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When is uncapped not uncapped?

The answer to the above depends entirely on your idea of what uncapped is, but for the sake of transparency let’s all agree that uncapped (read: unlimited) means that a user has unlimited bandwidth, and can download as much as he/she wants. Are we on the same page here? Good.

However, the current uncapped accounts are not uncapped, at least not in the sense that we have just settled on. Somewhat justifiably so, people are complaining about this, but I don’t think this is the underlying issue. Personally, I think people are missing the point here.

When MWEB first announced their uncapped offers they specified that according to their Acceptable Usage Policy, the new accounts are not for heavy downloaders. These are for the users that previously found themselves topping up their cap every month, and wanted a flat rate that would accommodate their usage — not the guys who sit on torrents all weekend. Those users are already accommodated for by current uncapped packages provided by ISPs such as Axxess, MWEB, and Webafrica, and they continually download large amounts of data each month. It’s completely acceptable, therefore, that they pay ± R1,000 for downloading the equivalent of my entire hard drive in a week.

Downloading the internet? Stay on your expensive accounts.

Downloading the internet? Stay on your expensive accounts.

Let’s take a step back and think about this: those same people are the ones who have now recently subscribed to the new uncapped accounts, and still expect the same level of service. Oh, gee, you wonder why you are now throttled because you downloaded 40GB over the weekend? Let’s do some maths then…

The average Axxess Uncapped Express+ user on a 4Mb/s line downloads 400GB a month. Those people pay R2,699 for that privilege. So…

R2,699/400GB  =  R6.75/GB

At close on R7 per gigabyte, that’s a pretty good deal, as currently the cheapest per-GB deal is sitting at R29. But try download that amount of data on the new Axxess uncapped account for R496.

R496/400GB = R1.24/GB

Has anyone been laughing at Webafrica’s “unsustainable” comments? Well, they’re right. There’s almost zero money being made here on this account with that kind of usage. There’s no way any business will survive running on less than R1.50 per GB. Naturally, all of the ISPs have forseen this, and have adjusted their AUPs accordingy.

The internet landscape is now a melting pot of wordplay, bad ideas and greedy users - yup, its still the same!

The internet landscape is now a melting pot of wordplay, bad ideas and greedy users - yup, its still the same!

Previously Afrihost specified 200GB as a threshold, after which your account will be subject to scrutiny and throttling.

R497/200GB = R2.49/GB

They immediately saw how people used their lines for heavy downloading. They charged pro-rata for users who signed up before April, and some got up to 120GB in two weeks.

R147/120GB = R1.23/GB

After a few changes to their AUP, they’ve come clean and decided on 60GB as the new threshold, after which you will be heavily throttled.

R497/60GB = R8.28/GB

You may want to complain about it, chuck your toys out the cot and move elsewhere, but you’re complaining about absolutely nothing… because nothing has changed.

huh

In fact, very little at all could have changed.

All that these companies are doing is selling you the same package from their premium uncapped accounts, but they’re charging you more for it. MWEB was the first to realize this, and others quickly followed suit.  None of you heavies will realize this until it’s too late, but for those of us who download less than 60GB a month, this is perfect.

If you want to complain, it will get you <-this-> far, I can guarantee you. Now will you people please rejoice for internet that costs less than R10 a GB?

Posted by Wesley Mar 31, 2010
10 Comments

The terror of redesign

Arguably one of the most difficult skills that a game designer can learn is the ability to duly cut something from a game. This isn’t simply about minimalism, or dropping features due to time constraints: no, this is all about hunting down and removing a piece of your own hard work from a project because the core idea unavoidably sucks.

We all hate undoing any sort of work that we’ve put time and effort into, but it’s something that’s important in just about all aspects of life. Writing several drafts of an essay can improve the final script, graphic designers often make multiple concept drawings for a single image and even scientists needs to be open to scrapping older theories in favour of newer, more accurate knowledge models.

Some game developers, however, seem to consider themselves exempt from this particular consideration: they hold the strange belief that once any given feature makes it into a game, that feature needs to stay there indefinitely. Somehow, subsequent versions of the game need to work around said feature’s flaw and turn it into an asset — after all, the more direct route of completely removing the feature would be too painful to even consider.

