PC Gaming has relatively struggled, compared to the console industry, due to the near constant need to upgrade a computer to get the most out of the latest games. Most games will still play on a PC that’s a few years old, but you don’t get the equal or even superior experience you can get from a console or high-end computer. What TorrentFreak’s list has done is given companies and consumers an easily quantifiable idea of just how much money PC game companies have lost to piracy this year. First, here’s TorrentFreak’s list:
# game downloads released
1 Spore (1,700,000) (Sept. 2008)
2 The Sims 2 (1,150,000) (Sept. 2004)
3 Assassins Creed (1,070,000) (Nov. 2007)
4 Crysis (940,000) (Nov. 2007)
5 Com&Conquer 3 (860,000) (Mar. 2007)
6 Call of Duty 4 (830,000) (Nov. 2007)
7 GTA San Andreas (740,000) (Jun. 2005)
8 Fallout 3 (645,000) (Oct. 2008)
9 Far Cry 2 (585,000) (Oct. 2008)
10 Pro Evo Soccer ‘09 (470,000) (Oct. 2008)That comes out to 8.99 million downloads, via torrents, of just the top ten. Obviously there are way more than 10 PC games that were pirated in the last year, and this number doesn’t include console versions or games downloaded via other means. If for simplicity’s sake we say a new PC game costs $49.99 (allowing for the fact that The Sims 2 obviously no longer costs that much), this is about $449 million dollars in lost revenue for retailers, producers, and developers.
Archive for the 'Newsarama' Category
Here’s looking at you, kid…
Oh, *please*…
Look, I’m all for the new Farscape comic series from BOOM! Studios. I am on the record as a Farscape fan.
However, Newarama giving interview space for Mark Waid (editor & chief of BOOM!) to talk to Rockne S. O’Bannon (creator of Farscape) is a bit much.
And it leads to shit like this:
MW: Tell fans how this project came to BOOM!
RO: Farscape is a very carefully protected asset of the Jim Henson Company. It’s Brian Henson’s baby. And if we were going to continue the saga in this different medium, we were only going to do it with a partner who knew and respected the original series. The folks at BOOM! are crazy-passionate ‘Scapers. Scary, really. Marry that to BOOM!’s reputation as an wildly original, creative, truly bold comic producer, and we knew we’d found our partner.
Talk about a mutual masturbation society. I have little patience for interviews like this where creators from other mediums (TV, movies, etc.) spout off the usual inane pleasantries (I love comics! Working with an artist is great!) but tell us little if anything important. Usually such interviews would be better off as a short blurb giving a hint or two about what’s coming and that’s it. Instead we get the standard fill in the blank wankery week after week.
That said, I am looking forward to more Farscape.
UPDATE: The above does not go into the ethical conundrum posited by a news source giving content space to the head of a company – they are supposed to cover as journalists – for what is essentially advertising copy. I thought it and its implications were obvious.
(Alternate title: Smith Michaels vs. Comic-Con)
Scott Pilgrim vs. The Universe
Every July I become a very conflicted comic book fan; San Diego Comic-Con is clearly the most happening place on the planet for three (four?) days, but it is also a clearly a giant cluster-fuck. There is a part of me that wants to go Comic-Con, it clearly a once in a lifetime experience. But the expense, the pure chaos, the lines, and the expense will probably stop me from ever traveling out there. And around even mildly famous people my social anxiety goes into overload (see: this year’s Heroes’ Con), I’m pretty sure the pop-culture explosion that is Comic-Con would make my head explode in a flood of crippling anxiety.
But then I think of the announcements! The talent! The free stuff! And I’m tempted again to one day head out there and reap with whirlwind.
What exactly does that ramble have to do with anything? Well I thought I do a brief rundown of some of the interesting announcements from the weekend. (I did something like this for the New York Comic-Con) This will probably be a bit (very?) redundant but I hope useful to someone.
- I spent much of the weekend tooling around Newsarama and Comic Book Resources looking for some coverage of the Oni Press panel, but for the life of me I couldn’t find anything. Even after repeated Google searches. The one announcement I was looking forward to (obsessed with?) out of San Diego was the title and release date of the 5th Scott Pilgrim volume.Luckily Bryan Lee O’Malley revealed the title and the cover on his blog and various Web 2.0 outlets. Way to stay on top of these things comics journalists.(To briefly allow myself to indulge my Scott Pilgrim fanboyness, this cover pretty much promises that we are going to [finally?] get some Ramona back story in this volume. Also: O’Malley’s art continues to improve exponentially with each volume.)
