We get a lot of questions asking us, ‘Why are you best?’, ‘What makes the best game server?’. Well here’s my unofficial take on it. If you don’t agree with me, tough. No, seriously- leave a comment below please and tell me where I’m wrong

There are so many factors that make a great game server. If we look at the technical specifics- anything from the hardware, to the connection. The configs- rates, tweaks etc. To the aesthetics- if you are going to have a good game server, the better the tools, the easier the job.

With a struggle, here’s the top five factors (in no particular order) that make a good game server:

The tools

To configure a game server, you need the full access. And to do it properly, you don’t want to be faffing around. This is where a good control panel comes in. As well as the control panel, full FTP is a must. The control panel should do everything the FTP does, but my making 101 clicks, one click! The ability to save config, install mods, change the start line on the fly, are all a must

The hardware

Game servers will run on:

• Desktop PC’s
• Crappy specs

However, don’t expect performance. Desktop PC’s aren’t made for stress, and can overheat (I’m talking about those that host them in a datacentre for some weird reason- must be cost cutting). Quad Cores are a must these days- Dual Cpu’s will do for running a few servers. Anything less and you are going to see horrible performance degradation.

Hosts should skimp on their hardware.

The best connectivity

Connectivity is perhaps the most important part of a game server. One bad route, and your pings will sky rocket. An ip transit provider should be incredibly stable. If you are finding the network going offline every few days, that’s a sure way to scare off players. So look for a good network. Goscomb connectivity is highly rated in the UK for example.

The configs

A CS Source game server needs rates set correctly according to those using the server. If you don’t set your rates correctly, expect horrible packet loss, choke, and lots of ‘OMFG’.

The provider

Of course, it goes without saying. A good control panel, good connectivity and the rest. But you are stuck without a good provider. There are a number throughout the world. Things to check for

- Are they a real company, or after school operation?
- Does their pricing scream desperation?
- How long have they been around
- How quickly do they respond to sales emails?

For now, that is just about enough to get you started. Be careful….it’s a warzone out there

Daily Mail Source

T**s

S**t

F***ers

Apparently Ubisoft’s Scrabble Game has been using offensive language to beat an 8-year old at scrabble.

How did no one on the Dev team think “Hey, we should pop a word filter on this beast, yo!”? Come to that, why wasn’t it sufficiently tested by Ubisoft and Nintendo?

If you don’t test your games, then mistakes will get made. Sometimes very embarrasing ones.

- John

We all tell a little white lie every so often.

No… your bum, doesn’t look big in that extra extra large swim suit.…..
I’ve only had three pints…
Moi, eat the rest of your pizza? How very dare you.

There’s the odd white lie, and there’s blatant lies. Unfortunately when it comes to stretching the truth, some internet businesses are no different, and neither are some server hosts. Whether it’s a Call of Duty 4, Team Fortress 2, or Counterstrike server host you are looking for, here’s three common porkies to beware of when choosing the next host for your clan’s gameserver:

• Do they really offer the 24/7 support advertised?
• Are they really hosting gameservers from their own datacentre?
• When they talk about we is it we, or me?

The great 24/7 support server host lie

Sometimes I feel like a stuck record going on about this one. I probably am.  But it does erk me those one-man server hosts (see below) claiming 24/7 support. If your bank claimed to be open 24/7, and it wasn’t, you’d call your local outsourced call centre and give them a jolly good piece of your mind.

So it shocks me, frequently those server hosts that use the whole 24/7 support thing as the main selling point. Telephone numbers that always go through to answer machine. Emails and support tickets unanswered for days. If only gameservers weren’t so important, and out lifeline! In fact, I had a shock the other day. My own public Call of Duty 4 server went down. I was shaking with fear. I nearly had to go out. Can you believe it? Luckily I was able to phone myself, and got the server rebooted.

But what if you’ve already bought a gameserver from a server host that claims 24/7 support when they don’t? Would it be acceptable for the server to go down at 6pm on a Friday night, and your server host doesn’t respond until Tuesday?

Some server hosts think the fact a website is potentially online 24/7, and that you can fill out an online contact form at 4am, means they offer 24/7. Don’t fall for it. They might think it means support 24/7 . It doesn’t.

