Moody Gamer

A company named Stardock, who are behind a game called Sins of a Solar Empire, have made a list that contains what they consider “The Gamer’s Bill of Rights”. Which I have listed here:

1. Gamers shall have the right to return games that don’t work with their computers for a full refund. (Barely any store store around here in Oman does that, though you can exchange with something else)
2. Gamers shall have the right to demand that games be released in a finished state. (This one is much needed since half baked games are the norm these days with lots and sometimes no patches. Must be enforced)
3. Gamers shall have the right to expect meaningful updates after a game’s release. (Yep, no patching something that SHOULD have been working from the start)
4. Gamers shall have the right to demand that download managers and updaters not force themselves to run or be forced to load in order to play a game. (Yep, though such programs are being forced on us and I hope they stop it)
5. Gamers shall have the right to expect that the minimum requirements for a game will mean that the game will play adequately on that computer. (Another true statement, lots of games minimum requirements are really not minimum since they will run the game in a sort of crippled mode)
6. Gamers shall have the right to expect that games won’t install hidden drivers or other potentially harmful software without their consent. (No Starforce or root kits please)
7. Gamers shall have the right to re-download the latest versions of the games they own at any time. (Logical and makes sense)
8. Gamers shall have the right to not be treated as potential criminals by developers or publishers. (Yeah, as in potential pirates I guess)
9. Gamers shall have the right to demand that a single-player game not force them to be connected to the Internet every time they wish to play. (Half-Life 2 and Bioshock anyone!)
10. Gamers shall have the right that games which are installed to the hard drive shall not require a CD/DVD to remain in the drive to play. (Hence will stop many from using Cracks and Mini-Images. It really is annoying to swap CDs/DVDs when someone plays different games)

The list is quite comprehensive and includes a lot of stuff many gamers lack in terms of such rights.

Am sure many will be or already at a phase of either upgrading some parts of their PC or buying a new one completely. Thing is, you only (if you ever do so) go on searching and reading up about new PC components reviews, comparisons and prices when you are about to do such an upgrade or purchase. So the issue is, you tend to lose track of what new products that came after you did the upgrade and it gets boring to do the research again. The time frame from your last upgrade and your new one is usually enough to see one to many generations of new products to show up in the market with new features that you know nothing of because you simply already got your upgrade that does what you expected from it.

Now for casual PC users who surf the net and use MS office, they don’t need to worry much as long as their PC can do the usual stuff. Though for gamers, it is a different story. New games always raise the bar a notch or two higher that require existing hardware to play catch up. Ending up at some point to the need of an upgrade or a totally new PC. I usually do my upgrades yearly, which is sufficient for both my gaming needs and budget. Within that 1 year, graphics card makers (AMD and nVidia) release two generations of cards (usually six month time frame). Now apply that to the processor, memory, storage and other computer components and you will end up with doing a lot of reading. Or simply you can visit Sharky Extreme. The site has three sets of PC building guides tailored for gamers depending on their budget. They got the value range (1000$), the high range (2500$) and the extreme range (4000$). They release updated guides every few months depending on the market. The guide doesn’t tell you how to build the PC though. It just points out the PC components that you need to get to meet your budget and end up with a gaming PC. They sometimes provide more than one option on a certain component to get. For example the processor, they tell you to go for a certain Intel version or the equivalent AMD version.

Of course no guide can be followed 100% but these can be used as good starting points and help minimize the headache to look up on each component. There are many sites on the web that provide such guides but through my experience, Sharky Extreme does it very well. Have a look yourself and see what you think.

You can visit the site here. Navigate to the guides tab and look up the latest guides they have.

Yep, I visited Comex 2008 on first day and went to both Shopper and Business areas. Before I go further, I want to note that I haven’t visited Comex for almost more than 3 years. The Comex today is so small compared to the Comex visits I had before way back. Business has nothing regarding gaming and of course I doubt it will ever will. Though when you think about shopper, you start to imagine some nice selection of computer parts tailored for gamers, cool console stuff or even just games. Though I hardly found any of the above and if I ever found anything, I will find it overpriced (300RO GeForce 9800 GX2 1GB anyone?). Even for the normal computer user, Comex has nothing to offer. It is just a group of local retailers who are trying to sell their stuff at lower (or higher!) prices than normal. Though I did get a chance to play with a fancy (and overly priced) iPhone :D! (Yeah yeah, you can do that at normal phone stores too).

Well, topic of current date is of course Omantel’s new ADSL packages. Which can be found on Omantel’s website. Do note that the upload speeds are not mentioned and that is very important for online gamers (WoW anyone!). Though checking around from various sources, it seems that the 512kbps, 1mbps, 2mbps will have an upload speed of 128kbps while 4mbps and 8mbps will have upload speeds of 256kbps. Which is really bad if you are considering upgrading to one of the higher packages for better online gaming experience. So you either stick with 512/128kbps or just go straight to 4mbps/256kbps.

Personally and from various friends who play online, it seems the move to 512kbps did fix the latency issue that was plaguing many gamers for months. Not because the speed has been bumped up but I think there has been a change in the network setup/configuration that made the latency better. So latencies are in the range of 150-300ms for various online games. Naturally, that depends also on Omantel’s network traffic! With more people moving to the higher packages, the network will be more strained and hence many hops will start dropping data packets leading to higher latencies.

So have latencies improved? yes! Will it stay like this? Only Omantel can decide.

UPDATE: The 8mbps has a 512kbps upload speed. If you are rich and have cash to burn, then go for it.