Dark Souls, one of my favorite games -- not only of this generation, but of all time -- is coming to the PC this year. This is fantastic news for PC gamers, because this version of the game will probably fix the glaring framerate problem that plagued the console releases (in addition to adding new content, which looks AWESOME, but the framerate fix is the main thing I'm looking forward to). It's sad that I'm probably not going to be buying it, at least not until I can get it for next to nothing.

The reason for this is the DRM that'll be a part of the game. No, I'm not specifically talking about Games for Windows Live, I'm talking about any DRM at all. Right now, it's reported that the PC release of Dark Souls will be using Microsoft's service, at least for the German release. This immediately prompted yet another petition to remove GFWL and replace it with Steam. The name of this petition, in my opinion, should be "Please replace the color of the shit you're putting into Dark Souls with a different color of shit." The fact that DRM is something that even NEEDS to be considered is unacceptable.

See, Steam is great as a service. They have lots of sales, their customer service is great (from what I've heard, as I've never had to take advantage of it), and it's nice to have your entire library of games in one spot. None of that matters, however, once you realize you don't own a single game you've paid for. GFWL, Steam, Origin, they're all the same. You have to go online and ask permission to play what you just bought. In a lot of cases, you have to do this every time a game is uninstalled, or even when you replace a piece of hardware in your PC. The second you have network issues, you lose features, and sometimes can't even start your games if the DRM is bad enough (*cough*Ubisoft*cough*).

The main thing I wanted to address here, though, is why Steam is just as bad of a DRM "solution" as any other out there, so let's look at a few points:

1. No Internet connection? You're screwed. When you want to install your retail Steam game, even though all the data is right there on the disc, you are REQUIRED to be online. Yes, you're treated as a thief before you even shell out the money to buy a game in the first place. Once you buy it, you still have to verify that it's legit. You want to do a Steam backup of your game? You have to be online. You want to reinstall that Steam backup that you made while you were online? You have to be online. If you don't have immediate access to the Internet, you might as well not even bother.

2. Steam is required to run along with your games. When you're playing a game that requires Steam, you have to have it running. It's not a huge program or anything, but depending on your setup, you want as many resources going toward your game as possible. You don't want ANYTHING extra running in the background if you can help it, and thanks to Steam not trusting you, you don't have that luxury.

3. Steam locks your games to a single account. Once you purchase a game on Steam, it's yours. You can't lend it to anyone, you can't give it away when you're finished with it, and you can't even let someone in the same house play it unless they do so through your account. Who wants to give that kind of access to everyone? Even in Offline Mode, someone else would be earning your achievements for you, and they couldn't earn achievements of their own. Yes, even when you're allowed to go offline (the game MUST be fully updated online first), ONLY the original account can access it.

All of the above points can be made for pretty much any DRM scheme, and that's the thing that people seem to be missing -- Steam is no different than any other DRM. I couldn't help but laugh when I read the petition to change GFWL, because it's no different than Steam. I have no idea what these problems are that people are always saying they're having with GFWL, because I've never had a single issue with the system at all, other than the fact that it's DRM.



Which brings me to my next point -- When in the hell did PC gamers decide DRM was okay? When did something like Steam or GFWL or Origin become acceptable? Look at the rumors surrounding the next Xbox and PlayStation -- No used games, no lending them out, games locked to accounts -- It's Steam, but on consoles. The backlash has been unbelievable, and I think that's the best thing that could have ever happened. NO gamers, regardless of platform preference, should be treated like a thief from the get-go. (Speaking of which, if you think Steam actually stops piracy, then I've got a bridge I'd love to sell you.)

DRM guarantees that the future of gaming is in jeopardy. It guarantees that the term "retro gamer" will never be uttered again. When a network that handles the DRM in a PC game is shut down, then the game can't be played anymore, period. And no, I don't trust Valve to just release patches for every one of their games, getting rid of the DRM -- EA said they'd release a DRM-free patch for the retail PC version of Dead Space once it wasn't selling as much anymore, and then Origin happened.

You know which games had perfect DRM? Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, for one. In a very un-Ubisoft move, Ubisoft made sure the single player mode had NO DRM at all -- Not even a disc check or the need to even look at the CD key. If you wanted to play online, access DLC, or earn achievements, then sure, you had to register it to your account. The point is that even when their servers aren't supporting the game anymore, you'll still have the entire single player mode available to you, with absolutely no restrictions. Batman: Arkham Asylum, Resident Evil 5 and Fallout 3 are all the same way as well, though GFWL.

