Piracy Killing PC Gaming? 584
1up reports on comments from Kevin Cloud, co-owner of id, saying that piracy is killing the PC games business. He says that, in most markets, it's hard to sell official products because pirates can beat them to market. From the article: "'It's the primary reason retailers are moving to the console,' Cloud said, continuing on to say that ways to reduce piracy are in the forefront of every PC developer's mind, and citing World of Warcraft's subscription-based nature as an example of a possible solution to the problem."
WoW is the solution? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:WoW is the solution? (Score:5, Interesting)
I dunno, I have pirated some games in the past. I never would have bought them in the first place though. It isn't as if they would have recieved money from the sale on my acount so i cannot be contributing to the loss thier talkking about in the article. (maybe so on a different level though).
Maybe most pirates are like me and the reasons they aren't selling games as they would like to is because of the ever increasing system requirment or maybe the win2000/XP only development approach. Maybe it is all the activation and anti pirating stuff they through on the CD making it dificult to even play in the first place. Maybe treating regular honest users like criminals gave them the idea that they could become one and get buy with it. Kind of like a "sticking it to the man" attitude.
Re:WoW is the solution? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why should someone who is playing WoW and loving it search for another game to play? They're already filling up their time playing WoW. On the same line of reasoning, when you pirate a game even if you "wouldn't have spent your money on it in the first place" you are spending your time on it. This possibly takes time away from the time you might use to play other games you might actually be willing to spend your money on, therefore maybe not hurting the developer of the game you pirated directly, but certainly hurting the industry they are part of. Now if you would never spend money on any game, then I guess this is a moot point, but somehow I think that if it weren't so easy to pirate games, there indeed would be more people who bought them.
Re:WoW is the solution? (Score:5, Insightful)
Though different, they are of a kind in the damage they do.
Re:WoW is the solution? (Score:3, Insightful)
If it's the illegality of
Re:WoW is the solution? (Score:4, Insightful)
I would never argue that anybody is entitled to pirate games. I will say that the whole idea that "piracy is killing PC games" is overly simplistic and denies the obvious fact that video game demand is highly elastic. I haven't bought a new game since BF1942 because new games cost around SIXTY FUCKING DOLLARS.
Time (Score:5, Insightful)
The same can be said about gardening, reading, going to the church, playing golf, etc. All these activities make you spend time that you could be spending on games. You could say that if there didn't exist so many gardens, churches, libraries, and golf courses people would be more likely to spend money buying computer games.
Re:WoW is the solution? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:WoW is the solution? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:WoW is the solution? (Score:4, Insightful)
That's a very good reason. I have much less time to play those days with work and family, so I'm buying less games, fair enough.
The problem is for people with low buying rate like me( like 1 game a year ) you almost have to buy a new gaming machine exclusively to play one game if you would like to play the game as it is supposed to be played ( like with at least 50% of the effects enabled ) That drives the cost of gaming to about 500$ per year, minimum.
Compare that to WoW and it doesn't look so expensive after all.
Sure I could play old games on my machine, and they will be very cheap. But that's not working like that, I'm not a dedicated player. If I want to play a game, I ask my colleagues/friends what they play and how they find the game ( so we can share the experience and have a nice conversation at the coffie machine - which is a good added value to the game itself ) Then I check if I can play this game on my machine and if I cannot, well I use the money to go to the restaurant ( which is a topic always working for the coffie machine meeting
Re:WoW is the solution? (Score:3, Insightful)
Amen to that. On top of that, I've actually had many games run like dogshit on hardware that far exceeds even the recommended specifications, so I have no faith that having enough
Re:WoW is the solution? (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Games have stagnated, both on the PC and on the consoles. I have a Game Cube and a PS2. I haven't bought a single game for either of them in about a year and a half. If game companies moved from the PC to the console, this (the single most important reason for me not buying, or playing, new games) wouldn't change one bit.
2) Game makers don't generally port to multiple operating systems. I know I'm in the vast minority of users, but I don't have (or want) Windows. I want and use Linux exclusively. PC games are a luxury item to me, and if they aren't on Linux then I don't play them. If PC game makers would ditch DirectX and move to cross platform development, they would extend their markets with almost no added expense.
3) Games cost too much. I'm sure this is because game production costs have skyrocketed over the years. But that is almost entirely the fault of the game producers themselves. With stagnant gaming ideas (see item 1 above), game producers have focused almost exclusively on increasing the visual appeal of games at the expense of good fun. This is a self-perpetuating spiral that will shrink the gaming market all by itself.
Maybe the gaming industry as we know it today deserves to die off.
