Months ago, I bought the Battlefield 2 Complete Collection. What a deal! One game! Three ‘booster’ packs! 50% off! Here’s the game in question:

So you get Battlefield 2 Modern Combat, and you also get three expansion packs: the Special Forces booster pack, the Armored Fury booster pack, and the Euro Force booster pack. The reason I know this is because it says so on the box. I’ve never actually been able to play them. Periodically I click on something in the game and it tells me I need the Euro Forces Booster Pack to play this (”Click here to buy it now!”). Why can’t I play the games I’ve purchased?

This Electronic Arts purchase isn’t a one-off. Here are some other EA games I’ve bought in recent times.

See, I remember when you guys were cool. Remember Bard’s Tale? Remember Arctic Fox? Or that time when you blew everybody’s minds with Shadow of the Beast?

Back then I didn’t mind saving up my money to buy your games. And you were happy to fulfill your part of the bargain too. We both knew how it worked: I would bring in my money, and you guys would give me my game. You would go away and spend my cash making more games, and I would take my new game home until my parents told me to stop playing it and go to bed already.

But somewhere along the way, you guys stopped upholding your end of the deal. Somewhere, you guys decided that it was OK to take my money and not give me my game in return.But you’re way subtle about it. You still give me the box, you still give me the media, you still give me the stupid little advertisements for hats and sunglasses and EA-brand socks and what-not. But you won’t actually let me play the game itself.

So I get home and install the little darling. Battlefield 2 itself installs OK, but the booster packs? There’s a separate install for those. And it involves getting online to install them. Separately.

And so begins EA’s merry journey of annoyance.

To register, the manual instructs you to visit https://account.ea.com/commerce/bf2cc/code-entry.jsp. Everything looks fine and dandy when you visit that page. Here it is:

Notice how the site is still there, even though this support ticket on the EA website says the site doesn’t actually work. Still, you don’t know that the first time, so you do what it says and create an account in Battlefield 2.

This is Account Number One.

Once you’ve created the account, as instructed, you return to the page, enter your details and voila! Nothing happens. In fact, it gives you the same page again.At this point, let me state that I can, if I want, call the ’support hotline’. But the catch there is, EA, you want me to pay AU$3 a minute to call! With your track record on giving me what I paid for, I bet you’ll keep me on hold for fifteen minutes, then play me a recording saying, “in what it’s cost you to wait for fifteen minutes, you could have bought another game!”.

So the next option is to trawl the EA support base for clues. One support ticket advises you to go to this site and complete the instructions there. You can’t visit that site right now because it’s…er…down, but here’s the Google cache version. That site gives you eleven steps to activate your games (these are games you’ve already bought, mind you). In amongst those steps, it will direct you to another website (note: this website is not mentioned in the original EA support site).  But before you can enter your registration code, you’ll need to create an EA games account. I tell you this because the site itself won’t.

This is Account Number Two.

Once you’ve created this EA account, you receive the following email message:

Note: my ‘Friends at EA’ tell me I can sign into my account using my member name and password. But if you then do exactly as they say, and use your member name and password to sign in, you’ll see the following:

I ask you, who needs enemies when you have Friends at EA like this. Once you are able to get into the site, you can’t do anything without creating a persona account. Why? Who can say?

This is Account Number Three.

Time to send EA a support ticket through their Customer Support section. I and Electronic Arts use the term, ‘Customer Support’ loosely. This is not as easy as it sounds. Even if you’ve already logged into EA.com, you’ll now need to log in again. Note again: do I use my user name? My screen name? Well, my friend, if you try either of these, it won’t work. Oh no, you need to use your email address. But you won’t get an error, it’ll just show you this log in box again.

Now, EA is prepared to send you any number of spammy emails advertising their games, but none of these actually notify you of answers to the support questions you’ve submitted. Since signing up to submit my problem, I’ve received 13 emails. None of these include a solution to my problem.

Silently and without any notification (why not??) they’ve replied to the support ticket with this little gem:

Date of birth! Zip code! AH HA HA HA HA! Just to play a game I’ve already purchased? AH HA HA HA.

