The End of Ownership and now we can't even have NFTs?

Published on GiantBomb March 10, 2021. Reposting here to archive. 

I get it, NFTs are bad. For the environment, for creatives, legal currencies, etc. If this isn't a way for somebody to own some data, then what is the solution?

Interesting read for the weekend: http://www.theendofownership.com/

Ah, deals on physical purchases. Originally posted on Cheap Ass Gamer, reposted on GiantBomb in July 2021 now reposting here for posterity. Links removed and a couple of edits included:

For short-time Cheap Ass Gamer's forums appear on the surface to be the best place to find the best video game deals on the Internet, but the pros know that you need to go that extra mile sometimes to get the most out of your cheap ass dollars. This blog series will help the community get the most out of a deal with only a little effort.

Arguably, the most important weapon in the CAG's cache is the price match. While the forums provide a litany of straight-up great deals, it is possible to get a little extra value by using retailers built-in price matching policies. On the surface it may seem insignificant, but saving some time and gas money can be enough to make the wait for a manager to do a key-turn for that extra 10% off. Popular retailers that have price matching policies that are well known are Best Buy and Walmart amongst others. Each of the stores have their own little nuances, but understanding the policies will save you some money with some easy tips.

Let's look at Best Buy first. One of the most overlooked policies at Best Buy is the ability to get an extra 10% matched when the product is bought at Best Buy, then matched at BB from another retailer at a later date. Using the forums, you can usually get a day or two heads-up on what games will be on sale the following week. So, for example, I have purchased a game for $59.99 at Best Buy because I know it will be on sale the next week at Target, for instance, for 39.99. When Target's sale goes into effect, I return to Best Buy and request a price adjustment. Not only will I get the $20 difference, but the Best Buy Policy is to match 110%, meaning I also get an additional $2. This makes getting the game at Best Buy an even better deal than the original retailer. See the Best Buy in-store policy at (links removed).

Sometimes Best Buy's Policy doesn't cut the mustard, many stores require that an item you are requesting a PM on be in-stock at the competitor and that the Best Buy you are standing in have enough on-hand product. I have found that Walmart, while not having a 110% policy, does have a more liberal set of requirements. My local Walmart in the past used to only match grocery items and ads from grocery stores. Now they have begun matching for exact items in movies, music and games. Walmart doesn't research the prices much, while Best Buy will call the competitor or do an item look-up on-line before satisfying the PM. The policy on Walmart.com states the following:

We strive to provide you with the lowest prices possible on Walmart.com as well as in our stores. However, sometimes a price online does not match the price in a store. In our effort to be the lowest price provider in your particular geographic region, store pricing will sometimes differ from online prices. Our local stores do not honor Walmart.com pricing or competitor advertisements from outside of a store's local trade territory.

Local trade territory is usually defined by the store, and commonly is around 30 miles.

A few tips will save you some heartache when doing the price match at your retailer of choice. First, always have the ad ready. One of the best investments you can make is buying or subscribing to your local Weekend/Sunday newspaper that includes the ads, or get printouts of the actual ad pages from the on-line stores. The CAG community is great for this as well. Best Buy, Target, Toys R Us, K-mart and Sears etc. all have on-line printable ads. Most stores you choose to PM at will require that they see the ad, and may want to keep it. Interestingly enough, my local Walmart has made price cuts shortly after seeing a competitor ad used for a PM.

Next call ahead! One of the biggest complaints I see on the boards is that "ShaqFu-ing Store X didn't have the item I wanted in stock!!1! It's all their fault I wasted gas and my time to go and get my item of choice only to not be able to get it." While it's not 100% effective in making sure your item is there, it is better than wasting money on gas and nullifying the savings you would have seen. On-line item stock availability is also not very accurate, but calling and asking the employee to set the item aside for you is good practice.

Lastly, keep your receipts. When your retailer of choice has a price match policy, they will likely PM something for the entire refund period. I have had Best Buy price match things WEEKS after I originally bought the item. Losing the receipt can be disastrous, and in the volatile world of games, prices drop, sometimes dramatically, in a couple of weeks.

Next week: Store Rewards and clubs

co-op est mort, viva co-op

 From 2008, posted in 2021 on GiantBomb

“Left 4 Dead?”

