Braid for Windows!

This is imperative! Braid is now available on Windows and can be downloaded online through Greenhouse and Steam for 15 dollars of the American persuasion. Buy it, buy it now!




Seriously, this game is important.

-King

Would you like a strategy guide with that?

Type “Ebgames Policies” into google and you’ll get a couple hits about their great deals and then a slew of rants and raves from jaded customers decrying the evil nature of EB. The most common slander is along the lines of “ramshackle pawn shop” and I couldn’t agree more. Let me start by explaining how EB rakes in trucks of cash.


Firstly, they don’t stock new games. They generally bring in a number of new titles equal to pre-orders plus half. Six preorders? Three unclaimed ones will hit the shelf. Three preorders and you’ll probably see one in the store. See, EBgames only makes about 5 bucks on each new game they sell.

Gaze ye, into the mouth of darkness.

So how DO they make money? There are a few different things, one is to sell you game warranties. These are generally 2 or 3 dollars and provide you with a full refund should any harm befall your game, like…Well I guess being shot with a rocket launcher? I have NES Cartridges that still work just fine (after a good cartridge blow) and even if a disk gets scratched it only costs 2 bucks to have it repaired anyways. Employee’s have claimed outright that these warranties are useless but that their jobs rely on their selling them.

The other main money maker? Used titles. You see you can buy a game for 70 dollars, than trade it in for $10. EB then puts it back on the shelf with a ‘used’ sticker for $5 less than new. That’s right they pay $10, sell it for $60 and rake in dollah dollah bills. This is the master plan from which EB get’s the pawn shop moniker. The big problem with this is that the Developer and Publishers don’t get a cent from the resold products. This essentially makes EB Games the equivalent of a french fry vendor who sneaks around at night and shits in potato fields. Eventually the potato farmers are going to go out of business because nobody is buying their poo potatoes (heh pootatoes) and where does that leave the french fry vendor? Unfortunately, In the case of EB, sitting on a pile of cash.

Poo Fries. A delicacy somewhere.

This is why I don’t buy used.The employees don't seem to get it either. Several weeks ago I went to pick up a copy of Left 4 Dead and after the clerk had scanned the game he exclaimed “Oh we have a used copy!” And rushed off to another part of the store before I could say anything, he came back about 5 minutes later and exclaimed “I almost gave up looking for it but I found it in the back.” To which I replied “No thanks, I’ll take the new copy” He seemed incredulous and didn’t understand why I wouldn’t want to save 5 dollars. I simply said that I was hoping they’d keep making video games and so I’d rather give the money to the company. He just didn’t get it though.

Sadly I’m not completely immune to their wiles and I do trade in. Frankly I’d probably buy used if there were, in fact, significant savings on used copies. There are alternatives around that are slowly but surely coming into prominence. Direct 2 Drive (D2D) is an online company that allows you to download games directly to your hardrive, though you’re left without a hardcopy unfortunately. Valve’s Steam offers similar and many companies themselves are beginning to offer their games for direct ordering. This insures the company gets the full profit and, occasionally, comes cheaper than buying from a brick and mortar.

Until next time, may you find your own path to profit.

-King

Indie Games and The Raiders of The Lost Art

I’m a hardcore gamer. I’ve tea-bagged Covenant Elite, Saw Manny and Meche all the way to the Ninth Underworld on the Double N, Caught 252 Pokemon on the Red, completed FF7 at level 28 without Materia and beaten Super Mario Bros 3 in 2 hours and 30 minutes.

Wait…what? Oh I know it can be beaten in less than 15 minutes, but why would I want to? Mario 3 is fun times and a speed run cuts out half of an extraordinary game. See I like playing video games, and I play them a lot, new ones and old, but eventually you run out of old. Or at least that was the case. These days some new games are…old? I’m talking Independent games here.

Remember this? Probably not since you skipped it with a flute you goomba.

Now granted not all indie games are of ‘the old-school’, the very excellent Mount and Blade comes to mind immediately, but most indie games seep old school charm from every pixilated pore and a select few do it better than their predecessors. Yes I’m looking at you Cave Story. The most incredible thing is that usually these are one or two man operations. I can barely draw a stick man and coding? I don’t want to talk about it. Most of these guys are doing the whole thing solo.

Bobble-headed robots are way sexier than chicks in robot suits

So where do they come from? How can we find them? Well it can be tough to track them down and you really have to keep your finger on the pulse to find these gems. Personally I read TIGsource and The Indiegames Blog daily. Sometimes though, when the stars align and the portents are auspicious, independent developers get a break. Introversion, the previously mentioned Cave Story by Pixel (Now being ported to the Wii!) Braid by Jonathon Blow and 2D Boy's World of Goo come to mind immediately.

Oh, you’ve heard of those last two? That’s probably because Microsoft and Nintendo put on some rubber boots and jumped into the ocean recently. The industry is finally recognizing that their target demographic grew up with games just like these and we, brace yourself, remember them fondly. So they’ve been putting in an effort to dish out some great Indy games though Xbox Live and WiiWare. This is good! Sort of!

Don’t worry true believers, I’m not going to give all the cred for mainstream indie games to the mega corps, things like Steam and Penny Arcade’s Greenhouse have been doing their part, not to mention organizations like the IGDA So try a couple of these, they’re usually free and the ones that aren’t are worth it. At the very least you’ll be supporting diversity in the market. But I guess WW2 Shooters are good too.

Until next time, may you be a bad enough dude to rescue the president.

-King