UKIE is currently in charge of creating the weekly boxed game charts, and those charts arrive bang on time each and every week. But when it comes to digital downloads sold via the standard PC route (Steam, Direct2Drive, EA Origin, etc.) or via Xbox Live, PSN or Nintendo’s shop channels, well…there’s nothing doing.

The industry has been calling for charts for these (and mobile) platforms for more than TWO YEARS. And nothing has been done.  Nothing visible, at least.

To build a sales chart, you need three things. You need sales data, a way of collating that sales data, and somewhere to publish the results. I can write a sales data collation application (I’ve done a very similar thing for my day job just recently) in just a few days – so someone else could undoubtedly do it quicker – and the UKIE already has somewhere to publish the results – its own website. Once they set that chart live, it takes less than 12 hours for it to filter through the gaming eco-system and get replicated and commented on by hundreds of websites, read by millions of people.

So obtaining sales data is the last step, and that apparently takes two years.

I couldn’t agree less.

The problem apparently, is that not all digital games providers are that happy about handing over their sales numbers. I don’t blame them, given the culture of “build now, rack up tons of debt, one day we might make a profit” that the digital era has ushered in. They don’t want anyone looking up their virtual skirt and seeing that they’ve only sold ten games this week. But there are things that can be done to twist their arm. How about giving away chart sponsorships for free? Every week, a different sales data provider becomes the sponsor of the chart. “UK Digital Game Sales Chart presented by EA Origin” one week, and then “UK Digital Game Sales Chart presented by Direct2Drive” the next. If UKIE added a bit of blurb to the bottom of the chart to show which digital providers are included in the sales rankings, that’d clarify the situation.

Or, how about changing the “Chart Information Copyright UKIE” message and link that is required to be displayed by any content site that wants to republish the chart. How about – and I know this is absolutely WAY OUT THERE – the UKIE adds a second bit of text. “Chart Information Copyright UKIE – UK Digital Game Sales Chart brought to you by EA Origin” – with the words “EA Origin” being a link back to EA. As it currently stands, the standard text is nothing but self-serving nonsense dressed up as an important bit of copyright information. To be fair, it always has been.

That’s just two ideas that I’ve come up with in the space of five minutes. Every digital provider on the planet would jump at the chance of forcing HUNDREDS of websites to link to them on a weekly basis. If they refuse to give up their sales data, UKIE, you could do something other than acting like Mrs. Doyle and repeatedly shouting “ahh, gowan, gowan, gowan, gowan, GO ON!” in their ear.

You can even follow the “build it and they will come” route. Throw out a digital chart that contains the sales data from the companies that you DO have on board. The rest will join. You mark my words. If Microsoft, Nintendo, or Sony have agreed to provide sales data, publish an Xbox Live, Nintendo Shop or PSN chart. The other companies will BEG you to accept their sales data then, so that they aren’t outdone by their rivals.

But it doesn’t surprise me that nothing has happened yet, to be fair. After all, there’s still no Kinect or Move-specific chart going on, and I can’t do something as simple as search the chart archives or build my own chart out of a selection of titles of my choice via the UKIE website. I don’t need to see the actual sales number, fellas, but would it be so hard to provide something where I could throw in forty or so game titles, and have your website instantly rank them in terms of the last week’s sales for me? In short no, it wouldn’t.

Hell, if I could go to their site, type in “Kinect Sports Season Two” and see that product’s chart history, that would be a bonus. Or find out if the Assassin’s Creed games all went to number one on the week of their release. Or see if 505 Games have ever had anything other than Zumba Fitness get into the top 5. Writers, analysts, retail buyers and publishers all want you to acknowledge their presence and act like you aren’t just sat there twiddling your thumbs, UKIE. I see your press releases, I read the articles about people and companies joining you, but I’m heavily embedded into the games industry, and I still don’t really know what it is you actually do – other than put forty numbers in order each week and call it a chart.

Ditch the politics and bureaucracy, guys, dump the excuses, and move into the 21^st century.

Game retail is stuck somewhere back in the 1980s, where mainstream people (and by that, I mean folks who aren’t experts in their field) didn’t have anything like as much choice as they do now. If they wanted to buy the latest Bananarama album, they had to go to somewhere like HMV, Our Price, Woolworth’s, or WH Smith. When they arrived at the store, they’d buy the LP and pay the required price, knowing that nobody else was going to give them all that much of a better deal. There were indie stores sure, but you could never be guaranteed that any of the five or six copies of an album they’d ordered were still in stock.

Now, there are a million reasons why the “take it or leave it” model that used to be used by the big boys simply doesn’t work anymore, and nowhere is that more obvious than at GAME, the UK’s largest chain of specialist videogame stores. Let’s look at a few things they can fix, while I wait for my PS3 to run through another 2-hour system update, shall we?

The Price Is Wrong, Bitch

They aren’t going to like it up at GAME head office, but their prices aren’t exactly conducive to brisk trade. If you can find anything new at less than the RRP in a branch of GAME, then you’re incredibly lucky. Not only that, but the likes of GAME (and the other chain they own, GameStation) seem to think that it’s the norm to charge one price on their website, and an entirely different price in-store.  My local GAME is charging £24.99 for L.A. Noire on Xbox 360. I can buy it from them online (and have it shipped to my house for free) for £21.99. It’s about now that everyone and their dog will chime in with quotes about how retail stores have more in the way of overheads. I know this, really, I do. I also know that if I buy online, it may take a few days for me to actually receive the product.

However, if I go to PC World’s site, I can pick up L.A. Noire on Xbox 360 for £14.97 – which is more realistic, given I only paid £25.99 for it on launch day and its now six months old – and have it shipped to me for free. If I don’t want to wait, I can pay for it online and go and pick it up from their store for the same price. I can choose either for MY convenience, not the convenience of the company.

The fact is that some companies – such as PC World – seem to have realised that their website is actually an extension of their physical business, and therefore a consistent pricing policy across the board can enable them to shift more product. If the customer is in your store, you have the opportunity to upsell their order. If the website gets me to COME to your store, half that battle is already won. People will use your website as a catalogue, to check prices and meander through your product lines at their leisure, before popping in and completing the transaction when they’re out shopping on a Saturday. Failing that, they’ll see the price online, and then rush to your store to buy a game on a Friday evening so they can play it at the weekend, rather than wait for five days for the Post Office to deliver it.

I would have gone to my local GAME and GameStation – where they were flogging preowned copies of L.A. Noire for £4.98 during their sale. I didn’t bother, because both websites quoted me a tenner a pop for the same damned thing. Whilst I was there, I might have picked up a bunch of other things that caught my eye, too, since I’m quite well known for my ridiculous impulse buys.