- The big announcement that everyone is talking about, I’m sure, is the new post-RIP Neil Gaiman Batman project. I should be beyond excited about this; I mean, one my favorite writers on one of my favorite characters! A big event! But I have learned, with recently big announcements, to be skeptical. My out of control expectations can only make this project worse. So color me disinterestedly interested, if such a thing is possible.
- Hey! A new War Machine series? Who would have predicted that?
- Valerie D’Orazio writing a Cloak and Dagger series? Sounds a like something to check out.
- Is anyone else over the whole video reporting shit on Newsarama? (I think CBR does it too)
- I’m glad that the Milestone characters will finally be getting so real, honest to goodness exposure soon.
- I am willing to bet that whatever thing Millar has planned in the Ultimate Universe will be over-wrought, to clever for its own good, and painfully macho.
- I am willing to give the new Superman books a look, I’ve missed fresh work from James Robinson.
I think that covers what I thought were the most interesting announcements at San Diego. I reserve the right to edit this post if I remember/find more interesting stuff.
UPDATE: Sam Jackson? The Eisners?
UPDATE II: Newsarama did get around to covering the Scott Pilgrim announcement at the Oni Press panel.
UPDATE III: Dean Trippe’s amazingly exciting time at Comic-Con…
Overload…
I gurentee that the Newsarama site will go down during all the Comic-Con craziness.
Strange world?
Perhaps one of the biggest legit stories about the comic book industry is not broken by Newsarama (or a similar site) but instead by The New York Times.
Yes, The New York Times.
Things are changing.
Where is your sense of design?
Has anyone else seen the ugly fucking web2.0 redesign of the Newsarama site? One would think that Newsarama could afford to pay someone with a sense of design…
Ah, racism…
(Via Kalinara, via 4thletter!)
Tell me: is this racist?:
The above was deleted from a Newarama interview shortly after it was published.
Ah, Newsarama. A real class act. As I’ve discussed this sort of shit from Newsarama before. Do they have, I don’t know, hiring standards?
Remember folks, this is the state of comics journalism.
Where your clothes were stolen…
I read this review of New Avengers #35, by Graeme McMillan, last week and thought, “Wow that sounds offensive. I’m glad I don’t read New Avengers anymore.” Then I read this interview with Bendis and I was merely offended. But still, a part of me, held out. There was no way this issue could be that terrible. Bendis a talented writer of has never displayed such utter misogyny before. So this morning I went over to the alma mater and read the book.
Truly it was one of the most reprehensible pieces of shit I have seen in my life. The level of misogynistic shit contained with in the glossy cover of this 22 page comic book nearly transends the some of the darkest, most terrible fucking crap to emerge from fan-fiction.
I know that is a very shrill but it is also very, very true.
And really the Bendis/Newsarama interview makes it all much worse.
I’ve noted before, in a round about sort of way, some of the problems with Newsrama. But this Matt Brady interview really takes the fucking cake.
The terribleness begins before the interview even starts; with the “oh-look-how-clever-this-is” introduction designed to put the piece in its larger “context”: (Empasis are mine, of course)
[A]s those who watch comic book fandom know, there’s a hair-trigger on the misogyny gun that’s fired anytime violence against women is seen, or on occasion, even just presumed by the viewer.
Wow, Mr. Brady what a way to stack the deck. Because, you know, critics would have absolute no reason at all, in this very progressive little world of comics books, to call people out for misogynistic tendencies in superhero writing and art. Honestly, there has never really been a reason to fire this proverbial “misogyny gun” (mixed metaphors, anyone?). Officer, I swear, the gun went off accidently!
And that was just in the introduction! Brady gets worse once he starts asking Bendis questions:
I was somewhat reluctant to see what fans were saying. There does seem to be a segment of fandom that’s looking to go after anything that remotely looks like a misogynistic act, and here is a guy beating a female character unconscious in what’s not even a fair fight.
Because, obviously you’ve got to be a crazy feminist fan to think the brutal beating of a barely dressed superheroic female in “what’s not even a fair fight” is misogynistic.
While Brady comes of as a condsending prick with his “Honestly-what-problem-could-people-have-with-this?” attidute. It is Bendis who comes off worse. Much worse with such gems as these:
Any time someone’s being beaten, and it doesn’t have that aura of superhero derring-do…yeah, it’s going to be disturbing. It was supposed to be violent; it was supposed to be a complete reversal of what you’d expect…
…
The other reason I don’t think it was seen as misogyny is that I think my work has shown I don’t have that in me. Everyone is equal. Daredevil had an awful time of it in my run on the book; and that doesn’t make me anti-Catholic or anti handicapped people.