Another problem: PC platform compatibility (Score:5, Interesting)
I have a CD case full of Windows games from 1998-2002 and a CD case full of Linux (Loki, mostly) games from years gone by as well. Probably these total 200 games. Despite the fact that I have a modern PC and the ability to multi-boot into Windows 2000, Windows 98, and Fedora Core, the total number that actually operate today is probably 15.
Many have copy protection that (apparently) runs afoul of my Thinkpad's DVD and/or CD-RW drive. They either won't install or won't run, prompting me to insert the "original" disks. Firmware upgrades to the drives haven't solved the issue.
Others aren't happy with my sound or graphics hardware, including some using big name game engines like the id (i.e. Quake) engines. They might run for two or three minutes and dump me back to the desktop, or textures come up unrecognizable (and unplayable), or sound doesn't work and is necessary to play.
Still others have expiry dates (no kidding!) About five of my games pop up messages about the license having expired and asking me to get a new CD key by calling the manufacturer. Naturally, all of them are long gone and/or not supporting the game. Am I really expected to set my date back every time I want to play?
Some were written for alternative graphics systems (i.e. glide) and while they had some DirectDraw/X compatibility back then, they don't seem to be happy with and/or find today's versions.
Some also don't seem to like modern display hardware, even when I boot into Windows 98. They complain about incorrect numbers of colors (no matter whether I set to 8-bit, 16-bit, or 24-bit depth) or about incorrect desktop resolution (no matter whether I set to 640x480, 800x600, 1024x768, or 1280x1024).
The Loki games for Linux continue to hobble along by and large better than the Windows games, but installing them is more and more difficult (alternate library folders, editing launch scripts, game updates that no longer run without applying them by hand on the command line, or no longer run at all) and they tend to crash a lot. I can't dual boot to an older Linux OS because many of the drivers required for my current hardware haven't been backported to the 2.4 kernel and 2.6 won't compile with the gcc/glibc versions in question, and I'm not willing to try to hack together/roll my own obsolete distro just to get a few games to work really well.
In short, I have buckets full of games that I spent good money on once upon a time, some of which I'd love to play now and then--but they simply don't work anymore. The only way to get them to work appears to be to maintain a separate system frozen in time--a period PC running a period operating system in addition to the PC I actually use to get things done.
I'm not proposing a solution of any kind to this state of affairs, I'm just posing the following rhetorical question: if I *have* to maintain an entire separate gaming system to play the games I buy, why not just buy a console and completely avoid the compatibility headaches, additional power and space requirements, extra cost, and so on? This provides the added benefit of being more survivable, i.e. you can still pick up a working PSOne, Sega Genesis or NEC TurboGrafx on eBay for not that much money. Good luck having such an easy time assembling a working ca. 1992 PC for a game that will only work with EGA, Pro Audio Spectrum 16 sound, and a 1.2MB floppy drive, much less finding the drivers to make all of the obsolete hardware work again.
Re:Another problem: PC platform compatibility (Score:3, Insightful)
Compatibility over time is is not a problem for the industry. It is your problem. It may even be a benefit for the industry, as you will go on to consume more products.
An exception might be the online games with a monthly income model. But I haven't seen one of them fail yet because the OS or graphics technology left th
Re:Another problem: PC platform compatibility (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:WoW is the solution? (Score:2)
Re:WoW is the solution? (Score:3, Insightful)
I personally have no qualms about subscribing to a game. If there was a particular magazine that I wanted I might think about subscribing to it. There are clear benefits to the model.
You are being too literal in your
Uh, no. (Score:4, Insightful)
Make a good game, and people will buy it.
Re:Uh, no. (Score:2)
Re:Uh, no. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Uh, no. (Score:4, Funny)
I think you misspelled "people will download it for free". Which brings us back to the original problem that Kevin was talking about.
Re:Uh, no. (Score:2)
However, Doom 3? Pirated it, burned the ISOs (didn't have the HD space to emulate them)...and summarily used them as Airsoft targets 3 hours later (as well as uninstalling and deleting). I'm glad I didn't get that at $60 when it came out, and still glad I haven't gotten it yet at $20; id didn't earn
Re:Uh, no. (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.frozen-bubble.org/ [frozen-bubble.org]
http://asteroids3d.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]
http://sourceforge.net/projects/lynn [sourceforge.net]
http://toppler.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]
http://blockattack.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]
http://source.bungie.org/ [bungie.org]
http://www.secretmaryo.org/ [secretmaryo.org]
http://www.realtech-vr.com/nogravity/ [realtech-vr.com]
http://www.classicgaming.com/worminator/ [classicgaming.com]
http:// [nexuiz.com]
Re:Uh, no. (Score:2)
Re:Uh, no. (Score:2, Insightful)
It's not just that the best games are showing up on torrentspy, that will always happen. What is more troubling is the entitlement that many gamers seem to have for new software, especially among the geek community. It comes from, I think, an association of development hours with quality. It is all too easy to raise your standards high enough to not pay for anything.