Another excellent way to do DRM (and my personal favorite method) was seen in Alpha Protocol. Sega announced well before the game's PC debut that they'd release a DRM-removing patch within one year of the its availability, since that's when the most money would be made. True to their word, Sega did just that, and even if you bought the game through Steam, the game doesn't require the client to run at all anymore. They knew people may want to go back and play the game in the future, well after they stopped caring about its sales, so why screw the customer over more? Does Valve REALLY value something like the original 1998 Half-Life so much that they have to leave the DRM attached to it, like some permanent growth?

This also proves an important point -- Steam games are indeed patchable to not need Steam anymore. I would be absolutely fine with ANY form of DRM if the publishers guaranteed that all of it would be removed after a set amount of time. But -- and you can call me cynical all you want -- I don't trust any companies to do this. Not with the way the gaming industry is going.

Now, the PC is a very open platform, as we all know. Hell, consoles are honestly just outdated PCs with different operating systems. There are many different ways to crack the DRM out of a game, and as of October 2010, it's actually legal in the United States to do so if the DRM is preventing you from playing the game. But why should this responsibility fall onto the shoulders of the customers who pay for the games and put food on the tables of the developers and publishers? Why should we stand for being treated like thieves when we pay for our games the same way console gamers do? Why should console gamers be the only ones to complain about the rumored DRM when PC gamers have had to deal with this for years already? And, like I said before, when did PC gamers start being fine with things like Steam and treating them as normal? Does anyone legitimately believe DRM stops piracy? The bridge, people. I have one for you.

Dark Souls is one of the best games I've ever played, and the replay value is indescribably high. The Souls series, as some call it, will be classic in the future, and it will be enjoyed by thousands of gamers to come. If I have to sacrifice a better framerate and a more open system in exchange for actual ownership of a game, then so be it. I'll just have to stick with my console version -- You know, the one that I can play whenever I want to, without asking anyone first.

Call me privileged all you want, but if we're paying actual money to buy these games, I think we all deserve to be in this situation.

(NOTE: I'm by no means bashing PC gaming, and the laptop I bought about a year ago was bought in part so I could play the latest games and make them look decent. I love the PC, and that's why I'm so passionate about this particular subject. If the DRM actually ends up being the same legacy GFWL system that games like Arkham Asylum used, then I'll be first in line to reserve the retail copy of Dark Souls for the PC. I'm extremely happy this game is coming to the PC -- I'm just pissed that people can't see that the only way gaming on the PC is going to thrive in the future is by way of services like Good Old Games.)

1. I'm a writer/journalist by trade.

(I still haven't found full-time writing work, but I swear I'm a writer, dammit.)

About half a year ago, I graduated from the University of Utah and got my bachelor's degree in mass communication, specifically journalism. I worked at the paper while I was in my last year, writing at least three news stories a week. When I started out, I was scared that I had chosen the wrong career, since I kind of regretted not going into something more directly related to gaming or computer technology at first. But once I started interviewing people and writing on a daily basis, I knew I was where I belonged. AP Style and I are close friends.

My dream is to be a gaming journalist someday, since I read about the industry as a hobby, but I kind of think that may be a tough gig to break into.



2. My username is the bastard child of Spanish names and letters.

Back when I was in middle school, I took two years of Spanish, most of which I've completely forgotten. (Although, I do remember one huge word that my teacher taught me -- "desarbispoconstantinopolisarse," which apparently means "to resign from being in the position of Archbishop of Constantinople.") It was during that year that I made my first email address/username ever, and due to a severe lack of imagination, I chose "pedro," which is Peter in Spanish, and "vay," which sounds like the last part of "doble uve," which is the letter W in Spanish. I don't know what I was thinking when I came up with this, but there you go.





3. I may have been responsible for the Battletoads bendable action figures.

Well, I don't know that for a fact, but if not, then it's one hell of a coincidence.

I once sent a letter to the "toy maker" when I lived back home in New York, asking for him to make Battletoads figures. I don't know if that actually had anything to do with it, but less than a year later, there they were in Toys R Us, and I proceeded to explode.

I plan on doing a full-sized blog about this once I actually find my figures in the depths of my basement somewhere.



4. I love horror games, but was vastly underwhelmed by Silent Hill 2.

My girlfriend and I have been playing through the entire Silent Hill series -- That's her horror series of choice, while I've always been a Resident Evil and Fatal Frame guy. I was excited when we finally got to Silent Hill 2, because I had heard nothing but good things about it. However, I was left unimpressed -- The combat (like EVERY game in the series) was horrendous, the voice acting was terrible, and it wasn't all that scary to me. The game overall was fine, but it was by no means the end-all horror video game that everyone makes it out to be.

