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Piracy Killing PC Gaming?
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."
I thought we already decided that WoW is killing the entire game industry...not saving it.
That is the reason I have stopped buying games. Other things are also taking up more of my time - stuff that *gasp* I actually interact with other humans!
"If you are on fire you can just stop, drop, and roll. If you fall into Lava you are just dead." - my 5yr old daughter
Unless they plan on, you know, providing a service, additional content, and other such niceties that the MMO genre provides, they need to keep their goddamned hands out of my wallet. Games already cost too goddamned much, and there just honestly has not been a lot of reason to buy many new games (as they've mostly sucked ass lately).
Make a good game, and people will buy it.
Man, I read this on BitTorrent like, two weeks ago.
Rock is dead. Long live scissors and paper!
If pirates can beat the official product to market, why can't the developers just speed up their release process to match them? If the game is ready there's no real reason not to go ahead and release it, except perhaps to try to create artificial anticipation for it. I consider that a below-the-belt marketing tactic anyway; if one of the side-effects of piracy is to undermine its usefulness, that would be a good thing.
That's odd. Galactic Civilizations was released as a downloadable game with no copy protection, and it sold extremely well.
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.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Most people who pirate PC games also pirate console games, sorry to burst your bubble there, Kevin.
Not to say that I've ever done any of this, but the same person who gets a bogus CD-Key for Doom 3 is probably also going to use the PSOLoader to pipe his/her favorite gamecube roms to his console, or install a modchip in his xbox, or have a library of every game ever published for Dreamcast...
+5, Truth
OK, so at least we did not have to pay for Steam (unless you want to include your ISP cost). But hey, even better, lets charge a subscription fee and just sit back and do nothing and every now and then throw in a new bad guy to justify the costs.
I must respectfully disagree. Consoles have always been more attractive to developers than the PC platform due to the "moving target" dynamic - when you make a game for a home console, there are no system requirements, you don't have to develop for a lowest common denominator (unless you're marketing a game on multiple consoles at once), and you don't have to keep a tech support log of what works and doesn't work with every possible make and model of video card.
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.
Glog!
Its always great when people see problem as piracy, and not the fact that almost every game just isnt good. Wow is a great example. It was a game that was done properly, and now it holds everyones interest. If a game is only going to hold me interest for 2 weeks and they want $50 or up to $65 for a game, I'm not going to buy it. More so, companies are more concerned with added some amazing physics into the game and forgetting about the story/gameplay. This is what plagues hollywood right now. Also, its not 'World of Warcrafts subscription based nature'. Thats every MMO's subscription based nature.
Clearly, it's not the crappy quality of the games we sell that are causing low sales, it's pirates!
Now they just need a cartel to start suing random people... Natural progression of media merchants.
Too many times have I had to deal with poorly coded, incomplete games and awful DRM restrictions;I've given up on the PC games industry and I'm not buying the games anymore.
.. and even on that one I still didn't like the 'registration' process I had to go through. Since that one though, every one has been a total nightmare. To the point where I've spent more time getting the game up and running than I have even playing the game.
The last game that I purchased that wasn't a total disaster was Half-Life 2
You're damn right I pirate the games now, I'm sick of paying for crap.
Maybe he's just looking for a scapegoat for why his games don't sell as well as he hopes they would. The PC game industry looks pretty healthy to me, with plenty of examples of recent games that are doing well. Oblivion's really easy to pirate but it still sold millions . . . it's plugins are easy to pirate too and even they sell.
Crappy games is killing sales.
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 with baited breath for UT2007 in hopes they add more gameplay fun instead of the stupid graphics and shiney crap that do not make a game more fun to play.
Most lan parties we end up playing ut2004 with one of the myriad of mods for it that make it a major hoot to play. Carball is a blast with 16 people.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
At least that's the message I got from that.
Anyway, it's a pretty stupid comment. He's complaining that he can't sell PC games to the 70% of the world that can least afford to pay for them. You're not going to sell many $50 games in Malaysia, dude. Of course they'll get $2 pirate copies - I did too when I was a schoolkid with no cash.
Netcraft confirms PC gaming is dead.
back in the days before neon light case mods and such. Then I bought a console. It was simply easier to have a console and be able to buy any game for that system and have it work well.
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 are going to consoles because A: they cant spend every dime they have on upgrading their computer systems constantly. B: console gaming is a good experience, good graphics, good gameplay etc.
Granted Sony is trying to take the whole concept of spending every dime you have to the console arena but that wont work too well.
Sure, I donwloaded a lot of games when I was younger, and bought a lot too. I probably wouldnt have bothered downloading if I could go rent a game, the full game like blockbuster etc offer with console games. I can spend a few days playing it, either beat it, or decide to buy it because it has replayability.
Demos are okay, but they are rather limited and so not as much fun to check a game out.
Consoles just offer a LOT more than PC gaming and I think that fact is showing with the success of the xbox and ps2 and now the new consoles. People want to play games, not work on upgrading their system to play the newest game.
The phrase "more better" is acceptable English. suck it grammar Nazis
Come on, there where what, about 170 words in that article? How often does 'misconception' and 'out of context' apply to media quotes these days?
I don't personally feel that piracy is killing PC gaming. If i'm honest, I would say piracy has been around as long as the PC gaming industry has. Perhaps prevention is better than cure (i.e. take a leaf from the Steam engine's book?)
ilovegeorgebush
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 suffers if the pirates beat it to market by a significant margin, where you get curious gamers who can't hold their dicks for another 3 days to play the game downloading it, and then failing to buy it later (in the case of D3... who could blame them?)
The only real sort of piracy prevention one needs to do is of the garden-variety anti-burning type. As long as joe sixpack can't pop it into his CD burner and come out with a viable, immediately playable copy, you've done your job. There was a time when certain malware (helllllo Ubisoft!) was being used to "protect" games, and just caused grief for the customer instead. This is pointless. The hardcore pirates will ALWAYS find a way, there is simply no use trying to stop them. As long as you can stop the average joe, it's good enough, and that's certainly quite easy.
But back on topic: Piracy killing PC gaming? Hardly. The average player isn't sophisticated enough to pirate the games, your only major demographic of worry is the pre-teen tech-savvy kid. I sincerely hope that we don't see more shite multiplayer-centric games like Counter-Strike just because it's the easiest way to guard against piracy. There is an appeal to singleplayer gaming that needs to survive.
That said... I do think there ought to be education in terms of intellectual property and basic morals in our world. Many people would pirate a game (if they could) without batting an eye, and that disturbs me. I know of some people who rant and rave about how great Will Wright (or insert another game designer here) but has apparently never bought one of his games. There is a distinct number of people who are unwilling to pay for what they play: mostly the teenaged never-worked-a-day-in-my-life type. Most people I know grew out of it after, you know, getting a job and realizing that people do things for a living and need money for food and a roof and whatnot, but some of my acquaintances even now are still in the "games are a rip! pirate!" crowd.
Tons of people are getting into PC gaming that would never have done it before. My girlfriend is into it, a bunch of coworkers and their SO's are into it. Adults with kids and jobs are into it. PC gaming is incredibly popular right now. Except that they're only playing one game, and that game is WoW.
