Don’t you just love bureaucracy.

All Australian citizens MUST be registered to vote if they are 17 or over and they MUST vote ($20 fine). Although only those 18 or over can vote, and while people in the Northern Territories must vote in federal elections their votes apparently don’t count.

So I received a letter asking me to either register or at least sign a statement that I am not eligible (being a resident is not enough to get voting rights). Not a problem – simply write my name and address and cross a box to sign and send it back in the prepaid return envelope.

On the return envelope there is a warning to check that the return address was visible in the envelope address window – and that’s where things got difficult.

Previously: http://horuskol.net/second-hand-pc-games-20090425

I got a response today from the Manager of Preowned Operations at EB Games confirming the reason to be the use of registration keys:

The main reason we do not trade PC games is because of registration keys. … Once this has been registered to a specific PC, they cannot be reinstalled onto another computer and therefore, cannot be re-sold as Preowned.

While I disagree about it not being possible to reinstall on another PC – I have installed registered games on various PCs when I have replaced the computers with newer models. But I do agree that it is not easy, and this added difficulty lowers the resale value of PC games in particular.

It still irks me that PC games in particular are singled out for such scrutiny and ‘protection’ when piracy is not restricted to PC games (Google News: Console Game Piracy) – but that’s not the fault of the retailers.

I’m also not advocating stricter protections for console games – it has been proven time and again that any protection method used for computer users is next to useless against determined pirates and also victimises honest users at the exact same time. In fact, the protection used on PC games is being softened again after certain well-publicised PR disasters last year.

But, I fear, the registration key is here to stay – although with on-line purchasing through things like Steam, reselling might be easy enough even if there is an administrative cost.

I wandered about town yesterday with a console game and 4 PC titles that I wanted off of my shelves – the console game because it was a bonus with the Wii and wasn’t much good (Sonic Unleashed), and the PC titles because they were old Total War games and I’d just bought the Rome/Medieval II/Empire pack from Steam (Valve’s content delivery system).

I got a pretty good deal on the Wii game – $35, which is about a third of the RRP of a console title, and half of what the shop will resell the secondhand game at.

But the same shop (EB Games) wouldn’t accept second-hand PC games – although the retail attendants couldn’t explain why (I also tried the other store EB Games has in the city, but they didn’t know either)*.

There is only one other dedicated game store in the city – Game. The staff there responded much the same as at EB Games, politely explaining that it was a policy*. To be honest, I wasn’t surprised as Game’s new PC title range is pretty lacklustre, but I thought I’d try.

That leaves me with going to a Cash Converters – where I’ll probably get $5 a title (although, that might have been all I got from the main stores).

I realise that as an individual, the trading of secondhand titles will not net me a large income (or savings against the cost of the games originally), but as a whole, there are a lot of PC owners out there (a lot more than console owners). I wouldn’t even hazard on how to estimate how many PC owners have at least one game that they might not want anymore (and comes complete with disc, box, manual, etc) – but there’s got to be a lot.

On top of that, the kind of people that have computers and not consoles are not the kind of people who would necessarily go out and buy the latest PC titles (this is why PC titles seem to be in bargain bins a lot more than consoles – console games, however, either disappear or end up in an endless cycle of trade/resell). This is a two-fold factor: not only aren’t the owners interested in getting the latest titles, they probably don’t have all that new a computer and would have performance problems if they did.

But if there were a range of second hand titles, then this might interest people seeking a cheap way to spend some time on their not-so-cutting-edge computers. So, I would say that there is a market there.

And yet, the two major chains aren’t interested. Why is that?

Well, one thing that could be a problem is the minefield of digital rights management – games publishers over the past few years have been getting aggressive on game ownership and re-distribution (mainly via piracy, but also limiting ‘legitimate’ second hand resales on which the original publisher sees no revenue). For example, players register with websites and licence keys much the same as for Windows or Office, and getting that licence transferred to another individual can incur a cost (Valve transfer game keys for at least a $10 surcharge).

EA Games went even further – they placed an absolute limit on the number of computers that a licence for Spore could be used on (although only one of those computers could actually run the game under that licence key at a time). After much uproar, they capitulated by increasing the limit and then allowing people to contact EA and pay a surcharge for a ‘resale’.

Console games have much less issues with DRM – despite there being an active piracy trade in titles on all major consoles (console piracy has been around even before the rise of the CD/DVD – dodgy cloned cartridges could be bought and used on various platforms in the 80s and 90s).

In addition to the problems of locked registrations, there just might not be enough of a margin.

Those bargain bins have fresh-wrapped titles as low as 25% of the RRP, or even less. So, buying a second-hand game at $10 and offering it at $20-$25 probably doesn’t garner enough profit for something that will occupy a shelf-space. The console game would reap them $35!

Which is a shame, because now I have 4 PC titles that I don’t want, and I’m having trouble getting them off my hands – so I’ll probably end up just chucking them… I guess they’re mostly recyclable.

The situation is probably going to worsen as more and more sales are done direct over content delivery platforms like Steam – which eliminates the game stores – and while reselling and licencing is still an issue, there are methods in place for ‘gifting’ a game after you’re bored of it.