Then again, I guess it's still better than the one in the HD collection.



5. I knew Captain Lou Albano, a.k.a. the original voice of Mario.

See that picture on my sidebar? That's before Photoshop, my friends.

Lou Albano played Mario in The Super Mario Bros. Super Show back when I was a kid. He was a wrestler before that, but I think we know what the more important role was. He didn't live too far from me in New York, and he came to a lot of our elementary school fundraisers. He really liked doing stuff for kids, and he was known to be really close with his family, which, even as a kid, I loved knowing. We may not have been great friends or anything like that, but I'm glad I got to see him a few times while I was growing up. He was never opposed to taking a picture or signing an autograph, or just hanging out with kids who knew who he was.





6. I didn't mind Mass Effect 3's ending.

I could write a week's worth of blogs on this one subject alone, but I'll try to keep it brief: I didn't really have a problem with the ending of Mass Effect 3. Sure, there were some writing issues in there, but that's not something I hadn't seen in video games before. The main argument is that your decisions throughout the entire series didn't matter in the end, and I think that's bull -- It didn't matter what your decisions in the first game were, the game always ended the same. Same with the second game, aside from the fact that some of your crew could die -- The actual storyline was the exact same, no matter what your choices were throughout the game. The entire Mass Effect series ALWAYS had only one storyline -- The decisions you made merely affected the journey you went on to get to that set-in-stone result. I just can't bring myself to understand what all the fuss is about just because this is the third game. Is it because it's the end of a trilogy? Is it because people are REALLY naive enough to think that BioWare wasn't planning this from the beginning, so they could charge for a storyline extension sometime in the near future?

I've hated entire games this generation, but I didn't go and try to make the companies that made those games change everything. Not everyone shares the same opinion, but people don't seem to realize this.



7. I grew up with the NES, and I've been playing games ever since.

The original NES came to the states less than a week after I was born, and to this day, I still think that had to have been destiny or something. I had an NES when I was two years old, and I could actively comprehend what the goal of the game was that I was playing -- I understood beyond "push button, thing happens."

My favorite time playing games when I was a kid was when my dad and I would play Duck Hunt for hours on end. I remember sitting there and wondering how he could be so good, always shooting down those ducks and clay pigeons. Two at a time, sometimes! It blew my little boy mind every time.



8. As much as I love gaming, I think the industry is going down the toilet.

I want to make something very clear here: I personally believe that the last generation of gaming (GameCube, GBA, PS2, PSP, Xbox) was the BEST generation we've ever had. We had awesome libraries on every platform, memory cards to take your data wherever you went, and stable hardware that didn't have a whole lot of problems. This generation? We've got consoles dying left and right, online passes, and the rumor that you won't even be able to PLAY your games unless you're online. In other words, everything bad about PC gaming (which was unacceptable on the PC in the first place) is leaking into the console world.

Even though people are trying to not jump to conclusions with the recent news that the next Xbox and Sony Orbis will have protection against used games, do you really think it's that much of an impossibility? Companies seem to not care about screwing paying customers over anymore, and I honestly think these rumors are more likely than we'd all like to think they are. Last generation, there were NO issues. Games were released completed, all of our data was portable, and we had an abundance of both local and online multiplayer games to choose from. This generation, everything went to hell, and it seems like it's only going to get worse. I love gaming, and I don't see myself stopping anytime soon, but the next generation might be nothing but Indie PC games and Wii U games for me at this rate.





9. Speaking of Nintendo, the Wii was my favorite console of this generation.

It's true: Even with all the shovelware that North American gamers had to wade through on the console, I really think the Wii was the best one this generation. Nintendo has always made the best first-party games in my opinion, and this generation was no different, with must-have titles like Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Super Mario Galaxy, and my personal favorite game disc I've ever spent money on, Metroid Prime Trilogy. Just those games alone are far superior to anything else I've played on both the 360 and PS3, and that's only stuff Nintendo actually made. The Trauma Center games, Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition, the upcoming The Last Story, and a bunch of others made the Wii an absolutely amazing machine, HD graphics or otherwise. I also kind of LIKED the fact that not many games got downloadable updates, because that meant that developers actually had to release completed products, which is something they like to forget about nowadays when it comes to other platforms.