The perfect sig is a lot like silence, only louder
"If you are on fire you can just stop, drop, and roll. If you fall into Lava you are just dead." - my 5yr old daughter
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!
It's true that piracy can definitely take a bite out of PC game sales. But I think the fact that for the genres that are still popular on and perhaps done best on the PC, the hardware requirements and setup challenges are a bigger factor. I don't think PC gaming is ever going to disappear, but the business model will have to change. Perhaps, PC games will just be a stepping stone to later console versions. That is, the PC game just becomes a loss leader to the console game where you make your real money. I can see the port friendly Xbox 360 being a good platform for this.
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
This is why the typical model in Asia is to give away the client software and charge for subscriptions. Piracy destroys the economic foundation of our high-production stand-alone mass media.
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.
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.
I'm pretty sure it's the lack of games that people feel justified in spending money to play. I think the last games I purched before WoW was Warcraft III and Command and Conquer Generals. Before that? Baldurs Gate and Warcraft II.
This sig isn't original enough, it's time to come up with something witty...
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.
> Not if you're wearing >250 in fire resist.
> 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...
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
The gaming industry is making more then it ever has. We as consumers pay the extra fees that companies have speculated as shrinkage or piracy loss. http://www.thesecondchancemovie.com/_site/mediapla yer/index.php?id=59a362eacbeaeda153f8e3fdf493c508
First, it's MMORPGs.
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.
I have not bought a number of recently-released games that I would have otherwise found interesting enough to buy because:
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?
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 had the chance to try.
... the day game developers decide to concentrate on gameplay instead of shiny graphics, will be the day PC gaming is reborn. Until then we have to play "Quake 7", the newest "Final Fantasy XXIV", "Generic RTS 7494" and the freshest "Wannabe-WoW-RPG".
It's the quality of the games that make a difference. I was in EBGames the other day and I had to laugh at the ridiculousness of some of the games I've seen....Ant Bully? Everything else these days are sequels and expansion packs...if you like sequels, more power to you, but theres been nothing that innovative that warrants spending $60 these days on games.
I mean Gothic 3? Lego Star Wars II? Sims 2? Quake 4? Doom 2? Medieval 2? Dungeon Siege 2? Space Empires V?
Can you name one new game that isn't an expansion pack or a new version of the same title?
PS- given that, I'm still ANXIOUSLY awaiting for Command and Conquer 3 and Total Annihilation 2 that's coming next year...
You don't need the entire game to be subscription based, just the updates and add-ons. Tie each "key" to a single credit card number, chargh $5 a year "service fee" and never let more than a single key access at a time (ban them if you do).
While Piracy may be to blame in part for this, it's far from being biggest reason. The fact is, as someone else posted above, PC games these days are more and more hardware hungry, and you know, I'm betting the majority of people just don't have the money to keep up just to play the latest games. I think also these same people, that used to be on PC gaming camp, have actually growed up, and found out that their PC is useful not just for gaming, but getting work done too, and see no more sense on burning money on their PC just for games, when their 2~3 years old PC can do all other tasks they need just fine. Obviously, when I'm talking on third person, I'm actually talking about myself, but I believe this to be the case for a lot of people: I have an Athlon XP 2400, 1Gb Ram and a GF4 Ti4200 card. That machine, except for the harddisk, is like 3 years old or more, and you know what? Its performance for the daily tasks is pretty good, comparable even to newer machines I've came in contact, and I do a lot of stuff on that machine - web and software development, browsing, and some casual gaming (not new stuff, usually just simple, 2 years old games). I see no reason to upgrade that machine on the next 2 years at least.
I used to be an avid PC Gamer 2 years ago. I never thought of having a console, but when I came in to contact with a PS2 (which is not even the best console, technically speaking), I completely changed my mind. Bought one, and now I rarely play on the PC. The thing is, you still end up having at least half of the latest games both on the PC and console, and you don't have to upgrade your console. And people just started to realize that. Nothing beats the price of playing in the confort of your living room, without having to upgrade your machine every year to be able to play the latest games.
Not every game has to be World of Warcraft. First off there are still a lot of us, I would dare say a majority of us game players who do not want to pay for a game months after we bought it. Personally I'm opposed to the whole subscription concept in it's entirety but to say that the solution to PC gaming problems is to turn them all in to WoW is ludicrous. What about the whole 'casual gamer' market that was supposed to be the next boom in gaming? Are they supposed to play monthly for games they only play casually?
Even the best FPS is still just a damn First Person Shooter... FPS games have a torqued out product cycle, once the graphics and game play are smooth - why upgrade? Story? Yeah.. sure. Sure, at first each new generation brought real improvement over the last - smoother curves however, do not a revolution in gaming make. On the console side we're seeing a greater amount of depth, 3D platformers, puzzle games, role playing.. and of course, First Person Shooters. Meanwhile, in the realm where PCs have the edge, adventure games and RTS titles.. nothing. That's why PC gaming is dying. -GiH
I don't actually give a dman about piracy. People were copying games when they came on tape, and they're still doing it.
i thought i just don't buy these games anymore because there copy protection schemes suck badly and intervine with the way i want to use these games (no disk in drive, image if really needed on hdd, no other option acceptable)
...
without piracy these markets never would have emerged to what they are now, so stop whining and invest into game content and design, not into useless protections schemes which protect your customers from playing these games
The problem with PC gaming is nothing good is coming out. I made the mistake of buying battlefield 2, and Quake 4 and liked neither of them. Then there was UT 2003, which had gameplay that wasn't as enjoyable as as the original Unreal Tournament.
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 Counter Strike 1.6 (and yes, I have source) and Unreal Tournament with a few friends. If you can give us something worthwhile that plays better than the old games, we will gladly buy it.
I've never pirated a game. The reason I buy at most 1 game a year is mostly cost. At $50 a game, it's hard to justify that. Replayability is another factor. A lot of games simply suck the second time through, many the first time through. Civ4 is great, but just variations on a theme - it needs more dynamics like flooding, weather, replanting/engineering the land, canals, etc.
Joshua Gigantino
Send a Note to the Cosmos! PostcardsToSpace.com
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It's just the same problem the MI is facing. It's not the copying. Copying is as old as the computer game industry. Granted, it's now easier than it was in the days when you had to travel around with your floppies (or have them sent across the country), and it's easier to get online access than it was in the days of BBSs. On the other hand, the market grew considerably since the old days of the C64. Gamers ain't no more just a few kids aged 12-18, more and more people discover computer games as a hobby, and the age bracket opened to something akin to 9-40 (i.e. the C64 kids didn't stop playing).
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.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Perhaps sales are slow because the market has started to reach critical mass - too many games! And way too many of them are crappy.
ID more or less created the FPS genre 15 years ago and it was good for their business. Now everyone, including ID, is doing crappy FPS because that is what is supposed to sell.
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.
