Curse

-Loki- · Mar 30, 2008, 02:34 AM // 02:34

Quote:

Originally Posted by Splitisoda

Not all, thats the point. If you say one game isn't worthy of a demo, your wrong . I've seen people rate a game REALLY low and when i play it its a heck load of fun. If a game doesn't have a demo, not lots of people will be willing to buy it, seeing as about 1/2 will want to return, or Ebay the BS game.

I never said some games aren't worthy of a demo. I just said most high profile games have demos. I don't know where you got the 'not worthy of a demo' came from.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Splitisoda

If GW didn't have a demo, would people buy it? If WoW didn't have a trial, would people buy it? Look at the games that DON'T have demos, they're sails are pretty much LACKING in comparison to games that DO have demos. Only thing that I see that isn't like that is Orange Box- TF2, and I got orange box cause of HL2 and its mods. Which HL2 had a demo also.

I can equally say, from my experience games that are bad don't sell well. There's more that goes into poor sales than lack of a demo. If a game is good, it will sell by word of mouth alone.

Burst Cancel · Mar 30, 2008, 02:39 AM // 02:39

Quote:

Originally Posted by BlackSephir

Oh, sure, but it's not the right way to do bsns. "Believe our bs, or f off".

Way to completely miss the point. We're not debating business strategy here, we're discussing why your pseudo-justification for piracy doesn't hold water. As I said, not having a demo doesn't give you the right - morally, legally, or otherwise - to simply download the game for free. What you do have the right to do is to speak with your wallet - if you're not willing to throw money at a game you haven't tried, simply don't buy it. If enough people do this, the game will fail and maybe the devs will notice.

Your thinking implies that game developers are somehow obligated to let you try their game, no matter what, and if there isn't a demo then you get to pirate it for a test-drive. There really isn't any rational basis for this kind of thinking.

Re Dr Strangelove:
Whether or not "everyone pirates" is irrelevant, and I think it's a pretty safe (and well-known) assumption anyway. The question above is whether you can justify it; given the rationales I've seen, I'd have to stick with a solid "no" to that question.

Again, the main reason people have no problems doing it, with or without justification, is because most people don't really consider intellectual property to fall into a moral domain - it's not good or bad, it's just something people do to get cool stuff for free. I'm no longer amazed at the number of people I see in tech forums all over the internet that honestly believe that music should be free - it's as if it didn't occur to them that people's livelihoods depend on getting paid for their work.

The fact that it's nigh-impossible to get caught certainly doesn't help either. People's sense of morals tends to go askew when there aren't any noticeable consequences of their actions.

Creeping Carl · Mar 30, 2008, 05:46 AM // 05:46

Quote:

Originally Posted by Burst Cancel

While I don't necessarily disagree with your points, starting your argument with:

makes you sound like a whiny sack of snot. Just saying.

Wow. Hyprocritical much? All I was saying that I still think Crysis is a good game despite what everyone was saying (AKA "I dont care what anyone else says"). You didnt have to be a prick about it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Burst Cancel

As for Crysis, you'll never get anywhere arguing whether it was good/bad - some people are going to enjoy it, others won't. Unless somebody actually bothers to set forth a reasoned argument on the merits, the 'debate' is just treading water. What's funny though, is that it's largely irrelevant whether Crysis was a good game or not, because the number of people who can even run it is too insignificant to matter in any practical sense.

Which, of course, is one of the key issues being discussed.

Again, I was only putting forth my opinion on the game and refuted one argument where someone said it looked like WoW (WTF?). I wasnt forcing people to like the game so I don't know what your problem was. As you said, some people are going to like it and some won't. Big deal.

And in case you missed it, I DID agree that the technical issues made it impossible for the game to succeed.

enter_the_zone · Mar 30, 2008, 07:29 AM // 07:29

I pirate quite a lot. I even have an eye patch, a cutlass and a parrot. Ok, ok, so the parrot is styrofoam and the cutlass is plastic, but I do a good "O, argh me mateys"

Seriously though, rent the game if you want to try it, at least for consoles. I'll admit, I sometimes get pirated copies of PC games I want to try from mates. Install, try, if I like it, I buy it. If not, uninstall and delete. Too much, um, other stuff, yeah, that's it, other stuff I need space to store.

Fril Estelin · Mar 30, 2008, 10:17 AM // 10:17

I've thought of the topic of pirating as a corrolary of the free/open-source software movement exemplified by Linux. From the OS kernel up to the most important applications (Open Office, The Gimp, Blender), people among the best programmers in the world have attempted to present a more open side to software, leaning towards the free (but "open" does not equal "free", you can see the difference between the GPL/Stallman's stance via GNU and Linus Torvalds take on the issue). To the point where I've seen many, many times people expecting software to be free, and of course the data they use, video, music, text files.