OK, EA, now how do I update the support ticket? You have a note telling the user they can just update the ticket (like you’d expect in the 21st century):

But there is no support for doing this if the EA support person thinks everything’s OK. So, I carefully started a new support ticket, including the original support ticket in my message. I ask them if they really, honestly need to know my date of birth just to let me play a game I’ve already bought. They reply with, among other things, “we have no other ways to identify the actual owner over the web”. Now, I posit that this is what the original media is for. If the original login credentials do not accurately inform you of who is logging in, then the login procedure is broken.

So, the moral of the story? Doubt I’ll buy any more EA games. I’m not the only one who is having these problems, and Electronic Arts just doesn’t care.

They even take Visa and MasterCard. The image linked to a site in China - it was a little bittersweet to add this sender to my blacklist, especially when they’re sending me such hip art! And for free too!

How Barack Obama does it…

Find huge ways to cut costs and save money for your organization on a one time AND ongoing year after year—the so called “low hanging fruit”.

I just don’t understand how a business that claims to understand the modern business world can possibly think that randomly spamming potential clients is a good way of operating.

For some reason the University of San Diego seems affiliated with them. Who knows why?

1. Aim at barrels, bottles and cans as you run around. If you have spare rounds, perhaps in your secondary weapon, test your aim by shooting at these items.

2. Shoot at open doors and windows with your secondary weapon as you run past them. Nearby enemies will hear or see these shots and will make them think about what to do next. In effect it tells the enemy to keep their heads down, and tells them to try running in a different direction. The AWP, in particular, has a very distinctive, loud sound.

3. Playing on a public server? Turn off voice traffic. It’s very distracting and will just annoy you.

4. Turn off Anti Aliasing in your graphics options. This will boost your frames per second (FPS) rates, and means that enemies don’t blend as well into the background, especially when they’re far away. In any case, until CounterStrike 2 gets here, the graphics won’t be improving all that much and you could use the additional processing power.

5. Start your own private server and play against bots…

6. …and give them better weapons than you have. This is one way in which CS is better than Day of Defeat: using bots to help you learn how to play better.

7. Play on public servers that are not VAC-secured. This way, it’s much more likely you’ll be playing against cheaters who are using wallhacks, among other Counter Strike cheats. If you can figure out how to beat a player that uses cheats to see through walls and aim perfectly, you can beat an honest player.

8. If you’re scoping as a sniper, follow your team mates’ heads as they move around the map. This will give you practice for how real enemy players move around. You don’t get much time to practice when you’re fighting the enemy. This way, when an enemy player comes into view, you’ll be better prepared.

9. Play on Friendly Fire servers. This will teach you to rely on skills other than “spray and pray”. This includes taking care with grenades and aiming carefully with automatic weapons.

10. Play wearing headphones. Listen for sounds that signal someone approaching, reloading or getting injured.

11. Play against people who are better than you. Yes, you’ll end up at the bottom of the score list, but you’ll learn a lot about strategy, placement and weapon choice.

12. Reduce your voice commands to just four: “Yes”, “No”, “Enemy Spotted” and “Hold This Position”. I think many people don’t use voice commands because they’re hard to access and there are so many of them. You really only need these four - map them to F1 - F4. Use a key bind to quickly access these voice commands.

13. Encourage your team with voice commands and written comments. Be positive and congratulate other players when they’ve done something good. This improves teamwork, and will help your side win.

14. Occasionally use an ‘improve your aim’ website like this one or this one.

15. Don’t reload your weapon. I know that sounds crazy, but having fewer rounds in your magazine will encourage you to be more frugal with your rounds, and hence also use the rounds you do have more effectively. Day of Defeat will give you another view on this idea, where reloading your weapon can take a lot longer, and there are more areas where the enemy can find you on the map.

16. Run with your team mates when you are playing competitively. Run alone when you are training. This way you are more likely to find yourself outnumbered, and that will help you develop the skill of prioritising threats.

17. In general, groups are stronger than individuals. Note how many voice commands relate to team play (such as “Stick together, team!” and “Under fire, need assistance!”). There are no commands that say, “I’m running off on my own!”.

18. Select random assignment when choosing a team. This will prevent you from always picking the team with the advantage, or getting you used to only one weapon.