Any above-cost/above-overheads sale adds to the profits pot. You need to consider the overheads for the business as a WHOLE though, rather than just short-sightedly thinking that “I’m selling this in one of our shops and they cost more to run, so the product has to cost more than it does on our website.”

The GAME Group don’t seem to understand this at all.

Case in point: GAME were charging £42.99 for FIFA 12 on Xbox 360 in-store on the day this was written. Yeah, £42.99. With a “SALE!” sticker on it. Or I can buy it for £30 with free delivery, and get a free Blu-ray of The Karate Kid bundled in from Shopto. (And no, I’m not kidding.)

Service with a Frown

When I walk into my local GAME, I’m immediately pounced upon by some 16-year-old lad who – only doing what he has been told to do by his company’s employee training documents (I believe the one I had to read consisted of Americanised bullshit such as “a retail team is like an F1 racing team, every member needs to do their job to get the car on the fast track to sales excellence” when I worked there) – asks me if I need any help today. He doesn’t know that I have a lot of knowledge of the products that he’s selling, so I flash him a smile and politely say “no thank you, I’m just browsing.”

And at this point, they generally ignore my response and try to push the matter, leaning on me with some stylish patter such as:-

“Browsing for anything in particular? Or…JUST browsing?”

Hang on a second. Why are you taking that tone with me? You know the one, where you sound as if I’m just wasting your time like every other Tom, Dick or Harry that’s walked in today? I didn’t ask for your help. In fact, I actually REJECTED your offer of assistance, you spotty little emo-wannabe.

Today, though, I actually did need something. “I was thinking that I need a new Xbox 360 controller actually. How much are your bog-standard official wireless controllers?”

“We ain’t got any black wireless controllers in at the moment dude, but we do have the new SILVER ones. They’re pretty nice, and they’ve got a D-Pad that switches around for MORE BETTER control.”

At this point, I look over at the controller bay that he’s gesturing towards, and see around 15 brand new black official Microsoft wireless Xbox 360 controllers, hanging up right next to a couple of the new shiny silver ones of which he speaks. Why is he trying to upsell me here? It’s like making a bad bet, and whichever deity you think exists knows, I’ve made enough of those to know what I’m talking about. He could be ringing up a £30 sale right now, but he’s tried to parlay that sale into a £38 spend. He tries to turn me to his way of thinking (by lying about the stock level of the item I actually want, in this case) and ends up losing the sale entirely.

I’ve since bought a new controller online, from one of GAME’s competitors. And I upsold myself to the shiny silver model, because I’m that bloody-minded.

Dude, SWEET?

At what point did it become customary for your staff to address me as “dude”, GAME? I’m dyed and pierced and most people can spare the airs and graces with me, but your staff cannot. When I was behind the counter I wouldn’t have DREAMT of addressing my customer as anything other than “sir” or “madam” when speaking directly to them, or “the lady” or “the gentleman” when I was speaking to a colleague about the customer whilst they were in earshot. It may make me sound a tad old-fashioned but surely, the customer deserves a little bit of respect? “This dude needs a loyalty card” doesn’t really float my boat, brother. The main reason for that, is that I DON’T FUCKING KNOW YOU, SO STOP ACTING AS IF WE’RE BEST MATES.

And…breathe…

Have some damned professionalism. And whilst you’re at it, learn something about the products you’re selling, will you? The “no, you can’t sign up for Call of Duty Elite online, you have to do it here” that I overheard one member of staff telling his customer today was either a straight out lie or the result of an embarrassing lack of knowledge. I’m charitable enough to believe it was the latter. This time.

And to the fine ladies and gentlemen who work at my local GameStation and who know me, I don’t mean you. You can say “OI OI, HERE COMES THAT DODGY LOOKING BASTARD” out loud when I walk in for all I care, since you all rock.

The Customer Is Always Wrong

One way retailers can win my business – and no doubt the business of the friends that I wax lyrical about them to – is by being fair, and listening to me when I have a problem with their service.

As an example, some tracks I imported into Rock Band 3 from Rock Band 1 suddenly stopped working on Tuesday. I emailed Harmonix at 8:12pm, and at 8:34pm they emailed me back apologising for the problem, and provided a voucher code so that I could re-download the faulty tracks. I instantly went online and told everybody what great service they had provided.

But GAME seem to go out of their way to cause problems for the customer, then try to make the customer feel like they’re somehow in the wrong.

I was given a GAME Gift Card for Christmas, and thought I’d pick up a few things online in their sale with it. Nope! Can’t use a GAME Gift Card online. I email them to find out why, they respond with a stock email telling me that its company policy and that the website is different to their shops, and that I can only use the card in-store, where the previously-discussed inflated prices make it technically worth less to me. Super!

I ordered a couple of things online from GAME just before Christmas anyway, which 9 working days after being shipped, have not arrived. I’d say the items have been lost in the post, given that I’ve ordered stuff since Christmas from various places, and they’ve all turned up without issue. I have to wait 15 working days (until Friday 13^th January, in fact) in order to submit a claim. Then, rather than telling them about the problem and letting them sort it, I have to download a Royal Mail lost parcel claim form from the GAME site, print it, fill it in, and then post it back to them. Then – and only then – will they consider replacing my games. Given how long it takes to get an email response from GAME, I’m estimating that a shade over an entire calendar month will have passed before I get to play the games I’ve ordered. Play.com has a lot of faults but to give them their due, if I say an item is missing in the post, they get another one sent to me right away. So do Amazon. So do HMV. You see where I’m going here, GAME? Oh, and none of those stores make me fill out the Royal Mail claim form. They seem to be able to do it themselves.

There’s been an about-turn with regards to the company’s friendly 10-day returns policy in-store, too. I’m not surprised, given the abuse that the system got from the less-honest customers in the world, but we’re talking an absolute 100% about-turn. Now, products (even pre-owned ones) are stored as empty boxes on the shelves (as they always were) then the disc and manual are put in the box at the counter as you go to make your purchase, and a seal is put on the case with a lovely label that says that if the label is broken or removed, you can’t return the game. They might as well be rubber-stamping the phrase “DON’T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT, PIKEY!” on the front of the box.

The Sum of All Things

The simple fact is that no matter what Mary Portas says, she can’t save the unbelievably faceless and soulless GAME. They can save themselves – of this there is no doubt – but given the amount of chances they’ve had to make common-sense decisions that would make their customers happy and (in turn) boost their profits, I don’t think they’ll manage it. It sounds harsh and it would be a shame to see them disappear from our High Streets, but you can almost hear the profits warning alarm starting to wind up. Maybe they should concentrate on downsizing a little. Nobody wants to hear of job losses, but I’m told that Glasgow has four or five branches within a square mile. Exeter has a GAME and a GameStation within 5 minutes’ walk of each other, and the same goes for many other cities in the UK. That’s no way to try to make money.

