Oh EA, you money-greedy bastards. ):

[Immortelle]

karma catches up with everyone eventually.  Its the reason why I'm always so 'meh' about people who've hurt me.  They'll get whats coming to them in the end, so, whatever.

[SoggyFox]

This is true, and if you want to speed Karma up, you just curse the person to get what exactly they deserve [and if somehow things aren't how they look, its no longer a curse]

[rum nate]

EA has gotten even more greedy not. Reading an article about Madden NFL, they are charging extra for everything. Everything for simple little things to get rid of a one time injury, to boosting your player stats cost. For $5 you get the Elite Status which will let players "access exclusive VIP lobbies, leaderboards and play the all new Elite Gametype," which is essentially a tougher difficulty setting.

I don't play any sports game (I hate most sports period), but it was on Yahoo's front page about extras for Madden costing, and I knew Madden was produced by EA, so I wanted to see what the extras were, and how much they cost.

And for the EA game Skate 2 there was an unlock everything cheat code, which you could by from EA for $5

Link to article here: http://videogames.yahoo.com/events/plugged-in/madden-nfl-10-charges-extra-for-well-everything/1342925


Now, one thing I have not seen anyone report on is the outrage about the Sims Store.

[SoggyFox]

That's because too many gamer sites still act like women [and let's face it, sims is known as a 'woman's' game] don't game, and so don't report much on it.  On the other hand, sports games are nice and manly.  Besides, compared to the sims store, the sports game stuff is a -huge- rip, which is saying a whole lot.

[arathea]

A german game magazine had a review about the EA Store/Exchange. They said in short that Riverview is nice, the store much to expensive and together with the Exchange there is nothing you would miss. - And they said that it looks like EA put popular content like hair in the Store instead in the game to get more money.

Link for all who are able to read german:
http://www.gamestar.de/specials/spiele/1956803/die_sims_3_online_funktionen.html#

[neriana]

99% of gaming sites suck hugely. You can't trust their reviews because the reviewers will get in trouble if they don't like a game whose ads are plastered on the site. They cater specifically to the pseudo-macho sexist homophobic male dorks they think all gamers are. Multiple studies have shown that females make up at least 40% of gamers but those gaming sites are stuck in some neverland locker room filled with boobie pictures and EA cash. Some of the reviewers (almost all of whom are male) might want to change, but the suits, who don't know anything about gaming, won't let them. The sites don't care about consumers anyway, they care about the huge game companies, with EA heading the list.

Some day, game reviewers will get the same kind of clout and independence movie and book reviewers have. Until then I get my reviews and gaming news from certain bloggers and other peoples' posts on forums.

[rum nate]

Multiple studies have shown that females make up at least 40% of gamers but those gaming sites are stuck in some neverland locker room filled with boobie pictures and EA cash.

And isn't that number still growing, because more and more females are getting into different types of games.

[neriana]

Multiple studies have shown that females make up at least 40% of gamers but those gaming sites are stuck in some neverland locker room filled with boobie pictures and EA cash.

And isn't that number still growing, because more and more females are getting into different types of games.

Yep. When I worked in a game store, the only kind of game I could really say I never saw any woman buy for herself was a football game. Women dominated sales of Sims games, but they were also a slight majority in sales of JRPGs, and were about co-equal with men in buying other RPGs, platformers, survival-horror, adventure games, shooters, racing games, and sports games besides basketball, football and boxing. Men were slightly ahead in buying fighting games, and Madden releases were testosterone central.

My own observations obviously don't make for a scientific study. But I also think women buy games online more often than men. It's gotten slightly better recently, but women being treated like garbage when they actually go to a store to purchase a game is still pretty common. And while the employees tend to be better, fellow customers aren't necessarily; being latched onto by some creepy nerd because omg UR A GIRL is not a pleasant experience.

[millahnna]

I worked in a game store in the "hood" and had approximately the same observations.  My theory on why more chicks buy online is more pricing than nerd grope though (at least in my neck of the woods).  I had one middle aged lady come in to buy one some street racing game who said she'd looked online for a "used" price and didn't find any yet so she came there instead.  This was before the EB/GameStop merger and we had a crapload of used games and DVDs at GameStop then. 

The girl nerd discrimination thing was worse there for the employees.  There were three of us chicks (me the punk rock white looking girl, an asian tomboy, and a cute little red head rocking some cat eye glasses, all girl nerd stereotypes covered) and customers would frequently request the help of other employees when we'd ask to help them find something. 

Amusingly, we were the only PC gamers in the shop with different areas of expertise so it wasn't uncommon for the idiot customers to get sent back to us anyway.  Bonus points if they had their laptops with them and needed help on an install.  Nothing quite like showing off to smack down a douchbag.  Not that installing a game is really all that hard usually, but still.

[neriana]

We had quite a few customers who insisted the girls who worked at the game store could not possibly play games because we were girls. Women did this at least as often as men did. "Gee, these boys and their games, they're so silly, don't you think?" The gobsmacked look I'd get from those bottle blond trophy wives when I told them I played video games was priceless. (This was not a store in the "hood", it was a store in a very wealthy suburban so-called "community".) And there was one peach of a guy who told us we were lying when my assistant manager and I told him we did play games -- obviously we didn't have any skills, we were just hired to look cute. She was within an inch of throwing him out, till he spotted the guy who was working there that night and glommed onto him. But the customer was looking for a PC game so my coworker had to run back and forth between the idiot and me to figure things out .

Then there were the guys who believed we played games and this was the biggest turn-on of their lives. *shudders*

[millahnna]

You know I only had a few skeevy guys of that variety.  Most of them were more like, "wow that's hot.  SO can you help me figure this out?"  Which I thought was pretty cool.  It was also helpful for increase my upsell figures quite a bit. 

[Immortelle]

Unfortunately it seems that people don't seem to pay much attention to females when it comes to computers.  Its kind of a pet peeve for my, so I'm having to restrain myself from having a heavily explexitive laden rant here.

[Pescado]

Me, I never discuss games or playing them in meatspace, mostly because nobody ever asks. The wife, on the other hand, refuses to discuss the matter with outsiders, dismissing the conversation as a "dumb male thing". This will do absolutely nothing to stop her from kicking your ass at the game, though.

[SoggyFox]

I was a sculpture/Comp sci major in college before having to move -very- suddenly.  I was writing code on TRS 80s, with the cassette drives.  I used to get the -old- computer kits for doing punch card computing, as a kid, before there were anything beyond mainframes, really.

And I've played in arcades.

Oddly, in my part of the southeast, it seems gamer chicks are far more accepted.  Or maybe its just going to the store with guys, who have no problems going to the female employees and asking questions.  But its the same way with the other big Geek activity, pnp RPGs.  Guys took the longest to realize women can game, and I've actually been kicked from a game group because half the guys were macho pigs and the other half were tired of listening to the macho pigs treating me like crap for being the one female in the group.

[neriana]

I've actually been kicked from a game group because half the guys were macho pigs and the other half were tired of listening to the macho pigs treating me like crap for being the one female in the group

So half were macho pigs and the other half were cowardly assholes without the guts to tell the macho pigs were to go? And you wanted to play with these jackasses why?

I still don't know where people find these men.