In fact Rights #4 and #6 pretty much remove most of my objections to Impulse. If this was announced a day or two earlier it probably would have saved a bit of grief for myself and others, but such is life. Don't get me wrong, I'm not about to rush out and install Impulse this instant. However, when and if I get to the point that I have an actual need for it, I'll frankly be far less concerned about it than I previously was.

The point is that although I've basically assumed Stardock to be a responsible company and not likely to intentionally violate these points and although assurances have been independently given that Impulse didn't do such things, I see a major difference between a company publishing such a thing like this Bill of Rights which to me is an actual promise and my simply assuming that the company won't do such things. To me there’s a big difference between my assuming that the company will treat it's customers right and the company’s explicit delineation of what it is they believe to be right and their promise to abide by it.

Not that I expect everything to be instantly and always perfect. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Mistakes happen and bugs happen. But this promises that any such things will be precisely that; a mistake or bug that will in most likelihood be corrected shortly. Again I don’t believe this is anything really new in the way Stardock does business, but before it was merely my assumption, now this is a promise that Stardock has made to their customers. Like I said, I find this distinction to be *very* significant.

A few comments have been made in regard to number 2 and I have to partially agree that there have been some persistent and long term bugs that have existed in GalCiv2 but mostly these occur in the types of games that I play which are probably not the norm. I play gigantic abundant all games that intentionally push the boundaries of the game to maximize score. Often these games take me up to 6 weeks of play each. While a dedicated tester could probably finish one in a bit less time than that the total options one would have to exhaustively check is simply prohibitive. So the of out of memory and other “big” game issues really don’t bother me and in fact simply place an upper limit on how far you can push the game.

Like I said above I don’t require perfection be achieved but I do require it to be strived for. I view this Bill of Rights as a promise to always at least strive for perfection. There's not a single one of us that could promise any more than that.

However one final picky little point is that both items 4 and 6 should reference download managers, updaters *and* games. As written Games could "autoload" themselves on startup and download managers and updaters could "install hidden drivers or other potentially harmful software without their [the Gamers'] consent." Although I'm sure that this is *not* the intent.

Regarding #2 and #3, this is the way I see it...

2. Games should be released in a finished state as in being fully playable and not broken. For example, in KOTOR 1, I remember an event/fight with certain conditions where an autosave would happen and the game would crash a few seconds into the fight. Upon loading the autosave, those conditions would still be present and you'd get a crash immediately after loading. I don't recall if there were multiple auto-save slots or just one - just that I made a lot of attempts and then gave up on the game for a few months. When we finally got high-speed I happened to come across a patch where it was fixed (and was able to play the entire game), but still. Point was that out-of-box, there was a pretty serious (in my opinion) issue.

3. Meaningful updates after release I see as a variety of things. Balance issues, driver issues, playability stuff, and also a little "if we had another year to work on this game, what else would we have put in" mentality. An example of this not done well: KOTOR 2. There's an oodle of content that they dropped (see the kotor restoration project for details). I understand that sometimes there are time constraints and you have to leave out some stuff, but they really should have eventually added that stuff in via patches.

An example of this stuff done well: Warcraft III. As far as I can recall, when I bought it (not long after release), it was perfectly playable. That game has also seen a pile of updates since release. Really, the expansion was released in 2003. 5 years later, they're still doing updates for it (most recent being a couple months ago).

Now I don't by any means expect every company to have the resources to provide updates to a game for 5 years after release or anything, but at the very least, make sure it's been tested throroughly before release (public betas are awesome by the way - why pay a few testers on a few pieces of hardware when you can get thousands to do it for free?), and when you release it, keep working on it for a while. At least until it's at the point where it's fulfilled the pre-we-gotta-rush-this-out-the-door vision that was had for the game.

All-in-all, I support the "gamer's bill of rights". I just recently bought GalcivII and Sins, primarily because of what I've seen/read about the games (mostly through the forums). I really think everyone should support the companies that are working to make *great* products (not simply pumping out weak stuff to make a quick buck), and who aren't making us jump through hoops (CD required, etc etc) to use them.

I think stardock should take this to game developers/publishers and ask what they think of this then give the replays to every gaming mag/website.

edit: what the... *delets a load of rubbish code looking stuff that appeared from no where*

Sounds like just a pubicity stunt, if a company really believes this then they don't need to state it.

Though I have to admit it, this has gotten stardock alot of publicity, several forums I visit have threads on this, so I guess it was a success.