Just look at the quote they’ve contributed to James’ article this week as a great example. Bear in mind that this is in an article from a friendly industry outlet, and that contains a fair few friendly, knowledgable soundbites from the relevant folks at several large companies:-

“High Street stores play a crucial role for a multichannel retailer. We look forward to continuing this important debate about how best to support them.”

Well done, GAME. You had a an absolute doozie of a chance – people were coming to YOU for your opinion – to make yourself look like less of a faceless corporation to folks in your own industry, and you’ve even fucked THAT up the wall. Best of luck for the future, though.

Order Update

Just for fun, I thought I’d keep track of my missing orders. I’m aware that we’re talking about low value items here. REAL low value in one case. But that isn’t the point. Here’s a brief timeline of how things are going…

23rd December – Placed an order for £7.98 at 11:21am. Found something else I wanted that was ludicrously cheap, so placed another for a whole £0.98 at 11:31am. Did it again (damned sale prices) and placed a third for £7.98 at midday. All items have free shipping. At 2:10pm, I get two emails stating that the two orders for £7.98 have been shipped.

28th December – GAME charges my card for £7.98, and £1.73. Using my reward points to make up the balance, as I asked.

29th December – GAME emails to tell me that the £0.98 order has been cancelled, due to lack of stock. I call GAME and am told that they’ll sort it out. They don’t take any of my order numbers, or account number.

3rd January – I call GAME and ask them if they’re sure the items have been shipped, as they haven’t been billed correctly. Again, nobody takes my order number or account number, and I’m told that they had problems with their payment processor over Christmas – I can just HEAR that he’s lying to get me off the phone – that it’ll all be sorted out, and that I have to wait until January 16th to make a claim for a lost item and that do to so, I have to download a form from their website, fill it in, and post it to them.

6th January – I write this blog post.

11th January – I write a passive-aggressive tweet about not being able to play Rise of Nightmares – one of the games I ordered. GAME Digital respond at 9:07am, asking me for order numbers. I reply, giving them the details. Then, they ask me to give them the order numbers I’ve just given them, only this time via direct message, along with my phone number. Which I do.

12th January – Not heard anything, so I tweeted and asked for an update. “Wine should be in touch today”, apparently. I’ve no idea what that means.

13th January – Still nothing, so I tweet them again. No reply, this time.

14th January – On Monday, it will have been 15 working days since my order was placed, so I’ll be able to submit a lost item claim form. Still no reply from GAME, mind.

16th January – Work scanner isn’t working, so at 1:30pm, I FAXED my “Lost Item Claim Form” to GAME for their perusal. Sent a follow up email too. No reply of any sort by the close of business.

17th January – Two automated emails arrive from GAME, saying that they’ve processed my two refunds. I still haven’t been contacted by customer services, or been offered an apology of any sort. Just stock emails. But, at least I’ve got my money back. Unbelievable lack of customer service on their part.

Summary: Ordered 3 items for a total of £16.94. One item was never billed and then cancelled, two items were billed fine and then lost in the post. They ain’t doing all that well, to be honest. “But sales are down, sales are DOWN! We’re in TROUBLE!” they sing. Yeah, this sort of thing doesn’t help me care, GAME.

They say there’s a struggle between art and commerce. Well, there’s always been a struggle between art and commerce, and now I’m telling you, art is getting its ass kicked, and it’s making us mean, and it’s making us bitchy, it’s making us cheap punks. That’s not who we are. People are having contests to see how much they can be like Donald Trump? We’re eating worms for money. “Who Wants To Screw My Sister?” Guys are getting killed in a war that’s got theme music and a logo.

That remote in your hand is a crack pipe. Oh yeah, every once in a while we pretend to be appalled. It’s pornography, and it’s not even good pornography. They’re just this side of snuff films, and friends, that’s what’s next, ’cause that’s all that’s left.”

– Wes Mendell (Judd Hirsch), Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip

I was reminded of that outstanding speech that kicks off Aaron Sorkin’s excellent and tragically short-lived Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip after seeing this year’s Christmas TV lineup. In short, you’ve got soap operas, and a million Christmas specials featuring everything from Peter Andre to the likes of The Only Way Is Essex and Desperate Scousewives. Now I’ve got nothing against Peter Andre persay, I just don’t really see the attraction in watching someone else plan how they’re going to spend Christmas. I’ve got everything against The Only Way Is Essex, Desperate Scousewives, Made in Chelsea and all those other utterly uninteresting shows about absolute arseholes of the highest order. And for those who claim to watch ironically, at least be honest enough to admit that you watch this shite because you love it.

And ITV2, I’m sorry, but if you splash the phrase “REEM BIRDS!” across my screen one more time, I’m going to start sending you bricks wrapped in pages from the Oxford English Dictionary. “Reem” is not a word (unless you’re so stuck up your own arse that it’s the only thing you can pronounce due to you having a mouthful of your own colon), and if I mentally correct your spellings, what you’re actually telling me to do is have anal sex with a puffin. Before the watershed.

I don’t want to do that. I’m not even going to point out to you that Essex isn’t a direction and therefore there are far more ways than Essex. Even more still, if you work in 3D.

I’ll be playing videogames this year, revisiting some of the games that I’ve missed over the course of the last twelve months. I feel a bit of Lego Pirates of The Caribbean, some apparently cracking Xbox Live Arcade titles that I’ve overlooked, and maybe Forza Motorsport 4 coming on for starters. Oh, and Puss in Boots for Kinect, as everyone says that it’s great and THQ’s ridiculous “first come, first served” review code request list failed me yet again – despite me replying within five minutes. I’m not surprised though really, given that every review code request from THQ this year has gone the same way. A tip for you THQ: If you don’t want me to ask for review code, don’t email me to tell me to ask for review code.

Merry Christmas to you all (and if you’re offended “for religious reasons” at me wishing you a Merry Christmas, please feel free to go and fornicate with yourself – I’m not telling you that you have to go to church or some shit, am I?) and a happy new year!

But mine is not the only site. In this field, there are two or three sites that are competing for visitors and page views, as you’d expect. However, someone mentioned to me the other day that my review scores are considerably lower than the scores posted at the current leading Kinect-specific site. I’m usually bordering on being overly-harsh, but my scores were fair and reflective of each game’s quality, I felt, so I trotted along to see how this other site had rated the games on offer for Microsoft’s motion-sensing marvel.

Here’s how the 56 reviews they’ve written break down.

43 above-average titles (scoring 6/10 or more)

6 average titles (scoring 5/10)

7 below-average titles (scoring 4/10 or less)

Wow.