The next important element that explains piracy is fairness, or rather the lack of it from the "major" companies that have exploited the unconsciousness of people. I can only give one very big example I personnaly consider disheartening: the creator of the tv series Babylon 5, J. Michael Straczynski had to give away his rights to taking money from DVDs when he created the series (the studios decide and impose the rules), which until last year made half a billion dollars of profit and he didn't see a peny, not one. That explains why the authors guild was on the biggest strike ever until a few weeks ago. The problem is the same with CDs and DVDs at an unfair price, with more and more knowledge of the business models of these companies, the customer feels he's cheated by them on the price, the price does not reflect the reality of the cost but is much higher and rather explains their big profit margins.

Of course, there are many other sides to the piracy discussion, but to me free/open-source and fairness explains a large amount of things. It's not about right and wrong, though very often it's wrong (I've attempted as much as I can to buy the DVDs/comics/CDs from stuff I downloaded), it's rather on what becomes (un)acceptable in a social context (look at the silly lawsuits of the RIAA, where grannies were on trial for downloading songs ...).

ischuros · Mar 30, 2008, 12:58 PM // 12:58

Quote:

Originally Posted by Antheus

Just to understand something - Unreal is an engine, and primary development focus. From time to time, they develop a technology demo (titles made by Epic Games, such as Unreal Tournament).

But the meat of the engine lies in the titles that were developed with it. So Unreal engine cannot be compared to titles directly, since UT3 is never expected or required to be a major performer - primary focus of Epic Games is development and support of engine technology.

I think you're talking about the Unreal 3 engine, whereas I'm talking about Unreal Tournament, which sold quite badly for such a big release.

DreamRunner · Mar 30, 2008, 03:08 PM // 15:08

I've seen movies that are not released into Australia. (3-iron) Some people have to go to U.S sites such as Amazon to get some international movies. And then Pay for a region 4 DVD player to play since people don't sell region-less DVD players anymore.

RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO that.

zwei2stein · Mar 30, 2008, 03:20 PM // 15:20

About demos:

Game lacking demo means it lacked some "dev love":

* Either creators know that game is so terribad that demo would scare people away.
* Or they had no resources to do demo, which means they lacked resources for normal development, again, resulting game is less than desirable.
* Or they didnt care. If devs dont care about marketing game, do you think they care about making game actually good?

All this means that game without demo is not worth pirating or even buying. Hence, pirating it is stupid.

About graphics:

"... if game devs didnt push us we would stil have 640kb ram".

Bull shit.

Anything my brand new 2008 PC does 1998 one Did, and it was faster for some odd reason. There is essentially no difference, really. There was no revolution or anything requiring one to upgrade. Nothing interesting happened.

For reasonable person, once we got 1240x1024 screens with 32bit color, 10 mbit connection, 100gb disks, 500Mhz procesors and 128mb+ ram, there was never reason to upgrade other than e-peen. Ever.

Seriously, i and sick of having to explain to people that they definitelly should not throwaway money just because neightbours kid b-washed from gaming forums and sites told them that their home PC must be replaced immediatelly (or they are failures or anything).

I am still laughing at 64bit madness.

Just say not to forced Obsolence.

cebalrai · Mar 30, 2008, 03:31 PM // 15:31

On a side note, Stardock games are very high quality. I take a long look at anything they publish. Galactic Civ II with it's high-quality uber expansions are truly remarkable pieces of software.

Because of this thread I looked into Window Blinds. I'm thinking of purchasing it when I get my new computer in a few months. It's pretty slick.

NeHoMaR · Mar 30, 2008, 03:58 PM // 15:58

Guild Wars forced me to buy it, the piracy is impossible with this game, I think all games should take a similar path.

About system requirements, I really love all games able to run in computers three year older than game itself, and at the same time looking awesome; The list of games inside this category is very small unfortunately, because normally developers sell their souls to nvidia, intel, and so on.

Splitisoda · Mar 30, 2008, 03:59 PM // 15:59

Quote:

Originally Posted by -Loki-

I never said some games aren't worthy of a demo. I just said most high profile games have demos. I don't know where you got the 'not worthy of a demo' came from.

Did Oblivion have a demo?

Quote:

I can equally say, from my experience games that are bad don't sell well. There's more that goes into poor sales than lack of a demo. If a game is good, it will sell by word of mouth alone.

Truth there, but then again, ALL of my games had some sort of demo.

