GOG attempt to bring customers back with a revival of Good Old Games

Quoting: TodCIt wasn't just lack of Linux support, I had Windows games that wouldn't keep working -- I was willing to keep a Windows VM around for that. But lack of DRM when you can't get the game to run makes no difference.

I just recently found out about Lutris from this site, and that seems to make GOG stuff easier to run just in general -- even compared to directly on Windows.

Not sure why, but Lutris's GUI looks horrible on my Kubuntu-Desktop. I've had more fun with "importing" Gog-Games into steam, even though it's not without its problems (each time I had to manually edit the paths to the executable and the game-folder). But it was worth it as I could play the games using Proton and simply start them via the Steam-App.

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: GuestI quite enjoyed Wheel of Time, and was reminded of it recently from the "tv" series adaptation (which I also enjoyed). Not yet read any of the books.

I'm opinionated about fantasy books, and Wheel of Time is no exception.
IMO, the first one is really very good, although it should be noted that the plot is very much Lord of the Rings reheated. In the second, it starts to bring you into the wider Wheel of Time universe, which has tons of interesting stuff. It's also very good. In the third, you get more of that, lots of cool weird magic stuff, lots of plot complication, lots of local colour of various sorts.
But some of the series' problems start to become noticeable around the third book; I started noticing that most of the characters were jerks, and some of the jerky things they did, the author didn't seem to notice they were being jerks. This was sort of even more so with the female characters. As complications piled on top of complication, the action started to slow down. As power levels stacked up, Jordan kept having to come up with ways to top that. Somewhere in there a new group of antagonists showed up whose defining cultural feature was indulging in squicky mind-control torture porn using these pain-conditioning leash things.
By the fifth or sixth book, I realized pretty much nothing was happening over the course of a many-hundred-page novel and I gave up. I feel like Jordan was a victim of his own success--the first couple of books sold like crazy, so someone, whether he himself or the publisher, decided he could do no wrong and didn't edit him.

I would not agree. First, I don't think characters are jerks. They have values and twists, some very opposing to mine, yet a lot of them grew close to me. There's also a ton of character development in the series and sometimes layers over layers of behavior. I very much enjoyed that part.
While some parts certainly feel long and stretched, the world building in these parts is rich. The scope of this saga is not to give you one high-fantasy culture, but multiple, sometimes very distinct, cultures. Also a lot is happening in the meta here, preparing the more dense chapters.
The TV series is cutting all that out, replacing complex characters with simple but proven motives and cutting away all cultural edges.
The wheel of time is about all that. World building and character development. If you want pure plot and action, look somewhere else. Amazon should have, too.

Guys, I'm really impressed how every time GOG comes to the topic you're saying the same thing over and over.
I think the record is scratched.

Quoting: CyrilGuys, I'm really impressed how every time GOG comes to the topic you're saying the same thing over and over.
I think the record is scratched.

But but but... this is *important*!!!

Quoting: scaine

Quoting: CyrilGuys, I'm really impressed how every time GOG comes to the topic you're saying the same thing over and over.
I think the record is scratched.

But but but... this is *important*!!!

I'm thinking about this:

Quoting: Mrokii

Quoting: TodCIt wasn't just lack of Linux support, I had Windows games that wouldn't keep working -- I was willing to keep a Windows VM around for that. But lack of DRM when you can't get the game to run makes no difference.

I just recently found out about Lutris from this site, and that seems to make GOG stuff easier to run just in general -- even compared to directly on Windows.

Not sure why, but Lutris's GUI looks horrible on my Kubuntu-Desktop. I've had more fun with "importing" Gog-Games into steam, even though it's not without its problems (each time I had to manually edit the paths to the executable and the game-folder). But it was worth it as I could play the games using Proton and simply start them via the Steam-App.

The Lutris GUI looks about the same for me on XFCE Mint, MX Linux, and Manjaro. It isn't perfect -- when downloading and installing, the action buttons get out of sync with the selected game, but Wine (or DosBox) has worked with varying degrees of success. On Manjaro, I ended up often needing to provide the installed path too, but things work. (Varying degress means, for example, in Bioshock Remastered, the mini games and save screens are slooooow to load.)

I like that it starts with the original install executables, which I don't think importing to Steam does. (I've read about importing to Steam but haven't tried it, since it doesn't seem to actually do the install, which is the part I'm interested in.)

Quoting: const

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: GuestI quite enjoyed Wheel of Time, and was reminded of it recently from the "tv" series adaptation (which I also enjoyed). Not yet read any of the books.