Bearing in mind that I’d struggle to recommend 10 Kinect titles to a friend and that I’m a reviewer that not only specialises in Kinect titles, but who has played ALL of them, those numbers seem pretty skewed. Reviews are subjective, I agree, but you shouldn’t be able to look at a spade and call it a rake. Unless you haven’t got a rake, and decide to use the edge of a spade in order to till your soil. I digress.

If games that fail to recognise your inputs properly are getting 6 and 7 out of 10, you have a problem. When games that have fundamental, idea-destroying flaws are picking up 8s, something is inherently wrong with your process.

Now, I know it may seem a bit crazy to effectively slate the platform that you’ve all but pledged your allegiance to, but you just HAVE to be realistic. You can’t mislead your readership into thinking that every other title is better than average, just because you want them to adore the platform that you’re supporting. You also can’t give high review scores in order make your readers feel better about a game that they’ve been excited about purchasing. What you also can’t do, is declare a horse that you’ve been backing to be the winner when it’s clearly finishing way down the order. Just because you’ve written 20 preview articles about Licenced Nickelodeon Game #2,832 (because the PR team have sent you 20 different batches of screenshots, spread out over 6 months) doesn’t mean you then HAVE to give the game a high score, lest you look like an idiot for giving it so much pre-launch coverage.

I feel that actually criticising a product is a skill that a lot of reviewers lack, or that they refuse to use. They can talk about the hype preceding the game’s release, talk up the game’s graphics as if they’ve got stocks in NVIDIA, and then suddenly lose their teeth when it comes to pointing out the product’s shortfalls. If you find yourself making excuses for a game-destroying bug in a game that’s been in development for two years, you’re doing it wrong. And no, “I’m sure that Game Publisher X will release a patch or title update soon to fix these issues” isn’t an acceptable way of covering over the problem.

A lot of the issue seems to come from the removal of the game’s notional monetary value. When a reviewer gets a promotional copy of a game to review, it sometimes seems as if they’ll forgive all but the worst problems, simply because the game hasn’t cost them anything. The fact is that to people reading your review, who may spend up to £40 on the game, what you paid for the game means absolutely nothing.

But, more often than not, it’s almost as if they’re scared of telling the truth, just in case they offend someone. Someone who works for a game publisher or for a PR company, perhaps?

I don’t understand. I’m closing in on writing my 1,000th review. Over the course of that time, I’ve been honest, fair, and downright fucking brutal when I’ve had to be, because that’s the only way I can be. In some cases, if a game has a control issue that makes it unplayable, I’ll write 600 words about that control issue, and 200 about the rest of the game. This is because the control issue is the focus point. If you can’t control the game, what game is there to review? How can I recommend it to my readers? How long would that game be in my possession before I’ve taken it back to the store for a refund?

And you know what? Despite my overly-critical and – some would say – unprofessional approach, I’ve had ONE publisher refuse to deal with me because of a review I’d written. And they’re out of business now.

I win.

*5 is the average, since a zero score is possible, even if it’ll never happen in a billion years.

I used to be absolutely addicted to poker. I bought every major poker book and devoured them, but eventually came to the conclusion that whilst I was in love with the game, I couldn’t justify playing eight-hour sessions in the hope of winning a few dollars. So, I looked to video games to satisfy my need to play. Titles such as Daniel Negreanu’s Stacked on the PC and World Championship Poker for XBOX and PS2 didn’t really hit the nail on the head, so I was looking forward to Microsoft’s second attempt at bringing the casino experience to Xbox Live.Full House Poker gives you the chance to play in both single-player and multiplayer tournaments. No money changes hands here, rather you’re playing for ranking points, and in-game unlocks. For this reason, the level of play that occurs when you do take the game online is only a shade above what you’d find in any online poker room’s “play money” section. Players call down your strong bets with any old rags, and the amount of all-in moves made beggars belief.

Offline though, the game performs quite admirably, and can be used as a decent way of keeping your hand in if you decide to take a break from real money online play, or as a nice introduction to the game. Generally, the computer opponents play with a deal of sense, although they will make a couple of wild moves here and there that can – and will – catch you out. The interface works nicely, although there are a couple of bugbears that take some of the excitement out of proceedings. When a player goes all-in and is called, for example, both players stand up and flip their cards up onto the table. The only problem, is that the cards are positioned directly in front of them, and so sit at whatever angle the player is to you – making them hard to read. In a quickfire all-in showdown, you want to see what chances you have, and what you need to see (or avoid) on the turn or river in order to win the hand, but that isn’t to be, here.

To say that ruins the game would be incredibly unfair. Little touches that you wouldn’t see at most online poker sites, such as the ability to pull off chip tricks or fast forward through hands that you aren’t involved in are good to see, and contribute to Full House Poker’s admirable job of providing a fun and challenging way to enjoy the game of poker from the comfort of your sofa. The game’s been out for a fair few months now, and the online contingent is dwindling, but there’s still plenty of fun to be had in the single player action and scheduled Texas Rush tournaments online.

Full House Poker is far from perfect, but when you fancy sitting down and busting through a quick thirty-player tournament before bed, or playing a few hands after work without having to log on to one of the dog-eat-dog online casinos out there, it does a stand-up job.

If you don’t know, “The Run” is a race across America, featuring a couple of hundred racers. Split into ten stages which are further split into a few events apiece, the contest as a whole is immediately limited by the fact that you can never progress any faster or slower than the game allows you to. Starting in 250^th position, one stage challenges you to pass ten cars by the time you’ve driven five miles. Any less and you’ve failed, causing you to have to restart. Any more than that and…well, that’s never going to happen, since there aren’t any more cars to pass. If you pass ten cars, there’s nothing but open road ahead until you complete the event.

So, that’s a great concept instantly crippled in order to extend the potential gameplay time. To three hours.

However, I soldiered on. In every race, I had the feeling that something was wrong with the game’s AI. Sometimes, I’d force a rival car to drive head-on into a civilian car and then get overtaken by that same rival at the very next corner, no more than five seconds later. Another time, I’d force an opponent into a head-on crash, and watch as the time between us increased as it should and I would close in on the remaining cars I had to pass. It didn’t make any sense.

Then I reached the final level, and it all clicked into place. Without giving anything away, the final level is designed to be an action-packed race to the finish, between you and the current race leader. You speed through the New York streets and back alleys, avoiding traffic and trying to keep up with your rival. It’s exhilarating stuff. Then, halfway through the event a cutscene kicks in and no matter what happens, you’re brought back to being neck and neck with your opponent. It doesn’t matter if you’re ten seconds ahead or a twenty behind, you’re now on level pegging – meaning that the first half of the race is an absolute waste of time.