Also:

8: Gamers shall have the right to not be treated as potential criminals by developers or publishers.

Isn't making people use Impulse to update there games kinda treating them like potential criminals?

No it isn't. A finished game does not mean that it can't have meaningful updates. An example would be TF2. Completely finished and playable. Only some balance tweaks needed to be done and some bugs/glitches needed to be squashed, but it was very finished. Valve has consistantly released meaningful updates to the game by introducing new maps, new weapons, new achievements, new game types, etc. So far, they have released 3 new sets of weapons (3 for 3 classes for a total of 9 weapons), about 8 to 9 new maps, and two new game modes on top of squashing all of the bugs that the updates bring, balancing everything, and making everything much better over all.

You can release a finished and complete product while still adding meaningful updates. Complete /=/ can not have anything else included.

How? If you bought the product, you can download the update just fine. Treating your customer like a criminal would be limiting the number of installs a game has a-la EA or forcing you to check in with a server to play single player (or sticking your disk in your drive when you don't have an internet connection.

Stopping pirates from getting an update /=/ letting everyone download an update.

Should they really stop developing new features because there are bugs? They are not a single person: They have multiple developers. They are perfectly capable of having some people hunt the bogs while others add new features to the game. Would you have them shut down the entire development process every time a bug is found?

I'm sure if you are playing at a decent difficulty level, they are developing planets and building ships. I'd say they are simply not doing it in a manner you think is optimal. If you have some ideas to give to them, I'm sure they'd be willing to listen.

Well, considering that there are bugs that have been in the game since day 1, and have survived to ToA's releases and patches, and will likely survive through 2.0, it isn't a question of who's doing what. They're simply not fixing many long-standing bugs.

And it isn't just about bugs; it's about polish. Even if the UI were bug-free, it would still be a very weak UI.

GalCiv II is ultimately a mathematical excercise. It is not difficult to write an equation of many variables and derive "opt" for a particular set of variables. Opt being the one optimal build order for a particular set of circumstances. You can even develop some rules of thumb that don't require you to compute "opt".

The fact is this: the computer does not use its planets anywhere near optimally. The game's build system requires specialization of planets to make optimal use of them, but the computer keeps trying to generalize its worlds. It has no idea how to make a high-population world and yoke money from it.

While I'm think of it. Lets do a bit of roleplaying, this is mainly based upon my own experiances. Lets pretend I have just bought Galciv2:DL On CD only and have installed it, it is 1.0 and I have no experiance with stardock.

*Installs game plays a bit and quite*

"Hmm, fun game, few bugs though, better go get a patch."

*Goes to the Galciv2 website and looks for a patch, finds a link to impulse but no patches*

"Hrrm wonder what this Impulse thing is?, and no patches? Better go check the forums."

*Checks forums and has to fight through the slow loading times of the Gal-civ2 forums to find out I have to use impulse to download patches*

"Well that sucks, I guess I have to download this thing"

*Downloads Impulse and installs, discovers the installation of impulse requires a download as it installs*

"WTF? I wanted to browse the web while it installed, now I have to sit here and download this thing, I JUST EFFING DOWNLOADED IT"

*After it finally installs I click the desktop shortcut, nothing happens at first*

"What, why isn't it loading?," *hits ctrl alt delete* "herrm  its there wonder whats wrong now" *it finally comes up* "FINALLY"

*Logs in, but it requires a long time for it to verify*

"HURRY UP"

*It finally verifies and retrieves latest info, notifies I have to update*

"Hrrm better update it I guess"

*Updates impulse, it takes a bit on my connection and has to be restarted afterward*

"Gods what a pain"

*Finally loads and logs in, I begin updating Gal-civ 2, Nothing happens at first*

"What why isn't it downloading?"

*After a good 10 minutes its finally downloading*

"Why did it take 10 minutes to even start downloading? How slow is this crap, anyways  its big update, mise well go to bed, its already 1 AM and it was 10 PM when I first installed Gal-civ2."

*goes to bed and lets it update*

That's unusual. Did you report the bugs?

Optimal for what? A tech victory? A military victory? Keeping alive while the player takes full advantage of knowing the equation ?

Have you tested this on higher levels of difficulty, btw?

Yeah... should I add in that to my post?

*Deciding that impulse is taking too long to load I check the forums for help, after dealing with the lag fest that is the Galciv forums I finally manage to speed up impulse a little, I decide that it would of been faster just to not deal with it.*

"The Developer's Bill of Rights"

1. To copletelty ignore everithing the player expect.

Amen!