19. Invariably, everybody has a favorite Counterstrike map in the game. I’d say the most popular maps are cs_office, de_dust and de_dust2. Think about your least favorite map and why you dislike it. My least favorite maps are de_cbble because it’s such a visually dull map and cs_compound because there are only two ways into the superstructure. If possible, try and force yourself to play the maps you don’t like, all the while keeping in mind why you don’t like the map, and how you can use that dislike to help your play.

20. Don’t buy a primary weapon. Now, this isn’t just a strategy to save money (even though that’s a good idea with the recent credit crisis). By not having a powerful main weapon to rely on, you will develop the skills of using smaller weapons and actual play tactics (like moving and firing at the same time, hiding behind objects, being a team player, and distracting the enemy).

1. Policy Segway

That’s right. For pursuing criminals who are speeding away at walking speed. And have stopped for a bite to eat. And a nap. Also ideal for blending in with segway tours around the city.

2. Smart ForTwo

Used by police in Toronto, Austria and Germany, and renowned for its excellent gas mileage and ease of parking, this snazzy small Smart can safely transport you and your apprehended felon in cosy comfort.

3. NIU Police Toyota Prius

Just the thing for the environmentally-minded law enforcement officer: the Bullitt Mustang for the 21st century. Silent so you can sneak up on your criminals while they are in the act.

4. Police Smart Bikes

The Smart Cycle is kind of like the Segway. Only with more wheels and less fast. And light on gas? You’d better believe it. And even better, this thing won’t fall over if you’ve had a little bit to drink.

5. Trabant 601

You may say that the Trabant, made of cardboard and sporting a 25 horsepower engine, is not the best vehicle for apprehending criminals. Well you would be wrong. She may not look like much, but she’s got it where it counts.

Attention Marvel lawyers: it was like this when I got here so please don’t sue.

You can click the first two pictures below for larger versions.

1. “Loose” v. “Lose”

You’ll often see this one written in the context of losing an argument or position (e.g. ‘you looser’ or ‘I think he is loosing the plot LOL’). Loose, with a soft ’s’, means ‘not tight’ while ‘lose’, with a hard s, means ‘to be defeated’. You lose an argument, but you loosen a knot. Calling someone a ‘looser’ instantly marks the author as a twit. Now, the other person may well really be a loser, so make sure you pick the right word so as to get the insult across properly.

2. “For all intensive purposes” v. “For all intents and purposes”

I think it’s easy to see how people can mistake ‘intents and purposes’ for ‘intensive purposes’, but it’s grating every time it appears in print. It almost suggests that whoever wrote the passage rarely actually reads anything (that is to say, they’ve heard the expression, but have never seen it in print).

3. “Could care less” v. “Couldn’t care less”

This one really begs correction every time it’s seen. In fact, I’d argue it actually drops to its knees, crying and bloody, screaming for correction. This term, correctly used, means that the subject or person in the sentence cares so little that it would be physically impossible to care any less. That is, “I am trying to care less at this moment, but I am finding myself unable to do so. That’s how little I care”. The other version is hip but puzzling: saying “I could care less about your stupid idea” means “Although your idea is absurd in the extreme, and only a fool would pay attention, I would like to hear more.”

4. “Case and Point” v. “Case in point”

Here, you’re offering an example to support an argument you’re trying to make. For instance, you might say, “I think popular music has real power to unit races. Case in point: Justin Timberlake and Snoop Dogg”. Supporting your argument in this way makes everyone feel better, and you look like a real big shot. But saying “case and point” doesn’t make sense, because you’re only offering the case, not the point. You’re going to have to make the point after you’ve made the case. See Point (2) above.

5. “Effect” v. “Affect”

An effect is a cause, but to affect is to cause. So, you’d say that ‘the music had a calming effect‘ and also that ‘the music can affect the mood’. This one is curious, because there are situations in which you can use either and the sentence will make perfect sense. For example, you could say either ‘the new policy affected the product recall’ (which is to say that a regulation changed the way a product was being recalled) or you could say ‘the new policy effected the product recall’ which suggests that the product was recalled as a result of the policy.