After the cutscene, I crashed and burned a few times, so on my third attempt at completing the stage I drove more conservatively. This time, I cleared the section after the cutscene, and was heading toward the finish line. A tricky set of turns loomed into view, I slowed down again, and then ended up facing a wall somehow. Parked up, I noticed as for every fifteen seconds I was stationary, my opponent was only pulling away by one. How does that work?

I wondered if the same thing applied to earlier stages of the game, so I headed back and tested the theory. Lo and behold, they’re identical. On most – not all, I grant you – levels, you can come to a full stop for ten seconds, and still win the event, as the developers have made it so that poor little you can’t be beaten TOO badly. That’s if you lose at all, of course. Everything is geared towards close finishes. If you’re ahead with half a mile to go, the opposition speeds up. If you’re behind with half a mile to go, they slow down. There’s something oddly unsettling about being in a car that’s just overtaken ten other racers, belting away down a straight piece of road at top speed with nitrous burn billowing out of the exhaust, knowing that someone in an identical car is eating away at your lead. There’s nothing you can do here, other than to attempt to block the opponent – and that’s what the game wants you to do, to make things more…exciting.

What’s exciting about it?

What’s exciting about knowing that no matter how well or badly I play for 90% of the race, the outcome is going to be pretty much the same?

In short, I’m not excited when I can’t do anything about my opponents being better than me, or when a game gives me so much assistance that I don’t even need to really concentrate.

If I’m playing against another player who’s vastly better than I am at a game, I can practice. I might know that I’ll never be good enough to beat him, but I’ll have a damn good go at it. The challenge and the excitement comes from my skill – or lack of it – and it seems that more and more often when I spend £40 on a game, my skill doesn’t really even come into it. Back in the 16-bit days (cue the “rose-tinted spectacles” music, would you?) you used to be able to buy a game and be uncertain that you’d finish it. Maybe that final level would be too hard. Maybe you don’t have the hand/eye coordination to defeat that final boss. Maybe, just maybe, you’d have to put some work in, become better at the game, and seeing those credits roll would be your reward.

Those were the days.

The reason? None of the available games are “hardcore” enough for them.

When it comes to the way in which we control games, a decent percentage of us dismiss the idea of motion gaming out of hand, deeming devices such as the Wiimote, Move Controller and Kinect to be nothing more than children’s toys. Products that – in the view of the sneering naysayer – every parent and teenage girl in the country is liable to own by the end of the year, given their inferior knowledge of gaming. This group of players won’t be associated with any such device, and they certainly won’t buy one. What they will do though, is sit up on their high horse and throw buckets of abuse at those who have taken the plunge, or who dare to claim that – shock, horror – they actually enjoy playing Dance Central or Kinect Sports.

I contest that this percentage of people may well be the sort of people who will complete Hyperdimension Neptunia on the PS3 in less than five hours, but that they aren’t hardcore gamers at all. Not only that, but I contest that they fail to understand the industry that they claim to be on the bleeding edge of in the slightest.

I don’t really know what they expected from Kinect, to be frank. Did we really ever imagine a first-person shooter working well without buttons or peripherals? How about a driving simulation game? A platformer such as Banjo-Kazooie, perhaps? Realistically, there’s no conceivable way that many of the tried and tested videogame genres will be able to make the jump to Kinect with any success, but given that we can play thousands of games set in those baseline genres on the Xbox 360 anyway, does it really matter? Kinect is being used to generate new and innovative experiences, and in my eyes, that’s a good thing.

Gamers – TRUE gamers – actually WANT new experiences. Consider for a second, if you will, why it is that year after year, we all flock to the stores to buy the latest Call of Duty title, or FIFA, or Need for Speed? If playing the first Need for Speed: Underground was good enough for most gamers to enjoy for twelve months, why would they go and waste money on another game that’s essentially the same no more than three months later? Hell, go back further! Why aren’t we still playing Chase H.Q. on the 2011 reboot of the Sega Master System? It was released to rave reviews back in 1988 and is a fantastic game, after all. The reason – as if it wasn’t obvious – is that we’re looking for something better, something more realistic and most importantly, something different. Each year, we open our wallets and hand over bundles of hard-earned money to see if the developers of our favourite franchises have created the game that we ourselves would have created, had we the skill and the chance. We take risks on buying new titles such as Brink, Vanquish, L.A. Noire, RAGE, Split/Second, and Enslaved, in the hope that the games in question will provide interesting and exciting new experiences that not only provide entertainment, but that further our videogame education.

Interesting new methods of control are an incredibly good way of providing new experiences – much better than polishing up a product’s graphics for the fourteenth year in a row, that’s for sure – and to pooh-pooh the idea of getting off your backside and moving about in front of the TV screen in order to play a game, JUST because you consider something to be beneath you and your skills, is to deny yourself those opportunities as a gamer. I don’t really see how you can call yourself a hardcore gamer, if you’ve never used a motion gaming product for any longer than five minutes. It may well be that you do end up thinking that Kinect is nothing but a child’s toy, but how do you know until you get in an actually use it? And if you’re the type of gamer that spends all year getting positively horny at the thought of a new Call of Duty game – with that game being the only one you’ll buy all year – I don’t see how you’ve got room to even comment.

So, to that hardcore gaming crowd who take a potshot at Kinect every time it’s mentioned, I do nothing other than turn my back. If – in your eyes – playing Kinect, Move, or indeed some of the more casual titles on the Nintendo Wii is enough to disqualify me from your ranks, then so be it. If you get a cheap thrill from leering down your nose at me and my like and branding me a “casual” gamer, then go to it. If that’s the worst I have to put up with in order to have the opportunity to take on new gaming experiences as and when they arrive, then I’m more than happy with that.

Whatever your reasoning, I’m hoping to draw on my experience of editing, building and running game sites – some successful, others not so much – in order to provide a guide that shows you what to do in order to build your gaming brand, what to expect, and how to avoid some of the pitfalls on your path. So, let’s look at what you need – mentally, more than anything – to run your own online gaming publication.

1. Realistic Expectations

This is, far and away, most people’s stumbling point. A lot of people who decide to run their own site do so under a massive misapprehension. Their idea is simply that if they a) set up a website, b) copy and paste a few news stories for it and c) email a few game publishers, that they’ll d) end up with free games dropping through their letterbox every other day.

This. Does. Not. Happen.

You should check out my article on dealing with publishing companies’ PR teams here:- http://rewiredmind.com/gaming/the-sixteen-stages-of-pr-hell/

It just isn’t that easy. If your goal is simply to get new games to play each week, you should probably join LoveFilm, or get a job that pays you enough so that you can splash the cash every 7 days on all the new releases. The simple fact is – despite the dismissive article that I linked to above – that PR teams only have so much in terms of resource to distribute, meaning that they – for the greater part – have to try to get the greatest return on their investment that they can. In short, if you don’t have the raw traffic coming to your website, a lot of public relations folks will turn their nose up at you, and rightly so. Their job is to get the product they’re promoting to be seen in a positive light by as many people as possible, so that it’ll sell more. If they have one promotional copy of FIFA 12 left, and they have the choice of sending it to your site with its 100 visitors a week, or another site that has 700 visitors a day – which do you think they’ll pick? Bingo.