My gameserver host has their own datacentre

This comes a close second on the lie scoreboard to the 24/7 myth.

There’s nothing wrong with not owning a datacentre. Let’s face it, if you are in the know you’ll understand already a minimum datacentre budget is going to cost you upwards of half a million to kit out. So it’s not really practical budget wise, for gameserver hosting.

But what is a concern is those hosts, that copy and paste data centre specs from their dedicated server host, and conveniently pass it off as their own.

Beware. Not knowing you do get found out for this, says a lot about this kind of server host.

Server hosting, to we or not to we

That is the question. There’s nothing wrong with a one man company. I’m sure you wouldn’t tip your window cleaner off his ladder, because the window washing waster doesn’t have 30 employees. Well you might if you are a tad sadistic, or he’s not cleaning the windows very well (my window cleaner, beware). The same logic applies to a game server. There’s lots of single man (or girl) server hosts working 8-10 hours a day, and providing excellent service.

But what if the me suddenly becomes a we. The server host that tells you you need to contact support, but it’s actually the same person. The clan server host that claims he has 3 support staff….but he’s actually paying them with a COD 4 server and a bag of nuts.

Being liberal with the truth, stretching the truth, or outright lying?

All my personal opinion, but a hopefully a few pointers to keep you informed all the same

Until tomorrow

You wouldn’t know there is a credit crunch on. Houses being repossessed. People out of work, unable to go to the pub, or eat out at their favourite restaurant. People staying in with cheap bottles of vodka, and turning to old games. The economy collapsing before us.

So why are gameserver providers getting cheaper?

Well at least, you wouldn’t know if you were a gameserver host. Ever day I witness an ongoing challenge to host gameservers cheaper, and ‘better’. Claims of more affordable. Affordable to the person renting the clan server, perhaps. Affordable to the provider hosting the server?

It really hit me just now, when someone on MSN Messenger just claimed we were expensive because he could get a 32 slot Call of Duty 4 gameserver for £23.  BTW, that’s £23 for 12 months. Blimey. Ok, so there’s cheap, and there’s…..suicidal. Some people are thick.

I don’t think so. A few facts to consider:

• Power and rack prices have increased up to 6x what they were 4 years ago.
• So gameservers are far more costly to host on dedicated servers.
• Game server customers expect more, and rightly so.
• Granted server hardware is more powerful, but that doesn’t cancel out the huge cost increases.

‘Affordable’ versus ‘Cheap’ clanservers, the myth uncovered!

So you might ask, why do gameserver hosts price themselves so cheap? What do you call affordable game servers.  And I won’t try and claim this applies to every host. Economies of scale means larger hosts can push out gameservers at a cheap price, because their overheads are lower.

But the kiddie host with the one old colocated server, pushing the old 50p a slot. Do me a favour. It does not add up. So back to the point, why are these clanserver hosts doing it so cheap? And is it affordable?

In a nutshell, no.

Such gameserver hosts are very often:

• Running at a loss, because it’s only £20-£30 to lose each month
• License fees, what license fees? Are you sure your Ventrilo / Teamspeak 2 server is authorised. I’m sure you wouldn’t want it going offline halfway through a war
• Not offering the 24/7 support they claim. Do you think someone doesn’t sleep to lose money? I’d have them commited if they were.
• Unable to compete with the big players. They cannot beat their level of support, uptime, and promises. There’s nothing unique in what they offer. They are just another one of many gameserver hosts. So what’s the *only* thing they can do? You guessed it, price. They make themselves Cheaper. And most definitely they’ll be the cheapest gameserver host on the internet. Yeah, right

So why are affordable gameservers better?

With total reference to the above, any gameserver host worth its salt will not be looking at whether they can pay their hosting bills at the end of the month. They will be looking at the next 12 months, and beyond that.

I would like to think an honest, and affordable gameserver provider will not pluck prices from the sky, in order to compete on the only thing they can do- being cheap.

Clanserver providers that price themselves as affordable, are thinking about keeping in business, and won’t be running away with your rental fees.

To the boys, you remember what you were told about cheap girls? Well gameservers aren’t any different.

