Yeah, it’s that time again – time for abig whine post about some small little thing that ruins bigger things.
I’ve always liked Dice´s products. From their early pinball games to Battlefield, I liked them. Ok most of them. So when BF3 was announced I was ofcourse a little bit excited although the first trailer was very annoying (more annoying sound than exciting visual). Then I saw the gameplay trailers and it looks sweet as hell. And for the past month EA have gone all out on the PR for the launch of BF3, here they are marketing it with the “Made in Stockholm”-slogan. And the launch is just two weeks away from Modern Warfare 3, another hyped shooting game. But when I got home last night I bought it through their own Origin-system (“Steam”-wannabe), downloaded it and got ready to rock.
That’s when the excitement died. Was the graphics not good enough? .. nope, it was good. Was the story terrible? Nope, it’s good. Was the multiplayer maps sucky or buggy? Nope.
After spending all this time, money, work and ideas creating this behemoth of a title, with the best graphics engine ever, they missed out on a very small tiny detail… making it easy for the user! At first I couldn’t launch the game. It doesn’t launch at all actually cause it starts my Internet Explorer (which is NOT my default browser!) to a website that I have to log into. And when I’m logged in my browser reports that the active x controlers are causing issues and the certificate isn’t valid for this https site and when all of that is done I get to the “launch campaign” and click it.. and then it downloads a game launcher that I can’t install in MSIE! When trying through Chrome there’s no technical issues.
But technical issues aside – who came up with the idea “to start the sing player campaign, you log into origin, you start the game, browser directs you to a page where you have to log into origin again, and then click ‘launch campaign’ and install another third party addon and then the game starts”?!? What the f*ck is that about!? I know I know, it’s probably their version of DRM to make sure pirates have a harder time to launch it but don’t they get it!? Every time you have some kind of DRM system, especially like this, all you do is encourage people to use the pirated stuff!!…
And so after 6 years (10 if you count the time as a consultant) here åt Vinge I am now starting the last week here before I am off to Carema Care.
It’s bitter-sweet kinda as it should be! Vinge has been a great employer. Some really Nice benefits here that I am going to miss but I really have to move on with my career and this feels like a good step. We’ll know in about 6 months if it was a terrible step! (that’s the trial-period here in Sweden for you and your employer. If during that time one of you thinks it isn’t working out you just say thanks but no thanks)
But if for some reason it isn’t working I’m fairly sure I’d be welcome back here 🙂
And during this last week I’ll be working 4pm ’till midnight or more if needed. Cause we’re reinstalling all the computers here one last time (for Me). So kinda going out with a bang 🙂
I read an article yesterday slamming media for not being more critical in their coverage of Apple. And it’s true, very rarely do you see, in Sweden anyway, some news that are criticizing Apple for anything. Sure we had that small little debate about Apple and Google geotagging everything (but as opposed to Google, Apple cached everything in a local file meaning if you managed to hack in to someones computer you could backtrace where their i-Device had been).
I can’t say much about Mr. Jobs, not because he’s recently passed but because I just don’t know enough to say anything about it. Most of my knowledge about him comes from “Pirates of Silicon Valley”. And I can’t say much about Apple as a company since I’m no business analyst.
But what I can say a lot about is their mobile products, iPhone and iPad. What positive I can say, and I said this a week after owning my iPhone I had for over 2 years, is that Apple has a very, very keen sense for interfaces. They make so much stuff easy for the average joe. But in my opinion it ends there with them. To my knowledge everything they’ve ever put into their iPhones have already been done by someone else. They just make it easier to use and overprice it. For example, I recently switched to Samsung Galaxy SII. It cost me about $600. How much would an equal Apple product cost? .. according to Webhallen it’d be around $1200. That’s double the cost. For what? I still can’t play my MKVs “out of the box” and all that other stuff. And I still can’t update my firmware without iTunes (or has that finally been unlocked now?). The Samsung phone already has everything that Apple introduced as “new!” with the iPhone, they even have the “S” in the model name. And did anyone, anywhere write that? Cause on a tech level it’s true but noone (except tech bloggers) seems to put that in print! No, instead Aftonbladets and Expressens webservers went down one night when I was working and for a second I thought we had internet connection issues. But nope, they just got overloaded thanks to their “Apple releasing a new product!!” coverage.
By the way – what happened to all those “win an iphone 5”-competitions I saw banners and links to? 🙂
No, I think it’s down to the fact that people just love an underdog that wins! It’s like the Brawn team in Formula 1 a few years ago. Very close to bankrupt, the boss keeps believing and somehow manages to pull the team together and they kick ass and win the championship against the evil competitor that has for a long time owned the throne, Ferrari. And people wrote alot of good stuff about Brawn as a person and the team as a “wonders can happen!”-thing. Not many dared to say “they exploited a loophole in the rules that allowed them to go between 2-3 seconds faster per lap and after everyone had caught up they didn’t win a single race”. And it’s the same here, Apple was very very close to bankruptcy when Jobs came back and started the whole i-Device thing and they’ve now won over the evil competitor, Microsoft. And little does anyone ever mention “the first thing Jobs did was kill the Newton and now, some 15 years later their iPad is one of their strongest products!”.
So my grief isn’t with Apple or the entire “iOS v. Android” thing, my grief is with the media not being the least bit critical when reporting on Apple, that annoys me…. Damn no I need cookies to make me feel positive again!