You might say that the quality level of commercial
Re:Uh, no. (Score:3, Insightful)
Broadband is IRRELEVANT. The biggest transfer medium of movies is still sneakernet via the USPS. Sneakernet was more than capable of matching the effectiveness of the net. I can probably copy a DVD now faster than I could copy a floppy back in the day. Media's cheaper too...
Re:Uh, no. (Score:5, Insightful)
I haven't bought any games lately.
Why? Because, every time I try them out, whether downloading it 'yo ho ho and a bottle of rum'-style, or at a friend's, I end up hating it. I'll play it halfway through, put on god mode, type 'give all' or equivalent, play a few more levels, then type exit in console, uninstall, and delete.
I guess you can honestly say piracy IS hurting the game industry, but not in the "I'll download it and never pay for it ever and play it every day" sort of way you seem to be implying. It's more along the lines of going to buy an Impreza WRX, test driving a friend's for a few days, deciding that you love the acceleration and handling, but the interior is just too basic and plain for you to want to drive it every single day, so you buy an Audi A4 Quatro instead. To the Subaru dealership, they just lost out on a lot of money. But from my perspective, I did my research and was lucky enough to stop myself from buying something I wouldn't actually want. So, Dude-From-ID; if this is the sort of piracy hurting the industry that you speak of, then you don't have a single bit of compassion from me.
You want to get my money, developing studios and publishers? I have lots of it, and it's burning a hole in my wallet. I'll be thrilled to give it to you, actually. Only meet these simple guide lines.
1: Figure out some engaging multiplayer gameplay. I want to be able to play your for years. Not hours. I don't give a shit about your story. Your Single Player game is a complete afterthought to me. Something I do when I'm bored and the internet is out and it's raining outside, so I can't go play street hockey.
2: Make sure you have object collision, net code, and hit boxes down pat. Nothing is more irritating than getting killed by Tanks/Humvees that aren't even remotely close to your vicinity, but, through some fucked up net code, manage to kill you from 5 meters away.
3: Don't dumb the game down so fucking much. Noobs will always be noobs. The less complex you make the game, the more apt I am to get bored with it in days, rather than weeks, months, or years. Or at least find a way to make the game complex, challenging, and engaging, even after having played it for many hours. Even Counter-Strike can be fun after playing it for years, whereas Doom 3 Death Match is about as fun as gouging your eyeballs out with a spoon. And don't just add capture the flag and think that's the most you have to do. CTF is mind numbingly boring after a while. At least add some quirks to it that add some depth.
Re:Uh, no. (Score:3, Insightful)
4. Do not, under any circumstances, use StarForce or any other draconian malware copy protection that is going to totally piss off your paying customers and treat them like the the pirates that you are desperately trying to avoid.
Anti-Piracy measures are part of the problem. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Uh, no. (Score:3, Informative)
They're expectations of sales was doubled within the first month.
Good products rise.
But I suppose the 'industry' isn't intereted in stories like this; the various retailers are more interested in Madden XCXCII or NHL 254,200 (with the latest player skins!).
Re:Uh, no. (Score:5, Insightful)
Does anyone know how game devs can recover their costs and make a profit (on good games) without copyright and serious enforcement of it? No, charity generally doesn't work. Subscription models are a great way of doing it, esp if they give the game away, so I don't see why it's so condemned here. I don't think you can deny that one reason devs are shifting to consoles is because it's harder to pirate there.
Re:Uh, no. (Score:3, Insightful)
1) Things like software and music are not scarce resources. They can be reproduced almost indefinitely with almost no effort.
2) People like artists and programmers are scarce resources. There is a finite supply.
3) If enough people pay an artist or programmer for producing something so that the artist or programmer keeps producing, it does not matter how many people experience the work of art without paying the
Re:Uh, no. (Score:4, Insightful)
The idea that an artist (or, worse yet, a distributor) is entitled to payment for anything is a serious economic faux pas
Where to begin.
First, the concept of "entitlement" is a moral one, not economic, so it can't be an "economic faux pas".
Second, you seem to be claiming the the distributor adds no value, which is false because someone has to inform people of the existence of the intellectual work and bring it within easy grasp, but is doubly false because until the artist, he *can* easily withhold the service of providing marginal units.
Third, if you are referring to the question of who adds value as the basis of entitlement, the artist certainly does, to the extent that people reveal through action that they are willing to spend their own money for access to something that would not exist save for his creative act.
Fourth, the economics on which you based that are in error:
If enough people pay an artist or programmer for producing something so that the artist or programmer keeps producing, it does not matter how many people experience the work of art without paying the artist because the work is already produced and the use of the work does not deprive anyone of anything.