Actually I would like to subscribe to HW requirements part. Hardware requirements have gone 10years retro during the last year. For the most part of the last 10 years all games could run on all PCs and the only thing differing was the speed and sometimes graphical details for 3D games. But in the last year games have started to use DirectX 9 exclusively demanding graphic cards with atleast shader level 2 and often 3. This mean any machine more than a year old can no longer play new PC games!
Last but not least even when they "support" the older cards, they don't test against it and it leads to thousands of crashes.
Of the three games I've tried recently none worked out of the box in a Geforce4 4200Ti
Civilization 4: Should have worked according to requirements, but didn't until a patch 3 months after release
Galatic Civilization: Should work, but still crashes now half a year after release
Oblivion: Shouldn't work as the card is way below minimum requirement, but with the oldblivion patch, this game is the only of the 3 working perfectly!!
Yeah, I think that nails it. Our lan gaming group died not because of pirating, but because there wasn't anything that everyone wanted to play and that half the people that showed up only wanted to play WOW.
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 (most for $10 to $20). Spending more time farting around in linux. Spending more time on my bicycle.
In a nutshell, I think PC gaming is frozen in it's current state for me. If I ever feel the need to do more modern gaming, it will probably be on a console.
"He's lost in a 'floyd hole"
Welcome to Gamesworld. Ten years ago it seemed as if the gaming world had come to a halt. Piracy had almost crippled the PC gaming industry and many companies were turning to consoles as a solution. Here at Gamesworld Inc. though we knew that the future came in a different form. Games life Everquest, WoW and Second Life showed us the way, we just built on what they began.
Today Gamesworld has more than 50 million citizens. Each and everyone has dedicated housing space in our MMO world. Within Gamesworld you can meet your friends, family and even your arch enemies... and frag them! We provide a basic framework for games developers to bring their projects to life in. Whether you enjoy FPS, Racing, RPGs or indeed any other genre you could ever think of - and some you couldn't even imagine! - we have it.
Our main City Kamajakin hosts some of the greatest speedways in the Gamesworld. We are currently hosting the annual Luna Day speedway championships so don't forget to check them out. Rumour has it that the prize for winning this seasons Championships is a previously unseen vehicle.
Of course if you want to relax then find one of our many welcoming taverns. There is sure to be some kind of card game going on in the gambling districts many drinking places, pull up a seat and have a few rounds.
We would like to emphasize here at Gamesworld that any talk that has been floating around of rogue elements within Gamesworld is entirely fictitious. Some of our more creative citizens have been spreading some colourful rumours. However if you happen to see any 'glitches' please do not approach them.
Unfortunately due to current system cleaning the Great Beyond will be not be available from now till 11amGST. Word from the top says a new area is being merged into the current realm. Sounds exciting.
This was the current message of the day.
You have completed logon.
you are in a room. it is dark and smells of death. something twinkles in the north east corner. a feeling from the south fills you with dread and terror. There are exits to the north, east and south. what would you like to do?
Promote Charity on Myspace, Show Your Colours!
Last game i bought was doom 2 when it came out - it fits on to 6 floppy disks if you span it, Ive yet to complete it. I Don't buy/steal/hire games
prboom is great doom engine for linux and the doom2.wad works well and no i have no desire to buy doom3
... surely an increase in piracy will help reverse global warming?
Jolyon
Please read my Canon EOS tech blog at http://www.everyothershot.com
As long as I have been gaming, I have heard the same arguments... and they are still here to talk about it. Must not be that dead.
I just don't get it why everyone has to blame piracy. They aren't really losing money as most people who pirate games just won't buy them anyways. I'm not going to go out and spend $60 on yet another Spiderman game. I will however, download it and try it out, if it's good I will buy it, if not, I'm not wasting money. I wouldn't have bought the game to begin with. When Starcraft came out, I had a pirated copy, played it for a bit then bought it. Someone else had a pirated copy, didn't like it, didn't buy it. That same person wouldn't have bought it to begin with. Same as movies, I'm not going to pay $50 (two people, popcorn, softdrinks...) to go see some crap movie, ie. Jersey Girl. It's not that I started out this way of downloading everything under the sun to try it out first, they caused it by releasing crap game after crap game.
So, the rationale for pirating games is "they're crummy anyway"?
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 admittedly a personal peeve.
Strike while the irony is hot! -- The Freethinker
Piracy has been killing the games industry for going on 30 years now.
1989 called. It wants its dire warning back. Carmen Sandiego sounds pissed.
(Don't copy that floppy!)
"These people look deep within my soul and assign me a number based on the order in which I joined" --Homer re:
It is the same story as everything else. People say they will buy if something is developed that meets their definition of quality and is cheap enough. Lower the price and piracy will disappear. Right. Sure.
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. From the investors.
So the obvious choice is to make the game for a platform where piracy is far more limited that on the PC. Today, virtually every game is available for free. As is the case with just about every other software product as well. You download it, you use it or play it. Period. Why would anyone pay in this environment? Unless they have no idea where to download stuff from. I guess education and being plugged into the right social circles still has value.
Playing a game for free on a console is quite different because you are going to need to modify the console. This isn't something you can just download for free - you have to make an investment. Most people just aren't dedicated enough. This makes console games a much safer investment for the development company and their investors.
Yes, that will lead to the end of PC gaming. Why bother when a safer, less risky investment is available? It is a whole different world than when two or three people could spend 4-5 months and put together a game.
The console game device is the "entertainment appliance" that will eventually replace the home PC for most people. It never gets a virus or spyware and with an Internet connection will be able to play games, send email and watch video. What more does the average consumer really want?
You know what, I remember 20 years ago where there would be pirate swap meets and BBS's just for the purpose of pirating Commodore 64 games. Shouldn't that have killed PC gaming? Ten years ago there were 0-day web sites that had new games often before your local software store had them. Shouldn't that have killed PC gaming?
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 forcing them to jump through CD-key/registration hoops or cramming system disabling copy protection down their throats.
If you want to know what could actually be killing PC gaming, look around. Hmm, besides the aforementioned copy protection issues (starforce) how about:
1. Current games either are just more of the same (sequelitis) or just plain suck.
2. PC hardware is far too expensive to simply play games. Contrast the price of a new video card vs. a game console.
3. World of Warcraft has gobbled too much of the market. Sad but true. The only time some gamers are not playing WoW is on Tuesday mornings... This doesn't leave enough time to play your new releases.
4. This one is my favorite. Some of the market has migrated away from Windows. If your product requires Windows, then I can't run it. Try launching your game with Windows, OS X, and Linux simultaneously. Or, simply focus on a Linux only release; it's not as if you couldn't just bundle it on the same frickin disc.
There are many more but these are the ones that I think the industry should focus on. Some they can do something about, some they can't. Just stop making piracy the catch all scape goat.
No, the games I have purchased in the last year or so (including older games) have been DRMed in one way or another. The DRM is very simple, make it difficult to copy the CD and require the CD to be in the drive when the game loads. This is true for GTA and GTA2 (even though you can D/L them from Rockstar now, GTA London, The Sims, Sim City 3000, and Halo Combat evolved.
sudo mod me up
For me personally, the barrier has always been HW requirements. I was a heavy PC gamer from the mid 90s to the early oughts. I really like the keyboard+mouse combo for gaming, and the mod communities are fantastic. It simply became too expensive to keep upgrading my machine every 2 years just to be able to play games.