If you’re looking for a gravy train, look elsewhere. It will generally be a long-assed time before you can even think of getting your hands on anything “free” that you actually want. You need to be looking at around 500 unique visitors PER DAY before you should even think about asking for anything to review. That’ll sound high to most small game site owners, and low to most big game site owners, but before you hit that magic 500, your time is much better spent link-building and networking than it is firing off emails to PR teams.

You have to be willing to put in the hours.

You need to bear in mind that running a videogame site is NOT easy, no matter what anyone tells you. In a lot of cases, you’ll be expected to be a Jack-of-all-trades. You’ll be the guy everyone comes to for writing advice, the greatest diplomat in the world, the PR guru, the advertising salesperson, the website designer, the editor, the newscaster, the interviewer, the dolly-bird spinning the tombola at the raffle, the bug-fixer, the chief wit, and – of course – the expert gamer. Oh, and did I mention that when you tell a friend, family member, or colleague that you run a game site, they’ll expect you to know everything about every game ever released, and they’ll also expect you to be able to get your hands on cheap or free games, consoles and accessories for them, too?

Think of it as being forced to ride a unicycle while whistling the theme from Miami Vice, balancing a ball on your head, speaking to your mother on the phone, reading three textbooks and saluting the flag – all the time keeping an eye on the baby crawling towards the live electrical cable draped across the floor, and trying not to wet yourself whilst you haggle over worthless items like you’re conning tourists at a Turkish market.

3. The Ability to Learn

If you’re a big fan of shooters and never really enjoyed driving games, but the only titles coming out this week are indeed driving games, you have to be able to learn about – you guessed it – driving games. Its absolutely essential to know the ins and outs of what you’re writing about, when you’re writing about it. You don’t have to like it persay, but knowing your Scandanavian flick from your double-apex, and your double-apex from your chicane will put you head and shoulders above the lazier sites out there.

It also helps when you’re editing the work of your writers. If they don’t know what they’re talking about, you need to be able to pull them up on it before the article goes live because – and you can bet your bottom dollar on this – someone out there will point out your site’s mistake quicker than a hiccup. An innocent comment about how the “Live Seasons” mode is one of the most important parts of FIFA 12 will make about 4 million FIFA players all instantly deem you to be an idiot.

And even if you want to run a “specialist” site that just cover driving games, or soccer games, or Japanese tennis simulations featuring cartoon characters, you still need to be able to learn about other genres. Crossovers happen – more often than ever before.

You’ll also need to learn how to plan your time wisely, how to promote your site, how to actually put your site together, and much more. If you’re unable to accept that someone else knows more than you about a subject – even a game that you consider yourself to be an “expert” in, say – you may as well stop right now.

Say it with me now…A – Always, B – Be, L – Learning.

4. The Ability to Put The Site First

For some reason, you just bought Bodycount. You want to play it. You’ve been waiting all day to have a go. Someone else is reviewing it for your site. You have ICO/Shadow of The Colossus HD to review – which is launched today – and you also have exclusive early access to the Battlefield 3 beta, which you’ll need to write about.

You have to be able to put the game you WANT to play to one side, so that you can get your site work done in a timely manner. If you want your site to be successful, you should treat it as if its a job. You can’t play Bodycount when you’re sitting in an office answering phone calls, or hammering nails in on a building site – so you can’t play it now. The work comes first.

That isn’t to say that you shouldn’t have regular breaks or do anything fun. Just that you should be aware that if you want readers to come and see what you have to offer, you should give them a reason to do so. One massive way of doing that, is by providing timely content. You only need to look at the facts to determine that. A review published before a game is released, or on release day, will ALWAYS get more traffic than a review published after the game’s been on the shelves for a week.

5. The Ability to Multitask

If you put aside time between 8PM and 10PM to write a review, say, you have to be able to break away from that when a news story leaks at 9PM and nobody on your team is free to cover it – all the while bearing in mind that the review still needs to be done, your emails need to be answered, you have some promotion to do, and that episode of Game of Thrones to watch. If you can’t keep three or four balls in the air, you’re going to have a tough time.

6. A Thick Skin

You’re going to need a thick skin. I didn’t have one to start with, and it caused me no end of problems. I’d review a game, find someone on a forum disagreed with it and was calling me an idiot, and go in with all guns blazing. It hurt my brand, and made me look like a bit of an asshole. To be fair, I AM a bit of an asshole – some would say that “a bit” is underselling it somewhat, in fact – but I’d rather prove it in other ways.

When people comment on your articles, they’re helping you. Even if they’re flaming you to death, they’re liable to incite responses from other members of your community, or even from folks that are just casually visiting and that wouldn’t normally have commented. That’s a good thing. If they’re talking about your site in a forum, they will have linked to your article – providing you with more visitors. That’s a good thing, too.

Your thick skin will come in handy for dealing with PR staff, as well. It can be tough when you’ve been chatting to a PR person at an event, and they’ve told you to your face that they’ll definitely support your site with screenshots, videos, interviews, review code and press day invites and that you should email them to confirm your details, and then they act as if it never happened as soon as they’re behind the relative safety of their computer screen. I would need to take my shoes off to count how many times this has happened to me over the years – and you need a thick skin to deal with it.

Repeat: There Is No Gravy Train

There. Is. No. Gravy. Train. Get it into your head, NOW. Running a gaming site is hard work. If you go to a trade show or public gaming event, you have to run around grabbing footage, conducting interviews, and taking photos rather than playing as much of the games on display as you want to. When the next big thing hits the shelves, you’ll be stuck reviewing something that only two thousand people will ever play. You’ll take a chance on a writer that looks to have potential, and he or she will completely screw you over by taking off with your one review copy of a game, leaving you with a lot of explaining to do with the PR guys – since no matter what happens at your end, they’re still expecting you to provide coverage. And brace yourself, because this will happen time and again if your writers aren’t writing for cash.

However, running a site is also great fun, and really rewarding. The purpose of this article is to try to make you understand that if you want to run a successful site, or even one that just doesn’t totally suck, you need to put in a LOT of work. You’ll meet some pretty cool new friends along the way, but if you think that it’s all “free” games and press events, you have completely the wrong attitude for the job, and there’s no way I can say that any more clearly than I have.

In the next article, I’ll give you an overview of the basic technical nuts and bolts that you’ll need in order to get your site running, using nothing but a model of Tracy Island that I’ve constructed out of sticky-backed plastic and dog hair.

