Good Old Games Relaunching
Good Old Games Relaunching
Company News - posted by VentilatorOfDoom on Wed 22 September 2010, 18:51:13
Tags: CD ProjektBrother None reports what's going on in the GoG press conference concerning the downtime over the last few days:
The Good Old Games press conference is ongoing, and it has been revealed that Good Old Games is relaunching, adding Baldur's Gate to its catalog. No real explanation was offered for the downtime other than "technical issues", though they do admit "it was a mistake, a technical mistake". Here are my notes:
GOG is being relaunched 1 pm GMT tomorrow with a graphical overhaul, making it easier for new users to register, with no email confirmation, and only a username, e-mail, password and birthday needed. See the details on some of the additions below.
The "great surprise" for their upcoming two-year anniversary is the addition of Baldur's Gate and its Tales of the Sword Coast expansion pack for $9.99.
New features include a mini-catologue divided by gaming genres, a community overview at the bottom of the page with GOGmixes, ratings and discussions, in a quick overview for purchasers. The games catalogue has been overhauled to make searching for games and genres easier.
GOGMixes are the "biggest" new feature: they're a list of titles with recommendations and short descriptions from other users. This is primarily to give an easy overview for users who are interested in certain genres (they use adventures and tactical games as examples), but who don't have a lot of knowledge in that genre.
The product overview has been changed with some new features. Each game has a "what's cool about it" overview (written by GOG's testers, not marketing blurbs), the old goodies were discussed but nothing new there. A Facebook like button has been added, as well as a download time estimation. The community pages have been overhauled to be more accessible as well.
Over 150 games fully compatible with Windows 7. Other games work on most configurations but have bugs on some configurations. The games that are fully compatible have Windows 7 flags, others do not.
The presentation was presented by a bunch of guys in monk robes talking in semi-indecipherable Polish accents. The whole thing was somewhat amateuristic and disappointing, offering little excuses for the closure, only stating "technical issues".
Guys in monk robes - could have been Jedis. Personally, I blame the drinking water in Poland.
Read more about GoG's great trolling efforts.
“First of all we’d like to apologize to everyone who felt deceived or harmed in any way by the closedown of GOG.com. As a small company we don’t have a huge marketing budget and this why we could not miss a chance to generate some buzz around an event as big as launching a brand new version of our website and even more important, bringing back Baldur’s Gate to life!
We believe this title was extremely expected by all our users and PC gamers in general. It would have made no sense to announce it in a typical plain corporate way. Our aim at GOG is to promote the greatest DRM-free PC classics ever in a creative way and allow people to escape from the usual boring mainstream marketing. We are also gamers and this is why we played a bit with this announcement.
Once again, we apologize for any harm we might have caused and we do hope people will keep the essence of our message in mind: GOG is doing things differently than elsewhere and yes, Baldur’s Gate is finally back (with more great releases to come)! We are working hard to provide users with much fun, so do expect some great surprises until Christmas.”
Spotted at: Gamebanshee
The Good Old Games press conference is ongoing, and it has been revealed that Good Old Games is relaunching, adding Baldur's Gate to its catalog. No real explanation was offered for the downtime other than "technical issues", though they do admit "it was a mistake, a technical mistake". Here are my notes:
GOG is being relaunched 1 pm GMT tomorrow with a graphical overhaul, making it easier for new users to register, with no email confirmation, and only a username, e-mail, password and birthday needed. See the details on some of the additions below.
The "great surprise" for their upcoming two-year anniversary is the addition of Baldur's Gate and its Tales of the Sword Coast expansion pack for $9.99.
New features include a mini-catologue divided by gaming genres, a community overview at the bottom of the page with GOGmixes, ratings and discussions, in a quick overview for purchasers. The games catalogue has been overhauled to make searching for games and genres easier.
GOGMixes are the "biggest" new feature: they're a list of titles with recommendations and short descriptions from other users. This is primarily to give an easy overview for users who are interested in certain genres (they use adventures and tactical games as examples), but who don't have a lot of knowledge in that genre.
The product overview has been changed with some new features. Each game has a "what's cool about it" overview (written by GOG's testers, not marketing blurbs), the old goodies were discussed but nothing new there. A Facebook like button has been added, as well as a download time estimation. The community pages have been overhauled to be more accessible as well.
Over 150 games fully compatible with Windows 7. Other games work on most configurations but have bugs on some configurations. The games that are fully compatible have Windows 7 flags, others do not.
The presentation was presented by a bunch of guys in monk robes talking in semi-indecipherable Polish accents. The whole thing was somewhat amateuristic and disappointing, offering little excuses for the closure, only stating "technical issues".
Read more about GoG's great trolling efforts.
“First of all we’d like to apologize to everyone who felt deceived or harmed in any way by the closedown of GOG.com. As a small company we don’t have a huge marketing budget and this why we could not miss a chance to generate some buzz around an event as big as launching a brand new version of our website and even more important, bringing back Baldur’s Gate to life!
We believe this title was extremely expected by all our users and PC gamers in general. It would have made no sense to announce it in a typical plain corporate way. Our aim at GOG is to promote the greatest DRM-free PC classics ever in a creative way and allow people to escape from the usual boring mainstream marketing. We are also gamers and this is why we played a bit with this announcement.
Once again, we apologize for any harm we might have caused and we do hope people will keep the essence of our message in mind: GOG is doing things differently than elsewhere and yes, Baldur’s Gate is finally back (with more great releases to come)! We are working hard to provide users with much fun, so do expect some great surprises until Christmas.”