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.
I think everyone is finally realizing that Nethack is the only game you ever need. Don't see why this is a big problem.
Cmon...visit any torrent site and the PS2 and PSP games are the top of the list. The argument that console games can't be pirated or are pirated less is a joke. On a different note, marketing games once they are finished and delaying the release date is done at the creator's expense...with some exceptions. Before the xbox 360 came out there was tons of game marketing for that system, but there was also very little incentive to pirate at that time because the console wasn't on the market yet...why release a pirated version that no one can play right? In short if a game is "good" it will market itself. Delaying the release date of a finished game to "create demand" is a business/marketing model that is outdated and failing. Considering the fact that most pre-released pirated games come from store employees that have had the game in the back room for WEEKS, is it really any surprise that one of the boxes gets cracked open a few days/weeks early?
No one really wants to pirate the good games, like Steam games, Warcraft 3, and Starcraft 3. Well, everyone wants to, but they all require CD keys to connect online, so it makes it really tough. Who the hell plays anything offline anymore in the PC gaming world? Id's just crying because they haven't made a good multiplayer game since Quake 3.
The problem is the combination of uncertainty of quality, overpricing (way to expensive) and uncertainty of lastability.
The solution is simply a combination of makeing better games expensive and worse games cheaper, and a money back guarantee for the better games. This produces the pressure to the studios to produce quality and lastability, or simply be cheap.
This solution wouldn't elimenate piracy, but it would reduce it. The cheap games will also get sold - people will be more likely to buy them, simply because they're cheap. And the very good games will get sold (if they're not too expensive, that is), because people know they get a quality game.
Oh, and in this context expensive isn't intended as hurting-your-wallet, because then people will still simply copy the game they want to play.
How many 3d FPS games do we need? All games seem to be the same now, they are all 3d, more effort is put into smoothing out textures than actual gameplay. I haven't played a worthwhile game since Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri (a game I still play).
So ID releases the same old boring game time and time again with prettier eye candy and complains about piracy? Doom was like the most pirated game of all time and they did just fine off of it. This is like the music industry blaming piracy for poor sales when it's the fact that, maybe, music just sucks now?
We need somebody to do something different. EA killed the games industry, all games are now idiotic, all graphics and no gameplay, they appeal to our worst nature and they are all clones.
Keep in mind that I will never own an Xbox, and doubtful that I will buy a PS3. I don't mind consoles, but they don't give you the same type of gaming you get from a PC. Consoles are good for certain types of games, but without mouse and keyboard you're entirely too limited by my own personal opinion. However, my opinion on the PC gaming industry issue is this.
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.
Heck, many of the games I've played recently, even those that have received generally favorable reviews aren't worth the download and hard drive space, let alone the retail price they are supposed to be selling at.
As others have said its not piracy thats killing it its the quality of the games and the stability. How about one example. Titan Quest. The game really is a lot of fun and I thought about buying it, but I don't play it anymore. Why? Because the pos crashes constantly. Now I can't even get into the game and I've only played up to where the demo ended. They have released 2 patches and none of the crashing has been fixed. Why should I spend $50+ for a game that I wouldn't be able to play, was rushed out, and the developers are slow to fix? Stores don't let you return opened software anymore so I sure as hell am not going to buy a game that everyone is reporting as crashing like crazy and completely unstable.
The second reason pc games aren't doing as well is the hoops publishers make legit owners jump through in order to play the game. No software that they don't approve of can be installed. This includes virtual drive software. The copy protection interfers more than it protects so users just say screw it and download a crack or don't buy it at all.
How about quality? If I spend $50+ on a game it sure better last me for more than a weekends worth of play. How about making games instead of engine technology demos (*cough* Id *cough*).
Its a sad state of affairs when you look around at all the games out now and say that there are none that I want to buy or play because they are either crappy games or beta software stability-wise.
The abundance of sequels we have been seeing in the game industry is, indeed, an ugly site in video stores. And I think this can be accreditted to the fact that developing a new game from scratch takes so much longer than it used to (3yrs plus,easy). Thats a LONG time for one game. This forces compnaies to reuse the same game engines, animations, etc. in subsequent releases making for very similar titles that don't have a lot new to offer in order to release games faster.
10 yrs ago it was easy (compared to today) to come up with a new idea and build it up from scratch in a small amount of time. But when a game can take up to 5 years to produce, I don't blame developers for wanting to reuse the same content and tools for sequels if it means their game can spend 12 months in development rather than 60.
Subscriptions don't help.
People steal/clone the server code through various means (read: insiders sell it) and then all of your paying customers leave for free servers.
Lineage 2 is just one game suffering this problem. There are 10x+ more people on free (as in stolen server binaries, not clones) servers as there are on the official servers. The official servers are just left with Chinese farmers that sell on ebay, which forces more players out... and you get a nice death spiral. It's not specific in any way to a game, this is happening to all subscription-based games.
Bottom line, current culture says you never pay for anything, because you can always download it for free. And people wonder why there is nothing but cheap crap available - and they aren't even willing to pay for that.
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
i have played MANY Games in the market lately and NO game has kept me entertained for more than 10 hours..
anybody played Prey? took 8 hours to complete can you really say thats worth £30?
I have found the only games worth playing are MMO's Or other Online game such as RTS / FPS but even lately these are lacking as companys rush to finish thier products and leave Tonnes of bugs and run a crap netcode
PC gaming is falling becuase of itself.. and soon the console market will suffer the same fate
Less Grpahics more Gameplay Thank you! long live nintendo the only company willing to try new ideas for us gamers!
and it repaid itself in 2 months,and maybe the dropping of starforce protection helped selling amd earning more ?
. shtml
http://mosnews.com/money/2006/07/28/mightandmagic
who blame piracy should be better blame themself, for the crap product or the overexpensive price/requirments
Agree with parent.
The gaming industry is killing itself. A good example of this is Call of Duty. The original game was good and playing online was a lot of fun. There were patches that fixed problems and improved playability.
Then UO (United Offensive) was released and things got even better. Improved online playability and it was even more fun.
Then COD2 was released. What crap. Fancy graphics, more drive space used and a -big- step backwards on playability, especially online. In UO, you can try to use some tactics, depending on the map and the weapons that you selected. In COD2, it all degenerates to "run-and-gun." If I could get half my money back for that piece of crap, I would.
I will be very hesitant to -ever- buy another game from them again. Maybe, if I have to chance to play first, but -never- again will I buy from them on blind faith...
The same applies to any other game. If they make a product that is good, I'll buy it. Otherwise, I'll just keep my money.
Bottom line: Crappy products are killing the industry, not piracy.
So, the rationale for pirating games is "they're crummy anyway"?
No, the rationale for terrible sales is that they're crummy anyway.
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...."?
No. It's more like borrowing your friend's car to drive around the block in, and then saying "Why's the car dealership so upset?"
Not everyone can upgrade their PC every year to keep up with the latest game, especially when that game is a rehash of games you already have. Not everyone has a spare $50 on tap every 3 months. But maybe they have a spare $5 on tap every month.
