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.

Comments

Re:product activation... (and other things)

[NetDanzr]

According to their FAQ, you need to be connected to the Internet when you try to activate the product, and you can get the activation code only from within the game. I guess it works on a similar principle as the new Microsoft activation codes.

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.

I've played it, it's good!!!!

[e2mtt]

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

Steam

[Pvt_Waldo]

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

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

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.

Works with Winex 3.1-1

[Zemrec]

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.

Re:Huh?

[paulcammish]

And why this game? There 's a much better Open Sourced game called Racer...

Possibly because with LFS if you go flat out down the road, and crash into the wall, you don't go flying into the air, thru the scenery, and then thru the floor into a void..?

Or maybe beacause theres opponents to race against, either AI or on servers the game can find for you?

Or it might be that the keyboard controls (once you work out how to use they keyboard) arent entirely digital, so when you press the left cursor to turn, you dont instantly get full left lock, generating wheelspin and smoke..?

Or maybe just because the car doesnt handle like the road is made entirely from marbles..?

Honestly, Racer just looks better than this...

Yes. That would be with Super-Open-Source-O-Vision(TM) then? Because its free, it must be better.

Well, ive just tried both, and where Racer may look very slightly better with the single bland car and sparse track, LFS actually has some detail in its surroundings and cars. Maybe the cars have fewer polys, but the game looks better as a whole.

Racer is a good start, it looks rather good, but isnt fun, and thats what games are supposed to be. As a simulation, it doesnt cut it - dodgy handling, bad controls and some very suspect physics.

A good start, tho - let me know when its finished. Ill be paying my £12 for a finished game until then.

Yes, £12 (US$20) Not that much, is it?