I'm opinionated about fantasy books, and Wheel of Time is no exception.
IMO, the first one is really very good, although it should be noted that the plot is very much Lord of the Rings reheated. In the second, it starts to bring you into the wider Wheel of Time universe, which has tons of interesting stuff. It's also very good. In the third, you get more of that, lots of cool weird magic stuff, lots of plot complication, lots of local colour of various sorts.
But some of the series' problems start to become noticeable around the third book; I started noticing that most of the characters were jerks, and some of the jerky things they did, the author didn't seem to notice they were being jerks. This was sort of even more so with the female characters. As complications piled on top of complication, the action started to slow down. As power levels stacked up, Jordan kept having to come up with ways to top that. Somewhere in there a new group of antagonists showed up whose defining cultural feature was indulging in squicky mind-control torture porn using these pain-conditioning leash things.
By the fifth or sixth book, I realized pretty much nothing was happening over the course of a many-hundred-page novel and I gave up. I feel like Jordan was a victim of his own success--the first couple of books sold like crazy, so someone, whether he himself or the publisher, decided he could do no wrong and didn't edit him.

I would not agree. First, I don't think characters are jerks. They have values and twists, some very opposing to mine, yet a lot of them grew close to me. There's also a ton of character development in the series and sometimes layers over layers of behavior. I very much enjoyed that part.

I did not find the character development as deep as all that. There was a lot of stuff happening character-wise, a lot of conflict and introspection and personal failure . . . I just don't think it really added up to depth. At a certain point, I realized that the good guys (except for the main guy himself) were mostly as busy bickering, backbiting and betraying each other as the big time villains who were specifically portrayed as manifesting their evil natures via internal treachery. Pretty much everything considered so nasty it was a hallmark of villainy, up to and including those torture-porn magic enslavement leashes, was soon done/used by the good guys. It's just, when a viewpoint character does it and is angsty about it, it's character development, whereas if a villain does it they're just being a dick. So it didn't exactly feel like they were jerks while you were reading it . . . unless you looked at their behaviour with some moral consistency.

I also found the magical arms race got kind of old. One "jumping the shark" moment for me was when I realized that after introducing "balefire", this terrible power that didn't just kill people but erased them from reality so they'd never return and in some sense never existed and, if overused, could potentially cause reality itself to fall apart . . . it almost immediately became the "go-to" way of offing bad guys, and dangers to reality quickly stopped being mentioned. From portentous to cheap and banal in nothing flat. No doubt something even bigger time than balefire was soon introduced, in books later than the ones I got to. This kind of thing isn't subtle worldbuilding, it's just powergaming.

Quoting: GuestI think you're confusing a few things. I mentioned old games for a reason - games unlikely to require 3rd part components.

Touché, I completely failed to realize you were only talking about old games.

QuoteYou also seem to equate not supporting GNU/Linux with hating GNU/Linux, and I'm not sure how to put it if you can't understand the difference. It's not economically viable for them to invest in. Simple as that.

Oh please, you don't need to patronize me; I know full well the difference between the two. I was mostly using the word "hate" for emphasis (you know how the internet can be about these things) but still, I wouldn't describe GOG's behavior as merely "not supporting". Enough has already been said about it and the article is kind of old, so I'll not elaborate further, but I'll just add that in my eyes (and I'm a developer by profession, so I have at least a modicum of the required knowledge to have an opinion on this) developing Wine wrappers and providing patches to make Windows-only games run on Linux, as well as providing the after sales support that comes with that, is MUCH less economically viable than simply developing your utility library to be OS agnostic so it can run on Linux.

So in fewer words, GOG's stance on supporting Linux is almost actively hostile (that's probably a better word than 'hate' because it's also commonly used in business-speak) and I fully expect that unless something big happens (e.g. change of leadership) this will only become worse, if only as a byproduct of their competitive strategy against Valve and Steam (which also includes the new partnership with Windows-centric Epic).

QuoteWhile I'm not suggesting you actually are, your words do give off an impression of entitlement - and why would any company want to do unprofitable business with that kind of interaction? Again, I'm not suggesting at all that you are - but I am using your words as an example of public impression that GOG might have to deal with, and any negativity associated with even the slightest perceived failing, so there's really nothing in it for GOG.
Obviously though, for some 300 games, GOG have provided you with an acceptable service. That's why you paid money for them, and for the games you have for free....well you can't really complain about that.

It's not about entitlement; I paid for these games fully conscious of the fact that they don't officially work on Linux, so I don't have any reason to complain about GOG not providing me with something they promised for. And I'm also comfortable enough with Linux to be able to play all of them without a hitch, so I don't even have a reason to complain as an attempt to get them to help me out for free (which would also be a kind of indirect entitlement).