Subscription models, or releasing "modules," is really the way to go for the future. Small payments over time for extended content may be successful. In other words, make a damn good game that everyone wants, and then extend the game in ways that make it last over time.
1. Subscription model. For games like MMOs, everyone pays a monthly fee. Every few months, there is a patch that adds a new dungeon, area, or similar content for players to explore along with new equipment. This has already been a proven model, given WoW's popularity. It could feasably be extended to other game genres to a lesser degree, like highly competetive FPS games.
2. Modules model. This is basically creating an expansion pack, but scaled down in size and price. Release a small module addition to the game for a small fee once in a while. This could be extended to almost any genre of game. For RPGs, an adventure module with some new equipment. For FPS games, some new maps/missions and maybe a new weapon. This would better target single-player or small multiplayer games since these would be optional updates.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
You know what's really killing PC gaming?
f -enough-people-buy-it-and-bitch-about-it-we-might- keep-enough-people-employed-at-the-development-stu dio-long-enough-to-release-a-patch-that-fixes-some -issues mentality. The game's likely going to be broken in some significant way when you get it home, and getting a fix put out is solely dependant on equal parts popularity and divine intervention.
First off, the list of available genres. Everything these days is FPS or the odd RTS. Adventure games are dead. Brawlers have ceased to exist. Action-RPGs? Hope you like tired re-treads of four year old PS2 games. More traditional RPGs? Gone. Dungeon crawlers? Prepared to be overwhelmed by mediocrity. You're lucky to get one solid entry in any given genre every couple years.
Then, you've got the compatibility issues. The release-it-now-even-though-its-broken-and-maybe-i
Next up, you've got the absurd hardware costs. And I'm not talking about $500 GPUs (although those can certainly be a factor in games like Oblivion), but the overall costs of maintaining an up-to-date PC to run the newest games at a smooth framerate with reasonably high settings. You've got a GPU, and RAM, and the CPU. We scoff at $500 for an Xbox 360, or even more for a PS3, but that $500 PC from Best Buy can't even handle games made 3 years ago.
And then of course, the fucking malware copy protection so many developers insist on packaging with their games... which makes me wonder: if this stuff is so impotent that piracy is still killing off the gaming industry, why don't they simply stop using it? If anything, it provides yet another source of motivation to drive would-be consumers to piracy. They'd save money on having to buy this bullshit, possibly doing something to stem the enormous tide of ill will it breeds with their customers, and maybe, just maybe cause a few more people to worry more about "is this game good," rather than "if I buy the retail version, will it break my PC?"
Wow, they should hire people who post on slashdot to write for them...as most the comments on here are longer than that article.
While I agree with a lot of people posting that piracy is not the issue, I really think the people who give excuses to why they pirate are pathetic. Just admit you are too cheap and lazy to go out and do some research for a good game and buy it. You can blame DRM and having to upgrade your vid card drivers...but really, it just takes a little work. If that work is too much, just don't buy games. According to you guys there are no good games anyways...so just don't pirate the bad games either.
In any case, back on topic. Moving to the console sounds great at first...until you realize there is piracy there as well. Yes, to a lesser degree...but then you have something that most people ignore. Used game stores/ebay has pretty much any game you want at a discounted price. They don't get any money from that. This means they get none of the profit of a sale, and it is totally legitimate.
The truth is what a lot of people here has stated: make a great game, and they will come. As long as you are covering costs and making a profit...quit crying and enjoy what you do. If you aren't making a profit, then you probably are doing a poor job (exceptions always exist).
One thing that isn't a problem is sequels. I really don't understand why people are freaking out about them so much. In general, sequels take a good game and make it better. As opposed to movies, which tends to take a good movie and make it worse. The games to avoid generally are the ones with movie tie ins. These are the games that rely on a big names rather than stand on their own merit. But sequels are not the issue...just look at some of the big sellers for the PC: WCIII, HL2, Oblivion, CivIII. All great games. It doesn't have to be original to be enjoyable.
Support a great indie game: http://www.abaddon360.com
No, piracy has created the PC gaming industry.
Let's face it: Without easy and cheap (i.e. a spare floppy disc) access to games early in our lives, none of us who are in our 20s, 30s today and actually have the money to buy games, would have been introduced to the hobby.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I see too many posts here about someone saying they're poor and that's why they steal games.
Do you steal your groceries too? How about a car? Do you steal gasoline? Do you go into a store and steal the game package off the shelf? No, you steal games off of the internet because it's easy and you won't get caught.
It has nothing to do with being poor. All the rest of that you'd steal too if you didn't think you'd get caught. It's about having no sense of morality and thinking you're entitled to everything simply because you're the most important person around.
Some of us don't steal because we think it's wrong, not because we're afraid of being caught. I actually buy CDs, DVDs, and games. Crappy games? Rent them first, if you like them buy/keep it. Pretty simple, or even wait a bit and buy it when it comes down 20-30 bucks.
Let me buy it online. I pay with my credit card. You pay for the bandwidth. (you do not however have to pay for media/manuals/packaging)
I download it.
I am gratified. It downloaded faster than it would have via bittorrent.
It's not that people are stealing the games - it's that they don't want to go all the way to the damn store and get a damn box.
The problem with buying the game first, is that you don't know seriously if the game is something you will enjoy. You hear about it, you played a demo, you watched a trailer, but all those fall short of the real thing, like the Sword of the Stars Demo, I plan on playing the real thing becuase I felt that the demo limited me, and didn't show me the full potential of the game.
I buy games I enjoyed playing. The two most recent purchases were Prey and Oblivion. The boxes sit unopened in my drawer, seeing as I have no need for the actual product, I just chose to support them with my money, becuase I enjoyed playing the game so much for a period of time.
Hollenshead explained how this his the PC devs by explaining that retailers would rather give up their valuable shelf space to product that can't easily be downloaded elsewhere
There are whole usenet groups, bittorrent sites, irc channels, and the like dedicated to the network distribution of console games. I would say, if anything, they're easier to download and use a copy of than PC games.
Why is it that they are citing WoW for subscription gameplay? Nearly 10 years ago, Origin released Ultima Online which was a pioneer in such services. Not to mention Everquest which vastly popularized the process.
Game companies are going to console because it is far more standardized, easier to support, CHEAPER and easier to USE that PCs. Not to mention, most of the PC games being released nowadays are terrible. They are not engaging and if you're lucky you'll get one with good graphics at least... but not always.
Besides, were't we blaming WoW last month for the decline in PC game purchases? Now we're thanking them?
Since the dawn of PC gaming, developers have said either one of two things:
1. Piracy will make games really expensive in the future if it keeps going on.
2. Piracy will kill PC gaming.
If they believe piracy will kill PC gaming, they first need to explain why it didn't in...
Well, which random year should we pick? The time period 1996-1998?
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
The Sims 2 probably suffers from the fact that it was a sequel too soon; there was a lot of commercial life left in The Sims (particularly as its hardware requirements had stopped being cutting edge), and The Sims 2, while it added a lot of core functionality, also required a lot more to run, and the franchise appeals to a demographic that isn't, otherwise, necessarily the kind that is going to have cutting edge hardware.
