Schmooples' Den! The DA News Discussion Thread

I think people are mostly trying to extrapolate from those what may show up in the next game...

eh? it wasnt about speculating what will be in the next game or what the story titles meant for the next game, ppl were speculating on the subject matters of the individual stories in the upcoming book. besides speculating is fun so like ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Should "The Art of Dragon Age Inquisition" be included in the list of books?

Sorry.  I must be getting old.  

While not DA-specific (yet), it's probably worth mentioning that EA is moving forward with their cloud-based gaming efforts. They're starting some early playtests with FIFA 19, Titanfall 2, Need for Speed Rivals, and Unravel.

A Learning Journey: Announcing EA’s Cloud Gaming Technical Trial
medium.com/@electronic_Arts/a-learning-journey-announcing-eas-cloud-gaming-technical-trial-cce0cabf2960

Lee Williams @justbiglee
And you can join EA Community Playtesting for a chance to be included in the upcoming EA Cloud Gaming Technical Trial. go.ea.com/cpt

Yeah, I'm no fan of cloud gaming either. Even beyond the issues of connectivity and latency, there's the issues of ownership and any modding outside integrated services. 

While latency or connectivity will remain an issue for many people in the foreseeable future I see this merely as a natural progression of things. Even without any push from game companies this migration was bound to happen sooner or later, because we see it happening everywhere. The modding scene will remain probably the most impeded by cloud services on the short run, but given how mods have been decisively proven to extend the life of (mostly SP so far) games we know that programmers are working on cloud games moddability as well, so... it remains to be seen how progress on this field will influence this particular landscape.

Plus, we never own a copy of a game or any other IP, regardless what we bought it on. So there really is no issue of ownership - at best it's an issue of access to the copy we own and whether there are any impediments to us enjoying it whenever we want to... which was always an issue. I, for one, am happy to leave scratchy DVDs behind and release some space on my disc drives and hope that times when broadband Internet access will be a basic human right across the globe aren't far in the future.

You don't technically own anything on that CD. That's just a copy of intellectual property you technically lend. It's the same with any movie or other content that is copyrighted. It's null and void the moment DVD gets damaged or serial number gets lost or revoked. Dunno about you, but so far I've lost games on DRM free DVDs and none on Steam or other digital platforms.

None of the mediums is permanent, so for me the concern with 'what will happen to the library of your games when Steam disappears one day?' is a weird one anyway. There were times I've almost lost all drives with ALL my years of digital artwork just because of freak synchronous disc drive failure that wiped my backup files as well. I only got them back by a small miracle, so I definitely know just how fleeting this stuff is and how illusory the permanence of it is.

And now even copies of stuff I bought on CD/DVDs long ago I usually don't bother finding that physical copy of again. I just search and download stuff from the Web, as my DVD reader isn't even attached (I don't remember when I've last used it) and it's quickly becoming an antiquity anyway. Many new computers don't have them already. And Internet connectivity won't be going away anytime soon - in fact it'll be getting more and more integral to most stuff we do.

Plus, most people are already used to consuming media via 2nd/3rd party services (Netflix, anyone?). This trend won't cease just because some think games can somehow stop in time instead of using Internet connectivity for more than just making sure everybody bought their copies legally.

Plus, people run their own servers for online games they want to keep around - and where there's demand, there's supply to meet it, especially if connectivity keeps increasing on the globe. It's not hard to predict a lot more digital services offering access to vast game libraries, online or SP, popping up everywhere from right about now.

*shrugs*

As long as cloud gaming isn't replacing the current practice of downloading games to your PC, who cares?

And anything I ever bought on GOG will keep working as long as I keep my backups.

I wouldn't be surprised if they put DA4 in this cloud gaming service.

Depends on which company we're talking about. GameStop workers aren't on EA's payroll in the first place. Well, except in the sense that their salaries are paid from the retailer split.

Overall it'll be a net loss of jobs, sure. Even if EA gets to do more stuff this way, that won't mean as much headcount as goes away when gaming retail dies.

While not strictly DA-related...

EA: THE GAMESCOM PLAYER COUNCIL
Healthy Communities Player Council Established | First Community Roundtable Held at gamescom
www.ea.com/news/building-healthy-communities-player-council?utm_campaign=ea_hd_ww_ic_ic_twt_bhcpc-09102019-tw&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&cid=59867&ts=1568135395510