And now that consoles are beginning to have online stores of their own, one wonders how much longer the physical media will be present in the stores out on the high street.

* I have contacted both EB Games Australia and Game Australia for an explanation of the ‘policy’. I’ll post their responses if and when I get them.

I finally completed Star Wars: The Force Unleashed on the Wii today.

Surprisingly, that amounted to only 8 hours of game time, even though I started playing it just before Christmas.

Still, it was fun. The Star Wars fanboy in me loved having the WiiMote in my hand buzzing and crackling away as I swing it to direct my characters lightsaber, and the game was challenging enough. The graphics are incredible – from the sweeping vistas to the character models. You take in several worlds and locations on your journeys, including Bespin (without Lando).

All that said – the 8 hours of gameplay is probably just long enough. Your progress through the game pretty much consists of you rattling the WiiMote and alternately pressing the Z anc C buttons on the nunchuk. The game designers also recycle locations (upto three times in the instance of the Jedi Academy on Coruscant), which makes for some deja-vu.

And, at times, progress is only really made by entering a room full of stormtroopers, hacking a couple down before the rest kill you, and then doing it all over again until you clear that obstacle.

Ironically, I found I had the easiest fights against the boss(es) at the end of the game than the ones at each of the other locations. I also had a harder time against some of the normal level fodder than the bosses.

And, about two-thirds of the way through the game, your character gets his crowning moment of awesome – but its all in a cut-scene, so you feel a little cheated at not having any direct input into that event. But it is awesome.

The game does have a multiplayer aspect – but I’ve yet to venture into there (I’ve been using the storyline game to unlock items and character models like Luke Skywalker)

If you like Star Wars, and you find this on discount, then I’d recommend it – otherwise, think about something else.

Messing about in the GIMP again – this time I was inspired by some black and white shots to have a quick blast at playing with another image.

This time I picked a shot of a single subject and played with either desaturating the background or the rider. Desaturation was done on luminousity rather than lightness, as this seemed to reduce the ‘burnout’.

I couldn’t decide if it was better to have the rider in colour or the background – so I posted both.

You can see the full-sized upload here.

Invisibles have always amazed me since I saw them used in movie quizzes at FilmWise. Just the strangeness of seeing an otherwise normal and familiar scene with faces cleverly removed. It also made the quizzes hard, as we tend to cue in on faces rather than clothes and scenery.

I finally took some time to learn the trick myself, and had a go at it in GIMP, the free alternative to PhotoShop.

After a couple of hours of so, including one false start, here’s the result. It’s a little rough in places – and I could have spent a little more time on it, maybe. I’m hoping next time, I’ll be able to get more done in less time, now that I know the tricks.

I’d been here in Australia for almost two years, and barring a couple of weekend trips down the Fleurieu Peninsula, I had not yet had a proper holiday. Granted, I didn’t quite need one while I was waiting for my resident’s visa, but then I had a very busy Christmas, and cleared a week off with my boss.

I chose Melbourne, not because it is the closest state capital from Adelaide, but because of a radio ad I’d heard offering discounted rail tickets on The Overland – the only passenger rail service between the two cities. Because of it’s location, Adelaide is actually a bit of a rail hub for Australia, with the main east-west and north-south lines passing through the city.

So, I booked myself a ticket there, four nights in a hotel in the Melbourne CBD, and a plane ticket back. I didn’t have a real plan, just that I wanted to see as much of the city as possible and get some photographs. I can always go back for special events and shows down there in the future.

Apparently, the clocks went back last night, putting us back onto ACST (Australian Central Standard Time, or South Australian Standard Time) – which is 9.5 hours ahead of GMT/UTC (or 8.5 hours ahead of British Summer Time).

The first I knew about it was when I glanced at my PC clock and saw that the time was before I thought I had gotten out of bed.

I checked my phone, and that agreed with my PC – so I checked my radio alarm in the bedroom. That was an hour ahead – aha!

So I googled for the information – and found the SA government’s information page.

The thing is – I remember the radio news bulletins in the UK during the week leading up to the clock change, and they would stress every 30-60 minutes on Fridays and Saturdays (at least) to remember to switch the clocks. Never heard a peep from the radio about it here – it would probably take up a valuable advertising slot (when a typical radio station only plays 6 standard length songs in an hour, things are getting bad).

The other crazy thing about all of this is that, until a year ago, South Australia switched their clocks the same weekend that the US and Europe switched yours. This makes sense, because then you don’t have to worry about figuring out if they’ve switched yet and how much time difference there is based on that.

The problem was that the eastern states all changed on a different weekend. But instead of bringing them into line with SA, Europe and the US – those states bullied SA into syncing up with them. So, depending on the time of year, we are now either 8.5 hours ahead, 9.5 hours ahead, and 10.5 hours ahead.

Still – it’s actually a nice surprise to find you have an extra hour in the day. Thankfully, I hadn’t set the alarm, so I woke up when I just wanted to wake up.