But The Sims 2 is hardly unsuccessful.
I've found a number of factors have led me to console based gaming; though I like a lot of games on the PC, gaming in front of the TV with friends is more of a social occasion than sitting quietly upstairs in a room by myself. Gaming is also finally (slowly) losing its stigma as being in the realm of techfolk. As the variety of games for consoles increases, many of them most likely appeal more to those who don't necessarily want to spend time and money on upgrading their PC to play the latest releases when they can throw a CD/DVD in the drive of their pre-configured and optimised-for-gaming machine.
With a subscription model they might allow portions of the game to be freely distributed, but in order to make money they still need to enforce copyright on something (server code, server based content). If they were to freely release the server, they would have to compete with service providers who didn't have to make the investment in development.
"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 artist because the work is already produced and the use of the work does not deprive anyone of anything."
My bet is on the fact that no one's opinion is going to change no matter how many times this subject comes up on slashdot.
People are either going to honor the reciprocal agreement, or they're not. No "if's", "and's", or "but's".
I only purchase games that aren't pirated. The games that are only bought legitimately are never worth my time/money.
One of the main arguments against audio DRM, from the ones I've heard (other than just being a total pain in the ass), is that it's the music industry's responsibility to adapt, not just fortify a stale business model Given that pc gaming faces much the same problem, and "solutions" like StarForce run a disturbing parallel to RIAA solutions (Sony Rootkit, anyone) in not being merely ineffective, but aggressive and dangerous, it appears that the game industry is faced with the same choice: Adapt, or fortify & piss everyone off. And it would make sense, since the internet ultimately defeated the brick&mortar business model for digital consumables, that the industry should factor the internet into its strategy when they adapt. The problem is that for every game DRM there's a crack. For every key there's a keygen, and for every demo there's an ftp server somewhere out on the darknet that has the complete version. Making money off of the distributed binaries is just becoming increasingly inviable. There's a couple different ideas floating around: WoW is the most popular example of a subscription-based business model, but games like MTGO and PoxNora (http://www.poxnora.com) offer a different system, whereby instead of purchasing the game, people purchase the assets used in the game. Poxnora even gives you a starter deck, which you can use to your heart's content, as sort of a "try before you buy".
Didn't people repeat the `piracy is killing games` mantra during the Commodore Amiga era of gaming, 15/20 years ago? I thought games were doing well - popular games sell loads, less popular ones cause the companies to lose money and go bust. Isn't that what's supposed to happen? There's no reason games companies have to be these huge entities that employ loads of people and make hundreds of millions of pounds! That's greedy. If you genuinely like making games, make games and make enough money to live off. What's killing games is all this licensed shit, tired sequels etc. I don't buy hardly any games for the same reason I don't watch many films - they're practically all shit. I'm quite happy with my MAME and n64 etc old stuff - lets face it, the gameplay is the same, it's just the quality of graphics that have changed, and who cares about that enough to keep buying new consoles, expensive graphics cards etc? What's the point?
There have been a number of games (Splinter cell C:T and some other rally game) that remained unpirated for a long time after their release due to the SF3 protection used. Now I haven't seen any sales figures for these games, which surely must be absolutely massive. Why? has anyone seen the figures and do games that have not been pirated sell much more that expected?
The reason PC gaming is dying is console gaming. Many new PC games are built so that they are easily portable to the latest consoles, and in the process any advantages the PC holds over the console is whisked away.
Deus Ex 2 is the quintessential example of this, how a great--possibly one of the best games ever made was killed by the consoles.
GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!
Bad games are killing the industry. People actually buy games that are good.
Don't you get kind of tired played the same game over and over and over ... for YEARS?
Or, are you saying that you don't play games? Then I don't think you're exactly the target audience here. Or is there some missing factor that would make you start? What the hell is your point, other than to express that you're old and grumpy, and afraid to change?
The genre is dying and Enemy Territory will be the first id game I will not buy.
Although piracy may have some blame in the overall, full page ads and pop ups, Gamespy-like subscription 'services' create a hostile environment. Advertisers (female centered anti-male sentiment) disenfranchised the core male demographic. Crooked hardware manufactures like BFG or ATI-like 'useful idiots' create an unpleasant atmosphere not unlike having a greased up stinky-ugly-obese woman sitting on the hood the car you want to buy.
On the positive side, I don't expect to buy another game or upgrade to any premium items which turns into saving a of thousand-five-hundred a year in cpu's, ram, video cards and games. Plus, paperbacked books dropped 1/3 in price.
I'd rather say that the consoles are to blame for the rather poor games nowadays - that and the invention of 3D. The games today are so simplistic when it comes to story, puzzles and such - you don't have to think at all, and even a complete moron could complete all the puzzles.
Think back over ten years ago. We still had the amazing games such as Monkey Island, Indiana Jones, Space Quest and the likes, while the console guys were playing some mind-numbing game of mario.
That's the reason why I stick with old games,and if I should buy a newer game, I buy it for ten bucks.
The consoles? New games for 65+ bucks, classics for 25+ bucks.You end up spending the gap between a computer and a console very quickly - not to mention, there are no freeware games for a console.
And if you want to play a ten-year-old game for a console - good luck finding that old console in you garage in a working condition.
Console gaming is a good experience? No thanks, I'll keep my mouse and keyboard thank you very much.
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?"
Why is this any more moral than 'I want to play it but its too crumy to pay for?' If your poor, maybe you should be worrying about how to get out of that situation instead of playing games...
They've always said piracy hurt the gaming industry, and it does (and I've been downmodded so many times on Slashdot for pointing this out in the past). But high-speed connections are prevalent today, as are advanced P2P networks, tracker sites, entire communities devoted to pirating the fuck out of everything so people can freeload to their heart's content and never pay a dime to any developer.
So the sequel-itis of PC gaming, the focus on superficial features like graphics, the lack of experimentation like we saw in the 90s (not that there wasn't crap as well, but boy there were a lot more hits then misses back then)--that's all because it's safer to do something generic than branch out, because the risk is much higher now that so many college kids today don't seem to have any morals whatsoever when it comes to never paying someone for a job well done. What's worse, if they try to introduce any kind of basic DRM, ala Steam, they get trashed for it. They just can't win, hence the move to consoles and the growth of crappy console ports to the PC.
Never again will we see the glorious 90s era of PC-specific gaming. I miss getting excited to see the latest shareware on PC Gamer's CD. Thanks a lot, pirates.
"Sufferin' succotash."