And finally, remember. If it looks too good to be true. It probably is.

And we are now well into the next generation of video games. But while the graphics have changed, and the loading times have decreased, and the finances and time required to make games has skyrocketed a lot of corners are still being cut.

I recently tried to play Flatout Ultimate Carnage with a friend. I’d been telling him about this slicker, grittier version of Burnout and we were both looking forward to it. Oh, wait, no splitscreen multiplayer.

That’s right. A game that does XBox Live multiplayer to the nth degree (8 players) doesn’t allow a couple of buddies to kill some time on the one console. So we ended up playing Burnout: Revenge instead.

As a result of my disappointment at this, and the desperately cut-down Unreal Tournament 3 (which was in many peoples’ opinion, steps backward in gameplay from Unreal Tournament 2004), and many other instances of glaring omissions that I’ve seen in games lately, I’ve drafted the following manifesto for games to be considered “next-gen” in what actually matters: the gameplay and usability.

Gameplay:

1) Games which offer “Deathmatch”, “Team Deathmatch”, “Capture the Flag”, and “Last Man Standing” game modes have to include other game modes as well to offer a variety of gameplay – too many games are offering these four as the bare minimum. Other popular ones include Assault, Conquest, Assassination, and Mutation (UT 2004).

2) Flexibility in multiplayer. These may include (the following are examples, not specifics) an optional regenerate health setting, an friendly fire setting (including friendly fire modifiers such as 50% of damage), an optional penalty for winning players, etc.

3) Games must offer an offline Instant Action mode. Too many gamers don’t have online access either temporarily or permanently to not allow this. S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Shadow of Chernobyl, one of my favourite games of recent times, has this problem.

4) Games that include blood should include a “no blood” feature, regardless of age rating.

5) Missions in story or campaign driven game modes shouldn’t be simply “walk from A to B then back to A”, even if this is disguised as “fetch x for y”.

Interface and accessibility:

6) Plenty of gamers are deaf or play with the sound off. All in-game speech must have subtitles.

7) All subtitles and onscreen text must be clearly legible on Standard Definition televisions, widescreen or otherwise. This includes making sure that the text is on screen for long enough! A lot of people found Dead Rising’s missions difficult to complete to play well because mission critical instructions were given in unreadable text.

8 ) Loading screens should have something interesting for the player to watch, read, or do, as well as clearly showing the relative amount left to load.

Multiplayer:

9) Games that offer online multiplayer have to provide it in such a way that an inexperienced and spoilt child can set it up without a tantrum.

10) Console games that allow network multiplayer modes must allow splitscreen multiplayer modes to either the same amount or the maximum amount offered by the console.

Are you getting annoyed with next-gen games not being up to par? Anything you think should be added to the manifesto?

- John

john@inx-gaming CO UK

The inevitable has happened.

Jack Thompson has been permanently disbarred. He’s got 30 days to get his affairs in order, and then he’s out. Oh, and he’s also got a fine of over $43,000.

The Florida Supreme Court supported the accusations against Jack Thompson including that he:

* Made false statements of material fact to courts and repeatedly violated a court order
* Communicated the subject of representation directly with clients of opposing counsel
* Engaged in prohibited ex parte communications
* Publicized and sent hundreds of pages of vitriolic and disparaging missives, letters, faxes, and press releases, to the affected individuals
* Targeted an individual who was not involved with respondent in any way, merely due to “the position [the individual] holds in state and national politics”
* Falsely, recklessly, and publicly accused a judge as being amenable to the “fixing” of cases
* Sent courts inappropriate and offensive sexual materials
* Falsely and publicly accused various attorneys and their clients of engaging in a conspiracy/enterprise involving “the criminal distribution of sexual materials to minors” and attempted to get prosecuting authorities to charge these attorneys and their clients for racketeering and extortion
* Harassed the former client of an attorney in an effort to get the client to use its influence to persuade the attorney to withdraw a defamation suit filed by the attorney against respondent
* Retaliated against attorneys who filed Bar complaints against him for his unethical conduct by asserting to their clients, government officials, politicians, the media, female lawyers in their law firm, employees, personal friends, acquaintances, and their wives, that the attorneys were criminal pornographers who objectify women.

