After much moaning, I’ve finally got work. Two works! At last I can start digging my way out of my overdraft.
This means I have had much less free time, that’s less time writing nonsense, working on projects and less time playing games. Unfortunately I am working with clothes, which means I’ve already been spending money I don’t have on clothes I don’t need. I also have recurring nightmares about being invited to interviews with specific game developers, but I turn up and they instantly decide they don’t want me. I finally tried Grand Ages: Rome on Ultra though…
I also want to offer some musings on Stronghold 3. If you have been following the saga so far, the game on release (and at the time of writing) is very buggy. There are some very obvious problems – having a city consisting almost entirely of farms and food production, but never being able to meet food requirements, the invincible wolves, wood cutters cutting wood once then sitting in your stockpile in a little circle, it goes on. Firefly Studios have written an honest apology which has been met with a range of responses that can be labelled from ‘truly absurd’ to ‘I’m an absolute fuckwit’.
The highlight for me is probably the hollow “I’m going to sue you” threat. Yes, similarly with every bad film I’ve spent money watching, I have sued the companies involved because I didn’t enjoy myself. At Assyria every time someone didn’t enjoy one of our games or found a bug, we got sued. Except none of this ever happened.
Obviously I don’t know why Stronghold 3 was released when it was, because it clearly wasn’t ready. Unfortunately Firefly Studios can’t really win – had they kept delaying the game any statement as to why would have been met with a similar barrage of immature comments from angry gamers. Now they are working on patching the game up as quickly as possible.
You must realise – even if you turn a console on to play a game, and sit for 20 minutes waiting for an update which can be a ball ache at times, that video game players are extremely lucky. You pay a specific amount of money for a video game, and in many cases, the developers will continue to tweak and improve it, at absolutely no cost to you. No-one will go back to Sucker Punch and make it in any way watchable, and they certainly won’t do it for free. New and improved iterations of films and books cost you more money. Updates to fix a game cost you nothing, just a tiny amount of patience. I want Stronghold 3 to work, yes, and I am perfectly happy to wait while Firefly Studios get things fixed. The general reaction to the games release was sad and also completely embarrassing. I love games but sometimes I cannot stand gamers.
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