Boycott Portal 2

[Nominull]

If your game is going to have advertising in it, you should make that clear to the consumer before he purchases it.  Even if you don't, the in-game advertising will probably be mentioned in a review, so a discerning consumer can avoid buying games with it.  But what if you sell a game initially without advertising, and then add advertising to it once you've already suckered people into buying it?

Using Steam's auto-update function to serve advertisements to players without their consent is really scummy business practice.  Valve has to learn to treat its customers with more respect.  Please join me in boycotting Portal 2.

[S.]

It's only temporarily, yet you still have a point.


I wouldn't bother too much about it though. Besides, people get 'spam/advertisements' every time they shut down a game, so you would still get the advertisements in the game.

Oh and this is part of an ARG, which is fun.

[Passerby]

really for most games this was done too there was actual content added to play too. whole new maps in defense grid and the ball and a few other's and it isnt really pushed on you that much just a potato here and there since you don't have to play any of the portal related content you can just choose other maps or in this case other songs.

besides compare this advertsing to what you find in sports games where the game is covered in adds.

[blue_h3x]

Portal is hardly ad laden though.

[ViRUS]

Because boycott groups ALWAYS work, they ALWAYS do, I can't recall not even ONE time in which a boycott group DIDN'T work...

Oh, hey L4D2! Good to see you!

[Laserrobotics]

I see the guests are swarming again...

[Mincus]

Boycott the only AAA franchise that's done something new with the FPS genre in the last decade? No, I don't think so. I think I'll give those people my money. FPSes are hugely stagnated right now and the only reason I can name half a dozen I don't mind is because there's so much swill out there that there has to be some ok-ish ones purely due to statistics.

That it happens every time you run Audiosurf is a bit galling. I thought it only happened on the Portal soundtrack and [as-portal] tracks at first (which would be acceptable), since the only tracks I'd tried to play were from the Portal soundtrack (they're all currently tagged with [as-portal] as well it seems) and tracks I'd manually tagged with [as-portal].
Is only for a week though.

[blue_h3x]

Let's all vote for another CoD style pile of **** by boycotting one of the few original games this year.

[Mincus]

Don't get me started on CoD. I could write a thesis on bad game design and why the FPS genre is stagnant using it.

Valve are overdoing the Portal 2 hype machine though. I can't really see these latest things getting them more sales, although as a Portal and Audiosurf fan I do appreciate the [as-portal] tag and I think Dylan deserves a thanks for adding it.

[Ko-Tao]

Can we disable guest posting already? Seriously, whats the point in upgrading the forum if its still going to be infested with bots and trolls.

[Passerby]

ya i win the olny cod i played was the first.

[Mincus]

Can we disable guest posting already? Seriously, whats the point in upgrading the forum if its still going to be infested with bots and trolls.

I think this one brought up a valid point (otherwise I wouldn't have posted). But you're right, guest posting needs disabling (or a decent captcha at least).

[blue_h3x]

I played CoD2 and CoD4, which were alright, the story was not bad with the whole realism of WW. Though having seen the latest, black c*cks, or what ever it's called, which seems to be purely aimed at the chav mutliplayer obscenity enriched torrent of ignorant gamers who like nothing better than boasting about something or other. The game is more of a cash cow, and a good one at that, grossing more than films.

For a game, I'd prefer a little more on the story side, than the being verbally abused by a pre-pubescent delinquent.

Portal offers something new and not done before. The potato stuff is a pretty good ad campaign, it's also pretty fun to play. Though I'd draw the line at hijacking games not interested in the ARG.

I think this one brought up a valid point (otherwise I wouldn't have posted). But you're right, guest posting needs disabling (or a decent captcha at least).

Dylan said he was looking into a better one, might try the captcha in a another browser...

[Mincus]

The single player in black ops is so bad you can get through the entire first mission on a harder difficulty without firing a shot. Except in certain enforced scenarios. All the parts that even in other examples of the genre would be "shoot or die" areas you can just sit behind some cover with your head down and your AI partner shoots everything out pretty quickly.

