Major Nelson lies to me

I'm a subscriber to Major Nelson's podcast and without fail, almost every episode, he reminds people that if they want an email read over the air or to get a question answered or anything like that, simply email him and he'll address your question / concern / comment. Well, either I'm blacklisted or he's not nearly as open to these things as he said he is.

During the course of about a year that I've listened to the podcast I've sent in numerous emails, each has returned no reply in any way. In his second to latest podcast he addresses all the flaming going on over at his blog about microtransactions over Xbox Live Marketplace and how companies like EA are charging for things that should be free or are free elsewhere and he specifically states that if we the community find that some content that is being charged for on XBLM is free somewhere else to write him an email and he will address it.

Now, I'm reasonable, I don't expect to send an email and then the next day the price is marked down on XBLM, but I do expect that if he's making claims like this he's going to actually do something. I'm seeing no evidence of that. So promptly after hearing him announce that, I got on the horn and sent him a message pointing out that GRAW Chapter 2, which is going for $15 on XBLM, is completely free for PC users for essentially the exact same content, and from what I can tell isn't ad-supported or anything like that.

A week passes, no email reply, and another Major Nelson podcast. This time, he's interviewing a developer of Need for Speed Carbon over at EA and that was one of the topics that came up, the microtransactions. The understandable part is the defense of the ability for players to purchase unlock codes to access content immediately that they would otherwise have to spend numerous hours playing the game to get. That's fine, if people are into instant gratification and want to pay for these things, go right ahead, it's your choice. No one is forcing anyone to purchase them so I'm ok with it. Personally, I prefer to play through the game and unlock these things, it's just as much of a good feeling to unlock a car in NFS as it is to get an achievement.

The problem that I have is when the Godfather content came up and Major asked the dev why it is that the cheat codes that are available on the current-gen versions of the game have been REMOVED and instead offered on the Marketplace as pay-to-access microtransactions. The developer's response was this: "I don't know if that's right or not. That's not something I've actually gone in and researched." Ok, so that's a very question dodging statement to make. To me and many other gamers, that's not something you have to research. It's just plain wrong to take free content and make people pay for it simply because you *can*. And did Major get all over him and say that it's wrong? Did he say that if you're going to have it free on the Xbox version it damn well better be free DLC on Marketplace or kept on the game disc itself as a cheat code? No, not on the podcast. Openly criticizing a guest like that wouldn't be the best form anyway, but I'd imagine that if we went onto XBLM right now we'd see it's still there as something to purchase. Way to go, Major. Way to listen and fight for us gamers.

I understand that when iTunes got on the podcasting bandwagon suddenly podcasts had a tremendous amount of hits and subscribers and that really changes the dynamic of being able to reply to each and every email, things like that, but if this dynamic does change then don't go saying that you're still everyone's buddy and will address each email because that doesn't seem to be going on in this case. And when you bring something up you said you were going to work to remedy but allow for such a response that completely avoids the actual issue? No. Not cool. Either you're on our side or you're not, don't try to be the righteous hero for the gamer on your show and then fail to follow through like that. I only hope that he's working behind the scenes and that change is being made and I'm going to eat my words. I've got my salt right here to add some flavor, now it's up to Major to tell me that I got served.