The thing that I always thought was the Wii's strength wasn't the motion that Nintendo pushed down our throats. No, the Wii's major strength was the infrared pointer functionality in the tip of the Remote. To this day, I personally believe that the IR pointer and sensor bar are more accurate than a computer mouse. While the mouse movement is simulated (you move the cursor up and down by moving the plastic mouse forward and backward), you're actually doing honest-to-goodness pointing with the Wii Remote, and it just feels so much more accurate and natural to me than any other control scheme I've ever used. The fact that you can move your hands independently of each other helps immensely, too.

I know I'm probably in the vast minority, but no 360, PS3 or PC game has given me as much joy as a well-done Wii game has so far.



10. I've been visiting Destructoid on a daily basis since it was less than a year old.

A friend of mine introduced me to Destructoid when it was about six months old. After lurking for quite a while, the first contribution I made was sending in a scanned copy of the entire Red Steel manual, since the game was released in stores before the Wii was. Manuals for Wii games seemed to be cropping up all over the Internet (including on Destructoid), presumably because people wanted to get an idea of how the controller would work, so I scanned and sent the manual to Niero. The scanned booklet made the front-page news, at which point Robert Summa exploded, because he thought scanning game manuals and spreading them around was pointless. After I stopped being afraid that he was actually going to hunt me down and kill me in a drawn-out assault, I found the entire experience to be hilarious, and I've been here ever since.

Thanks to my friend ctrayne for bringing these lovely pictures to my attention:





So, anyone up for some Dark Souls?

I'm going to keep this spoiler-free, because this blog isn't about whether the ending of Mass Effect 3 is good or not. In fact, I'm not even going to talk about the ending itself, nor am I going to express my own opinion of the matter or talk about any theories involving the future. Whether the ending is "good" or "bad" is completely up to the player, and that's the whole reason I sat down to write this blog. Movements like Retake Mass Effect are a joke, and everyone who supports that way of thinking should have all technology taken away from them.

How many people here have heard of Star Wars? Anyone? Show of hands? It's not exactly a secret that the Star Wars movies have always been under fire for the changes George Lucas makes to them, seemingly with every release. Not only is there disappointment, though -- People actually go out of their way to DEMAND that Lucas rewrite his stories to how THEY say the movies should be. People who have NOTHING TO DO with Star Wars other than the fact that they're sad, obsessed individuals demand that the story be shaped to what they deem is acceptable.

Sounds a lot like Mass Effect 3 "fans" to me.

Whether or not you like the ending of the game, or even if you hated whole thing, you have NO RIGHT to demand ANYTHING of the developer in terms of changing the story. If you didn't like it, then don't play it. There is NOTHING explained more simply than this "situation." Just because you're another everyday, run-of-the-mill fanboy/fangirl who thinks you rule with an iron fist doesn't make you correct in your thinking. Do you work for Bioware? Did you get paid to do anything involving the game's development? No? Then crawl back under the rock you came out from.

The only good thing that came out of Retake Mass Effect was its charity work. It's absolutely awesome that they raised so much money for Child's Play, and yet even that gesture was still tainted when they acted like "Oh, look what we did for the kids, now change the game!" How about you raise money for those in need because it's the right thing to do instead of as a front to get whatever the hell you want?

If you liked the ending of Mass Effect 3, that's great. If you absolutely despised it, then that's perfectly fine, too. But you don't get to go around and demand that everything be changed to cater to your every wish and desire -- You're nowhere NEAR that special. If you want a better story, then go to programming school and make your own game.

Then again, I guess it's a lot easier to just sit on your thrones and complain, isn't it?

UPDATE: You know, the more I think about it, the more I believe my rage is coming from reading so much about this on GameFAQs, which isn't much of a surprise, in retrospect. Even if this group has good intentions, most people on GameFAQs are giving them a bad name with all the extremism.

I'd like to add my personal good news to the plethora of excellent Phoenix Wright stuff that's been coming out this week. Today, I have FINALLY secured the last game in the series, which gives me the complete Ace Attorney series in one place!



It took me forever to find these games after Jonathan Holmes introduced me to the series on the Wii, and now that they've been out for such a long time, they're all crazy expensive. After months of searching, I ended up finding them at various GameStops -- all in mint condition -- for less than $20 a piece. One of the games was also a birthday gift, so I actually only paid about $70 TOTAL for the entire series.

But the centerpiece of the collection isn't any of the games, oh, no. It's this amazing stylus that was a preorder bonus for Justice for All in Japan that my girlfriend was able to track down online:



IT'S HIS ARM, PEOPLE. HIS POINTING "OBJECTION!" ARM. And I don't even mind the fact that it looks like his finger is wearing a condom!