…
But to the larger point – there’s a lot of misogyny in comics, and a lot of misogyny in all media. Even female empowerment is sexualized in this country, and that’s not good. I completely agree with all of that. You’ve got to be careful in how you show it, but I just don’t think this scene fell under any of that. Most people seem to get it.
Through out the interview Bendis seems honestly perplexed at to why someone would think this whole thing was terribly misogynistic.
But really the work, speaks for itself.
What you have here is a man beating the living hell out a barely dressed woman while he threatens her family and another man video tapes the whole thing. How fuck can a decent person not think that’s misogynistic? The ‘fight’ scene could have easily been taken straight out of a snuff film.
But the honest to goodness best (worst) part of the whole interview is this little exchange:
NRAMA: And to cap that it wasn’t sexual, The Hood explained why he was going to do what he did beforehand…
BB: And he didn’t veer off course. Probably the most shocking thing is that he accomplished it. No one tapped him on the shoulder as he was about to give her the punch that would knock her unconscious, there was no one swinging in the window to her rescue. It happened – and it was awful.
Because, you know, how a person rationalizes something they do automatically makes the reality of it that way. And it seems to me that Bendis and Brady are denying the existence of a little thing called subtext.
*sigh*
Besides the jack-assery on display in the Bendis/Newsarama interview, the issue itself is worse than the interview it spawned. New Avengers #35 is an example of the worst sort of misogynistic, pornographic violence that is so prevalent in comics today.
Honestly, would you ever see a cat-man, dressed purely in a pair of boxer shorts, be beaten close to death? I think not. This sort of imagery is virtually only envoked towards female characters. And it needs to fucking stop.
This whole affair has soured me even more on Bendis’ Avengers run. His writing for this books is almost a paradoy of his own style in its awfulness. The fact that pulled this crap is just another example of how this book just brings out the worst in the man.
This big announcement from Newsarama this week (really, last week) and this post at Blog@Newsarama (and the post it links to) got me thinking.
There is no “real” journalism of the comic book industry. There is no “industry” press that really covers the “behind the scenes”, the corporate aspect, of what goes into making comics (and by this don’t mean uncovering the fact that John Byrne hates Geoff Johns, or some such).
What we have is a “fan” press. That is to say 75 to 95% of the mainstream coverage of the comic industry prefers style over substance. This is obvious to many (especially online comic fans) but, I think, can not be stated enough.
Wizard is, of course, the worst example. But even the brand spanking new print version of Comic Foundry, the anti-Wizard, still suffers from some of the same problems.
(Brief aside, after reading the first issue of Comic Foundry I was struck as to how much it really is sort of the Indie-Wizard, or better yet, the comic industry equivalent of GQ. Which is kind of disappointing.)
In the online world Newsarama is the best and the worst comics journalism has to offer. Though Newsarama primarily serves as outlet to follow the latest dish about their favourite books and as a marketing/propaganda smoke screen for Marvel/DC, they often branch out and cover more difficult legal and industry issues (re: Superboy and the somewhat-recent Harlan Ellison flap). And, of course, Newsarama serves as the home for the great Blog@Newsarama.
I think the recent Imaginova announcement will make Newsarama worse, not better.
The money quote from the announcement was this: (Italics are, of course, mine)
And that’s really the story of this day …what you have come to expect from Newsarama –won’t be changing. We will continue to guide and grow the site editorially as we have since Day 1 and the writers you have come to know and trust will come along with us for this exciting ride.Starting now, however, we’ll be armed with the resources to begin phasing in additional content and introducing new media to improve site design, functionality, and dependability, and ultimately to expand our brand of coverage to other entertainment genres you’re all already interested in.
Even before Newsarama was aquired by Imaginova, I’ve been wary of their expansion into cover geek culture more generally. Newsarama didn’t always do a great job covering the comic book industry as a whole before it added more to its plate, expanding their focus even more is likely to make things worse.
Becoming a “geek chic” magazine made Wizard worse, a feat I did not think possible. What does that say about future of Newsarama?
Getting back to my point more generally, I think the comic book industry suffers from not having a true, semi-independent “industry” press. The “fan” press will always be at the beck and call of Marvel/DC because it serves their fannish purposes. It is not in the “fan” press interest nor inclination to burst the bubble of bullshit that Marvel/DC spin.
And, until a real “industry” press develops I think both the comic book industry and comic book fans are poorer for it.
