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Game Distributed Online Forgoes Publishers
KrackHouse writes "A group of developers from Black & White got together and used their bonuses to fund a project called Live For Speed. This online racing simulator uses the Internet as its distribution channel exclusively. No retail stores carry LFS and you need to use PayPal or a credit card to buy it.vIf this is successful will game publishers go the way of the RIAA and face irrelevance? LFS is much less expensive than a typical boxed title and if it ends up becoming a profitable venture more devs will surely jump on the solo bandwagon." It'll be a long time until this sort of thing becomes more common, and there's still a lot of consumer reassurance that comes from buying something in a box and having the disc laying around. It's a nice case study for what will inevitably become the way things are done, though.
They sure gonna need some pretty good product-activation/cd-key scheme, already having downloaded the files... what's gonna stop you from emailing it to all your friends ?
I'm getting a flashback from the HalfLife/CS cd-key problems already... and the site hasn't even loaded in the background (seems mildly slashdotted)
Ambrosia Software, Inc. has been exclusively using this distribution model for its excellent line of mac shareware for 10 years, (somewhat) successfully. They're not exactly becoming the next microsoft, but they're not going out of business either
Repeal the DMCA!
I was flamed all over the Valve/Steam article but these techs are for sugar coating DRM. Thats it.
Don't accept it folks. It isn't worth it.
Oh and to the shitheads who honk, "BUT DRM DOESNT HAVE TO BE BAD!!! HUHUHUH!!!" wake up. Beneficial DRM is the tech equivalent of Santa Clause. Only the young, naive, or outright stupid believe in it.
The frame on the left side looked exactly like 'bug online'.
When you buy this game, is the download simply an executable or can you download an ISO? Although not really that important, I could definetely see iso's as a value add, simply to make the cd installable, etc. I know, not a big deal one way or the other...
I don't know about everyone else, but I like having my install CDs available. I'm the type of guy that has reinstalled Windows a bunch of times for one reason or another (mainly becuase I'm anal retentive about my system), and I hate having to enter the Product ID for each game on every reinstall, let alone having to download a mega-huge file and having the publisher have a shifty eye pointed at me because I do a complete overhaul every 6 months or so.
And yeah, yeah.... I know... I'm planning on eventually doing a Ghost image of my machine so I don't have to do this every time.... it's just going to take a huge number of CD-RWs...
Price of this game: 12 lbs (~$18?)
Assuming this isn't a crap game (and often enough those $50 games are), this is the price you can expect to pay when you wipe out all the expenses of the box, the disc and jewel case, the instruction booklet, and the cut that everyone along the way gets.
So that means that even with the developer making a profit along withthe distribution bandwidth, they cut the price of a game by +60%.
Given how many stupid Xbox games I've bought, I hope that Phantom is able to have games similarly cheaply distributed using this same model. And considering it's a closed system, maybe it's the only fool-proof way to distrubute games this way.
how do you put this under the xmas tree, wrap as a birthday present or give to someone without good internet access?
all of those are reasons for retail boxes. if a publisher would wake up and not demand exclusive rights, they could sell a happy retail box of this for $10 more than the online version.
See subject.
Sure, they finance and ensure the marketability of a product, but they're occasionally cabable of quality and innovation. They haven't tried to arrest the majority of their customers yet, either.
Making games cost money. Game publishers have money. They'll be around for a while.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
Next thing you know they'll be telling about this "new thing" called the GPL... It's Shareware, and it's been around a lot longer than the internet.
See there used to be this thing called Mail (No E at the beginning) and when ppl used floppies (that's the slot in your PeeCee that you never use) they had Public Domain collections (Like Fred Fish for the Amiga). And some were freeware and others were shareware...like, oh Castle Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, etc (ID Software distributed via shareware for a long time)...
And why this game? There 's a much better Open Sourced game called Racer...and unlike this game, it's available for Linux...
My guess is this KrackHouse guy probably has a stake in the company...
Honestly, Racer just looks better than this...
Thats a laugh.
