[casual_games] If Vista is going to be such a problem...

[James Gwertzman]

Here's a repro case:

 

1)       Log in as administrator. Download and install Bookworm
Adventures from www.popcap.com <http://www.popcap.com/>  on vista. It
will show up in the game explorer as unrated by the ESRB. As part of
installation, the game will install a shortcut link to the desktop.
Verify that the shortcut link works (if you double-click it will run the
game).

2)       Log in as a user with parental controls set to block unrated
games. Now try double-clicking the same shortcut link. You will get the
error message alex lists below.

 

---------------------------

James Gwertzman

Director of Business Development

PopCap Games, Inc.

+1-206-256-4210

________________________________

From: casual_games-bounces at igda.org
[mailto:casual_games-bounces at igda.org] On Behalf Of Chuck Walbourn
Sent: Wednesday, January 03, 2007 2:50 PM
To: casual_games at igda.org
Subject: Re: [casual_games] If Vista is going to be such a problem...

 


>  Both error messages make no mention of parental controls being

enabled as the reason the game link is broken which is


>certain to be very confusing to any consumers who encounter these

errors.

 


>From the dialogs, this is not Parental Controls or even the Game

Explorer offering to delete stuff for you. This is the shell trying to
"help" with broken links. The Microsoft game shortcut links are marked
as part of your basic install, so the inability to reach that link is
being assumed by the shell to indicate "bad things have happened to your
OS".

 

Can you provide (offlist is fine) some repro details, because if you try
to launch a locked game from the Game Explorer Folder itself, you should
be getting a more obvious error message? Are you trying to use the
short-cut directly from a File Explorer window or via a console launch?
What you are seeing is either a bug in the OS itself, a bad install, or
a misconfiguration of the Game Explorer. It certainly isn't the intended
design, which is why I said originally that Parental Controls makes no
effort to hide unrated or blocked games. In fact, we specifically show
the game in the Game Explorer with a padlock icon to indicate that the
game is installed fine, but is not accessible due to the Parental
Controls settings.

 

-Chuck Walbourn

SDE, Game Technology Group

 

 

 

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