Fril Estelin · Mar 30, 2008, 04:15 PM // 16:15

Quote:

Originally Posted by zwei2stein

For reasonable person, once we got 1240x1024 screens with 32bit color, 10 mbit connection, 100gb disks, 500Mhz procesors and 128mb+ ram, there was never reason to upgrade other than e-peen. Ever.

I'm in agreement on what you say, except the above: modern CPUs and GPUs allowed to have fast video and image editing of great quality. Adobe even have a lightweight Photoshop option.

Modern programming haven't progressed according to "Moore's law", but it's starting to catch up (look at Beryl for Linux or Xen virtualisation for running Windows and Linux in parallel). But this is not possible because of the hardware-graphics-pushing-the-envelop thing. Look also at Mac OS X.

Quote:

Originally Posted by cebalrai

Because of this thread I looked into Window Blinds. I'm thinking of purchasing it when I get my new computer in a few months. It's pretty slick.

I'm using their ObjectDock application (the free version), which gives you the equivalent of the nice Mac dockbar, and it's truly wonderful, light, fast, beautiful. (I also saw this afternoon that the last UK magazine PC Zone has a review of Sins of a Solar Empire, I'll start to take a look at that) I tried windowsblind a year ago for switching the windows interface to the mac one, it looked great but my slow laptop would run 20 to 30% slower, so I'll wait until I've got a decent desktop. (zwei2stein: here is another example of how HW progress has enabled some nice things, but the forever arms' race they're engaged in is ridiculous as you mentioned)

NeHoMaR · Mar 30, 2008, 04:23 PM // 16:23

Quote:

Originally Posted by Splitisoda

Did Oblivion have a demo?

And Grand Theft Auto? and Half-Life 2? Portal? KOTOR? Neverwinter Nights 1 & 2? Morrowind?

Divinus Stella · Mar 30, 2008, 04:41 PM // 16:41

I cringe everytime i see a games chart, its just purely dictated by sheep-like casual gamers, anyone who buys a Tom Clancy or football game really has no idea about games, they just buy them to sit next to their console and serve as bookends.

There really is a lack of exposure for decent games, so many go under the radar because of some sports game or disney game getting all the hype instead.

GloryFox · Mar 30, 2008, 04:56 PM // 16:56

Interesting read, as it justifies the reasons why ANet should not just cater to hard core gamers who dictate how skill nerfs should be in GW. It also justifies the arguments on why "skill over time" should always out weigh "grind". Game development is a business and if you drive away your market (you know the "noob" casual gamer crowd) you end up with less sales. Hard Core gamers do not dictate markets. Casual gamers dictate markets because casual gamers make the most purchases of very good games.

On a side note about security:
I used to play games that used STEAM (HL2, Portal, Counter Strike, etc) but after an issue of them screwing up my user name & password I will never touch another game that uses STEAM again. Their indifference and lack of personal response to issues I've had with STEAM again and again will forever cause me to never purchase another STEAM powered game again. Too much security paranoia drove me the casual gamer away forever and that means no sales from me or my family ... forever.

Fril Estelin · Mar 30, 2008, 05:16 PM // 17:16

Quote:

Originally Posted by NeHoMaR

And Grand Theft Auto? and Half-Life 2? Portal? KOTOR? Neverwinter Nights 1 & 2? Morrowind?

HL2 demo: http://www.download.com/Half-Life-2-...-10349536.html
Portal demo for Nvidia customers: http://www.joystiq.com/2008/01/10/po...customers-onl/
NWN demo: http://nwn.bioware.com/downloads/demo.html

Quote:

Originally Posted by GloryFox

On a side note about security:
I used to play games that used STEAM (HL2, Portal, Counter Strike, etc) but after an issue of them screwing up my user name & password I will never touch another game that uses STEAM again. Their indifference and lack of personal response to issues I've had with STEAM again and again will forever cause me to never purchase another STEAM powered game again. Too much security paranoia drove me the casual gamer away forever and that means no sales from me or my family ... forever.

Just a note on this point and in particular the highlighted sentence: this is an issue that I think is absolutely essential (not security, but rather perceived and felt security which are much more subjective in nature and close to the notion of "trust", but I digress) and I think that security paranoia is really very, very bad (terribad as some say). It's actually worse than having no security because it will lead you to making the wrong decisions.

Sorry for the slight thread derailment (we can talk about that in a different thread if you're interested) but I felt it was important to mention.

Dr Strangelove · Mar 30, 2008, 05:25 PM // 17:25

Quote:

Originally Posted by GloryFox

Interesting read, as it justifies the reasons why ANet should not just cater to hard core gamers who dictate how skill nerfs should be in GW. It also justifies the arguments on why "skill over time" should always out weigh "grind". Game development is a business and if you drive away your market (you know the "noob" casual gamer crowd) you end up with less sales. Hard Core gamers do not dictate markets. Casual gamers dictate markets because casual gamers make the most purchases of very good games.