I've watched people play. I've attempted to play black ops on a 360, but I'm still bewildered as to why anyone would choose the horrendous handling from a gamepad compared to keyboard and mouse. I shot the sky a lot and died a lot. It was boring.

I've played through about 1/3rd of CoD4 (I got CoD4 and CoD4:MW2 whilst on offer purely to see if they did offer anything, since they're so popular) and I honestly couldn't tell whether it was a tongue-in-cheek comedy or just a really badly done "WAR IS GLORIOUS" game. The cutscenes are absolutely dreadful, if it really is a "WAR IS GLORIOUS" (which I suspect) then the cutscenes are less believable than the infamous FFX laugh scene.

That would maybe be forgiveable if the game itself wasn't so buggy and broken. Getting stuck on a railing when you're 2 metres from it during a timed section causing a death followed by spawning right next to it afterwards (thankfully just far enough away to not get stuck on it again) isn't exactly conducive to a fun gaming experience.
Talking of spawning in stupid places: I was mucking about with a car, shooting it up whilst standing on top of it. Unrealistically, but in line with hollywood, it exploded and killed me. So I respawn on top of the car again, whilst it's already alight. Managed to escape before it went boom though.
The AI is absolutely dreadful in it. When it's not busy shooting everything in sight so you don't have to bother (I might try and do a mock Let's Play of the entire game where I just run through and never use my gun unless directly ordered) then they're standing in doorways so you can't get past them or running in front of grenades.
I kid you not, I had this happen: 2 enemies in a small room I had to run through, I was stood by the doorway, 2 AIs. One of them ordered me to throw a flashbang into the room, so I backed up a little and literally as I brought my arm back to throw it, the other guy dived in front of me, walked just past the doorway and turned round to look at me. I'm still WTF-ing at this point and throw the flashbang, it bounces off the guy, knocking him further into the room, where he gets peppered with fire so runs back out, just in time to watch the entire team get flashbanged. Thankfully the enemy AI wasn't clever enough to run out and kill us all in the meantime.
Had I been taking the game seriously, I would have been pissed. Instead I was pissing myself laughing.
The AI is terrible. And that's from someone with 170 hours of Left4Dead gameplay. At least you can push them out of the way in L4D if they insist on standing in a doorway.

So, those are my CoD4 experiences summed up from a few hours of playing. I keep intending to play some more, but I need to be in a really good mood so I can see the humour in how bad the game is.

As I said previously: I could write a thesis on the bad game design decisions in the game.
If you want to laugh at just how silly even others in the industry think it is, take a look at the parody "Duty Calls" http://www.thedutycalls.com/
And a playthrough of said parody: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eE_msAKWdOs

[Havoc1337]

Portal 2 boycott will NEVER EVER happen, especially because 80% of the people who want to play it have already pre ordered it. (I know I have and all my friends have)

But you know what would be pretty fun? If the super hyped up Portal 2 turned out to be sh*t.
This won't happen either but... I'd lol very, very hard.


And regarding the CoD debatte: There is no denying that Black Ops is a crappy game, MW2 wasn't alot better, altho the story was better and I think I needed about 40 minutes longer to complete it on the highest difficulty.
Was still short tho.
But a glance at the Steam stats shows that MW2 still prevails, and is now ontop of BlackOps again.
Retrospectively I'd love to boycott the half-baked pile of steaming sh*t that is BlackOps, but I didn't and thousands of others didn't either. Sure some murdered their steam accounts by reverting their paypal transactions but that doesn't really help.
I just wish the Devs of BlackOps would come down of their high horses and realize that the did NOT infact make anything even remotely good.

Ironically "Duty Calls" was a CoD Parody by the devs of Bulletstorm, a slightly less fun ripoff of UnrealTournament and a mix of Gears of War and Painkiller.


Now onto the in-game advertising.
I think advertising in games and product placements are fine, and can even add to the atmosphere of the game (Homefront). But if you're cruising around your 2020~ city and see an ad for a new 2012 variant of cola... well then good night. But thank god there are modders and crackers out there that surely will declare war on such idiocracy.