After pointlessly trying to explain the process of getting on press lists to a new site owner this week and having him point-blank refuse to believe a word I said, I thought I’d use my own experience of PR teams in order to make the point. I even said I’d post it on my blog. So Mike, here’s a little game I’ve come up with based on what you’ll need to go through before you reach the promised land that you think that I live in. If it isn’t enough, I’ll show you my credit card receipts for FIFA 12 and F1 2011, both of which I bought last week and didn’t get “for free.”

Start at Stage 1, and go to the next stage every time you’ve added another 10,000 visitors a month to your reader stats.

With no budget.

And with the writing ability and insight of a blind chipmunk with irritable bowel syndrome.

The 16 Stages – A Game for Game Site Owners

Stage 1 – Off to the Races

You launch your site. Riches and free stuff aren’t far away, right?

PR team ignores all emails from you. You phone them, but all of the PR staff are in a meeting, despite the person answering the phone actually being the Head of PR, who you went to school with. You write them a letter, they ignore you. Back in the day – which was a Wednesday, as it goes – I noticed it was nearly February 14th, so I sent a two-woman PR team a pair of Valentine’s Day cards and some flowers along with a request to be added to their press list. Cunning, huh? They could smell that I was only at stage 1, and ignored me.

By the way, ladies, you totally owe me some flowers. Unless you thought the whole affair was a bit sexist, in which case you can keep the flowers as an apology.

Stage 2 – Ignorance is a Bitch

PR team ignores all emails from you. You phone them, they offer to put you on their news list – which means you’ll get their press releases via email. You’ll probably get each and every one four times, as the blind, deaf work experience lad they’ve got adding email addresses to the list doesn’t have any thumbs. Don’t take the piss, he’ll be the head of PR within the next 5 years.

Stage 3 – Extra, Extra! Your Inbox is Full

PR team ignores 2 out of 3 emails from you, but they do give you access to their press extranet – which means you can download screenshots, box art and promotional images from them directly. Oh, and now their extranet software will automatically send you the press releases as well, so expect five emails for every piece of news they ever want you to cover. Which is everything. Every day. For ever. By now, I half-expect emails to turn up informing me that someone from Activision’s Accounting department has just eaten a cake and that it was delicious.

Stage 4 – Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics

PR team ignores 1 out of 3 emails from you, including all requests for review code. Well, they don’t ignore the requests, persay. They just say that the press list is full or that they “only had limited stock” of the title you want to cover and that they’ve all been sent out. You lie, and tell them that you suddenly get 200,000 unique visitors per month, and – oh, wait – what’s this? A copy of the game you want to review has JUST appeared on their desk. It’ll be with you shortly.

Stage 5 – Indecent Proposal

PR team emails you, asking if you want to review Barbie Race & Ride 3 for the Nintendo DS – even though you only cover PSP games. You tell them this, they take time out of their busy day in order to ignore you. Then they go back to their hectic schedule of ignoring you.

Stage 6 – Indecent Proposal II

PR team emails to request that you review Shrek Snakes and Ladders 3D for the Nintendo DS.

Stage 7 – Welcome to The Dark Side

If you didn’t review Shrek Snakes and Ladders 3D, return to Stage 4, and keep doing so until they send you something relevant to write about. If you gave in, welcome to the game! You’ve officially started to turn towards the corrupt side. On you go.

Stage 8 – Turn Back, Weary Traveller

Publisher decides to hire new PR firm to deal with all their affairs. You’re probably back at Stage 3 at this point, since there’s blatantly not going to be the slightest bit of information passed between the two companies.

Stage 9 – Il Postino

Once you get here, you might, MIGHT get a positive response to your request for a review copy of a game that you actually want to review. They might totally ignore you again. The PR team might even send you the game. Then again, they might not bother and then demand to see your review anyway. It might get “lost” by your local postman. Or at your local post office. Or at the parcel collections depot. Or at the receiving sorting office. Or at the sending sorting office. It might go missing before the Royal Mail even get their hands on it. It might not even have been sent. Who knows?

If the game doesn’t turn up and you tell the PR crew that you never received it, return to Stage 7 as they’ll think you just want another copy for your friend, or to sell on eBay – mainly because of the dumb pricks that actually do this. If you dug your way out of a hole by renting it and reviewing it, move on to the next stage.

Stage 10 – Dinner For Schmucks

After you’ve reviewed a few of their products, the PR company decides to disagree with your latest effort, which rated the game they’re promoting as a 7 out of 10. The reason for their concern being that it was “clearly an 8 because everybody else said it was and it’s hitting exactly 80/100 on Metacritic. So it should be an 8. GIVE IT AN 8. We may not be able to support your site anymore unless you ‘re-review’ our product.”

If you decide to change the score to suit them, fuck off. Seriously. Close your browser, head into the kitchen, turn the gas oven on and stick your head in, because you’re an arsehole of the highest order and I don’t want you reading my beautifully weighted and immaculatly imaculeately very well spelt prose.

However, if you stuck to your guns, return to Stage 4 or if dealing with a particularly stubborn bastard, Stage 1. The guys at SCi – before they were “absorbed” by Eidos, that is – had me at Stage -48 at one point, because I rated a game a whole point lower than the average of the two other sites that had reviewed it. (Bitter? Me? Noooooooo.)

Stage 11 – Pockets Changed

You get invited to a press event by the PR guys. You should probably have a massive great fucking party at this point, as you’re well on your way.

Unless you live outside of London, that is. If that’s the case, you should probably start crying, as it’s going to cost you at least £150 for transport and a hotel, just so you can see some glamour model wearing a t-shirt featuring a game logo, and hear one of the game’s developers talk about how amazing the game he’s spent four years working on really and truly is. What’s good about this is that after you’ve attended about 10 of these events, you can start working out what score you should give a game, solely based on the quality of the buffet at the event. There’s a correlation between vol-au-vent quality and gameplay, I tell you.

Stage 12 – Bric-A-Cack

PR team starts to send you promotional items that vary from the benign to the utterly strange in order to “expand mindshare” or some other phrase that equates to walking up to random people in the street and bellowing the name of the game in their face.

I once had to go to the Post Office in order to sign for a bent spoon and a sock containing a bar of soap, which was sent to promote Midway’s below-average prison romp The Suffering. Got some bizarre looks in that Post Office, I tell you. It didn’t help that I hadn’t shaved in a week.

Stage 13 – Back to The Future

PR team decides to start using Alexa.com in order to work out who to send review copies to. This would be a stellar idea, were it 1996. Or if Alexa rankings were ever anything like accurate. In ten years time, the most popular site in the world according to Alexa, will be the one that you’re reading now. The only reason it isn’t as it stands, is because the two other people in the world that still use the Alexa Toolbar can click faster than I can. I’m sure they’ll uninstall it soon. Either way, since your site is blatantly not going to be in the top 10,000 on Alexa, you can move your sweet ass back to Stage 7.