Who do you think pays the developers while they make the game? Very few developers are in a position to publish a game without any outside funding. Web-based games are cheap to make, but does the world really need another Bejeweled rip-off? Who is going to pay for the 3 year development of a game and the engine license in the first place?
Then lets talk quality control. Its the publisher who does the QA. Now I know we all have different opinions about how well that works, but it is something. Along with quality control goes support. Who is to say there would even be a serious customer support webpage, let alone a call and email center?
Patches? See above for cash. Once the game is out the amount of money earned is basically set. The chance of extended support with patches is even more unlikely.
Broadband support is not ready. If you don't believe me, look how the Counter-strike population shot up once it became a retail product. That was a free game in the first place, but since it was a huge download it didn't REALLY blow up until someone could walk into a store and buy it at retail. Broadband is spreading but its just not there yet. Is a couple thousand units sold enough to justify making a top quality game in the first place? Enemy Territory was recently released and even at the delicious price of 0 it only has less than 8000 users online at a time. Assuming TEN times that many have downloaded it, that is eighty thousand units. 80k units at $50 each (yeah right for an online buy) = 4 Large. Blizzard (chosen because I could easily find the info) has about 150 employees. The sales from that game would earn each employee an average of 27k per year. For exactly one year. They definitely need a larger base than that, even given the well rounded up and generous numbers.
Then there is the physical product itself. There are so many questions there. Sure, I can make a backup copy once it is downloaded, but what if there is a problem with the download? Can I download it again for free? Do I have to buy it again because there was connection trouble. Don't have to worry about that if I walk into Best Buy. If the CD is defective they will exchange it for the same title. No thanks, I'll take the box, jewel case, and paper manual any day.
Don't even think about publishers going away just yet. Wallstreet analysts will be the first to correctly predict that one.
That said, I'd like to point out that selling games on-line is nothing new. Wargames, my favorite genre, are now sold almost exclusivelly on-line, and there's lots of other independent games as well.
However, what most of the other games have in common is a well-designed Web site. Here, I can see about two thirds of the main frame, and there's no scroll bars for me to see the rest. If the development team is unable to do such a simple task as designing a user-friendly Web site, I'm a little sceptical about the quality of their game.
All the comments about open-source, business models, etc, and no reviews? I downloaded the final beta bit ago- it is a very good racing game. You race street type sports cars, they handle very realistically, the online racing is quite good, the cars are customizable, there is a strong online community, and the whole game can be modded rather easily. If you like sports cars, this gives you a very good approximation of actually racing street-legal real cars. http://lfs.racesimcentral.com/ is the URL
Yes, because we all know that the quality of a book can be seen from its cover, don't we?
(And if you didn't catch the sarcasm there, don't bother with a reply.)
Tomorrow will be cancelled due to lack of interest
The publisher is normally the entity in charge of beta testing and quality assurance. With them out of the picture, who's making sure the product they release is bug free?
You can't take the sky from me...
http://www.steampowered.com
This is Valve's technology to perform this kind of function. Not only can it perform a licensing function beyond being a point of purchase, it has the advantages of being an automatic updating/patching system. Because it manages licensing it could be used for "trial" play of a game. Pay $1 to play for a week. Decide if you like it. Pay the difference to buy it forever else your license expires. A risky proposition - but only for those that make crappy games.
Valve (creators of Half Life et al) is doing something similar. Theyre currently testing something called Steam.
Steam lets you download a game you have access to(meaning, subscribed to from steam once the test ends. currently its all free) and play it on the fly. You only download the sounds/maps/textures that are about to be used, so the download time isnt too bad. It caches also, so after the first time you dont notice it as much. This is helping them betatest the new version of Counterstrike much easier, as they can push updates whenever they want and fix minor things without having to wait a few months to release another patch.
While the Steam system works great, Its scarey to think it will enable pay as you play style billing. Who really wants to pay $.50/min to play counterstrike? (example figure, again its currently all free, and in the future they'll start it with comparable prices as a one time fee, but you have no garuntee thats all they'll use it for).
