DanWhitehead • Comments

• Nintendo now claiming ad revenue for YouTube Let's Play videos

• DanWhitehead 17/05/2013

  @skunkfish
  
  "I would suspect that the commercial nature in this case goes against 'fair use'."
  
  It shouldn't do. Everyone is proceeding under the assumption that these videos are made by people who are profiting just from putting Nintendo's content up on YouTube. They aren't - or the vast majority of them aren't. They're putting GAMES CONTENT up on YouTube. Nobody would argue that Eurogamer - a commercial venture - owes Nintendo all its ad revenue when we run articles that use Nintendo's content. This is no different. It's just these uploaders are almost all amateurs, and the content is them talking over a video.
  
  This is a case of old law crashing into new media, and Nintendo has picked the wrong side. Reply +5

• DanWhitehead 17/05/2013

  @Faramis
  
  "Of course, it is their IP, they have right to demand some kind of revenue from it..."
  
  I'm not sure they do. Fair Use ensures that everyone is free to use sections of a copyrighted work for the purposes of criticism or commentary. As long as you're not streaming the whole game and claiming authorship, a Let's Play video should fall under that. It's like a publisher saying that a games website should hand over all its ad revenue because it used their screenshots. Reply +4

• Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon review

• DanWhitehead 01/05/2013

  @SaintDaveUK That's actually a fantastic comparison, and as a huge fan of Timesplitters 2 I'm ashamed it didn't occur to me. The two games definitely have a lot in common. Reply 0

• Among the Sleep crawls to Kickstarter

• DanWhitehead 19/04/2013

  It's the Jack the Nipper remake I've been waiting for. Reply +1

• Molyneux adds option to re-grow Curiosity cube

• DanWhitehead 19/04/2013

  Reply +30

• Team Bondi staff sacked, Whore of the Orient development on hold - report

• DanWhitehead 18/04/2013

  @X201 I think "fired" would be the one most applicable to misconduct. "Get the sack" likely derives from the days when tradesmen carried their own tools from job to job in a bag. When they were no longer required, they were literally "given the sack" so they could move on.
  
  THIS HAS BEEN YOUR THURSDAY MORNING DOSE OF LINGUISTIC PEDANTRY. Reply +37

• Saturday Soapbox: The high cost of free-to-play

• DanWhitehead 13/04/2013

  @solidsnakeckw That's basically the idea behind the rather fun satirical XBLIG title DLC Quest - http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-GB/Product/DLC-Quest/66acd000-77fe-1000-9115-d802585509c7 Reply 0

• DanWhitehead 13/04/2013

  @Bluetooth "You can equate this to the old arcade machines "back in my day" (I'm still youngm dammit!)... but the key difference is that when you put that £1 coin for another go, it was physical money. The same money that you knew would prevent you from buying other stuff."
  
  The key difference, I think, is that the value of the money spent depended on your skill. As you got better at the game, the less coins you had to put in the slot. Not to mention, the price stayed the same - pressing continue for the fifth time did not cost ten times as much as the first.
  
  Also, they had, you know, gameplay.
  
  So while there are similarities in the way they could eat away at your pocket money, the psychology was very different. Reply +7

• DanWhitehead 13/04/2013

  @Master09 I'm wary of slippery slope arguments, but it's clear that the microtransactions in Dead Space 3 were a tentative toe dipped into a much larger pool. If sales for DS3 were disappointing, as rumoured, but the figures showed people were willing to buy unnecessary in-game upgrades then you can guarantee there are numbers being crunched to see how much they could make if the game was free and the upgrades were necessary. Then it becomes a question of how the game can be designed to nudge the player towards making a payment. Then more payments. And more. Traditional retail doesn't work any more. F2P is seen as a license to print money. These are conversations that are happening, I guarantee it. Reply +29

• Nintendo shutting down Wii channels and online services

• DanWhitehead 12/04/2013

  said Mario.

  This killed me. Reply +41

• Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon has cybersharks and mutant cassowarys

• DanWhitehead 11/04/2013

  Did he really just call Robocop and The Terminator "shitty action movies"? Because if so... Reply +69

• Defiance TV pilot review

• DanWhitehead 09/04/2013

  @Blammo72 I've been the TV critic for Big Issue In The North for six years, and wrote for DVD & Blu-ray Review from 2007 to 2011, if that helps convince you. Reply +49

• Battleblock Theater review

• DanWhitehead 04/04/2013

  @monty_79 It's published by Microsoft, so very unlikely. Reply +1

• Creepy Watson to return in Sherlock Holmes' Crimes & Punishments

• DanWhitehead 02/04/2013

  @Cjail It's very good! I played it last month and had a great time with it. A couple of wonky puzzles, as always, but if you enjoyed the previous Holmes games there's a lot to like. Reply +1

• Zombies Ate My Neighbors retrospective

• DanWhitehead 31/03/2013

  @grassyknoll It was definitely released on the Wii Virtual Console, because I still remember the girlish scream of excitement I gave when I saw it there. Reply +6

• Army of Two: The Devil's Cartel review

• DanWhitehead 28/03/2013

  @BigDannyH I was tempted. Reply +3

• All the world's a playground: Tiny Games heads to Kickstarter

• DanWhitehead 22/03/2013

  Parents buy books full of simple everyday activities and games for kids all the time. Why not have a digital version? Reply +3

• Watch five of us play Gears of War: Judgment live from 8.30pm GMT

• DanWhitehead 20/03/2013

  @Snake_2011 As LeSpank has pointed out, you can pay for Double XP tickets but leveling up doesn't grant any gameplay benefit. A Level 50 player has the exact same weapons and abilities as a Level 1 player.
  
  It makes those micro-transactions more than a little weird and pointless, but it certainly doesn't impact the gameplay. Reply 0

• DanWhitehead 20/03/2013

  @Snake_2011 There's no "pay to win" in Gears. Reply +1

• Gears of War: Judgment review

• DanWhitehead 18/03/2013

  @SheffAl On normal difficulty it's around six or seven hours, but there's also the Aftermath bonus campaign which can last another few hours. Reply +7

• Code Britannia: Sandy White

• DanWhitehead 08/03/2013

  @PAG72 The Speccy didn't come out until 1982, and Jetpac and Ant Attack were both 1983. You may be younger than you thought! Reply +4

• DanWhitehead 08/03/2013

  @jamyskis Durell is actually still going - http://www.durell.co.uk/ - though now it makes financial software rather than games about dragons, ninjas and sports cars.
  
  I did a piece on Turbo Esprit a couple of years ago: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-04-17-turbo-esprit-article
  
  Still my favourite Durell game, though I'll always have a soft spot for the lumbering majesty of Thanatos. Reply +2

• DanWhitehead 08/03/2013

  Yes, dammit, I rescued her!

  Or him.
  
  And on International Women's Day as well, you monster. Reply +10

• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows announced for XBLA, PSN and PC this summer

• DanWhitehead 04/03/2013

  @TheEarlOfZinger Yeah, I have the original Eastman/Laird black and white comics. They're not for little kids, but "extremely violent" is pushing it. They're downright tame compared to today's mainstream superhero comics. Even so, that was decades ago - Turtles is very much a kids franchise today. If anyone paid attention to PEGI ratings, it would be the kiss of death for this game. Reply 0

• DanWhitehead 04/03/2013

  PEGI 16? For a Turtles game? That's insane. Reply +2