"The Team Fortress Engineer: always accept the possibility of your hard work being completely *obliterated*."

"The Team Fortress Engineer: always accept the possibility of your hard work being completely *obliterated*."

Fair enough. It’s difficult to kill one’s darlings, even for those who know that it may well be the right thing to do. We all have bad ideas from time to time, and such ideas can vary in scope: maybe it’s an errant menu option, or an unwanted enemy type, or even an entire section of the game. Of course, the size doesn’t really matter — if it turns out that an idea is well and truly poor, it’s time to throw it into the garbage compactor.

Many games go through an initial expansion phase, particularly if they’re complex or experimental in nature: early builds will attempt as many ideas as possible, usually because the best way to test an idea’s effectiveness is to simply code it in and see how it turns out. Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, a massively popular Roguelike which has been in development for years, has taken this approach in many areas. This expansion, however, is tempered by an overall tightening of the design: along with every new feature added, the devs also remove classes, races, status effect groups and even entire spell trees — some of which have been in the game for a very long time.

Some players occasionally complain about the losses, but on the whole they tend to work towards a better game experience: even though the version number is at a mere 0.6, DCSS is successfully trimming a whole whack of game fat from its overall package.

Don’t be afraid of revising your own games: accept feedback intelligently, establish your project’s weak points and ask yourself honestly whether you can salvage them, or whether you need to remove them entirely. Remember that a wooden raft held together by frayed ropes is destined for trouble no matter how tough the wood may be. Strengthen your own raft by finding those weak points and replacing them with something better.

Posted by Rodain Joubert Mar 31, 2010
0 Comments

Win a StarCraft II beta access key!

Things are finally starting to settle down with the website move. We’ve had some hiccups, and are still fighting with the forums, but things will eventually be completely sorted out [Update: the forums are now up and running again]. To celebrate our near-success, we are offering you a chance to get in on the hottest RTS experience of the year: the StarCraft II beta. We have seven beta access keys to give away.

Here’s what you need to do: send an email to [Update, the competition is now closed] detailing why you deserve this prize more than anyone else on the whole planet. It could be anything from a simple sentence to a 20-page essay. Points will be awarded for creativity, humour, drama or anything else that stands out from the crowd, so don’t be shy. To get you in on the action as soon as possible, we’re going to run this competition for two weeks only.

Please pay attention to the following:

  • You will need to be able to download the client which weighs in at around 1.8GB. You also need permanent internet access to use the beta, as it’s multiplayer and online-only. If you ask very nicely, we may burn a disc for you with the client, but you’ll have to come to our offices in JHB to fetch it.
  • Entries are open to anyone from anywhere in the world.
  • Entries close on the 14th of April at 24:00 GMT+2.
  • Winners will be selected shortly after the due date and announced on the website. You will receive an email with the details if you’re selected as a winner.

StarCraft II

Posted by Geoff Burrows Mar 30, 2010
1 Comment

Positing on the possibility of the Xbox 360 Slim

Following on the rumours of a possible announcement of a “slim” version of the Xbox 360 some time this year, some zealous fans over at IGN decided to present their idea of what it might look like – not just fantastic, fan-boy dreams, but actual conclusions they’ve drawn from the rumours, correlating that info with what is also rumoured to be in the next Xbox 360 system software update. It’s an interesting  read, so check it out here, if you’re interested. But this is the basic idea:
25_04 Image

Seems they want a disc-gobbling tray like the PS3. Let's hope that, if this machine does exist, that they'll replace the cheap and nasty disc drive while they're at it.

Posted by Matthew Vice Mar 25, 2010
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Review: Simon the Sorcerer 5

Developer: Silver Style Entertainment
Publisher: The Games Company
Platforms: PC
Website: simon-the-sorcerer-5.com

There is, and possibly always will be, a soft spot in my heart for Simon the Sorcerer. In the not-too-long-ago when I was a rebellious, adolescent know-it-all, there was nothing quite like putting myself in the adventure gaming shoes of a rebellious, adolescent know-it-all who also just happened to be a wizard. At the time, Simon represented everything that was against heroic fantasy archetypes: he was cynical, insulting, juvenile and behaved like an all-round dick to just about everybody he met.