I think that I both agree and disagree with this article. Many have voiced their opinions stating that piracy isn't killing the industry, lack of quality games is. This has been recently been shown true with games such as Galactic Civilizations (which was mentioned) and the recent fav. Elder Scrolls Oblivion which ported with not so much as a cd key. Though a boldd move for the devs they knew they had a game of superior quality and that customers would support their product because of said reasons. In a market that is being saturated with un-original titles (no we don't need another UT/Quake style FPS or remake of C&C RTSs') I see piracy as the PC gamers form of "renting" games. Perhaps other people are willing to shell out $50 for a game that won't hold their attention, which is my theory of why their is one juggernaught MMORPG (World of Warcraft). People are clearly willing to spend their money on games that are good. Which seems like basic logic but applies to any product. We don't want nor need titles that are seperated solely by their title and their content is similar to just about half the games within said genre. So please devs, this is a gamer plea...Instead of focusing on trying to destroy piracy via methods that will prob end up "pooching" our hardware, just spend that time at the white board coming up with ideas that will have us gamers talking for months and wanting more.
"One day your going to wake up and realize that your not as witty as you think you are." -Me.
Piracy is as old as PC games and used to be much easier, but the games sold just fine. The problem is price and the same old tired titles being pushed out over and over.
If they want to start selling games they should provide a downloadable version with a nice printable manual for at least $20 but no more than $30. What's the first thing I do when I bring a game home? Throw away all the dead tree except for the discs and the manual, and the manual follows about a week later. How much money would they save by not printing boxes and manuals, pressing cd's, packaging them and shipping all that garbage to the retail stores?
Plus the industry has plateaued, they need an injection of fresh ideas and talent. They have become formulaic just like the music and film industry. And just like those industries it will take a new wave of independent developers to shake things up.
"Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everybody agrees that it is old enough to know better." - Unknown
From reading about all the problems with the recent game "security features" causing more problems than they solve it's actually taught more people about the software piracy market. The customer that went out and bought a game that doesn't run has to resort to piracy (in a sense) to play the game they already payed for. What makes you think they are ever going to buy another game after they find out all the NoCD, serial numbers and cracks are out there?
It's almost hilarious how anti-piracy acts have actually created more pirates. I know of at least five people that didn't even have a clue where to go to get this stuff until they couldn't run a game they bought that had Starforce protection that didn't work.
(There are a few long sentences in there, and maybe a mispelling or two. Try to look beyond it to the point.)
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
This mean any machine more than a year old can no longer play new PC games!
Huh? That's simply not true. Just before Doom 3 came out, I got a new card, and its most certainly more than a year old. I'm pretty sure it can handle the games of today as well; Doom 3 plays fine, on some of the highest settings. The card wasn't expensive either, $150. Not bad considering it plays the older 3D games better and the current ones today, even though its two years old.
You don't NEED a new computer, nor the latest graphics cards..
You need putting in touch with someone. Chipped consoles are infinately easier to organise and play backups on than PCs. And in my experience your "100 times more" is inaccurate.
Think you can program? Prove it @ the geek challenges
Reading most of the replies here it seems obvious that we'll get the standard "make good games and people will by them." This is bullshit. Everyone who says this is an idiot.
Reading the numbers on piracy it seems the US are last on the list, with a very low piracy quota.
I live in Greece, I'm 22 and I've been playing games since I was 6. Over the years I've had plenty of gamer friends, with 100's of games between us. The number of non-pirated games among them was no more than 2-3. NOBODY buys games if they can get them pirated. Quality of game is irrelevant, people get ALL their PC games (and console games since they moved off cartridges) pirated. ALL of them. I feel weird every time I buy a game because people call me an idiot for paying.
And there are countries (Asia) that are worse. Imagine that.
So yes, software companies lose huge amounts of money from piracy. This has nothing to do with games' quality, nothing at all. Wake up already.
Improve at backgammon rapidly through addictive quickfire position quizzes: www.bgtrain.com
Bullseye. Last FPS I bought and liked... any guesses? Tron 2.0. Why? Cuz WW2 is friekin boring. And yet because a bunch of tards bought CoD now they wont stop making em. I did buy F.E.A.R and the AI was very good but the level design for most the game was the worlds most ginormous office building and became very old very fast. Tron 2.0 had unique gameplay and breath taking level design.
Quality games just arent being made anymore. And frankly thats a problem that crosses over on to consoles as well. All the new people flooding into the gaming industry are willing to buy any old piece of garbage *coughsimscough*. So developpers will make any old piece of garbage and sell it to them. All these WW2 FPS are a dime a dozen and nothing special but people keep buyin em. The term RPG has been raped and now means any game you have a character sheet with stats. When it used to represent games that were deep and have many options and allow you to choose how you interact with the world around you (RIP Fallout and Baldur's Gate).
Hardware requirements are much less of a problem these days. Im about to buy an AMD 3800+ with 1GB of ram, 250 GB Sata 3gb, and a decent vid card all for about 500$ which is apparently going to be about the same cost as the next round of consoles.
Dont worry after the next round of consoles we will see people coming back to PCs I think when they see that consoles and PCs cost the same thing.
It's true. Take, for example, my Nintendo DS Lite - on my 1GB MicroSD card I can fit about 15 games on it with no extra space taken up in my bag or jacket. There's no way I would carry around more than one or two game carts without it being annoying. Also, once you've flashed the DS firmware, you don't have to read the annoying warning every time you turn on your DS.
Of course, there's nothing stopping anyone from buying the games, but the download option is more convinient. I don't see why Nintendo don't release a download cart for the DS and have a download service like Steam. I'm happy with Steam and I bought the HL2 series on Steam, plus some other stuff to. I don't see what your problem is with it, you don't *have* to run it constantly if you don't want to. It's better than the old version where you would connect to a server and wait for 2 hours to download a map or the latest update! Also, when I reinstalled Windows, Steam just re-downloaded the games I'd bought to my PC, which was great.
It's not Piracy exactly that's killing it. But Yes Piracy is hurting it quite a bit. A great deal of piracy started with game companies not properly supporting the PC industry in the first place. AKA Not releasing demos, not making easy to install games.
I've started playing Xbox 360 ports of PC games, not because I'm a console gamer but because I remember Doom 3. When I first got Doom 3 I was thrilled, my hardware was FAR better then the spec. Everything beat it. Except it wasn't installing right. My sound drivers continually screwed me up. I could never get the sound right, and Doom 3 is a full game experience. I ended up having to wait til I bought a new computer (not even a full reformat helped in the end).
The fact that I have to dick around with Drivers just infuriates me. If I buy hardware I should get a working driver that complies with a standard ATI and NVIDIA create. I should not have to constantly get drivers because they changed the way the game interfaces with the card. And then I have to grab a new DirectX because that's changed, then I have to do the same for the sound card and so on. There should be an interface between the computer and hardware that actually works correctly from day 1. That interface then should connect into DirectX and OpenGL. Perhaps NVidia doesn't allow DirectX use all the card from the first day. That's fine. But updating drivers every time a major game gets released is ridiculous. It's not about performance. The problem is it's about the game crashes unless you have the latest driver.
That's not even getting into the fact that you might not be able to use the latest driver. Or the Product's company might have to give you a patch a month or two after the release of the game to fix the problem. Or maybe something is wrong with your computer that it doesn't like and you get random performance that only 2 other people out of 200 ever see.
The fact is there's so much randomness with the PC that gamers who like games really have started walking away from it. It's true Quake 4 doesn't feel exactly right on the 360, but me not having to deal with 50 little problems because of my rig makes that feeling ok.
