The old-school publishers will have a welcome role in the new era as gatekeepers of those microtransactions, if they play their cards right. I think they're going to need to work on their royalty models, though.

As it stands, most authors need editors - no, really, they do - and the publishers aren't picking up that tab any more, in our brave new world of indie ebook publishing. If costs like that are coming out of the author's slice then publishers are going to need to find a more appropriate gatekeeper cost, or start adding value in other ways. (Amazon take note. Apple take cover.)

Exposure is anyone's guess. If we could all manage it, we'd all make it.

-Quinn Wilde (a Creative Commons licenced author)

Firstly, I won't be donating to Wikipedia again. This is not because I'm an OMM fanboy taking my bat home in a huff, although I am also that. But actually, it's because this story has made me look into Wikipedia more, and apparently this shit is rife. I guess I should have known that, but I'd always been scared to check because I still had some faith in one human endeavour and was happy to let things stay that way, until I felt some pressing need to know otherwise. Well, game over on that front. Back to total misanthropy for me.

Secondly, it's actually quite an interesting read because the Schumin guy who nominated for deletion, is evidently really, really, pathetic. And not in a kind of sad and disappointing, move along cowboy way, but actually to a degree that's almost gripping. This article highlights an almost iconic exemplar of the form of pathetic, to the degree that it's actually compelling.

To whit, and as best as I can tell from summaries, a man who is mocked - for being pathetic no less - by a popular gaming culture website waits a DECADE for revenge, whilst the world moves on around him, and the revengee behind the site goes on to pen dialogue for a video game that many people rightly consider one of the genuinely enduring classics of the new age.

This 'revenge', and I use the term loosely, is a heartfelt, but misguided attempt to remove all evidence of revengee's classic projects from Wikipedia, which is petty to an alarming degree, but also absorbingly impotent. Seriously, I would be amazed if anyone involved in the original site gave one flying fuck, because they're probably too busy banging hookers on their jetskies right now. On a lake of money.

And after literally waiting until he thought this site had decayed into irrelevancy and finallly making his move, he discovers that half the internet still cares, the whole thing goes Barbara Streisand, and we just get to see what a massive, unerring loser at the peak of his skills really looks like.

And, damn, I've enjoyed the ride... but that's sadly all it is. Because tomorrow, said loser will have lost his momentary connection to relevancy. And OMM will still have rocked my world.

Microsoft does not comment on rumours.

No, she'd only get that comment if you were an AOLer.

Well, wonder no more. I can explicitly confirm it.

That is NOT a AAA title. 'AAA' has never been a measure of quality. It is a marketing term.

Aren't you making a huge assumption? You're assuming that consumers should be billed for how a company deals with its internal organisation and release schedule. Would you be as accepting if a company went 'gold' two months into the dev cycle and charging extra for the final two years of work? No, because that's ridiculous. If it wasn't finished when they went gold, then they should pick up the tab, not their customers. That doesn't change just because they went gold two weeks or two months before they were done, not two years.

Last year one of the majors proposed charging extra for the boss fights of a game. Everything you just argued above applies to that, as well. But I think we can probably both agree that this would be a bullshit system? Well, that's how I feel about DLC, and I think that it's justifiable, if only because DLC present the thin end of just such a shitty wedge. Especially release day DLC.

You're absolutely right. Pirating this game is wrong, and I know that. But, it's not very wrong. It's only about as wrong as deliberately adding a hidden cost, and probably a bit less wrong than holding a meeting to discuss how to shaft your customers hardest and cut down on second hand sales - which, I presume, happened.

If I wanted the moral high ground, I sure as hell wouldn't pirate the game. But I don't care so very much about the moral high ground. I'd like to do the right thing, and I'll make an effort to do the right thing, and I'll pay some money to do the right thing. That's why I pre-ordered right off the back of their 'no drm' announcement. I wanted to do the right thing, and reward someone else for doing the right thing.

But I care a whole lot less about doing the right thing by someone who has just decided to shaft me. I'm not some pristine paladin of virtue, nor am I trying to be one. Nor am I seeking to justify an act of piracy. I don't care if it's justified.

In reality, I'm playing devil's advocate. Probably I'll have a crisis of conscience, and not pirate it at all. But you know what? I probably won't pay for it either. How much I was looking forwards to this game is now officially having to go up against how little I like getting the shaft.

I disagree. The only games I know of with extra in-game stuff in the collectors edition are MMOs, and the stuff is usually pretty lousy to compensate. Most collectors edition bumfluff is stuff like maps, coins, cards, making of DVDs, etc. But I have never seen meaningful extra in-game content given away with the collectors edition of any single player adventure game, and I don't think most people would stand for it there, either.

How can something justifiably be called a 'collectors edition' or a 'special edition', if that's the only edition that contains the complete package? Or, to put it another way, how can the 'standard edition' not contain the actual game?

Yeah, that should have been part of the game. Sorry, but where else will it end? Before you know it companies will be releasing half finished games, and charging for 'service packs'.

I pre-ordered this badboy in a show of support after their 'No DRM' statement. Now there's part of the game I'm going to have to 'pirate' on day one if I want the full game, so already there's little point to my gesture. I might as well pirate the whole thing if I'm going to have an illegal copy on my computer anyway.

I won't cancel my pre-order for now, but I'll be watching how this pans out.

Well they certainly achieved that goal, with Windows Mobile.

It wasn't up to snuff when it was up against Palm OS, and it wasn't up to snuff when Palm OS atrophied and left it as the only game in town. And that's about the most damning thing you can say, really: during that brief window when it was the best there was in the mass market, it was still almost better not to bother.

In this modern Web OS, OS X, Android world it stinks like a fucking dinosaur. It's as archaic now as Palm OS was in 2005 when that jury-rigged bastard child the lifedrive was borne out of warped metal and torment.

The only difference is that Palm OS will be remembered fondly.

Legally speaking, there may be some leeway there. But what kind of lawyer would take on a borderline frivolous case filed by a man disbarred for bad practice including, but not limited to, the malicious use of frivolous lawsuits? Any reasonable lawyer would need a rock solid case before they'd touch that, given the nature of their client, and his history.

With that in mind, it may not be unreasonable for him to have found a lawyer, but there's a better than even chance he's hired an unreasonable lawyer.

At best that will categorise you as 'angsty teenager'.

At worst, as 'All things to all men - especially those free and easy men at MIT'.

Seriously? Love it or hate it, the one thing WoW has is a broad appeal. I know loads of people who play WoW who, apart from Wow, only play casual games. In fact, amongst the people I know who play WoW, over half of them are (typically) casual gamers. Hardly any of them would touch Crysis, or even Arkham Asylum, and know what the hell to do with it.

Hell, WoW has broader appeal than a casual game, because Casual and Hardcore gamers both play it! You want to expand on that? The only thing I can think of with broader appeal than that, is Pizza. Actual bread, cheese, tomato, to your door in 30 minutes or less. Are activision branching out, or going nuts?