Most of the whining about "deletionism" is from fans who want to blither endlessly about their favorite movie/comic book/Star Trek episode/vampire.

I don't know about "most", but I know it's not all mindless whining about fandom. My own disappointment with Wikipedia comes in the form of an article that was specialized, but useful in my professional field: Dragon Kill Points (DKP). There used to a fairly detailed page about this player-based MMO mechanic. (That's a link a user made to preserve the old page.) A few scholarly works on MMORPG economics referenced the article. I used to send it to young designers who didn't know much about raiding and how player created systems can impact design.

Then some admins decided that this topic wasn't notable enough. When a few of us experienced MMO people said, "No, this is in fact notable in our field," they started attacking it for not having enough references. After failing twice the request for deletion succeeded the third time in a rapid decision only a month after the second failed deletion attempt.

Oh, hey, guess what? An abbreviated article is back on Wikipedia. Not nearly as useful as the previous version was, but I guess enough notability and reference were found to make it worthwhile now. (If you look at the talk page of the new article, you'll notice I point out the old article and suggest the article could be expanded to its old glory. Someone has the audacity to tell me to "be bold". Not throwing my time away just to see someone else go on a power trip and delete it again, thank you very much.)

I've seen this happen other times, too, with other topics. But, lesson learned: Wikipedia is not a reliable reference, even ignoring the fact that vandalism happens. I don't link to it anymore because I never know if the useful article I found will remain undeleted a few weeks from now.

So, you can dismiss the complaints about deletionists as mostly bellyaching from people who want to write about Star Trek (on a site with multiple articles with info about every Pokémon), but I've had a very different experience.

What's interesting is that Bioware merged with Pandemic before being bought by EA. Seemed odd that an RPG developer would get together with an FPS developer like that. Also seems strange that if Pandemic was so poorly managed as indicated in other comments that an amazingly well-run company like Bioware would merge with it. Another oddity here is that Riticello, the current CEO of EA, was one of the people who orchestrated with Bioware/Pandemic merger before EA acquired them and he became CEO.

Given all these facts the closure of Pandemic could be a deep betrayal or someone getting their freedom after a big payout. Ah, the world of game business.

At any rate, I keep reminding people that Bioware is now owned by EA. Other studios manage to put out a few good games before they're killed off by EA, too. So, keep hoping the streak lasts.

When they finally mailed it out to us, 6 months after billing my company / me thousands of dollars for it,

Is your company in the habit of paying bills for items you haven't received yet?

And if so, what is your company name and address, please?

Do your companies send out goods before they are paid for?

If so, what are the names and addresses for each of your companies? ;)

A few thoughts.

First, I don't imagine Rowling is sitting in her castle of money laughing at your suffering. It's probably the publisher that deals with what formats the books come out on. So, desiring to "punish" her for not putting out a book in the specific format you'd prefer seems misguided to me. As someone who writes, I suspect Rowling would prefer to get her work in the hands of every fan possible, whereas the publisher prefers to turn a profit.

Second, remember that the Harry Potter books are intended for children. In that context, it makes sense that the audio books would be "about as slow as your mother read to you as a child." Personally, I loved the audio books when I borrowed them from a friend and listened to them with my better half; the slow pace didn't bother me as an adult.

Third, you should realize that what you're asking for seems highly specialized. Listening to your example file, it nearly sounded like random noise to me. Not that I'll claim to have golden ears (far from it), but this is quite different than a large print book where someone without significant visual impairment could still enjoy it. This seems to be a step beyond, "I'm visually impaired and just want a version of the book I can enjoy."

Finally, have you contacted the publisher or a publisher association about this? Have you worked with the visually impaired community to demonstrate to publishers that there would be a sizable market for this specialized version? I honestly don't know, and perhaps you have. But, as you've pointed out, a lot of people don't keep in mind the needs of others so they may not be aware that a market for this exists. As a game developer, I know a lot of other developers don't even keep common things like color blindness in mind when designing games, so I know information is the first vital step.