Of course, whether through the march of technology, the change of hands in developers, or the pressure of maintaining the high bar set by the original games, the latest offering just doesn’t meet expectations. It’s by no means an awful adventure game (it’s far better than Simon 3D, at least), but in contrast to the wit and depth presented by the likes of Simon 1 and its sequel, this particular addition to the series appears to be rather camp.

Simon the Sorceror 5

On the left: our hero. On the right: Bloody annoying green thing.

In terms of the plot, things get rather strange rather quickly. Aliens have invaded Simon’s fantasy world, stolen his girlfriend and attacked everything in sight with what appears to be weaponry powered by bad luck. Naturally, it’s up to Simon to Save The Day™ and restore the world to his satisfaction so that he can go back to watching TV and getting pizza stains on his wizard robes. His use of actual magic in the process is rather limited, but he makes up for his ineptitude by constructing zany contraptions in true adventure gaming spirit while verbally abusing anyone who gets in his way.

The length of the game is decent, though the ease of many puzzles and the rather extensive hint system would probably appeal to casual players more than adventure genre veterans. The exception to this is one or two puzzles which seem to have rather odd solutions, and it seems that they’d be figured out only with a bit of luck or a rather detailed hint peek.

Simon the Sorcerer 5

Funnily enough, this robot was one of the more charming and expressive characters in the game.

The game’s art style is pretty in its own way (they make 2D backdrops and outlined characters look pretty good, actually), but the characters can either be unambiguously forgettable or cringe-inducingly awful. Dialogues are painful barrages of clichés mingled with limp filler statements, and some voices (such as that of the swampling) will practically grate at your inner ear with their strained falsetto glory. Even Simon, a protagonist who I’ve come to associate with a keen wit and a sharp tongue thanks to previous titles, is now limited to pithy statements and the occasional half-arsed insult. I’d be tempted to forgive the speech as it has doubtlessly lost some impact from the original German (the developers of Simon 4 and 5 are based in Berlin), but it’s fair to say that it still affects the audience.

Overall, it would be difficult to call this is an awful game. That is not the case. It’s technically sound, the puzzles are reasonably well put-together and even the story manages to draw you in after a while. It just seems that so much more can be done with it to make it stand out in the same way that the original games did back in their day. Without this magical ingredient, this passion… well, Simon becomes the star of just another adventure game, rather than an in-your-face antihero of the teenage generation.

Posted by Rodain Joubert Mar 25, 2010
0 Comments

The Top 50 PS3 Games

OK, here we go with another one of my favourites, a list on yet another cream of some crop or another – in this case, the Top 50 PS3 Games. I remember the PS3′s first year, when it was hard to imagine the machine would ever have that many games. Well, those days are behind us now, and the PS3 is pumping now. So which games pump the hardest on the machine? Surprisingly, the top of the list doesn’t contain mostly exclusives, as you might at first think. Some choices are obvious, others I was actually surprised to see on the list. Anyway, check it out here.

And the winner is.... of course, Uncharted 2. And it's hard to argue.

And the winner is.... of course, Uncharted 2. And it's hard to argue.

Posted by Matthew Vice Mar 24, 2010
0 Comments

NAG April 2010 issue

We’re old! 12 years-old, in fact. It’s our birthday issue, but don’t send through those gifts just yet; we’re going to do that for you instead. Everything is better: 16 additional pages of pure awesome, a jump to the A4 format which means bigger screenshots and other additional awesome, a very special cover (you’ll have to see it to really get what I mean). Eight previews, nine reviews and some amazing features, including our hands-on impressions of the StarCraft II beta, Blur and our God of War III review, fill out the gaming section. On the hardware side of things, we peer into the BlackBerry App World, the Athlon X3 425, the Eurocom W870CU Cheetah gaming notebook and, of course, a massive feature on the NVIDIA GF100. There are tons of changes from the tiny to the huge; don’t miss out!

The April issue will be on shelf on the 25th of March.