[source: gamepolitics.com]

His response was his standard threat: he sent an email to www.gamepolitics.com entitled “Now the fun begins”. I remember a similar scenario when he threatened to “deconstruct the Florida Bar”.

For a timeline of Jack Thompson’s demise click here.

- JForce

If a bloke with too much of the old fake sun tan and with more gold than a Swiss vault, tried to sell you a cheap as chips game server, you’d wonder whether it’s hosted on an antique server. Never mind hosted from an amiga, you’d expect the gameserver to be powered by a Spectrum. Or maybe a BBC micro? Any suggestions for a worse case scenario? Antique-host. Now there’s a business idea!

So it does amaze me the amount of people that are obsessed with the word ‘cheap’. We as a nation, and as individual consumers, are obsessed with it. Where it’s arguably valid is when you are shopping around for the best price on a product. As an avid amateur mucisian and wannabe rock-star, I recently treated myself to a Microkorg, which I must say is a rather cool little synthesiser. Apparantly the lead singer of the Killers uses one. How cool!

Narrowing down the best

What was the first thing I did? I went onto Google shopping. And then you guessed it, I sorted by price. So here sits the biggest hypocrite writing this post like an old woman. Now, the average price was around £250, and I had tabbed in Firefox around a dozen possible companies to order from. I wasn’t going to pay £275 for it, when I could get it for £250 or less. So out went those companies charging an arm and a leg. Windows closed.

I was then left with around half a dozen sites. And after that I started doing a little homework. I asked the following questions

• Do they have a full contact address listed?
• Can I get hold of them easily if there’s a problem?
• Does their website look nice, or is it a horrible template. Something a Turner Prize wannabe has shat on my monitor?
• Do they have what I want in stock?

And from that I was left with three websites.

Choosing the winner

I then contacted all three by phone. Two of them didn’t answer. Funny enough, I was left with the one I liked at the beginning. It was a bit more expensive, but firstly they really knew their stuff, and secondly they were going to put my keyboard straight in the post after I ordered. Which they did, to their credit.

So why didn’t I go for the very cheapest one?

Pricing is a very thin line. If you price too high, you don’t get any customers. If you price too low, while you’ll get the hordes of customers, you don’t make enough money to sustain growth and offer a good service. I chose the one that was going to be least hassle. I wanted my synth for the weekend. I didn’t want to be let down. I wanted to be able to get hold of the company I’d paid £250 to if there was a problem. For the £5 extra I paid over the cheapest one, it was completely worth it.

The relevance to gaming servers

Very simple. The same people that wouldn’t listen to this advice, will have stopped reading this post after the second line.

It amazes me how people will choose a game server provider, a couple of quid less over INX-Gaming (and other reputable hosts) even though:

• No contact details are on their site
• The grammatical and spelling errors, are quite frankly embarrasing. Stinking of kiddie-host
• They only appear to host a couple of game servers
• Yet they lie, and promise 24/7 support
• Because they get something free they don’t actually need

My dad taught me something when I was younger. When buying something, think, what profit that provider is making? Can they sustain service at that pricing?

I’m well aware that INX aren’t any longer the ‘cheapest’ (we were once!). But I can tell you that the pricing is based on sustaining top support, and excellent server quality.

If a competitor drops their prices to compete with us, something has to give somewhere.

If we halved our prices we’d double our bills for:

• bandwidth
• rack space
• power
• hardware
• networking equipment

And with that, twice as much as support. And at the end of it, we’re making the same “profit”. But we’re not.

It’s not my job to tell people what to charge, but we have been around coming up to 6 years now, and we’ve not gone bust like so many with silly pricing.

While some game server hosts might want to charge 75p a slot, we know their support sucks. We know they aren’t making the profit. We know it’s not sustainable.

So we’ll be sticking to our guns, and we’ll stick to offering the superior service we do. And really, at the end of the day, all for another 25p. Even Mars Bars cost more than that now!

-Olly

Look mate, it’s http://www.inx-gaming.com.

It’s not some weird affiliates link.