I'll admit when Bioshock comes out I'll be trying it on the PC. I want the better controls and more immersive feel. But I'm sure it'll be a hassle to even get it working again.
Now that's just why some of us don't play games on computer.
Companies on the other hand don't want to make games on computers because they are afraid of piracy and rightly so. To Pirate games on the PC or Dreamcast is simple compared to piracy on the 360 or PS2. So instead of a number like 60 percent of people who play the game bought the game legally. It's more like 90 percent on a console. And that's a better number to them. Game companies don't require 100 percent of the games to be legit. They understand piracy and moding is a fact of life, and the fact is that even if a console was 100 percent secure, if it isn't as easy to work for as the 360 or PS3 they wouldn't make games for it.
The PC will continue to get games tailor made for it. But games that are shipping on other platforms probably will not see a PC version for a couple monthes if not a year.
On the other hand a lot of PC games get huge boosts from modding communities, and that alone is why you'll never see PC gaming die. People want to have stuff like Oblivion and Half life 2 on the PC because while they are fun on the consoles, the true abilities of those games are only available on the PC.
So yeah, the PC market is definatly dying. And piracy is definatly helping it along. But it will never die completely. It's still the cheapest platform to develop for and it has the most tools available, so even if the corporations leave, indies will still remain.
What these game companies should do is sell subtle advertising space within their games. Mostly branding spots. Anyway that's where they could make their money. And the more people that stole the game, they more people that would see the advertising. And the more they could charge the advertisers.
Getting something for free is often great. But piracy does not provide free games. It comes with a package: ...)
-> risks (trojan, virus, police)
-> restrictions (game updates, on line play)
-> effort (find the game, download it, crack it,
Therefore, I would say that piracy is the result of something in games that users don't like.
Let's make a list:
1) game quality: would you trust EA to make good games? no. Can you trust a studio to make a good game? no. The "seal of quality" does not exist in he PC world. Everybody makes crap. The mob does not read the reviews, or the reviews cannot be trused, which does not help. (lack of confidence)
2) how will it run? often, you don't know how a particular game will run on your PC. Sure, with the latest nvidia and athlon 64, it runs and look great. but... (lack of information)
3) Reviews: you always can find someone which didn't like a particular game. You don't trust one source, you compile many of them. And if someone says it's crap, maybe it's best to get for free, or not to get it? (too much information)
4) It's a sequel. It looks sooo much like the first one. (user bored)
5) It will be half the price in no time (user forget)
6) It's too long, too short, there's no enough support, let's wait for a patch, will there be any mods? (too many expectations)
The list could go like that. I believe that players have high expectations, and that it's difficult to sell them the "average" game. But it's not exacly their fault: developpers and magazines does encourage this behavior.
For example "HL2 episode 1 is very short". This was in the column "cons" of the magazine I read. But my habits as a player is that I want short games, because don't have much time.
I believe that games on PC today wants to address the same market as 10 years ago. While those people have aged. The PC games market is probably very segmented. If the market of PC gamers all in all is 50 mio people, the target audience for a high end FPS is maybe 5 mio people only. If we are able to extract these figures, then we will probably realize that games are selling OK, because they address a pretty small user base.
when I've pirated games, it's usually because the last 2-3 games I've purchased suck. If i drop 100-150$ and get 5-10 mediocre hours of play, i'll be damned if I'll drop another 50$. There are some franchises that I will gladly drop the money on, bceause I know they'll be good (though I've been burned there before too) It seems like companies are less and less likely to offer demos nowadays too, which makes it even worse.
As always, there is that misconception that every download is a lost sale, or that by someone downloading something they've taken something from you. Downloading costs them nothing, the bandwidth is provided by those other people, the game is released by someone not on your payroll (possibly, unless there is a new marketting plan to create buzz about little known games by getting them out on the p2p networks). So whats being taken? A copy.
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.
Has the author of this article ever heard about Stardock of Galactic Civilizations II before? They intentionally included to form of DRM whatsoever, and they believe their sales benefitted from it. Companies who see piracy as such a huge problem only make it worse by alienating their users with ridiculous (Steam anyone?) or even destructive (Starforce) DRM schemes.
The odd thing about WOW is they still charge for the software. I was discussing this with a friend. WOW software should be free with a free 2 week trial period. This really came about because I was trying to convince him to try WOW on a Mac, and he thought it was just too expensive to buy to try on his mac. Once you have a WOW subscription you should be able to get the software for free or near free for all supported platforms.
Think Deeply.
The past couple years have been better than it has been in a long time.
In the past couple years, we've seen some great ones... I'll elaborate.
Sorry, but all the DRM in the world wouldn't make HL2 a "crappy game".
Fable an utterly fantastic single player RPG (possibly the best ever made) and we're getting Fable2 early next year. NeverwinterNights from a few years ago was amazing and NeverwinterNights2 is due very soon now.
SpellForce2 and DragonShard are two amazing RTS games from the recent past.
So that's 7 modern games that just rock really hard. I'm sure there are others but I haven't had my coffee yet.
There are great games coming out, you just need to do a bit of homework to figure out which ones they are!
Please, please PC game makers - more like these... console games suck!
std::disclaimer<std::legalese> sig=new std::disclaimer; sig->dump(); delete sig;
I remember back in the Commodore 64/128 days, companies were screaming they were losing money and had to make up for it by charging high prices for their games. Along came Nintendo and others, who decided to put the program on a chip, instead. Prices continued to soar even though it was near impossible to pirate the hardware chips containing the code. Since then, I've taken the whole "high prices due to piracy" talk as complete BS.
PC gaming is killing PC gaming. The entire gaming industry hasn't come up with anything new since Wolfenstein 3d. How many times can I run through a dark hallway and blast an alien/terrorist? Dreamcast had some interesting ideas with their fishing pole controller thing. I hope that Wii can take some of the mistakes of the past generations and turn them into something truly revolutionary in gaming because looking at their MS and Sony brethren is depressing. There's a saying about money and employees. Money won't make people stay, but without the money nothing else matters. The same can be said to a certain extent about graphics. Without decent graphics people won't buy your game. At the same time, it won't make players stay. What makes players stay is game depth, interesting story line, gameplay, etc.
Check out my lame java blog at www.javachopshop.com
Puppet to the US? Are you are crack? When was the last time the UN and the US agreed on something.
OMG Ponies!!! with Glitter!!!! I miss Pink
[Taken from todays gamespot PC game rankings]
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.
I used to pirate games I used to buy games, now I don't do either because they cost so much and are most of the time not worth playing therefore no pirate no buy!
If you go see a play, you can check the reviews before you go, but in the end you may end up paying for something you don't like.
If you go see a sporting event, the game may end up sucking.
Am I allowed to pay for these only if I enjoyed myself at the end?
This may be stretching it a bit, but people doing 'try before you buy' on official game releases, and no the demos, must impact the bottom line in some way, regardless of this "I wouldn't have bought it in the first place" nonsense. If you weren't gonna buy it, why did you download it?
You've mostly hit it on the nail, but I completely disagree with you on the "I don't care about the story/plot" part. