Publisher NDA's and embargo's

So this generation and previous generation the thing i have seen coming up are non disclosure agreements and embargo's. Basically from what i can gather sites and magazines get early access to a game but that is providing they do not disclose information until a specific date. The idea (supposedly) was so no specific site or publication had the advantage of a early review and everything was equal.

Nice in theory not that good in practice firstly when the embargo ends can be a big giveaway.If for example the embargo ends on the release date of the game or worse later on you can usually guess they do not have much faith in the game. Second if a certain site or magazine has a earlier then the rest review you can guess there was a specific deal done with them and i would be very wary of there opinion.

I do have a concern on how much hold a publisher has on the sites if for example they give a bad review would they blacklist them with holding future games ?. If a site was under that much pressure i would imagine it would be really hard to be unbiased.

Its even happen with youtuber's recent one was the middle earth lord of the rings game if you wanted a early access to it you needed to comply with a huge list of demands (Rather then requests) like for example not mentioning any negatives.

Have to say it has changed my buying habits and i no longer preorder games at all i wait until i get variety of opinions before i put down my money. I think in the end publishers need to give a lot more leeway it would be fairer for the consumers aswell as the reviewers.

Resolution and frame rates

With all this talk about resolutions and frame rates i thought i would give my two cents about it. Recently my 1080p monitor broke and i had to use a old monitor i had which was 720p and to be honest after a period of time i got used to it. Now granted when i get a new monitor i will probably notice the difference but for now its good enough.

Frame rates though that i do notice a lot more i really notice low frame rates and things like microstuttering (where even if the frame rate is say a 60fps but its not a constant speed) i really love a smooth frame rate in games i find it makes the experience better (also because if there is more frames per second the controls can be more responsive

Ubisoft saying with the new assassins creed having a 30fps to make a more cinematice experience to me is like peter jackson saying the hobbit is 48ps to have better gameplay. In my mind i do not play games solely for the cinematic feel.

In the end for me though frames per second is not the be and end all as long as the game plays well enough that is good for me

Developer feedback done right

I have to give major kudos to the makers of project nimbus now in its alpha stage and they have a forum on steam and they really are taking on feedback. One bug was mentioned and a few hours later a patch came out fixing it 

Some of the requested stuff has already been implemented though still say it is early days and there is still a lot of work to such as optimization and polishing.


You really get a feeling that you are interacting with the developers i really hope it gets early access as i just do not have the time to put into the game to give more feedback 

The waiting game

I used to be the type of gamer that would get the stuff at launch but past few years i have learnt to be a lot more patient. The reason being most of the time the game at launch is the buggiest most expensive and has the least content of what the game will eventually become.

There are a load of games from borderlands 2 to skyrim and fighting games like blazblue to MMO'S such startrek. With either content updates or game of the year editions with all patches and dlc or just a quasi sequel if you can wait you can get a better game.

With stuff like early access it really often pays to wait as some games may never actually finished and how gutting would it be to spend the money only never to get a completed product.

I was really really glad i held out on getting GTA V for previous gen i knew it would get a pc version and while the wait has been long hopefully it would be worth it .

RTS games with the emphasis on the Strategy part

i grew up on real time strategy games but i noticed with quite a few of them there is not that much emphasis on the actual strategy most of the time it boils down to building and researching as fast as possible to try an overrun the enemy.

First time i remember using strategy and it worked was playing this game cossacks and using the terrain and the height to my advantage a  squad of riflemen took out a much larger squad because they could shoot further.

Now there are more strategic games such as total war series, company of heroes etc.

I would love to hear from people stories about when strategy paid off and the perhaps more traditional resource collecting games that have a fair amount of strategy rather then base rushing.

Developers that listen to there fans

Have been following two games one was Skullgirls which had a full release then a successful indie gogo campaign and the second was Project nimbus a kickstarter funded game which is now in beta.

Now what has impressed me about these two games is that you can interact and feedback to the developers and they really take the comments on board.

And i do find that missing now days with a lot of companies it feels like there is a barrier or you get lost in the crowd it could have something to do with the size of them and perhaps that the smaller companies are closer to the fans

Will say about diablo 3 it does appear they have took a lot of the feedback aboard and the game is now a lot better (still no offline mode though grrr) so that is a start but i have seen some official forums for a recent kickstarter game where any negative feedback is not acknowledged at all (even if it is valid constructive criticism

When it comes to crowdfunding constant communication i feel is important and they really need the goodwill to be successful.But it is also important to the bigger companies make sure that the constructive feedback can get to the developers even via things like polls

early version compared with full release

Was reading some comments about a game which is in a testing phase at the moment and people were of course commenting on the footage and when people mentioned negative's the response was "its a test/early version"

But that got me thinking if a game is released either in a beta/alpha/demo/test release how often are they different to the final product ?.And for me personally with the limited games i have played i have not played many early versions which does not give me a basis on what the final game will be like. The only game i remember playing was timeshift for the pc when i played the demo the game was took back into development and redone so the final version was very different.

There have been games such as killer instinct and streetfighter x tekken were the first vids i saw the game was changed a fair bit though i suspect even with those early versions you would still get a feel of a game.

And of course we have games like duke nukem forever and aliens colonial marines where the final version is different.

But i would really love to know for the people who play far more games then i would what games have you played where the final version was a lot different ?