Just When You Thought Game Companies Weren't Greedy Little Bastards.....

When Origin released Wing Commander: Secret Ops for free over the internet, I was ecstatic. This proved that not everything was motivated by money (even though EA might have an alterior motive here, I will choose to remain naive). I started to hope that this would start a trend, game developers releasing old games for free download, or even new games. Now I can thank Sierra for totally switching my point of view. Whenever Sierra releases Half-Life I am sure some people will try to avoid buying it because of what I am about to talk about, but the chances are that they will be unsuccessful. In September Sierra released a demo version of Half- Life called Day One. They claim it is something new and special, maybe the game is but Day One is nothing more than a glorified demo. They say it contains less than 1/3 of the actual game, allow me to say "WOW!" That right there makes it something other than a demo, because you see Duke Nukem 3D gave you a full 1/3 of the actual game. I must commend Sierra for creating something new, unseen before, a demo! For them however it may be a strange phenomenon. The reason I am so pissed off about this "demo" is because Sierra made exclusive distribution rights with some hardware manufactures. Yep, that's right. To get to play the Half- Life demo you have to buy a new soundcard, a demo worth a good $150! If I wanted to waste that kind of money, I'd go to a professional sports game. Sierra never had, or has plans of releasing Day One to the general population through magazine demo CD's or through the Internet. Sierra must be very confident about Half- Life to show this kind of arrogance, most developers wouldn't dream of it. Right now there is a large backlash against Sierra through the Internet community, me being one of them. I know it isn't right to wish for bad events to happen to someone, but I hope Sierra crashes and burns on this one. For their arrogance I hope that people reject Half- Life and find it to be a POS game. I tried for a week to get ahold of a copy of Day One, but I couldn't get one. Not that it matters any more anyways, I am so mad and frustrated with Sierra right now that my prospective purchase of Half- Life is be seriously jeopardized. To Origin and their generous offer I say "Bravo" to Sierra and their greed I say "FUCK YOU!" I hope any company that thinks about doing the same thing as Sierra had better think twice because I think Sierra made a major blunder. At least if you are going to give hardware manufactures a special version, at least give the poor people who can't afford to buy a new piece of hardware to get a demo a small demo. Ritual Entertainment and Activision did this with SiN and I applaud them. I hope more generosity spreads throughout the gaming industry, but I am not going to hold my breath.

The Clair

October 17. 1998