Though I’ve yet to personally see any advertisements within Battlefield 2142, there have been rumors and statements floating all over bulletin boards and such regarding in-game advertisements and the alleged “spyware”.

Released from DICE games:

Because BF2142 delivers ads by region, the IP address of the player is used to determine the region of the player and helps serve ads by region and language; for instance, a player in Paris will be presented with ads in French. Note that this IP address is not stored on the advertisement server and is not repurposed for other uses.

A unique ID number is anonymously assigned the first time the player joins a Battlefield 2142 online game. It is stored locally on the PC but is not linked to any personal details.

The in-game advertisement gathers what we call “impression data”, such as location of the billboard in the game or duration of advertisement impression. It helps see how many people have seen an ad - but not who has seen it.

We are also conscious that the advertisement shouldn’t distract the player from the overall gaming experience, so all ads fit in the unique environment of each level in the game. The content of the ads is also controlled to ensure that no offensive content is displayed in Battlefield 2142.

There are two things that bother me about in-game advertising, particularly for a game set at the year 2142:

1. We’re seeing ads for present-day companies running ads in a futuristic setting.

So companies like Subway can place their annoying, present-day logos in a futuristic, semi-apocolyptic setting, where the world is literally freezing over (and has been for a long period of time) and the various factions of the earth are fighting over small regions of inhabitable land. Sure I don’t mind seeing a torn up billboard as a part of the scenery, but it should NEVER capture my attention and distract me from my objective—to obliterate the other team’s players.

Advertising companies get paid to distract us in real-life with their big-ass billboards and signage all over the streets and highways. They litter the landscape with crap with the sole intention of filling the space in our minds with their brands. I don’t want to deal with that in a game, thank you. If I want to be assaulted by ads, I’ll buy a NASCAR-sanctioned game.

2. The second thing that perhaps bothers me even more than item number one, is that you’re PAYING to be advertised to.

You can equate that to subscribing to Sirius Radio Network and having to listen to advertisements in between songs. No one in their right mind would put up with that…why should gamers have to put up with being ADVERTISED TO within a game that they’re PAYING FOR??????

EA Games and DICE have really lost it. Between the serious bugs with their game and insisting that we be advertised to AGAINST OUR CHOICE, I don’t think that I will ever buy a game from them again. No thank you.

If you feel similarly, I encourage you to head over to the EA Games forums and post your thoughts to them. They need to know how the general gaming community feels about these poor choices. Sure some rich executive thinks it’s an innovative way to make more money…but I say “NO”. If they insist on generating revenue from in-game ads, then they can afford to drop the price of games to something that’s more appealing…say $25 instead of $50.

Tell EA and DICE where to shove the ads… up where the sun don’t shine—where all the lousy games go to collect dust and general criticism from the gaming community.

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Well if you were one of the masses that flocked to get the new issue of Battlefield 2142, you might as well have waited another week or so as the game really BLOWS when it comes to functionality. It’s a cool game, don’t get me wrong…but it would be nice if the game WORKED!

There are repeated forum postings about an issue with Punkbusters repeatedly kicking people off servers within only 2 minutes or less of game play. It also appears that many people are having issues with their CD Keys and are unable to play at all.

In addition to that, EA Games released a PATCH the day before the game’s official release. I call that tacky and a sign of rushing a games’ release, whereby letting some big bugs and glitches through the system.

I know it’s not really my place to criticize, but I will. If you’re going to issue a game for $50, it had better damn well be free of major glitches and problems. I think it’s acceptable for some small glitches to get by—but things like being kicked by Punkbusters within 2 minutes of play, issues with CD Keys and serious latency in connections…I think EA and Dice would have been better off holding the release date off to fix those issues, rather than get gamers across the globe all excited, only to dash and smother their expectations.

I think EA Games and DICE need to rethink the way they build and release games. Clearly it’s not working out very well and MANY people are walking away disgusted and ticked off.

I had checked both the EA Games and Even Balance websites for any mention of the bug, and nothing. But there sure are a lot of ticked off people trying to play BF2142…myself included.

Added 10/19: There is one thing I do have to say about the new Battlefield 2142 that is a major improvement. The rendering looks better and both the maps and the game load MUCH faster than its predecessor, Battlefield 2: Modern Combat. But as my buddy Jamison says, “sounds like they UNLOAD faster, too”.

He’s right. They do, thanks to Punkbuster and the superb quality of EA Games and DICE. [sarcasm]

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Well…because I don’t like being told to stay offline for 16 hours…I could’t resist killing time on YouTube:

Filed under: General
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I received this message today with my Google browser sync in Firefox:

What the??? So are they telling me that I’m spending too much time on the interweb? Jerks.

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It was coooold this morning and the rumors of snow confirmed this evening—our first snow of the year. I just don’t feel ready for winter…let alone snow. Granted, the snow didn’t stick, but it’s still snow. If having snow this early is an indication of what winter will be like, I’m sure it’ll be a long one.

Next spring can’t come soon enough.

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One night as my wife and I were enjoying an evening of Cirque du Soleil programming on A&E I saw advertisements for a production called Cirque Dreams: Jungle Fantasy coming to the State Theatre here in Minneapolis. Excited that Cirque was coming into town, I decided to get us the best tickets possible and payed roughly $50 each, landing us fifth row tickets with relative ease.

