Five Advantages of Being a PAL Gamer

March 13th, 2008

pal gamers flags

This article was originally titled “The Top 10 Advantages of Being a PAL Gamer” but as you might have guessed I fell short at five.

There is a long tradition in the video game industry with consumers and the PAL encoding system. That is people whom live in PAL territories (that is Europe, Australia, New Zealand among others) more often than not end up drawing the short straw. Unlike our NTSC counterparts it often takes a long time for new technology to reach our shores and even when it does our price is marked up, we have lower distribution numbers and often receive modified/downgraded content. Basically it is the manufacturer’s way of telling us that we are simply not a priority for them.

On the rare occasion though us PAL gamers might be treated to something that trumps our American and Japanese friends. These special treats are rare cases indeed, thinking up even a measly five perks has been a formidable challenge. But the advantages are there, just a little hard to find. ^_^

I’d also like to thank the forum members over at PALGN whom suggested a few ideas and helped with the brainstorming process.

Early/Exclusive Releases

Although it had taken a long time for this trend to set in, occasionally in the industry you will notice that some PAL (especially European and Australian) games are released a few days earlier than their respective American counterpart. Fifteen years ago, excluding European developed games this trend was not existent but in the past 6 years early European releases have taken off and continue to occur quite frequently.

There are a couple of reasons as to why this situation is turning around. Firstly the increase of European game development. Take a flick through the back of any EDGE magazine and you will notice just how many AAA developers are situated in the UK. Then there is the strength of the Playstation brand in PAL territories.

I could fill a whole separate article on the latter point but I will try to be brief here. Basically for years game companies had neglected the PAL markets. When the Playstation was produced, the situation started to slowly change. Sony actually viewed and treated the PAL market for what it was; a solid, viable area for strong game sales. Hence it didn’t take much for Sony to become and still maintain the European market with it’s Playstation brand.

Years later, prior to the release of the Gamecube, Nintendo Europe was noticing slow adoption rates of Nintendo consoles compared to other territories. NOE representatives admitted that the UK markets had been previously neglected by Nintendo (release dates particularly) and in an attempt to turn the tides they changed the way that they viewed Europe and PAL territories. As a result the UK started to see several earlier releases for significant Gamecube and GBA titles, some games even launched first in Europe and then to the rest of the world. In the meantime Phil Harrison (of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe) pushed for a greater emphasis on mass market Playstation 2 devices (Eye Toy, Buzz, Singstar etc.). This payed off for Sony and these games were and still are a huge success in the UK and Australia. The success of these titles (as well as Nintendo’s new found interest in Europe) ensured that earlier PAL releases would continue to occur and have done so ever since.

Along with this, PAL territories do occasionally receive PAL exclusive titles and they are listed as well:

pal exclusives and early releases

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Tags: australia, box art, Dragon Ball Z, europe, pal, super nintendo

An Interview with DrainingSouls.net on MMORPGs

February 21st, 2008

mmorpg interview header

Its not often that I cover PC games let alone MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games) in this blog so I thought that it was about high time I did. But I have no idea where to start, I’ve never even played a MMORPG before. So to fix this I’ve enlisted the help of DrainingSouls.net’s Adrenis whom I recently interviewed to clear up some misconceptions and possibly help start me off on my own MMORPG experience.

Daniel Primed: Thanks for being part of the article Adrenis, can you introduce yourself to the readers so that we have an idea of who you are?

Adrenis: My real name is John Pickett, and I’m a 27 year old guy living in the southeastern US. I’m married and have a one and a half year old son. I was introduced to MMOs when I picked up WoW (DP: thats World of Warcraft) a little over two years ago, and basically haven’t played any other video games since then.

I’m slowly turning my entire household into WoW fanatics – I’ve already convinced my wife to play with me on occasion, and I’m sure that my son will be an avid player as soon as he can sit at a computer and not try to eat the keyboard.

DP: Now as you know I’m not into MMORPGs myself, its just a genre which has never interested me. So what do you think is the appeal of MMORPGs to so many gamers?

Adrenis: I think there are a number of things that attract people to MMOs. First is their social nature. It’s nearly always more fun to play games with other people. The last video game I was really into before WoW was Halo
2. I logged around 40 to 50 hours in the Campaign (singleplayer) mode and then got pretty tired of it. On the other hand, I spent hundreds of hours online playing multiplayer on Xbox Live before I got tired of that. Most games are more fun and engaging when you can play them with other people.

On top of that is the go anywhere, do anything factor in MMOs. If you want to quest, then go right ahead. If you want to go exploring, you can do that to. If you want to just hang out in a city and talk to people in chat, that’s an option too. I think people enjoy not being forced to do stuff like in a typical video game.
wow back
DP: Awesome, now I can think of 3 or 4 reasons why I don’t play MMORPGs but deep down I can’t help but think that they are preconceived notions or stereotypes that I’ve formed from my outsider view of the genre. So I want to run each of these past you so that I can get a better perspective on the games.

Adrenis: Ok, shoot.

DP: Firstly; it takes a lot of time and dedication to play a MMORPG and I don’t have the extensive free time to play it so therefore its not worth me playing.

Adrenis: That is a misconception that I bet a lot of people have. It is entirely possible to devote your entire life to WoW. It’s addictive enough that you can enjoy playing it for 8 to 10 hours straight and there’s enough to do that you don’t get bored easily. However, having vast quantities of time to spend in it isn’t required in any sense. It is totally possible to spend more normal amounts of time in WoW (say, an hour or two a day) and still enjoy it.

It really all depends on what you want to accomplish in the game. If you want to be a top level raider in a leading guild or a world famous PvPer (DP: PvP = Player Vs Player), then that will require a good bit of time and dedication. But if you just want to play the game to have fun, it wouldn’t require more time than any other video game you play.

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Tags: australia, china, fury, gaming industry, interview, mmo rpg, world of warcraft