Stage 14 – Debuggery

PR company responds to your requests for review code each and every time, but starts sending “debug” code that can only be played on a “debug” version of the console, which you can’t get unless you actually like cupping Satan’s balls. When you ask for retail code, you can just go back to Stage 10, since the thinking is that if a platform holder doesn’t hold you in high-enough esteem to give you a debug console, why the hell should the PR team have you so high on their list of priorities?

What nobody ever used to say, is that preview code such as this used to work on “chipped” or “hacked” consoles. I’ve no idea if it does now. Getting a console modified to play preview code did used to be a hell of a lot cheaper than selling your soul, though. Just sayin’.

Stage 15 – The Promised Land

The PR guys send you final retail code of everything they ever work on, on every format. You don’t ask. It just turns up. This is the mystical stage that 99% of people who decide to run gaming websites believe is actually at stage 1. It generally takes around 63 years to reach this point, but you can do it in 5 if you’re REALLY good at brown-nosing.

Stage 16 – An Extra One as 2,000 Words Wasn’t Enough For Me

The PR guys come around and clean your house, whilst making canapes for the hookers they’ve brought as a gift for you. You’ll be dead in about an hour.

Congratulations, you have won. Nothing!

The last one may or may not happen. If you ever get past stage 16, you might even get them to buy advertising on your site. You can use the revenue to buy a warm coat and some firelighters, given that hell is actually freezing over at this point.

Oh, and bear in mind that the PR teams know full well that they can drop you a few stages for whatever reason they wish. If they come into the office in a bad mood on a Monday morning because their little friend refused to stand to attention the night before, they might decide to banish any emails from you to the bin, effectively putting you back to stage one. They might even do it after agreeing to provide you with competition prizes two weeks back, meaning that you have five people waiting for prizes and…well, either a severely damaged reputation or a fucking great hole in your wallet from having to buy replacements.

Bear in mind that you may well have to go through this with the PR team for EVERY publisher individually. In addition, if you’re dealing with cartridge-based games (aside from really, really awful children’s Nintendo DS fodder) or digital downloads – bizarrely – expect to double the number of stages. Oh, and finally, forget any concept of time when it comes to dealing with PR teams. Their game comes out on Friday, you request it two weeks before, they send it two days after it comes out – despite them having stock on the Tuesday before release. Why? Well, it was Karen’s birthday in the office, so they had to down tools for three days for some cake.

And you thought that all you had to do was get busy with copy and paste and you were in business! The reason you think that way, is because nobody else will be honest about what happens when dealing with PR, lest the PR team sees in and kicks them back to stage 1. I, however, don’t care anymore.

All the best.

What I didn’t imagine, is that it would be remotely close to being any good.

Putting aside the fact that I am now officially an overly-skeptical person, the simple fact is that OnLive is almost…ALMOST…a really decent proposition. So, after a fair bit of play-testing, here is my list of 6 things that OnLive needs to do or change, in order to really push the product over the top of the trench in a blaze of brilliance…

1. Gimme a Power Button that Works

OnLive features a wireless controller. That’s great. What isn’t great, is that I appear to have to plug the controller in if I want to switch the OnLive console on. Every. Single. Time. That’s nothing short of madness I tell you, madness!

2. Gimme Wireless

Also somewhat-to-incredibly annoying, is that the console comes with the world’s most unrealistically short LAN cable. I either have to a) buy a longer LAN cable or b) move my router so that it’s close enough to the OnLive console for the cable to reach. Why do I have to plug it in at all? I’m no radio engineer, but I’m relatively sure that an 802.11n router would provide enough bandwidth for OnLive. I realise that relaying the video and audio to the console involves and awful lot of data being shifted about, but I would have thought that would only be a problem when it comes to the connection from my router to my ISP, not from my router to my OnLive box.

Having no wireless options (other than to use a bridge) smacks of a cost-saving measure.

3. Gimme Pretty

You want to make an extra buck or two? Well, I wouldn’t mind shelling out £5 a month or so in order to get my games running at a resolution close to 1080p, rather than the maximum 720p that is currently on offer. You could even provide a network tester in the OnLive dashboard that tells me if my connection is decent enough to support it. You make money, I drool at the shiny. Win/win.

4. Gimme (or them) Decent Clips

I can take a “Brag Clip” that lasts for 10 seconds and can be viewed by anyone using OnLive. But, I can also share that Brag Clip to Facebook, which means that 90% of the people that could see it will be turned off by the fact that they have to download the OnLive App in order to watch it. Make the clips viewable by all, and people will start to talk about your service. Then, they’ll probably install it without being coerced, since they’ll see how much fun I’m having at crashing into walls on DiRT 3.

5. Gimme a Working Interface

The OnLive interface is slick. Its easy to use and it allows me to nip between menus without too much hassle. However, a large percentage of things that I want to do, end up with me being told that I have to visit the OnLive site. If I want to change my profile motto, or edit my profile video, I have to do it from a PC, Mac or smartphone. But what happens if I don’t have a PC, Mac or smartphone? You’ll essentially have sold me a console for £69.99 that I can’t even buy games for – because I initially have to enter my credit card details via my web browser! Some folks have commented that the interface is essentially a large-scale beta, but I’ve got a t-shirt with “OnLive UK Launch: September 24th 2011” that disagrees with the sentiment. If you haven’t finished writing the software, don’t release the software.

Add that to the fact that I can’t make any changes to the way in which OnLive connects to my router – because there just isn’t an option to do that – and you have an interface which is doing nothing other than providing a 50p solution to a £1 problem.

6. Gimme More Games

I’m not greedy, honest. The PlayPack (£6.99 a month) features 100+ games – including some really decent retail releases – that I have full access to from the get-go. That truly is awesome value for money, says I. The problem, however, is that outside of that PlayPack – that I’ll only ever truly be interested in playing about 15% of – the only thing listed as coming out for OnLive anytime soon is Saints Row: The Third. I can preorder that right away and have a game to look forward to, but what then? I’ve read that Codemasters’ F1 2011 is also due to launch on the system at some point. Again, I have to ask, what then? There will be dozens of games released between now and Christmas for PC systems, and you’re telling me that I can only rely on your service to provide me two of them – one of which I already own because its been out for all formats for a fortnight at the time of writing. That’s just not going to get the job done.

Even with these points borne in mind, OnLive is a good bit of fun. I got my OnLive console for free at the Eurogamer Expo, and I’ve used it a fair bit. Whether I’d be as happy with it if I’d paid £69.99 for it is another story entirely. I have to say that I don’t think I would be.