This is totally false. It most certainly does matter how many people experience it without paying. The artist makes his decision what to produce based on what he expects to get for it (plus whatever non-monetary good he sees in doing so, but we'll stick with the case of for-profit production). If e.g. 2 of a million people will respect his copyright on option A and want him to produce A, while 3 of 3 people will respect his copyright on option B and want him to produce B, and he expects this, he will do B. The non-payment skewed his incentives to perform an activity not justified by the demands of the consuming public. It's true that after-the-fact non-payers *can* have no influence -- if they decide they like it long after production, when time discount had obliterated the value of whatever they could have given the artist, and thus could not have affected his incentives, then they would have no influence. But in the general case, they certainly can matter.
it is impossible to steal a service,
False. You promise to pay, you get the service, you don't pay. That is theft in all sigificant respects. (It's not what's happening here, but I'm showing your general statement to be false.)
With the rest of your post, I don't see your point: you labor to make what appears to be a semantic distinction to show how accessing an intellectual work "isn't theft" despite how I said such a distinction bypasses more substantive issues.
Yes, you were rambling.
Re:Uh, no. (Score:3, Interesting)
A game worth buying is a game worth not pirating, so to speak. For those games with online services, such as any FPS, RTS, MMO, eieio, buying the game is often the "only real option" due to key-checks and whatnot, and frankly, the average consumer isn't intelligent (or tenacious) enough to attempt to crack the various portions repeatedly until something works. Offline games of course are a different animal, but t
Old news. (Score:5, Funny)
Uhhhh. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Uhhhh. (Score:5, Insightful)
The obvious alternative is something like Steam, where they provide a download of the game. It's quite a bit harder to beat that.
Someone else mentioned after-sale services... Most games that I play, I don't WANT further services from the company other than bugfixes. I don't even plan to play them again and I certainly don't want to have to play more money if I do. I'd much rather put that same money towards a new, fresh game.
Re:Uhhhh. (Score:2)
For my part, too, I like having a physical copy of a game. I may want to pull it out and play it again ten years down the road. Or I may not. Either way, I enjoy having a physical item to show for m
Re:Uhhhh. (Score:5, Insightful)
For a while, I would buy a game and then download the no CD crack. Then I realised something. I didn't want to pay money to a company that was spending money making my life difficult. I didn't even want to support them indirectly by pirating the game and increasing its popularity. I just stopped playing them. I used to play Half Life a lot before the introduction of Steam; now I don't play it at all, and I haven't bought Half Life 2.
On the positive side... (Score:5, Funny)
Jolyon
Galactic Civ (Score:4, Insightful)
Perhaps the secret to selling a game is releasing a good game in the first place, listening to your customers, marketing it well, and offering real incentive to pay for it.
I find the best way to combat piracy is offer exclusive content, or multiplayer modes that require validation. Hell, let people pirate the game for it's single player and sell them on it. Watch them turn around and then buy the game for the multiplayer, and other downloads.
Re:Galactic Civ (Score:2)
Quit astroturfing. And quit making these lame arguments that pirating is just a 'demo'. There are real demos out there.
Re:Galactic Civ (Score:2)
So actually, there's no DRM. It's not added in a patch. Your game isn't rendered unplayable, you just have to register with Stardock to get further updates.
Re:Galactic Civ (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Galactic Civ (Score:2)
I think that is being a bit silly.
Re:Galactic Civ (Score:2)
Contrast that with Half Life 2 which requires online activation for single player.
Re:Galactic Civ (Score:2)
As for GalCiv 2, they do use a serial # with the online auto-update system and to gain access to beta patches and so forth, but you can download the production-release patches manually, as far as I can tell.
And you thought Steam was bad? (Score:2)
Disagree (Score:5, Insightful)
Years ago, this was a pipe dream to most developers because of the immense difficulties involved in developing for a home console (usually requiring a full knowledge of the hardware's machine code). But today, they're practically as easy to develop for as a PC. The royalties are a small price to pay for the numerous conveniences a console offers to developers.
Independent developers on consoles (Score:2)
And it is still a pipe-dream to smaller independent developers who currently self-publish shareware on the Internet because consoles do not yet take such a business model into account. Even Xbox 360, which has a pay download system, still keeps the terms of the development contract secret.
sigh.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Nope. (Score:2, Interesting)
Let's see the latest blockbuster from ID...
Quake4 - Boring.
Half-Life 2 - DRM so restrictive that most people did not bother buying it.
SIMS2 - selling poorly compared to the outdates Sims and the 65,000 expansions packs that sold at the same price.
How about that games suck right now? the few DS games I like are very different from what I can get for the PC.
Piracy is NOT hurting the Gaming industry. Their lack of ability to make a game that people want is.