The upside is of course Valve no longer needs a distributer so being bought out would be up to them. This is nice in the face of all the vivendi buyout rumours you see every few months.
Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx
I did catch the sarcasm, and I still see no reason to reply ;)
And yet, you did.
Marxist evolution is just N generations away!
This sounds similar to the Steam client that Valve just debuted for Half-Life, CS, and HL2. Downloads right over the 'net and a distributed system for acquiring updates and other bonus media.
I hate boxes, I want this to work so much! But a racing game? Peshaw, give me an adventure game with guns, damn it, and I'll buy.
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
Well, I'll reply. If a book had several words speled wrang and several grammaticalation errors on the cover, I would judge it based on that, and fairly. Having a poor design does suggest that their design skills may be lacking.
Because the topic of the post is concerning whether or not independant developers can survive online and neglect retail entirely. Not about what free/cheap online games have the best graphics.
A company called MoonPod has released a game with the Internet being its primary distribution method.
You can pay more for a boxed copy if you want, but they have an instant-access online purchasing system that turns the crippleware demo into the full version.
The game is an asteroids-style 2d shooter with some turn based strategy mixed in.
I hope to see projects like this in the future from larger game developers. If the savings is passed on to me, I'm all for purchasing games, music, movies, or whatever else I could want, with no hard copy.
or they have contracted out the distribution side of things. But then thats what their companies about. (And no excuse, btw)
Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself. -- Leo Tolstoy
"Thanks to DRM, you know that something has been built in environment of unspecified degree of security, from source you cannot check, written by programmers you don't know, released after passing QA of unknown quality and which is released under a license which disclaims any responsibility..."
Q.
Insert Signature Here
If the development team is unable to do such a simple task as designing a user-friendly Web site, I'm a little sceptical about the quality of their game.
Yeah.. there's this open-sourced kernel called "Linux", and I heard the developers don't even maintain an official website. I bet the quality is even worse... [/sarcasm]
It works great using Winex 3.1-1 on Gentoo Linux 2.4.20 and Nvidia 43.63 drivers. Just thought you'd like to know. The only glitch is some weird transparency issue when shadows are enabled where the wheels can be seen through the car, and the track is transparent in the rear view mirrors. You can disable those options though.
Very cool, I might just buy it.
... but shelf space in stores isn't. There's plenty of good boxed software that never gets to see the light of day because the company is outbid for shelfspace at PCWorld, etc. Online distribution has more benefits than simply reduced (hopefully) price.
I can't seem to find an "about"-type page on their main website. It'd be nice to be able to see the main features and so forth before downloading it.
Yes, but the Linux kernel developers aren't developing the kernel as a business venture. They aren't trying to sell the kernel solely through the web either.
ahhh you damn dunce use a browser that is known, instead of some fly by night spyware producing piece of crap. website works fine here
Any of you just commented on the game without playing it, well I'll just say you're uninformed. I hate racing games. Bore me to death. Exception-Live for Speed. Point 1: This is a boring singleplayer game-distribution with box, jewel case and manual would probably leave people with no net connection ......unhappy.
Point 2: Any judgement on the game using it's website or graphics as examples of how fun it is should be ignored. I've played midnight club 2, nfs etc. It is better, probably because it is hard . Bad turns are punished. (And nudging someone in the back can get you kicked/banned - no one will ruin your day)
Point 3: Download the trial version. I'm not sure but someone (during the game) told me you "unlock" it (possibly no extra dl?).
Yes thats right...go download it. Now! Now I say!
Its just three guys. the programmer, the artist/graphics guy who also does the website and another guy who does the music that's it. It's pretty damn impressive if you ask me. I can thinks of many 'great' programs with far more awful websites.
Book buyers quite often judge books by their covers. It's a quick and reasonably efficient way of filtering out rubbish. A bit like what's sometimes done with CV's or when you meet new people. I'm not saying it always works but appearances can say a lot about the contents.
business venture or not has nothing to do with my post or the parent post.
he judged the quality of the game based on the quality of the website. not too different from judging a book from its cover.