Productive weekend part 2
Posted by: sharnajackson in Semi-related musings, Techniques and ElementsI also completed parts I and II of MSN’s Conspiracy in a few hours.
It’s a pretty standard Adventure/Point and Click game – my favourite genre. A friend of yours, a proffesor has been abducted so you go to his house, with your colleague (and lover, apparently) Anna, to solve a range of puzzles, using their search facility.
The game is alright, but Anna spoonfeeds helps you look in the right place, by actually telling you what you need to. I have to say, if I completed both parts in around 6 hours, its too easy. But the activities where good, and commerically, it did make good use of Live Search. However, I was tempted to Google. Habit, I guess.
Another thing – as the games get older, and players write about the games on line, you inadvertantely come across walkthroughs if you type in the clues you have. I did have to do a few rapid scroll downs. Arggghh, my eyes! I don’t want the answers.
So this made me think of all the adventure games I wanted to complete/start:
- Broken Sword (the last one)
- Grim Fandango
- The 7th Guest
- 11th Hour
- Maniac Mansion
- Monkey Island (all of them)
- Evidence: The Last Report (This game is a sore point in our family – isn’t it)
- In Memoriam - I’ve never seen this one before until today, its an ARG apparently. This is on the wish list for payday, and will hopefully do a study of it – seeing how the ‘CD-ROM’ model works. First impressions for use in an educational context – not sure, on a practical level. Who owns the CD? Do you need to order one for each student? Would it need to be installed on every computer in the school? Does anyone have any thoughts on this?
Entries (RSS)
August 7th, 2007 at 7:53 am
Who owns the CD? It’s not really important. You’d have to enquire about how the software is licensed. The publishers would most likely charge a set fee for 1 license when you purchase the CD. If you wanted to use it in a whole school they may charge a smaller fee per person or charge a bigger fee for a site license.
If you think of an office environment, 100 people all have a copy of Microsoft Office but there is only 1 CD and 1 Product Key. The company would have paid a set fee which is negotiable (much less than 100 * 1 license) and they then have permission to install Microsoft Office on 100 PCs.
The physical media (CD/DVD) distribution method will eventually be replaced now that fast internet connections are available pretty much anywhere (iTunes replacing HMV etc.).
There are limitations with physical distribution compared to networked distribution
- Manufacturing costs of the discs/case/paperwork is passed on to the customer.
- Archival costs for the customer. Where do you store copies of the discs?
- Quality Control. Any software faults identified after the gold CD is pressed will need to be resolved. Deploying any patches could come at an operating cost to the customer.
Checkout Steam from Valve. It’s a content delivery system for games. Although Steam is not applicable to an education environment, some of the concepts crossover for updating software and wide area game deployment.