Granted, I am waiting
HL2? (Score:2)
I don't see how it was restrictive. I just bought it with my credit card, and BAM, I was downloading it immediately. The day it came out, BAM, it was installed and I was playing within 30 minutes, not bad considering their servers were dying under heavy strain.
The only limitation is that Steam has problems when it can't find an internet connection, but even then, I'm an internet addict anyways, so if I wanted to try to use Steam without the internet I'd probably have shriveled up and died long before I
Re:HL2? (Score:2)
My problem is that I can't get Steam to connect to the server. I bought Red Orcherstra at the store but I could never get it to work on my room mate's PC short of formatting and since it wasn't my PC I coulnd't do that. (My main computers are PPC macs
Re:Nope. (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know what the deal with this week is, but I've seen so many non-sensical comments on /. it's amazing.
Quake4 - Boring - I haven't played it, so I can't comment (although I seem to remember reading reviews saying it was nothing special).
Half-Life 2 - DRM so restrictive that most people did not bother buying it
Yes. That's why Half-Life 2 is one of the best selling games of the past few years. Because people didn't buy it because of the DRM. That's also why they are not making two expansion packs. That's why they aren't releasing new mods for it (no one plays, after all). That's why it's not getting put on consoles (tentativly scheduled for this fall). Oh wait...
SIMS2 - selling poorly compared to the outdates Sims and the 65,000 expansions packs that sold at the same price
Really? It's not quite as innovative as the last (after all, there was no Sims before Sims) but it's still a very nice game. My little sister and all her friends rushed out to buy it. They are churning out money making expansion packs as fast as they can. Again, my little sister and all her friends rush out to buy them. So Sims 2 isn't as successfull as the first (according to you). Well since Sims is the best selling game of all time, that might be a little hard to live up to (considering how long the two have been on the market).
How about that games suck right now? the few DS games I like are very different from what I can get for the PC.
Newsflash, different platforms have diffent games! Film at 11! The DS has some of the most innovative games on the market, and many games currently made are terrible. But if you look at the PC, it has them too. The problem is the signal-to-noise ratio.
Piracy is NOT hurting the Gaming industry. Their lack of ability to make a game that people want is.
If they made games no-one wanted, why are they being pirated? If they made games no one wanted, why is the industry making so much money? Piracy hurts. If the games were better, people may be less inclined to pirate.
But your entire post reeks of hyperboly and your points get lost in it.
Re:Nope. (Score:3, Insightful)
The industry is always quick to yell "Piracy!" whenever something doesn't sell as well as their market research suggests it ought to be selling, but they haven't really gotten it with games yet. They think like the MPAA..."This game is like that game, and that game sold x million copies so
Re:Nope. (Score:3, Insightful)
Cost/benefits ratio. People are willing to watch a marginal movie on cable or from bittorrent for "free" (already paid for the movie channel) but wouldn't bother to see the same movie in the cinema or buy the dvd because it isn't worth that much. In the same fashion, a game that costs $50 isn't worth the cost or effort of buying it, while a "free" version of the same game might be worth a look.
Of course, a sufficently good product will shift the b
Re:Nope. (Score:2)
Everytime I see these idiots from industries complain "boo hoo, pirates hurt us", I want to smack them and tell them "maybe the reason your sales suck is because of your product -- supply and demand!". It happens with the music industry all the time -- some trashy no-talent "artist" will complain that piracy is bad because they haven't had a platinum record... get a clue *smack*!
My friend got FarCry when it came out and offered to bur
Re:Nope. (Score:2)
I used to be a big PC gamer (Score:2)
No more upgrading ram, or video cards or whatever to play the latest. One $200 console and games that generally cost the same amount. Console gaming is a far better experience for me, less hassles, less cost etc.
Piracy doesnt help, particularly if it is widespread as pointed out in the article, but I think a lot of people
Re:I used to be a big PC gamer (Score:2)
Re:I used to be a big PC gamer (Score:2)
Re:I used to be a big PC gamer (Score:2)
The graphics are quite good, the games are fun and I can just turn it on and use it, turn it off and no worries about drivers, or patches or whatever when I buy a new game. Plus I only run ubuntu on my computer, so I dont want to bother installing windows (or using cedega etc)
Hit the power butt
Re:I used to be a big PC gamer (Score:2)
After all that,
Simply... No (Score:2)
Does piracy cost the industry money? Yeah, sure. But it's not to the same extent as some people would like to believe. One has to remember that the oodles of games your local 14 year-old downloads off BitTorrent are non-sales as it is. For every 10 games the kid downloads, how many would he actually buy if piracy was not an available option? One at best, I would guess.
There is a major problem in cases like Doom 3 where pirates beat the game to market, but those are rather rare cases. Yes, the product suff
WoW is killing PC games, not PC gaming. (Score:2)
Console Games Are Just Easier To Play (Score:2)
Status Quo in Asia (Score:3, Insightful)
It's hitting PC games first because PC gamers are by definition going to have better access to pirated software.
