcher, Tomb Raider (2013), Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Red Faction: Guerrilla, Saints Row. The list goes on and on.

Point is, I was late to gaming. Nearly two years on, there are still so many games I haven't played, and so many games that I want to revisit. For video gaming, I think we live in a great time. Games can be better than ever, with better graphics than ever, with better voice actors than ever. Hardware companies are making new strides in all phases of computers - more processing power for less electricity, great value-for-money computers that are easy to build yourself. Even as duplicity, corruption and strife run rampant in the societies of the world, there has never been a better time to play video games.

I'm starting this blog because there is more that I want to say than can be fit into a single game review. And though video games and the tech required to play them remain primary, I expect to be sharing and commenting on a number of issues and events that happen in the world as well.

So, welcome to Abe's Mission Control! Glad to have you aboard.