NAG April 2010

Click here for the contents PDF [218KB]

Posted by Geoff Burrows Mar 24, 2010
2 Comments

Notice: NAG Online is moving (soon)

You may have noticed that we’ve had a severe lack of content these last few days. The reason behind this is the upcoming move: NAG Online will (hopefully soon) be moving to the address www.nag.co.za. Unfortunately, there have been a lot of unforeseen hiccups causing all sorts of delays, and ultimately our content is suffering because of it. Rest assured: we will have everything sorted out and back to normal as soon as possible. We apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused; we’ll keep you all posted with the status as soon as we know for certain what’s happening. This should have all happened last week, but hopefully we’ll have it all sorted out by the end of this week.

As soon as we’re up and running, the regular content will make a return and we’re going to run a killer competition with a truly awesome prize (a few, actually). Here’s a hint:

o.O?

Stay tuned for more updates!

Posted by Geoff Burrows Mar 23, 2010
0 Comments

Sid Meier comments on gamer psychology

Master game creator Sid Meier gave a speech not too long ago about what he’s learned about gamer psychology during his career. He was probably avoiding using the term “gamer psychosis”, which would have probably been more to the point, in my opinion. Among his observations is the important discovery that gamers seldom act logically within a game, no matter what kind of game they’re playing. He then went on to mention all kinds of points about game difficulty and so on. It’s quite interesting, particularly if you’re interested in game development. Check it out here.

Civilization
Posted by Matthew Vice Mar 16, 2010
0 Comments

Retro review: Castles 1 + 2

Developer: Quicksilver Software
Publisher: Interplay
Year: 1991
Genre: Strategy
Availability:For Sale getitatgog

Castles are quite possibly the coolest buildings in existence, bar none. They’re those eponymous war huts which feature in just about every medieval fantasy you’d care to mention, from the romantic ramparts of a Cinderella story to the Gothic depths of Dracula’s Castlevania abode.

In post-Dark Ages Europe, they were astounding feats of deadly engineering and careful co-ordination which could break Viking armies and bankrupt paranoid noblemen. Killer moats, boiling oil and murder holes were just a few of the traits which could turn an entire structure into its own freaking weapon.

You can even name your castle "awesome." How awesome is that?

You can even name your castle "awesome." How awesome is that?

Long before the Stronghold series emerged in the first tentative years of the new millennium, a bunch of really awesome developers decided to create a DOS-based game called Castles. It was awesome. It put you in the role of an awesome king who built awesome castles and got into awesome battles with awesome armies while basically engaging in a whole bunch of awesome management tasks like raising taxes and executing annoying people.

It's role-playing time!

It's role-playing time!

Nearly two decades later, the game is still a strong representation of how fun an oldschool strategy/building title can be. It balances castle construction chores with a simple (yet interesting) combat system, some pretty juicy medieval politics and randomly-generated plotlines which add a huge whack of flavour to the whole experience.

Most of the game is spent managing the labour mix of your workforce, assigning sections of the castle to be worked on, fending off bunches of angry Celts (those darn Celts) and making sure that you can pay, feed and protect everybody given only the paltry funds available to you. At the same time you’ll grant audience to a whole variety of interesting characters who can affect your kingdom: from bumbling dukes requesting aid in military campaigns to malevolent sorcerers bent on destroying you. The decisions you make in these encounters can have a startling — and sometimes detrimental — effect on your castle-building progress.

The second game in the series, Siege and Conquest, is just as strong an offering, though it focuses more on territory acquisition and less on the minutiae of individual fortresses. While balancing resources, maintaining shaky alliances and carving out your own zones of military conquest, you need to compete against several other lords for the throne of Bretagne by expanding your empire and earning the pope’s blessing.

Colourful, crisp and classy -- the sort of strategy title you can easily get into.

Colourful, crisp and classy -- the sort of strategy title you can easily get into.

Compared to most sim-like titles reviewed on this site, the Castles games are startlingly lightweight — which can either be considered a boon or a curse. There’s not a hundred and one structure types to choose from and both titles have the extent of their functionality contained within a few tabs, which opens them up to the risk of monotony for hardcore genre enthusiasts. More casual players, however, will love spending time with their miniature armies of soldiers and workers as they go about stomping the king’s stone-and-mortar authority all over the countryside.

If you’re a fan of the Stronghold series and wonder what its grandparents would have looked like, get this two-in-one deal and try them both. They’re quite an odd couple, but each can easily be considered heroes of the late DOS generation in their own ways.

Posted by Rodain Joubert Mar 16, 2010
0 Comments
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