DRM is actually the best hope if we want to keep having the same sort of entertainment that we can get now, unless the culture changes to shun pirates and piracy. I'd bet DRM is the reason that Square/Enix is looking into creating their own hardware [kotaku.com].
I don't like DRM or subscription services, but when the government can't/won't enforce the laws and the people don't respect them it's inevitable.
Nope (Score:2)
What Next? (Score:3, Insightful)
Now it's pirates.
What next? Will the gaming world be blaming ninjas?
Face it, most games for today's market suck. People are looking for either a quality game (such as Mario Tennis, which will keep you and your friends entertained for hours) or something different (MMORPGs still fit the different category, but probably not for long). Video games are also too expensive. $50 is a lot of money to spend all at once. Personally, I buy a new game about once a month, which equates to about $600. These games have to be a worthy investment.
Yeah, maybe, or maybe not... (Score:3, Insightful)
1) they cost too much
2) they have onerous copy-protection schemes that require a network connection to phone home regularly, or
3) they stop working if you don't keep paying a subscription fee.
For example, Half-life 2 would have been interesting, but #2 means I haven't bothered. It isn't worth the hassle because I have a relatively slow network connection.
Instead, most of my recent game purchases have been vintage games from the "bargain bin" that are cheaper and don't require a network connection or subscription fees. Most also have "no-cd" patches so I can install them and play without having to dig out the CD and wait for them to spin up and the copy protection to validate (which it sometimes doesn't on certain CD drives -- one game I have validates fine on an old, plain CD drive, but fails on a newer DVD/CD drive. Don't ask me why).
So, is it piracy, or is it because the schemes to slow it down end up costing more and degrading the experience of the the legitimate consumers? Or have game manufacturers simply priced themselves out of the market?
simple fix (Score:2)
I work for a games company (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem.. (Score:2)
Seriously, I've just stopped buying new PC games, the only one I've bought really recently was World of Warcarft. I'm not buying another FPS unless a demo comes out ahead of time, and it's damn good.
So what am I playing? Since I quit WoW, it's mostly Count
Cost, replayability (Score:2)
Joshua Gigantino
Send a Note to the Cosmos! PostcardsToSpace.com
Printed on giant rings in space at ProjectSanBao.com
Same ol', same ol'. For reference, see the MI (Score:5, Insightful)
The market grew. Copying grew, too, but the number of people willing to buy did certainly not shrink. If anything, it grew.
The problem is the games offered. Yes, I would buy a game if it interested me. No, currently there isn't anything that screams "BUY ME!". Actually, currently there's little on the market that I would copy willingly either. Waste of bandwidth, if anything.
Sure, the expectations grew since the days of the 64. On a C64, you had a 3 colored sprite that resembled vaguely something that could be considered a human shaped something if someone told you it was so and you didn't look too close. Today, this better was true color and smoothly animated! But what really makes or breaks a game, at least for me, is its gameplay and the fun I have when playing it.
Most games today are more a chore than fun, though. MMORPGs aside, which are by their very definition a chore accompanied by the dangling carrot, games today become more and more a burden. Many games, even in the days of the 64, had something "in store" for you if you did well. If you practiced long enough in this platformer, you went on and saw the next level. If you knew the patterns of the enemies in that shoot-em-up and if you knew when and where the boss was vulnerable, you'd see the next powerup. But today, it doesn't feel like you "get" anything when you invest time. You get to see... a new character outfit in this beat-em-up game, or a new cutscene if you assembled enough thingamajigs in that RPG.
The carrot is getting too small for me.
This aside, many studios start releasing the same ol' game over and over and over again. New (better?) graphics, a few new toys, maybe one or two new kinks and presto, it's Unreal2006. Or Command&Conquer Generals. Stripping the fluff, it's the same game as the predecessor. And don't make me start ranting about the EA sports line. Did ANYTHING change between NHL2004 and 2005?
So the games industry faces the same problem the MI is facing. Your offer became very, very bland, incredible uniform and indifferent, and generally not really interesting anymore. 10 companies competing by making essentially the same games, each with a little flavor and a bit of spice added, but it's FPS or RTS, RTS or FPS.
Do not confuse leeches for pirates (Score:3, Insightful)
Try to innovate from time to time, maybe you'll fail (for major studio, it should not be that a big deal) but it the long run, it's the only way out of slow decay.