Well, when we arrived we were greated by a relatively simplistic set and a black and white program—no fancy CMYK or spot color printing to make it stand out. Fairly ordinary and lacking any pizazz. In reading the playbill I grew a bit concerned, thinking this doesn’t sound like the kind of Cirque du Soleil performance that I was anticipating. “Never bug a Lady Bug” “Bugs Climb Too” “Lady Bug Bop” ??? Uh, do we have the right theatre?

The house lights came down and the production begain with some so-so music and B-level acrobatic routines. The costumes were marginally imaginitive and the song-n-dance routine reminded me of something that Valley Fair might put together if they had a slightly bigger budget. To better describe it, it sorta had the whole gay-off-broadway sound but scored for kids, with most of the songs in basic major chord patterns and all-too-happy-sounding American songs with very bland ethnicity laced in the audio track.

I wondered where the dream-like, imaginitive characterization of Cirque would start to show but was progressively disappointed in the production.

The ONLY redeeming qualities of this production were the asian contortionists and the balancing duo. Their respective acts were creative, inventive and entertaining. The contortionists performed some crazy formations and balancing acts on one another in very graceful ways and the balancing duo were a great combination, weaving humor and near-clumsiness into their act.

But everything else? So so. There was some good jump rope acts and some okay aerialists, but all in all I felt like I was watching the people who didn’t make the cut with Cirque du Soleil.

The thing is, I wouldn’t have been so critical about this performance if they didn’t bill themselves as being like the original Cirque. Make no mistake…CIRQUE DREAMS IS NOT CIRQUE DU SOLEIL. It’s an overly-priced kid’s version of Cirque. The real deal at least doesn’t dumb down their performances and music for the sake of making it seemingly more accessible to kids—kids still enjoy it for what it is. But with Cirque Dreams, I often felt like I was watching a production put on by some pseudo Disney Kids theatre theater company. [They don't deserve the "re"]

All in all it wasn’t a horrible performance. Some seemed to enthusiastically enjoy the show. Natalie and I weren’t all that thrilled, though. Frankly, if they didn’t have the asian contortionists and a few of the aerialists, the show would have been a SEVERE waste of time and money.

Now let’s talk music, shall we?

I mentioned how it sounded like kids music all too often. Well, the center-stage female vocalist (”The Lady Bug”) had the whole jazz-hands-I’m-almost-as-feminine-as-the-gay-men-in-this-production thing going on and didn’t deliver a convincing production. She was too stale and stiff and offered no real meat to the performance. It also didn’t help that the music, the score and the words to the songs were TERRIBLE. I listened as closely as I could to make out the words and they were ALL FLUFF with no meaning at all, riding on over-used, stereotypical feel-good-psuedo-gay-broadway songs. I almost hate to put “broadway” in there, as a production like this would never make it within a hundred miles of broadway. They’d probably be shooed out.

All in all, I would probably not have made such a big stink if we had payed maybe $20 each to see the show. But the fact that Cirque Dreams is trying to model themselves after Cirque du Soleil and are charging SOOOOOO much money for the performances, they are opening themselves up for criticism.

If Cirque Dreams is coming to your area, don’t bother. Stay home and watch the real thing on TV. Or better yet, take the trip to Vegas and see their Vegas production.

Filed under: Culture, General, Performance
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This morning tickets go on sale at the Saint Paul Ordway Theatre for Monty Python’s SPAMalot. Assuming that it wouldn’t be busy down there, I slept in until 9:00 and casually made my way down there, only to see a large flury of activity and a long, complex and winding line of people.

At the door they were handing out labels to give to you for the order in which they call ticket ordering—I’m 542. According to the ditsy girl at the door, I may or may not want to wait and just order online. She told me that they’re starting to get over a hundred orders placed in an hour and that it may be picking up. Well, if she’d stop to think that it’s only been an hour and a half, she’d realize that she hasn’t much historical data to make such a judgement call.

Even if they were averaging over a hundred orders per hour, that’d put me at waiting until AFTER noon-o’clock. Considering that I have to leave my place around 12:15 for Cirque De Soleil this afternoon, I don’t think I’m going to hang out around here much longer. [I'm actually at the Dunn Bros just a few blocks away taking advantage of their lovely, free WIFI access. Thank you Dunn Bros. Their yogurt parfait was good.]

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It’s no secret that I’ve been angry with the current Administration and how terribly they’ve been running our fine nation.  I don’t really consider myself a democrat, but I’m also most certainly not a republican.  Thing is, I don’t really see myself as being libertarian or independent, so that leaves me somewhere in the middle, begging for the two majority parties to stop their nonsensical partisan crap-ass-battles and see things for what they are from the perspective of the people.  Unfortunately it seems our government seems to be overlooking the fundamental role of government: representation.  For the people, by the people.

But I’m not the only one.  Even a good friend of mine (who leans Republican), has reached an all new level of pissed off with the current ass-first administration.

As much as I don’t like all of the democrat standpoints, they sure beat the narrow-minded, blind-sighted republican party.  The democrats will also be getting my vote, too. 

Filed under: Awareness, Politics
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