Really, you do puzzle me sometimes. Please, sort yourself. We’ve changed to www.inx-gaming.com. Thanks

Two separate attacks occurred around the time of GTA4’s midnight release that ruined the release of the game. One was an unprovoked stab attack and the other was a vicious weaponless attack in which two men broke a teenager’s nose and jaw to get his copy of the game. Even if two men are prepared to resort to crime to get hold of their copy, I doubt they can justify that level of violence to get hold of it. They can’t. They aren’t men.

It’s tragic that a climate of fear should penetrate our games community, and on behalf of INX I would like to express my support for the victims and condemn such crimes.

If you have any information about the stab attack in Croydon, London (there were 50-100 potential witnesses that night) please report it to the Metropolitan Police (you can do this anonymously).

If you have any information about the robbery in Lancashire please contact the Lancashire Constabulary (again you can do this anonymously).

- John

Your child wanting that 18 rated game!

This is just coming from experience, and still narks me when I think about it. Was a few months back a relative came over with his swanky Xbox 360 (which I am jealous of cos I STILL don’t have one!) and I saw him playing a game. Me being naturally interested in games (And Xbox deprived) I am to games like bees are to honey so I swung on in there and wanted to have a go.

The game revolved around you stealing and driving cars and doing tasks of taking out people with various types of weapons (I think you know which one game I’m talking about here!). I was staggered to learn he had managed to obtain this game and so I interrogated him by how he managed to get this game.

Me: “Hey lil dude, what you got there, oohh Xbox 360, me wants to have a play!!”
Relative: “Sure!”

(Not like the poor kid has a choice mind you, I swoop in like a hawk and nab the controller off him! And after few mins of playing I’m just a bit concerned…)

Me: “Eh, Dude, this game is a bit violent no?”
Relative: “It’s cool though, you get to shoot people and steal cars and stuff!”
Me: “But eh… it says on the packet it’s an 18 rate…”
Relative: “Yeah?”
Me: “You’re 11 years old!!”
Relative: “Yeah???”
Me: “well how in hell did you buy the game!?!?!”
Relative: “Oh, *Insert grown up person of age 18 and over here* bought it for me for my *Insert special event here!!*”
Me: “WHAAAA???!!??” *shakes fist of rage*

Now usually I’d be shaking the parent/relative vigorously, asking them why and what in their right mind are they doing, but unfortunately they weren’t available!

But one thing I have to say is this…

IT’S AN 18 RATED GAME FOR A REASON!!!!

>_< <—- Yes I am pulling that face as I type this!

I mean you wouldn’t give alcohol or cigarettes to a child now would you? The same reasoning should be applied to the games rating system. If they’re not of age, then don’t buy it for them. It is common sense after all.

And you hear on the news “games blamed for child violence on others” etc etc. Well, how did they get their hands on the game in the first place? I would assume that game stores and sellers have the sense not to sell an 18 or even a 15 rated game to someone who looks underage to play it. Do they even ask you for ID when you’re buying a game and you happen to look younger? (I got asked once for ID when buying lotto tickets, 16 is the legal age, I was 21 at the time! Ha! I find that quite flattering *n_n*)

But then there is the internet. Children can seemingly buy games with ease with their own pocket money just as long as they have an account and a bank card, then it’s all hunky dory. They get the game. No questions asked.

It’s good that the rating system is going in for an overhaul. But i just hope thye don’t go too overboard with it, as in for example, take a good game like Super Mario series and put it a rating of “12″ because it contains “Mild head stomping of animals, pyromania and drug induced growth by mushroom eating” !

Sometimes I hear “But it’s only a game Sooz, kids play on them all the time! What’s the fuss?” You are kidding me!?? What kids’ game do you know that takes you where you have to slice baddies with a overly sized sword or makes you go on a gun totting killing spree to say the least? Games aren’t just for kids, they’re for us adults too and with the market focus widening it’s audience, all the games are varied in nature.

I think exposing a child to that kind of violence and adult related content at such a young age just desensitizes them to a degree that what they do and play holds no value in the game or in real life. Kids are growing up far too fast. Let them be innocent for a while in their lil fluffy safe haven bubble until they fully understand the values and morals of life.

- Suzie