Welcome to gamesworld the next jump in MMO worlds (Score:2)
Today Gamesworld has more than 50 million citizens. Each and everyone has dedicated housing space in our MMO world. Within Gamesworld you
Where would we be without piracy? (Score:2, Insightful)
Piracy vs. Value (Score:2)
The problem is that a company needs to invest a significant amount of money to develop a game. Such a large amount today that they cannot afford too many missteps. And, if a game loses significant sales because of a perception that people are playing for free there will be serious repercussions. F
Uh huh... Piracy is killing PC gaming (Score:2)
The big thing to do with piracy is to make sure that most of the potential buyers either can't or don't want to pirate your software while not impacting the ones that do purchase it by
as a long time gamer... (Score:5, Insightful)
Hardware: Yes. That's definitely an issue, but at the same time people are getting too picky about what it looks like while playing. I usually go on a 2-3 year upgrade cycle. I buy a new vid card every 2 years, and upgrade CPU every 3. Never really have too much of a problem but before I upgrade the video I'm down to 800x600 resolution.
Titles: There are a huge amount of titles out there for a gamer to choose from and our economy still isn't the greatest. There's a finite amount of money to buy games. Which also causes part of the next one....
Poor Games: Many games don't have the "attraction" they should. They don't seem creative or keep you drawn into it. Doom 3 anyone? I installed it, even used the duct tape mod. I just couldn't enjoy the game. Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge Id fan, but Doom 3 was pretty, but WAAAAAAAAAY too dark. It didn't scare me, just annoyed me. However, I really am waiting for Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. That's going to be awesome!
Poor Value: Many games are getting rather poor for game play. Very few games are played single player for longer than a week. It's hard to justify spending $60 for a game that will only give you a week's entertainment. This leaves multiplayer to cover the remainder of the cost.
Horrid Protection: More and more games are causing system problems. I don't mean to get into the StarForce debate, but every single game I've bought with SF protection has given me serious stability problems on 3 different machines. I currently have 8 games that I paid $39.95 or more for sitting on my shelf that can't be played for several reasons. SF is the biggest cause of that, but there are 2 that "don't like being played in any kind of drive that can write CDs".
Poor Quality: Aside from the above problems many games are seriously rushed to market. Tribes 2 is an excellent example. It took months before I was able to play that game without it locking up my system. By that time I completely lost interest. Of course it didn't help that every server could be configured differently and every player felt the need to use the in game voice crap constantly without any way to mute them. Similar problem with Diablo 2. $70 for it on the release day, I played it for 2 hours after spending 4 hours making it run on my system. It's never been installed again.
Business Model: I won't bash Vivendi even though they need it, it's probably all been said already. But games like BF2, that's just rediculous. I wanted to run a server for it but unless I handed a huge amount of additional $ to them, I couldn't. So even though I kind of liked the demo and wanted to try out the full thing, I didn't buy it since I couldn't maintain my own server(s) for it.
Over all, after more than 15 years of gaming, I get a bad vibe from the industry as a whole. I understand their need to protect their property so I do understand copy protection. But that doesn't mean it needs to damage a system and it needs to take into consideration that systems have burners in them...period. There are other reasons the industry is having a problem. Not because of piracy, if anything that helps the strong games because the gamer decides they like it and buys it. More often than not it is because of poor business decisions. Rushing to market, bad copy protection, stifling creativity.
Oh, and Steam....SUCKS! Valve, you've really gotta learn how to manage your software better. Every patch breaks something else. Your software acts....odd at times. Oh, and while you're saving money by doing everything from the 'net instead of pressing CDs, I'd rather have the disk in my hand. Plus, I don't like having things preloaded on my system. Particularly when I own the CD already and "uninstalled" the preload twice before. If I wanted HL/CS installed on my system, I would put in the CD, I don't need Steam to do it for me.
Make a good game, make it available (Score:3, Insightful)
Allegedly they're taking your business, but the p2p users certainly aren't making a buck on it. There is a difference between someone using P2P and someone burning copies and selling them for profit.
There's never been any concrete evidence given to show that this is indeed harming the business. Why these articles are even given the time of day boggles my mind.
Here is a hint:
1) Make a game people want and they will enjoy.
2) Make it available.
I spent years trying to get Silent Storm. While the original was available in Canada, the expansion never was. So I downloaded it. Played it several times. Even years later, I went to ebgames multiple times to request it. Seems the company finally got an NA publisher (for the gold edition containing original and expansion), but ebgames never bothered to bring it to Canada. They sold it in the US only. I asked them several times to find out why, they never got back to me. Finally after almost a year, I had to buy it from some guy on ebay.
If there are good games out there that people want to support, they'll go to great lengths to do it.
Produce crap and they won't.
You offer no rebate policy on the shit your shovel out the door, and don't support your customers when there are problems with it.
Awesome business model. When it fails, blame the pirates.
