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Digital Distribution Good News
Gamasutra has a piece looking at the good news in digital distribution. Getting games to consumers with bits, rather than boxes, seems to ensure that we'll have a wider variety of titles to choose from in the future. The path looks at indie title Red Orchestra on its path to our desktops. From the article: "Of course, with a digital distribution deal, there is usually no big marketing push from the distributor like there is with a big publisher. But, through Steam we would be selling into the hardcore FPS gamer market. And as a result of the Valve deal, Red Orchestra got solid editorial exposure in major PC game publications, including two page 'preview' articles in PC Gamer US and UK."
Is this the same Red Orchestra you could get for free as a mod for UT2K4?
Chicken fried butter sticks? Do
You can buy many of their games through download. In fact their recently released game, Galactic Civilizations ][ was easier to obtain that way than finding. http://www.galciv2.com/
A ID=101602
One interesting issue about digital distribution versus retain was covered by their own people in journals available on the site.
Adventures in Retail
http://forums.galciv2.com/?ForumID=164&AID=103584
Economics in Gaming
http://forums.galciv2.com/index.aspx?ForumID=164&
For some companies there is no real exposure on the store shelf. The big problem is, how do people then ever learn of your product? Browsing the games while in BB/CU/Etc is one thing, but how is there an effective online equivalent to that?
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
You can easily backup your steam data files. Right click a game and goto properties. You'll see a backup option where you can the put the files on the media of your choice. The cd key is not needed as you just reinstall Steam and the restore your backup which will then be patched to the latest version. As for Steam going under, it's been stated that if that happen Valve will release a patch to untie the games from Stream but it going under is very unlikely for at least a while seeing how popular it is starting to become.
The official link to RO is here: http://www.redorchestragame.com/
The other is to their old site.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
If you lose your Steam password, it's analagous to misplacing the game CDs. You have to buy new ones. Nothing new with that, really. Only issue is if Steam ever goes under. That's when the certain patches made by certain individuals to separate the games from Steam will become popular and useful. Also because Steam is gone Valve likely won't be in a position to care (and might even release one of their own).
Stardock have their own system too, as to Realgames (shudder... intrusive client) and lots of indie devs like msyelf are selling through Digital Downloads without using Steam. Steam is just one way of handling digital distribution.
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
That's simply not true... I lost my hard drive and didn't have the Steam password anywhere. I reinstalled Steam, entered my email address and clicked the forgotten password link and I had the password in my inbox in seconds. I signed in, all my games were listed ready to be installed and I was playing HL2 in minutes. Now, when I lost the CD Key to RTCW a couple years ago... well that's another story.
I did the whole "Use our download client instead of buying a CD" thing for Guild Wars. I have to say that was the slickest game installer I've seen in a long time. I haven't played the game much since the first month, but wow was that installer easy as hell. I'm not saying Steam is chopped liver or anything. I will say that If I play another NCSoft created MMO, I will definately go the digital distrobution route again.
I'm not a shill, I didn't really care for the game that much (what can I say, I'm a loot whore... I like getting loot). I just thought the installer was hot-shit.
The guild wars game distribution system is actually one of the coolest I've ever seen. For starters, it only installs bare minimum requirements before it lets you play the game. Then, after that, it only downloads exactly the areas that you visit, so if you never get to level 20 and visit the "end-game" content, then you never have unnecessary space taken on your hard drive.
I actually went out and bought the game from Gamestop though, it saved me $10.
Yeah, it's very slick. They'll be distributing their new standalone expansion this way as well.
Is this the same Red Orchestra you could get for free as a mod for UT2K4?
This is the fundamental problem indie developers face. People don't think they should have to pay for these games, especially if earlier versions were free. To some extent the sentiment is justifiable because most indie games, even when they have potential, simply lack the polish and refinement or amount of content found in a commercial game. It hurts playability and I think people are averse to spending money on such games.
I played Red Orchestra on the recommendation of a friend, when it was still free. The amount of effort they put into that mod is impressive. They went out of their way to create realistic combat. Many of the guys who played were very particular about how true to life weapons and vehicles were.
The guys who played tended to be passionate about the game and no one tolerated the idiotic antics encountered in games like Battlefield 2. The problem was, however, that the game catered to a small niche; it has a steep learning curve.
It might not sell very well for that reason, but I think they're justified in charging for the game given the amount of work that was put into it.
If I were marketing my own game online, I'd do the same. Release initial versions for free, so that they get to know the game. Once people are hooked, hopefully, then I start charging, perhaps providing episodic content given that I wouldn't have the resources to develop a full-blown game all in one attempt.
I recently purchased EverQuest 2 through the Direct2Drive service. I figured an MMO was relatively safe since I wouldn't need to deal with any of the weird DRM that most Direcr2Drive games require to be installed. The big problem was delivery of the game files. At least for EverQuest 2, in order to download the files I paid for I had to use the FilePlanet servers and a proprietary download program. The real problem is that unless you are a FilePlanet subscriber you can't use the "no wait" servers AND ads are displayed by the download application for the duration of the download. Now you can minimize the application and use your computer, but every couple minutes when the ad changes the application will pop up into the middle of your screen. The only way to stop this from happening is to subscribe to FilePlanet to disable the ads (keep in mind this is to download a program I PAID for, not a demo). Additionally, you can't just leave the download going overnight because the download app has a habit of timing out the connection, in which case the download needs to be manually resumed. I spent an exciting 3 hours watching the bits come down and had to resume the download more than 20 times.
I can understand problems with downloads timing out as the Internet is far from perfect, however forcing a paying customer to watch ads while the product they bought is being downloaded just boggles my mind.
I thought the Steam install process was much better although I waited until a couple weeks after Half Life 2's launch before using it. Just wish I could figure out how to install Steam programs on some drive other than C:.
Sometimes my arms bend back.