I remember TV stars saying that Hulu was a system to turn human brains to mush to make them easier to consume. Charging for it is going to hinder that plan, it makes no sense! ...wait a moment, did Hollywood lie to me?!?

All these mod points, and no (-1, Threw up a bit in my mouth) option....

Region locking also allows for licensing of content to different distributors. As a simple example, say I develop a game and get EA to publish it in the U.S., then later Ubisoft wants to publish it in Europe. Ubisoft will have to invest some effort in translating the game, so they want need to see a minimum amount of sales to recoup costs. This type of arrangement wouldn't be as appealing to Ubisoft if people could easily buy the other region's copies on the gray market.

Admittedly this is less of an issue as the larger publishers are more international and localization issues are being handled earlier in development. And, yeah, it still doesn't help the consumer. But, there is a real business reason behind this rather than just being mean to consumers.

Because it's an improvement of the old eBay feedback system biologists were using before. They found that system was open to "retribution" feedback if the prey didn't rate the predator highly enough.

Review by vole:
(positive) Fox was an excellent predator!!!! Would be eaten again!!!!! A+++++++++++!!!!!

Actually, a friend of mine hides when we pull out Guitar Hero. He says the "twangs" and empty spaces when you miss a note grate on him something fierce. Not sure if that's what the GP meant, but there are some people out there that just don't like listening to the games themselves.

An expansion brings new interest to a game, because it puts new boxes in stores. So, the stores have a reason to sell the new version of the game, which could bring in more people. This really is the best way for them to try to gain more users through typical means.

Both. After all, 1d12 trolls can appear at one time, according to the 2nd edition Monster Manual.

Because when I see that people are actually PAYING someone else to play the boring parts of a game for them, it's easy for me to deduce that what we have is not a fun game[...]

This is like saying that any game with cheat codes is obviously unfun. There are a lot of different motivations for buying gold in an MMO, many of them similar to the motivations for using a cheat code in a traditional single-player game. Yes, it could be that the gameplay is fundamentally boring and unfun and people want to skip it, but I suspect if that were truly the case, they'd stop playing the game instead of paying money for some convenience to keep playing.

The solution to goldfarming should be to find out why earning gold in the game is so bloody tedious and focus your design efforts on making the game fun to play.

You said in this thread:

I don't care if you make your new RPG game $0.01, I am not interested.

Therefore, I suspect that the typical RPG conventions of "earning" money will probably never appeal to you. In this case, MMORPGs are not for you, and no amount of "design effort" is going to make the process any more fun for someone who doesn't like that type of game.

That's fine; lots of people enjoy the games anyway. Many of them don't even buy gold to get past the parts you find "bloody tedious"!

As a further point, almost all the games given as examples of free games are clones or derivatives of previous games. One of the things that makes a good indie game stand out is interesting, new types of gameplay or new takes on existing gameplay. Not to say that games like FreeCol are bad, but comparing an after-work project cloning an existing commercial game and someone trying to create new types of games from the ground up for a living and then wondering why they both can't be free seems a bit silly.

3DO didn't use SecuROM until Heroes V.

Just to be truly pedantic, Heroes V was done by Ubisoft. They bought the rights to Might & Magic from a bankrupt 3DO.

From my perspective, it is a moot point though.

It's something I remembered, having worked at 3DO at the time and having to deal with the copy protection. Ironically, it was for a game that nobody would have wanted to pirate anyway; that's what happens when you finish what is supposed to be a AAA PC game in only 6 months.

As a developer, I'm not fond of copy protection/DRM schemes either. I use Daemon Tools for checking CD images I've made for my game; it sucks that some DRM thinks I'm a dirty pirate just because I have that installed.

My thoughts,

Heroes of Might & Magic 3 was published by 3DO. I worked at 3DO at the time it was released.

I don't think they used SecuROM. The copy protection software at the time was SafeDisc. I remember that distinctly because one of my last few tasks at the company was to built the installer using SafeDisc on another project. 3DO was really cheap, so I don't think they would have licensed multiple copy protection systems.

Chipping in my two cents. I hate SecuROM as much as the next gamer/programmer, but I don't think the hate is properly directed in this case.