This is about me criticizing them about their stance on Linux support and, as I've said in an older thread, condemning them for pretending to be the champions of 'DRM-free' gaming while actively refusing to support the champion of 'DRM-free' *everything*. Even if they had to spend some extra bucks to support Linux, they should have done so just for the sake of being honest. Not "economically viable" in this case means "I'm full of s**t", nothing more, nothing less.

Quoting: Purple Library GuyIMO, the first one is really very good, although it should be noted that the plot is very much Lord of the Rings reheated.

As a person who has tried many times to point out to other people the simple fact that WoT #1 is good because it's essentially a very, very obvious "re-imagining" of LOTR (in my eyes it's almost a case of plagiarism), and who has invariably received responses of the "what are you on about, that's bollocks, WoT #1 is one of the greatest fantasy novels ever written" type, I'm writing to inform you that you've just become one of my most favoritest persons in the world :P

I also agree with most of the rest of your criticism about the later entries, and I can only say that this is exactly what happens when you run out of giants' shoulders to stand on and you suddenly need to start relying on your own original ideas <<


Last edited by Nocifer on 14 April 2022 at 1:02 pm UTC

Quoting: Purple Library GuyIMO, the first one is really very good, although it should be noted that the plot is very much Lord of the Rings reheated.

I can't agree with this. They are both high fantasy. There are parallels with some of the creatures (though other books just use the same creatures that LotR does, since they are basically unaltered from European mythology). As far as the plot goes, the hero of each comes into danger from dark forces and has to leave home to fulfill a quest, and that's pretty much where the similarity ends. That's quite generic as far as high fantasy goes. Don't get me wrong. It's definitely the same type of book as LotR, but it does not have the same plot in any but a very, very general way.

Quoting: Purple Library GuyAs power levels stacked up, Jordan kept having to come up with ways to top that.

Umm, just no. This does not have the feel at all of something that is made up as the author went along. He was clearly following an outline that dealt with anything like that (the way the story got away from him was in developing the books from the outline he added too much story detail).

Quoting: Purple Library GuyI realized that the good guys (except for the main guy himself) were mostly as busy bickering, backbiting and betraying each other as the big time villains who were specifically portrayed as manifesting their evil natures via internal treachery.

I think you are getting the amount that the books delve into politics (referenced by the phrase "the game of thrones" in medieval terms) confused with the struggle between good and evil. Some of the "good guys" do end up tangled up in politics to accomplish certain things, but generally not with each other (instead with other political figures). Also, a lot of what the books do is to show how a different point of view and misinformation can affect how people act toward each other, even if they are both well-intentioned.

Quoting: Purple Library GuyPretty much everything considered so nasty it was a hallmark of villainy, up to and including those torture-porn magic enslavement leashes, was soon done/used by the good guys. It's just, when a viewpoint character does it and is angsty about it, it's character development, whereas if a villain does it they're just being a dick. So it didn't exactly feel like they were jerks while you were reading it . . . unless you looked at their behaviour with some moral consistency.

Some spoilers ahead.

Spoiler, click me

So you think that people who take everyone who has a certain ability and use a torture/reward system to completely control them are the same as some of their victims who get free and very briefly give them a taste of their own medicine and leave them to possibly get sucked into their own system on the other end? Or the same as people using the same object to control a specific criminal rather than random people with the ability?

Quoting: Purple Library GuyI also found the magical arms race got kind of old. One "jumping the shark" moment for me was when I realized that after introducing "balefire", this terrible power that didn't just kill people but erased them from reality so they'd never return and in some sense never existed and, if overused, could potentially cause reality itself to fall apart . . . it almost immediately became the "go-to" way of offing bad guys, and dangers to reality quickly stopped being mentioned.

This just isn't accurate. Balefire didn't make it so people were "erased from reality" altogether, and it certainly didn't make it so they could never be reincarnated (part of the mythology of the book). What it did was destroy a person or thing at a previous point in time from its use, how long before depending on how much power was used when doing it. It was supposed to be particularly dangerous to reality / "the Pattern" to use on many people and with enough power to erase days of time. However, erasing a few seconds of one creature's life was not nearly so dangerous. To some degree, it was shown to be a little bit of an overreaction to never use it at all, since it seemed to be just about the only way to kill some creatures.

Spoiler, click me

The one time that the main character took it too far was seen as dangerous, but it was also implied that this particular use was actually a part of "the Pattern" since it's effects were predicted in advance.

