There are a lot of games on there from the last 5 years, even up to today (Codemasters was talking about simul or near simul releases of their catalog).

I was playing and beating the Sam and Max episodes on Gametap 2 weeks before they were available for general purchase; played the whole season and my 1 year subscription cost less than buying them (after I beat a game I don't play it a second time).

Only the old games are emulated, at that. They use a virtual disk system and streaming method for prioritized and on-demand disk segment delivery - download the parts necessary to get started playing, then stream the rest as you play.

Games generally have to be content locked a month to two (depending on PC vs console and lead times on manufacturing); during this time the majority of the development team is freed up. This time can be spent on making some new content for release as DLC. Sometimes the content had seen some effort earlier on in the development cycle, then was cut from the game before it was finished.

That said, I've worked on a couple teams that make maps during development that were later released as DLC. Usually the content was made as an exclusive for one of the big retailers (GameStop, Best Buy, Walmart), as they all want their own little perks, and then was later released as DLC for all.

Savage Worlds (by Pinnacle Entertainment Group) is even more flexible and adaptable, easier to learn, and in my experience offers more roleplaying and more combat options.

It has many good things going for it, including many 3rd party publishers jumping on board:

* Core rulebook is $10 small-format full color book, has rules for nearly any situation, and these rules all follow the same core concepts. Also includes basic equip and monsters for several generic settings (its easy to make more).
* Easy to learn, yet offers a lot of depth and variety
* Easy to GM
* Combat can be tactical w/ minis, or not, at your discretion; it goes fast even if there are lots of combatants.
* Pinnacle sells all of their products as PDF as well; the Settings books are offered in Full and Player Only versions, and have site licenses granting permission to print copies for your players
* Lots of 3rd party publishers are jumping on board Savage Worlds; the next Cthulhu RPG will be Savage
* Lots of homebrew settings available, and it's pretty easy to make one

Throughout the show they only ever conversed with real-Six and real-Baltar. The concept of 'God' was something that the real counterparts they were influencing could easily understand and latch onto; portraying themselves as guardian angels in a way. It made them more malleable.

It also gave me something to look forward to - having read the book, knowing the movie had a different ending, I was curious to see what it would be/how they would do it. It made the movie better for me in the end.

I've been playing in a 4E campaign for about 7 months now, but I managed to get most of my group to try out alternating with Savage Worlds' system, playing Deadlands (Reloaded). Now our DM is switching out the 4E game for a Crimson Skies game running on Savage Worlds.

If you want something that offers a lot of room for character creation without bogging down (make a PC in 5 minutes with more flavor than any D&D character), has rules that don't get in the way of roleplaying (and has mechanisms to reward it), and offers tactical or non tactical combat that is FAST even with many combatants, then check out Savage Worlds. There area a bunch of published systems with more on the way (next Cthulhu game will be SW based) and a huge amount of fan conversions (it really doesn't take a lot of work to convert a setting). Best of all, the core rulebook is only $10 - Savage Worlds Explorers Edition - and includes all the rules you need for nearly any type of gaming situation (I had a gunfight split off into a chase situation on the side, which we then ran simultaneously using the chase rules; the chase ended in a crowd and the next session, will probably be resolved with a persuasion contest).

... if it isn't detachable, and he has to keep his 'finger' plugged in all the time it is in use.

The card doesnt hold value at all - it's a scratch-off card with a key you enter into iTunes and get credited that amount into your account.

I don't know why people expect to find low priced cables at these kind of stores - they're bulky items, don't necessarily sell in large amounts, and the margins aren't that great on the low priced items.

Years ago, when I first moved to California, I had never seen a Circuit City, only Best Buys (and was suitably appalled by BB and business practices, they tried a bait and switch on me once).

I found the Circuit Citys I saw to be clean, maintained, decent prices, friendly employees. But then, a few years ago, I noticed a reversal taking place - the CCs near me had become, for lack of a better word, 'ghetto' - unfriendly employees, broken equipment on display, and lack of product - while the Best Buys had cleaned up and trained their employees. I switched back to BB, occasionally walking into CCs, and finding them just getting worse and worse.

At the same time those mods:

1. Build on a significantly developed technology base that the creators probably could not have made on their own (or it would have required a much longer development time)
2. While above 'amateur' in quality, are not necessarily at commercial quality (Dystopia's levels could use some work)
3. Have low exposure and low adoption; I'm lucky to see 2 Eternal Silence or 3 Dystopia servers with a lot of people even at prime time. And this is after the mods became Steam Installable; they did see a huge spike at first but interest dropped off rapidly.
4. Are made as a hobby; some of us like to make games for a living. Many modders want to use the mod as a springboard to an actual job, so it's sort of like an unpaid internship to them if they can get a job.

I've worked at both small and big game dev companies; I prefer the big one I've been at far longer than any small developer I've worked at has managed to stay alive (I think the record for steady paychecks at any small company I worked at is one year; I've been at a big publisher/developer for over 5 years now). One advantage larger studios have is that they can keep people employed (barring major cuts of course) - there isnt much of a hire/fire cycle between, to keep the skill pool constant. People can be shifted around to other projects after one finishes or to help one finish up.

Being part of a large developer allows long term budget planning - the studio's financials are bolstered by continued sales of the products they make. At independent developers it was always a work for hire contract with the publisher and no residuals, so it was hand to mouth the whole time. Good luck negotiating residuals if you aren't self funded, and you need even better luck to get self funding as a small studio, regardless of the pedigree of developers. Publishers take a big cut from the sales for independent studios; not so with publisher owned studios, where the studios get most of the revenue, and provide responsibility profit to the corporation.

Interesting; I have a very similiar system (Q9300, 4 GB, nVidia 8800 512 GT), and it ran pretty well on max settings, 1680x1050 in a Window (on 1920x1200 desktop).

Did you update your drivers? If I recall there was a known issue with older nVidia drivers.

The server migration did wonders - they overestimated expansion based on early demand and expanded too quickly, but by allowing people to migrate from lower pop servers to some mid pop servers, things really picked up.

That said, I did get bored and quit after a month, but I get bored of every game after a month or so (even WoW).

I've filed a complaint. I hope more people do the same.

In the last 4 months I've seen my signal strength go from 4 bars to no bars in my home, nearby grocery store, and at the hobby shop I hang out at every other weekend.

I'm on PrePaid, I have no contract, but I've got over a hundred dollars in my account still.

Ok Mr. High and Mighty Musician....

Most of us just want to have fun playing a game and listening to music. Do we want to be musicians? No! Do we think we are musicians? Nope.

Tell me, do you also criticize people who sing karaoke if they don't go out and become professional singers?

It's worth noting that Rock Band is only distributed by EA - MTV is still technically the publisher. Bioshock is not an EA game at all, it's published by Take2.

Ever since Riccitiello took the helm, there has been a real shift towards new IP and ideas - other new franchises/games that have come out include Boom Blox. The problem there is that such development is always very risky, financially, so it is even more critical that any sequels that come out are still as successful as before to help offset any losses. Mirrors Edge looks to be great, but it could just as easily fail just for the reason that it is something different.

Me, I'm waiting for a sequel to SSX, for the 360. SSX3 was one of my favorites.

As for the DRM, it's actually very low impact, and doesn't install a service if installed on an admin enabled account. The service is only needed for non-admin accounts to run self decrypting executables. The registry entries are isolated to a software-specific area. The 5 installs is only on separate machines, and they've made strides to allow you to de-register (also you can call tech support and they'll fix it up for you pretty quick).