It’s all he said, but I had to hold the wince on the inside. Really?

The other two were very excited; visibly jittering in their seats. The holidays are the best time for them to catch up on some of the M rated stuff their older cousins are playing. J stares at me a little longer while I ruminate. It’s more time that I don’t get to play all of the other stuff I’m trying to finish, plus something in the back of my head was saying play something else. The previous years it was Halo over the LAN. Two in the basement, two in the living room.

“Alright.” Grudgingly.

The younger two are up and out of their seats before J and I; trying not to run to the basement. We were going to hold off on opening presents since E was taking a nap. By far the youngest in the house that day, he was dictating a great deal of the events. But now the other ones at 11 and 14 were really deciding the activities.

We get to the basement. M and L in their excitement have taken the prime seats on the couch. J takes a perch on a barstool. I boot up Entertainment Central with the Harmony. The interlopers have changed my mood to the opposite of “harmony” within a few minutes. J hands me the copy of L4D and I put it in the 360. My dark cloud reminds me it’s only two player. Ah. I hand J and L, the oldest two, some controllers. “I need to go help clean up lunch,” I sigh. “I’ll come back down to play later.” I’m used to this kind of thing now.

So asking me what I wanted to play was moot. More than likely I will get a few hours to myself after everyone leaves or goes to sleep for the night. What I don’t get is why I was so disappointed to play L4D after enjoying it so much at Thanksgiving. The missus told everyone that would listen over the following weeks how funny it was when J and I were tooling around the zombie apocalypse. As I washed dishes I thought of the things that bugged me about the newest games.

Left 4 Dead, while excellent an experience in co-op, really loses something on the couch. Sure, J and I could play over Live or Steam with some others, but on one 360 only two of us could really enjoy it. The experience I had enjoyed so much a few weeks earlier had suddenly turned negative. Was this really the state of the couch co-op that I had enjoyed so much when I was younger? Or even last year? It seems that so many of the games that the core were really into only have a great on-line multi or single player experience. The casual stuff is what people were meant to play together when Ethernet or fiber wasn’t involved. It mostly dwells on the Wii, or requires more crappy plastic accessories to fill my sanctuary. To top things off I had heard numerous gamers complain that single console split screen was probably ruining their experiences.

“Grabbin’ Pills!”

The meme is working its magic when I return from my self-imposed exile. The cousins have drawn a crowd of the non-gamers in the house, and they’re all cracking impressions of the computer player’s dialog. My scrooge heart grew some sizes watching for a few minutes. And I was sure that I would get my turn before too long, but I kind of understood how it might be fun to just watch. Things could have been worse, but watching the two cousins get owned may have been just as fun as playing myself. Maybe there is some hope for couch co-op yet. Or I just need to buy another 360.

Should the Xbox 360 have a HDD? Does the Pope wear a funny hat?

This morning I read a bit on Kotaku where Sierra was making the assertion that the Xbox 360 should have had a HDD in all systems much like the PS3. Ashcraft's affect in the piece was a "duh" and really I don't think anyone who has an Xbox 360 thinks otherwise, even if they have a core or arcade system.

Where Microsoft failed in regards to the 360's HDD requirements is in underestimating the power to convince system owners to buy into the HDD. Numerous opportunities have passed MS by where it could have moved to a HDD required future.

I appreciate the idea of choice, and even can understand the value of no HDD to the consumer, but after the core no system should have been marketed without a HDD. This Christmas, according to Microsoft, they sold all of the Xboxes they put out on the market, leading to shortages in the quarter following the 2007 holiday season. While this included what I believe to be the inappropriate Arcade pack, it also included the more expensive Elite systems. Microsoft could have sold just as many systems if the Arcade pack was not part of the SKU scheme. More users could have been led down the HDD path if they had no choice.

Another way that MS could have convinced the install base to move toward HDD system SKUs would have been to allow developers to create content that required the use of the drive. If Halo3 had required the use of the HDD to play the game, you would have seen those gamers who had a Core SKU buying more HDDs (which I think you could assert would have made yet more money for Microsoft). I'm not sure it would have discouraged any Halo fan who also had a core.

As someone who bought a launch day 360, which has since RROD, I know for a fact that the systems sold that night sold in the very black and white Premiums first, Cores second. I think that if only "premium" systems had been available at launch, they would have sold through, and no one would have complained that they paid more. The conspiracy theory in the back of my mind says that there was a HDD shortage, and no reason existed that the Core was for consumer choice. The Xbox Prime had a required HDD in all systems, and in no way did anyone complain that it could have been cheaper because of it.

So, as a gamer who enjoys the 360 I wonder why Sony made the decision to go ahead with a mandatory HDD in all PS3s and allows the developers to use it in programming their titles? And I also wonder why no third party solution to the 360 HDD issue has been presented. Security my eye.

Arrrgghhhh!: Pirates, Reviewers, Stupid Gamers and Titans

I just read a post by Susan Arendt on GameLife Blog about the recent finger pointing by THQ's M. Fitch where he chides the gaming public about the recent closure of Iron Lore Ent. and the failure of Titan Quest. After reading the piece I found that I was somewhat angry about what was said. I purchased Titan Quest and the expansion recently from Target, picking it up on a clearance deal, and quite looked forward to playing them and the Warhammer 40K expansion that the company had worked on. Fitch's vitriol over what happened to the company surprised me considering a few things:

1) Piracy counts for the failure of sales. Weaksauce. The game has a protection scheme in place to counteract the pirates, and was apparently unsuccessful in the attempt per Fitch. Meanwhile some of the games that have released in the past couple of years that supposedly ride "raw dog" (thanks S. Elliot at Ziff Davis) have been very successful sellers (Sins of a Solar Empire, Gal Civ II etc.). I think that it's vogue to bring up piracy in regards to the failures of any PC title, but doesn't explain anything (i.e. COD4 on PC)

2) Gamers are stupid, and can't work their machines. I'm probably oversimplifying the idea Fitch states, but PC gamers as a group are quite persistent in getting something to work, particularly a game that...

3) was critically lauded in the community. He cites one reviewer that didn't change the score of the Titan Quest title because of a lack of teleport (which it actually DID have), and then when schooled didn't change the score. I'm skeptical that this was a strong argument mostly because every score I saw was excellent, and many in the community said it was the next coming of Diablo. Hell it even metacritic-ed 79 and the expansion at 80 percent. Sounds good to me.

I waited to buy the game when it hit cheap, but finally did. Now I'm wondering if that was the right choice.

Folklore and Why I Started Playing PS3 Again

Recently I have not been playing the giant 500 dollar blu-ray game player I have in my living room. The last time I had used it was around Christmas to watch Superbad on BD. The thing was there was games out that I wanted to play, but I couldn't get over the 60 bucks on ALL of the games that were worth playing, still. Finally this month, I got another game for Valentine's Day: Folklore. It had been on clearance at Target the past few weeks, 30 bucks, and has actually turned out to be a pretty good game.

What makes it pretty good? Well it has already passed the spouse test. I think that the game looked interesting enough in the store for my wife to get it for me was a plus, but now she wants to sit with me and watch while I play. There hasn't been many like that lately (Puzzle Quest XBLA not withstanding). I've also found that it suffers ( in a good way) from the PokeMans syndrome. We have been carefully leveling and capturing the folks in the game, and it's actually fun. The SixaxiS control is kind of a throwaway, but the collection aspect itself is very fun. It's also very pretty. I'm not one to look at the detail in the game, but this one really shines. Some reviewers have cited some problems with the game, but I haven't seen them yet.

One is that it's repetitive. Some of the criques of the game say that while there are two characters, you must play the game with both and the storylines are too similar. I disagree with this, mostly playing as both switching by chapter has been fun, and while the maps are the same, the folks are different and the stories do have two defined points of reference. Keats and Ellen do not expereince the same story. Another critique leveled at the game was that it mixes cut scenes and traditional RPG dialog too much. A petty argument to be sure. There is an interesting somewhat comic book / graphic novel approach to some of the cut scenes which is nice I might have pointed to the bad voice acting rather than this.

All said I think Folklore is well worth 30 dollars and hits a more reasonable price point for some of these early PS3 titles. Despite the complaints from reviews, I think many people looking for a budget minded title on PStriple would like this.

Thoughts on Xbox Live and PSN

Recently I've been thinking about XBL and PSN. I had come to take them for granted over the last year in the case of PSN and five years (!) in the case of Live, but I helped my grandfather and father jump into the world of current generation gaming, and now it has kind of become a bigger issue. My grandfather wanted to buy a Blu-ray player, and while he won't play that many games, I encouraged him to buy a PlayStation3. My father on the other hand really likes the games that 360 has to offer (Halo 3 and COD 4 mostly, the PS3 shooters didn't trip his trigger) so he bought a 360. Both offer this ability to play and communicate on-line so it brought back memories of the debates over the merits of both.

Now don't get carried away, my dad and grandpa don't really care too much about these things, though my dad will get a kick out of getting owned on-line. Moreover I felt like when discussing these things with my dad I kind of felt like I was defending Live again over PSN. The list of benefits and deficiencies are great on both, but Live seems to get a bad wrap more for its cost. So I kind of outlined in my head how I felt on the whole 50 bucks a year.

I listen to a lot of podcasts and 1up yours seemed to have the most heated debate. Shane Bettenhausen and the other chairs disagreed on multiple occasions about which was better: Free PSN and 50 dollar Live. I used to get really angry when I would listen to this because the Live supporters don't argue the over the cost of Live, just what it offers in features. Something that gamers neglect is price, and I felt like schooling my dad on this very topic.

1) 50 bucks IS too much to spend for Live. I concur with all PSN and PC gaming fans that say $50 is too much for 13 months of Live. I like to start with this stance to kind of give the rest of my pointers a little credence. I also pont out that 13 months is my standard total for the service, which I'll explain.

2) Turn off auto-renewal for your subscription. Something that I seem to hear people complain about is that Live auto-renews, and it has made some of the blogosphere's headlines. Shutting it off is easy to do, and will prevent Microsoft from getting 50 bucks from you. It's actually more expensive to pay for a 12 month subscription on the service than a 13 months on the in-store cards.

3) In the same vein as above: Don't buy points ON the service. Buy them some other way. This leads in to the next recommendation...

4) Shop around. You may think what does this mean? I have yet to pay full price for ANY of my Live subs or points. From 5 years ago to today, I am always shopping around. I've discounted the sub cards at places like Target and Best Buy and the points cards at other places. It may take price matching, but it works. The last time I bought Microsoft points I got cards buy one, get one free. An awesome deal? Naw, some may say they're overpriced anyway, but now when someone says something costs too much on Arcade or Live, I think to myself "does it?". My points are worth twice as much now. It helps when I only end up paying 10-50% less for a year sub on the service as well.

5) Buy good content, leave the bad ones. Very little on XBLA has been free or reduced in price over time. Patience will pay off in the long run. Every purchase you make on the service is scrutinized and analyzed. Remember when you by a gamer pic or theme you make a statement. You also make one when you download all of the free stuff. I have heard in numerous places that Microsoft hates to post stuff for free on Live.

6) Lastly. Pass this kind of knowledge around. Gamers, as a group of consumers, are notorious for early adoption and spending too much. But I enjoy a game and Xbox Live as a service more when I pay less.

Now PSN has it's problems too, but you can make the best of them.

1) Another blog I frequent at UGO by Wombat seems to pick on Xbox Live for remainder points, but PSN has similar failings. PSN requires you to purchase "money" in 5 dollar blocks when adding to your wallet. No refunds. and while you're purchasing better priced material, you will inevitably end up with at least extra cents on your account. Maybe those pennies will add up?

2) The store on PSN sucks. It hasn't really improved that much either over the course of the year and a half. Where as you make statements with purchases, you also must make statements by providing feedback to Sony and MS. You can't just buy/not buy stuff on Sony Store, you'll actually have to make it known outside of rants on a message board.

3) Games are way bigger on PSN. Don't discount this. Xbox supports 16 players in most games, but the most popular games on PSN, Warhawk and Resistance, support way more. Keep this in mind.

4) It is free. No cost to use, so use it. Video conference, play the games and keep up with some friends.

I think what I'm really trying to get through is that Xbox Live and PSN are way closer in features when you can reduce the cost of Live. Maybe I've convinced my dad to not just go buy a sub on the service.