Why balefire was the "go-to" way of killing "the Forsaken" was because it made it so "the Dark One" couldn't transfer them to a different body at the moment of death, even if it was only a few seconds of their life burned away.

Quoting: Purple Library GuyFrom portentous to cheap and banal in nothing flat. No doubt something even bigger time than balefire was soon introduced, in books later than the ones I got to. This kind of thing isn't subtle worldbuilding, it's just powergaming.

Nope. That never happened. As I said before, those types of details had very clearly been planned and outlined from the beginning.

Spoiler, click me

Balefire was first used in the third book, and nothing "topping" it was ever mentioned. Of course, the scale of general power usage did increase toward the end of the series for cleansing "the taint" from "the One Power" and resealing "the Dark One's" prison, but this was again planned.

Last edited by CFWhitman on 14 April 2022 at 2:51 pm UTC

Quoting: Guest

Quoting: NociferOh please, you don't need to patronize me; I know full well the difference between the two. I was mostly using the word "hate" for emphasis (you know how the internet can be about these things) but still, I wouldn't describe GOG's behavior as merely "not supporting". Enough has already been said about it and the article is kind of old, so I'll not elaborate further, but I'll just add that in my eyes (and I'm a developer by profession, so I have at least a modicum of the required knowledge to have an opinion on this) developing Wine wrappers and providing patches to make Windows-only games run on Linux, as well as providing the after sales support that comes with that, is MUCH less economically viable than simply developing your utility library to be OS agnostic so it can run on Linux.

So in fewer words, GOG's stance on supporting Linux is almost actively hostile (that's probably a better word than 'hate' because it's also commonly used in business-speak) and I fully expect that unless something big happens (e.g. change of leadership) this will only become worse, if only as a byproduct of their competitive strategy against Valve and Steam (which also includes the new partnership with Windows-centric Epic).

Well, I'm a developer by profession who has also been in various discussions about supported platforms. I know the development side, and I know the accounting side to a degree. I also know the support side and how much extra effort is required when first trying to determine the customer's setup (GNU/Linux users who know their way around the system very well are by and large very helpful and can reduce support effort - but those who aren't can make up the difference and then some).

Anyway, I know it's old topic raising its head, but GOG galaxy is different to what GOG do to have old games running. Most of their (original) business needed to supply wrapper libraries to have old games running on modern Windows. There's a mac version of galaxy, so no doubt it's fairly well OS agnostic. No doubt they had plans for a GNU/Linux release too, and yes I think they should have done that just because it's the platform I use - but to go ahead with it now makes no sense. Too much else already takes care of it in my view.

I think we'll disagree - I don't see them as actively hostile, just not interested instead.

Well, it seems that apart from the hostility thing we mostly agree on the important stuff, so I think I can live with that :)

Though I also disagree with the "now it doesn't make sense" part - why do you think that it doesn't make sense? I think it would be good from a PR perspective ("we're DRM-free and we support the prime DRM-free OS because we're THAT cool a company"), it would be good from a marketing perspective (through the Steam Deck, which is all the rage these days, GOG could be exposed to many people, especially of the younger generation, who may not know or care much about it) and it would be good from a technical perspective (it would remove the need for custom Linux/Wine wrappers, because it would take advantage of Proton in the case of a Linux GOG Galaxy client, or Lutris etc in the case of a galaxy.so library meant to be used independently - in the latter case they could even look into making a deal with a third-party UI tool like Lutris to provide official endorsement and maybe support).

I mean, they would stand to gain in more than a few ways and with minimum effort and financial investment (because most of the required work has already been done by others for them), which in my eyes sounds more than good. All it would take is a bit of re-organizing their company around this kind of Linux support, and of course having the will to do it.

I could understand that now it maybe isn't possible for e.g. financial reasons, but not make sense? I just don't see it, especially with Linux popularity being on the rise.

Quoting: CFWhitman

Quoting: Purple Library GuyIMO, the first one is really very good, although it should be noted that the plot is very much Lord of the Rings reheated.

I can't agree with this. They are both high fantasy. There are parallels with some of the creatures (though other books just use the same creatures that LotR does, since they are basically unaltered from European mythology). As far as the plot goes, the hero of each comes into danger from dark forces and has to leave home to fulfill a quest, and that's pretty much where the similarity ends. That's quite generic as far as high fantasy goes. Don't get me wrong. It's definitely the same type of book as LotR, but it does not have the same plot in any but a very, very general way.

I guess it's a matter of perspective, or maybe attention to detail (though you seem to be a very detail-oriented person yourself), but as I also said in my previous comment, WoT #1 in my eyes is plot point to plot point a case of almost-plagiarism when compared to LoTR.