I'm in my glory right now. If I had paid the full prices for these games (i.e., what they're worth NOW), I wouldn't be nearly as giddy. The fact that I paid next to nothing for the series is what's blowing my mind.

Yesterday, I was lucky enough to get to go to the Sundance Film Festival and catch a showing of Indie Game: The Movie in Salt Lake City (about 20 minutes from my house). I had been following news about this movie for quite a while -- mostly through Destructoid -- and I was crazy excited that my first Sundance experience was going to be a movie about video games. While not a whole lot of actual gameplay from any Indie games is shown, the movie is much more about the people who decide to dedicate their lives to making these games for all the rest of us to enjoy. After hearing their stories, I can safely say that I will NEVER try to program a game while on a deadline.

The documentary is laid out similar to others in the genre: Interviewees in front of a camera, talking about the process of creating their games, mostly DURING the actual process itself. The movie concentrated on three specific games and their creators: Braid, with Jonathan Blow, Super Meat Boy, with Tommy Refenes and Edmund McMillen, and Fez with Phil Fish (which was confirmed to be finished at the end of the show, with a release date planned for sometime within the next couple months). The audience got to hear about the inspirations that went into these games, and that was one part that I really found fascinating. In fact, Refenes said something that really made me smile -- He said that he didn't necessarily care if people absolutely loved his games or not, but that he made the games for himself, and not for other people. If other people liked them, then that was great, but if they didn't, he still had something he was personally proud of. That's an awesome way of looking at it, as far as I'm concerned, and as we all know, Super Meat Boy was indeed a success. He used the money they earned to pay off the debt his parents had built up over the years, and McMillen used the money to buy a house (and a hairless cat) for his wife.

Blow, while admittedly not the most interesting person to listen to, was obviously the most experienced in game programming. He explained how he created elements of Braid to reflect himself, and how he responded to almost every post about his game on the Internet to make sure people "got it." In fact, he said he was actually very depressed after his game launched, because he wanted it to be understood. And no, the video they showed of Soulja Boy "reviewing" Braid didn't help, I'm sure.

Fish's story was particularly agonizing at times. His first partner left during the creation of Fez, and it was actually against the law for Fish to show the game at last year's PAX without that person's signature. He was stressed as hell leading up to the show, knowing that at any moment, he'd have to pack up and go home after all his hard work. This was made even harder to swallow considering that the public hadn't seen anything related to Fez since the FIRST video that was shown, so it was an extremely important part in the game's production cycle. He ended up having a playable demo available anyway, and the signature he needed was indeed acquired at a later time, so everything turned out okay.



I liked how the movie was shot, because it ended up feeling like a drama. At times, it seemed like it actually had a storyline, and you wanted to know what the characters were going to do next. I had to remind myself more than once that this was actually non-fiction, and that all of this had actually happened. Just knowing that raised my own blood pressure, and I now have so much more of an appreciation for what these small developers do. Companies like EA and Capcom have thousands of people making these games at any given time. The groups shown in this documentary had no more than two each, and in Braid's case, it was ONLY Blow working on it. Knowing what I know now about the creation process, that these guys quite literally wanted to kill themselves during the whole thing, I'm absolutely blown away even more than I was as I played their games in the first place.

The coolest part of the showing was that Refenes showed up for a Q&A afterwards. (I meant to bring my copy of the Super Meat Boy Ultra Edition, but I forgot, so that pissed me off for a bit -- I got my ticket stub signed instead by him and the directors.) Being a journalism graduate, I took particular note of one question an audience member asked, which was related to the best way of getting the news about Indie games out there. Refenes said that journalism is going to make or break the Indie game scene, and that good journalists actually sit down and play the games they review, rather than just throwing something together to get the first review on the Internet. And that's when things got awesome.

Refenes, in person, talked about Destructoid's own Jonathan Holmes, telling the audience how passionate about gaming and writing he is. His praise of Holmes was extremely high, and he brought Holmes up when he was speaking about what all game journalists SHOULD be doing, and the right way to do it. I thought I wanted to meet Jonathan in person before, but this pushed it over the edge now. Let's hang out sometime!

Anyway, the movie was great. I'm not a huge documentary guy, but I am a huge video game guy, and I definitely appreciated what was done here. Even if you've never had an interest in game programming, you should check this out when it's available to the masses -- You'll actually enjoy and appreciate the Indie games you play even more than you do now.