I really don't see what skill balance has to do with anything here. The article is about the pieces of a game independent from gameplay - graphics, playability, media hype and piracy. However, I liked what Burst Cancel said about the hardcore vs. casual thing:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Burst Cancel

The happy middle ground is made up of games like - you guessed it - Starcraft. Games that casual players can screw around with that also retain tons of technical headroom to accomodate tournament-level players as well. Many of the better FPS and fighting games also fall into this category. RPGs rarely do (the reason being, it's easier to make good, successful games when there's a competitive aspect to dynamically drive hardcore play - a topic that could warrant it's own essay, frankly).
- If you look at GW, PvP never really took off the way Anet probably wanted it to, because GW PvP is too technical for the casual player. Nevermind top-level GvG play, the bar for entry is fairly high if you want to do anything other than RA, and the whole "finding a guild/group/team" is only a part of the problem (as much as newbies profess otherwise). But as I said above, and as I've said in other threads, you can't promote game quality by catering to the lowest common denominator; ultimately, I think keeping GW PvP at a high level was more important to the game's overall quality than trying to break it out of its elite clubhouse. It's especially true because Anet can use GW PvE to pay the bills - as long as you keep PvE simple enough (both in terms of difficulty and technical complexity) to keep the casual players coming, it won't matter if PvP remains largely out of reach.

One of the biggest points in the articles is that casuals do not, in fact, dictate the market despite having the most purchasing power. The hardcore gamers are dictating what's cool, while the fabled casual gamer is either following along with that or playing The Sims.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fril Estelin

Just a note on this point and in particular the highlighted sentence: this is an issue that I think is absolutely essential (not security, but rather perceived and felt security which are much more subjective in nature and close to the notion of "trust", but I digress) and I think that security paranoia is really very, very bad (terribad as some say). It's actually worse than having no security because it will lead you to making the wrong decisions.

I'd actually argue that the only place people care about security is when their credit card is involved. After that point, the huge amount of copy protection, security checks, and logins just serve to annoy players. With Guild Wars, the security for buying it online is fairly extensive, while the security that protects against people logging into your account is remarkably light.

KennyC · Mar 30, 2008, 05:29 PM // 17:29

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dr Strangelove

Where are you getting those numbers? As of December 17th, they sold a little over 80,000 unique copies, so I'd be somewhat surprised if it did sell that well.

I am one of those 80000 people, I'm running dual 8800's 4GB of ddr800 and a quad core processor. I uninstalled the game after a week, too much tearing, and jumping about when it got busy. Personally I think theres too much emphasis on realistic graphics rather than gameplay nowadays.

Take the call of duty series for example. The only thing that really changed throughout the whole series is the quality of the graphics. As the series progressed, it got pretty. They didnt address the piracy, the cheating/glitching or the many, many bugs. And if anyone says PB is adequate protection against cheaters.. LOL! Even though the series started to look better the gameplay got worse because graphical glitches, bugs and cheaters made players move away from it. Graphics and advertising are what attract you initially to a game but to maintain any longevity the game needs to be maintained and looked after, bugs need fixing, updates and patches need to be applied in a timely fashion otherwise people move on.

Fril Estelin · Mar 30, 2008, 05:53 PM // 17:53

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dr Strangelove

I'd actually argue that the only place people care about security is when their credit card is involved. After that point, the huge amount of copy protection, security checks, and logins just serve to annoy players. With Guild Wars, the security for buying it online is fairly extensive, while the security that protects against people logging into your account is remarkably light.

True, and false. People care about their personal experience. So if their account or computer was hacked, their private data was spywared or access to the services they paid for was denied (either for failed authorisation or denial of service), they'll react and push the enveloppe towards certain sectors of the security domain. Because of its nice SW design, GW pushed the problem onto "local security", i.e. the security of the customers' computer/credit card, which is outside of Anet's responsibility (see the book "Exploiting Online Games" by Hoglund and McGraw). On your last statement, I'm unsure but I also read a thread on GWG (shall we trust it? some kids here are ready to say anything to be in the spotlight).

Amy Awien · Mar 30, 2008, 10:11 PM // 22:11

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fril Estelin

I've thought of the topic of pirating as a corrolary of the free/open-source software movement exemplified by Linux.

That ignores the history of (personal) computing. People, private as well as business, used pirated software on their XT's long before the GPL came in to being, and long before the x86 was even capable of running anything *nix like.
If anything OSS offers free and completely legal alternatives to pirating paid-for software.