Everything from how the kid gets recruited/involved in the story, to how the supporting good guys are the equivalent of Gandalf and Aragorn, to how the group has to pass through the Moria-equivalent where now only shadows dwell, to how they're being hunted by the equivalent of the Nazgul, to how the kid gets separated from the good guys and then goes through his own adventures with his friends, to how his friends achieve some kind of secondary recognition of their own, to how the good guys live in an equivalent of a Gondor which oversees an ancient fence around the equivalent of a Mordor, to how that fence is about to fail because the Gondor lookalikes have grown too negligent and/or weak to fulfill their duty, to a multitude of other, both major and minor plot details and devices, character arcs and development, world details and history, or what have you - all these are in one way or another picked up directly from LoTR.

The most significant plot differences I can think of off the top of my head is that Gandalf is a chick and there's also a second chick as a romance option for Frod-- err, sorry, for what's-his-name, you know, the kid who isn't Frodo.

Quoting: NociferI guess it's a matter of perspective, or maybe attention to detail (though you seem to be a very detail-oriented person yourself), but as I also said in my previous comment, WoT #1 in my eyes is plot point to plot point a case of almost-plagiarism when compared to LoTR.

I still don't see it that way. I see the similarities as those of general world building and not plot.

Quoting: NociferEverything from how the kid gets recruited/involved in the story,

Except that Frodo is not a kid (he's 33 when he receives the ring and 50 when he leaves on his quest) and he gets involved in the story because of an object left to him, while Rand is around 18 and is involved because he is a person prophesied about. What makes Frodo special is his incorruptibility and no ambitions of power (and having the ring in his possession) while what makes Rand special is that he has the potential to be the most powerful person alive inherent to his being. Frodo knew Gandalf for years while Moiraine was a complete stranger to Rand.

Quoting: Nociferto how the supporting good guys are the equivalent of Gandalf and Aragorn

A "magic" user and a warrior; call the plagiarism police.

Quoting: Nociferto how the group has to pass through the Moria-equivalent where now only shadows dwell

I think this is a bit of a stretch. On a quest they go through a dangerous place; that's not unique, and they go there because the danger there is different than the danger pursuing them, and the things pursuing them are afraid to enter that place.

Quoting: Nociferto how they're being hunted by the equivalent of the Nazgul,

I see the general similarity of the Myrddraal to the Nazgul, at least as hooded black figures of evil who carry swords. I think similar creatures are more a setting than a plot point, though. There are also big differences between Nazgul and Myrddraal (Myrddraal aren't nearly as special and don't have a particular limit in number). In a sense the Forsaken are closer to an equivalent of the Nazgul, though they are nothing like them in appearance.

Quoting: Nociferto how the kid gets separated from the good guys and then goes through his own adventures with his friends, to how his friends achieve some kind of secondary recognition of their own,

This is hardly unique to these two books. That's part of almost any quest based story.

Quoting: Nociferto how the good guys live in an equivalent of a Gondor which oversees an ancient fence around the equivalent of a Mordor, to how that fence is about to fail because the Gondor lookalikes have grown too negligent and/or weak to fulfill their duty

This is again a stretch. There is no fence or even natural barrier around the Blight, and it can ebb and flow in size. There is no negligence by the residents of Fal Dara and their fighting with the forces of the shadow is just a necessity to live where they live, but they are not alone in being at the edge of the Blight, they are just the nearest still inhabited city to where the Eye of the World is. The Blight is expanding because the bonds on the Dark One's prison are weakening, not because anyone is failing their duty.

There are many difference in plot. The Eye of the World is neither where the group was originally headed nor their ultimate goal. The Eye of the World has a heroic guardian and is a place of refuge in the Blight. They happened to meet up with a character who has no equivalent in The Lord of the Rings that warned them about a problem there and joined their quest, of which the Eye of the World is only the first leg. The details of the plot differ in many ways, and are only similar in very general ones. The general similarities make The Eye of the World fairly formulaic. I won't argue with that, but the similarities are general. Just about any story of someone who seemed of no particular significance that goes on a quest will have similar ones. In fact, it would probably be easy to find a video game plot that had at least as many similarities to The Eye of the World as The Lord of the Rings does, especially since video games are about the hero, perhaps reluctantly, pursuing power, like The Eye of the World, and very unlike The Lord of the Rings. You could easily take the whole collection of The Wheel of Time and draw just as many similarities to the story as a whole as to the first volume.


Last edited by CFWhitman on 18 April 2022 at 11:37 am UTC