Please say it ain’t so.

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Now, I love playing PC games. I mean, I literally grew up playing them. And you’ve probably read about how I absolutely adore Steam. But reading this piece in PC Gamer that references comments from EA General Manager Ben Cousins annoys me. Because it smacks of money-grubbing corporates ruining the hobby we all love. If you’re a gamer, it’s time to think and take action.

Wouldn't it suck if Red Alert 3 forced you to pay US$1.99 for each unit you wanted to unlock?

First, let me post some liberal excerpts of statements that annoy me:

“I have trouble working out why free-to-play games have generated controversy – I’ve been doing this for four years now, so it feels kind of normal to me – but I can’t think of anything more exploitative than gating all of your content behind having to pay someone $60.”

“That’s a really harsh business model if you think about it objectively,” he adds, saying “what we do is enable everyone to play the game, and figure out if they like it. If they don’t like it they can walk away and they don’t lose anything.”

“How many times have we all bought crappy games for $60, right? And the majority of people in our game spend less than that – the cost of a full-priced game. So what we’re selling is a cheaper than full price game that you can try before you buy.”

So what he’s saying is basically saying that the smarter, kinder model is to release a game, lock everything that’s fun about it up, and make you pay ridiculous amounts to unlock all the content. You see, the business model works only for those who want to milk more money out of a game. Just like how some DLCs function.

If it was really about letting the player experience the game before making a purchase decision, well, demos do that pretty well already. In fact, here‘s EA’s own excellent demo of Dragon Age 2 for you to download.  No, I’m pretty sure that was a cover line.

More obviously, is the funny railing against the US$ 60 price point for games. The irony is that EA’s pointing at itself and it’s not like they don’t have the means to reduce that price to – oh say, $50.

To his last line – the majority of people spending less than the cost of a full-priced game becomes that way because many, many people will register for free and stop playing. But really, with gamers, you’re talking to an audience that wants to go through the entire game. It would really suck if you needed to pay US$20 to unlock every chapter in your “free” copy of Dragon Age II – with micropayments of US$1.99 for each piece of equipment you want.

It’s ridiculous on iPad games (and I’ve stayed off those kinds of games) and it’s utterly ridiculous on the PC games that matter (I’m leaving out all those Chinese MMOs that work on this business model).

The statistics are skewed and I can guarantee that if this is where the PC Games industry is heading, playing games will be no fun anymore. So please, PC Game companies (especially EA), please say it ain’t so.

Did this tweet deserve that response?

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Saw an interesting conversation on Twitter today.

Someone on my Twitter list tweeted:

And that immediately got the reply:

I get that any rumor of any plane crash is a touchy issue, but I really feel too that the tone of @airasia‘s response was unnecessarily aggressive, or at best – defensive. Would have thought the better approach would be to engage her and explain why mocking up plane crashes (it looked like a fancy instagr.am mock-up to me) is not a laughing matter. How would you have handled it?

New Discovery: Espresso Reader

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With all the buzz around news reading apps for mobile devices and tablets (iPad), the desktop and laptop space seemed to be getting left behind. I really enjoy using Pulse News Reader on my Nexus One and iPad, but when it comes to scanning the news while I’m at my desk at work, it’s really a pain to layout my iPad next to me (given the mess on my desk).

And while I essentially love Google Reader, but being spoilt by Pulse, my tastes have become somewhat more “refined.” Okay, I just liked the pretty pictures and slick layout.

Thanks to Taylor Ling, who heard my plea on Twitter, I’ve now found the perfect answer! Espresso Reader is a compact little app (if you could ever call apps written on Adobe Air that), that takes your Google Reader feeds and presents them in something that looks like this:

Slick reading on the desktop with Espresso Reader

Sweet? Other than the swish interface, there’s also a little bit of a social layer (though I’ve yet to try it) where you can also add in a Twitter account and share links directly from the app.

I think I’m pretty much set.

Thinking inside your marketing bubble?

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It’s one thing to talk big about trends and get marketing types all excited. It’s another to try to make the same statements to the man on the street and elicit little more than a raised eyebrow, if you’re lucky. PHDWorldwide who played this video at an “industry conference” and then released it on YouTube drew such a response.

Don’t forget to look at the comments and gather the reactions. I didn’t get what the fuss was – me being an entirely techno-evangelist sort. But Joe Public did. I think the fault of “marketing people” like me is that sometimes we live in our own bubble. This video is a good example, if ever there was one. Yes, there’s been a lot of talk about augmented reality especially in conferences and marketing circles. Yes, there’s been some experimentation and coverage of that experimentation. But to the public at large, it’s still largely gimmicky.

And until someone actually turns it into an essential, useful application, making “promise-the-sky” remarks based on assumptions is not going to win you the love of the masses. I think we need to use the same logic with some of the social media tactics we’ve been seeing and wont to promise. Hold them up to harsh daylight and ask this question of your latest brilliant new-fangled geo-location social idea and ask: “Will real people really care?”

Tales from the lounge

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Sorry for the silence. I’ve been travelling quite a bit and am about to hit the sky again. But thought I’d drop by with a quickie post about how much I’m loving airport lounges.

Taking long haul flights and getting caught in transit is no fun at all without a lounge. I need me my battery juice and a connection.

The ones I’ve been to also have hot coffee and tea thrown in the mix.

Oh, and comfortable chairs or a place to nap.

From the way I’m gushing you might think its like I’ve become a lounge junkie (antonymous to bar junkie) but believe me, if you were in my shoes, you’d be too.

How will 2011 change our lives?

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More and more often in recent years, I wish I did a degree in anthropology instead of Mass Communication. Human behaviour and norms are changing so rapidly these days that what’s in for a year will immediately be out the next. Contrast that to the fact that white wigs were popular for a whole century in British history and you get the picture.

That’s the premise for my article earlier this week in The Star’s R.Age which can be found here. Or, if you’re too lazy to click thru the link, I’ve happily (with permission) reproduced the entire piece here:

A FRIEND of mine recently talked about how tough it was to communicate with teenagers today. His job requires frequently being around teenagers and he found his solicitations for conversation often greeted with grunts and groans and distracted stares.

“How are you today?”

“Mmmmmmhhmm … Gnnnnnnnnhhhh,” comes the grunted response. This is swiftly followed by an abrupt motion as the youth whips out his mobile device, turns around and starts pushing keys, effectively ending the conversation.

Granted, this kind of behaviour isn’t entirely new. SMS has been around for ages, and yes, it’s annoying when someone starts checking his SMS messages in the middle of conversation (which isn’t good courtesy to begin with).

But this time, on his mobile device, the youth isn’t sending or checking an SMS though; he’s just zoned out of the face-to-face conversation and posting on the Facebook wall of another friend using some new-fangled service called Facebook Zero.

It’s amazing to see how social tools and services have slowly changed and morphed the way we not only communicate but organised ourselves.

What Facebook Zero did since it launched in February 2010 was to enable hundreds of thousands of Malaysian teenagers (and older folk) to access their Facebook profiles while on the go for free. Free, being the definitive word.

So now, I’m suddenly seeing plenty of young people on their low-end Nokia and Sony Ericsson phones browsing Facebook and chatting to each other. The barrier’s been lifted.

You no longer need a smartphone that can run “apps” or a monthly mobile data plan; you just need your regular prepaid plan and a working phone.

Then there’s this new thing where everyone’s setting up dates and parties using Facebook Events.

No, this feature is not a new tool, but it seems to me (within my admittedly limited circle) that it’s become the RSVP service du jour. This year alone, I’ve gotten invites to weddings, to go to the mamak, concerts, birthday parties and to attend church.

Maybe it’s just my friends, but even something as mundane as setting up a time where four friends can go out for a movie now needs to be sent via a Facebook Event.

Notice I’ve not mentioned the usual whizbang suspects for the next great social media revolution happening this year.

It’s easy to crow over the next iPad (coming soon) or mobile device, but when you realise that most of the young people out there still won’t be able to afford those gadgets nor the price of the data packages that come along with them, real behavioural change isn’t going to happen from the top-end alone.

Yes, it’ll trickle down eventually, but what will change us in 2011 are the things that will have a mass effect. What will be the Facebook Zero of 2011? What will cause us to change what we’re doing today?

Here’s my prediction (based solely on my gut feel): I expect to see mobile commerce and Internet purchasing finally becoming commonplace. I think there might just be enough platforms which will be accessible enough to get more people using them in a big way.

Actually, the foundations were laid this year such as Facebook Credits in partnership with MOL and the PayPal top-up card, and the ability to withdraw money you’ve made on PayPal to your Malaysian bank account.

Previously, you had to have a credit card (or at least access to it) meaning you had to be in your 20s and working or you had really generous parents. With the advent of Facebook credits and top-up cards for PayPal, these barriers are again coming down. And it won’t take long for people to start discovering they can buy stuff cheaper on the Internet.