Odd thing about WoW (Score:5, Interesting)
Try Getting Best Buy To Stock 2m Units of Freeware (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Odd thing about WoW (Score:3, Insightful)
Whatever could it be? /vomit (Score:3, Interesting)
1 Warcraft III : The Frozen Throne
2 The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
3 The Sims 2
4 World of Warcraft
5 Dungeon Siege II: Broken World
6 Age of Empires III
7 Titan Quest (Shameless Diablo clone)
8 Prey (Generic FPS Game #2412)
9 Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (GTA3 part 3)
10 Counter-Strike: Source
World of Warcraft is the only 'new' game on there and that is still somewhat debateable.
Id is more responsible than anyone for the situation that they are in. They are poster children for boring clones that whose feature set is 90% new features on video cards instead of gameplay.
Piracy is killing the PC?? Pull the other one. (Score:4, Insightful)
Just a quick look (google) and I found ALL the latest Xbox 360 games available (Prey, Battle for Middle Earth II, Tomb Raider, Burnout,... need I go on) via ISO format. So going to THAT console isnt going to fix the Piracy issue.
Oh look its the same for the PS2 (Ant Bully, Sensi Soccer, etc etc etc) again all available in ISO format. So THAT console is out...
Hell theres pirate games available (all latest releases) for the PSP, PS1, Xbox, Dreamcast, Gameboy Advance. All available on all major P2P networks all around the world.
So what point is he trying to make exactly??? No matter WHAT platform you develop on someone is going to pirate it, period.
I remember discussing this very issue with Peter Moylenuex and Les Edgar when we was trying to get a game published by Bullfrog (They were actually trying to get into the publishing game until EA bought them out... little known fact). Peter said that the Amiga was being killed by Piracy and that the consoles would take over. The sad fact is that the Amiga didnt die from piracy, but from lack of innovation from commodores part and was trounced upon by the fast developing PC hardware.
The same can be said for the PC games market.. its the lack of innovation thats going to kill it rather than piracy that exists on ALL formats ALL the time.
Re:Umm (Score:4, Informative)
I find this hard to believe. It's an order of magnitude more difficult to install a mod chip, hook up your console to a PC, flash the BIOS and copy ROMS images than it is to google for a serial number crack for a PC game.
I would venture that PC game copyright violation (I don't like "piracy") occurs 100 times more often than console game copyright violation; especially if we're only looking at current generation games.
Re:Umm (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Nah. Crappy games and HW requirements (Score:2)
Not if you're wearing >250 in fire resist. School that girl of yours with crappy games, this is important information!
Bah to interacting with humans!
Re:Nah. Crappy games and HW requirements (Score:2, Funny)
> School that girl of yours with crappy games,
> this is important information!
Tell ya what. Put on the best body armor you can find, and I'll stand there with a gatling gun like from Superman Returns. We'll see if ya do just as well.
While you're at it, let's see how you do vs. a real flamethrower, too. Somebody forgot to flip the "easy" switch on reality, my friend. And not many people are leaving for other games, I would like to point out...
Re:Nah. Crappy games and HW requirements (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps sales are slow because the market has started to reach critical mass - too many games! And way too many of them are crappy.
Re:Nah. Crappy games and HW requirements (Score:2)
Isn't that like stealing a car off a dealer's lot, and then saying "Why's everyone so upset? It was a lemon anyway...."?
I'm not meaning to moralize here. I mean, I can see the reasoning used - "I'm poor, I can't afford to buy it, someone's willing to share it, so why not?"
But to then rationalize it as "and it was crummy to begin with" is going too far. It was the reason given for some software I helped write getting pirated, and so it's admitte
Dead on. (Score:3, Insightful)
"Destineer President Peter Tamte
Reread that sentence: more people tried to play the game with a single hacked serial number than paid for it in the first place.
Re:Nah. Crappy games and HW requirements (Score:3, Informative)
Last but not lea
Re:Nah. Crappy games and HW requirements (Score:3, Interesting)
I haven't bought any new games in a while for several reasons. I'm a tightwad and can't justify upgrading my PC. Battlefield 2 runs fine on my rig (though the amount of cheating is getting like counterstrike was years ago). I own tons of legal games I haven't finished yet. Son has tons of XBox games (mos
Re:Nah. Crappy games and HW requirements (Score:5, Insightful)
With consoles, you have an upfront cost of $200-400 and then you're set for the remaining lifetime of the console which could be around 5 years. With an investment of $200-400 in PC parts, you'll be to play the latest games for another year, 2 max, before you have to invest more money.
PC game developers really limit their available market when they target the latest hardware and don't bother trying to scale things to older machines. It's pretty rare to see a high quality title that can run well on a 2-3 year old machine, let alone the majority of PCs out there. This is one reason why casual games are in much better shape, as they can run on 10 year old machines just fine.
Re:I've been burned..... (Score:2)
Re:I think everyone agrees... (Score:2)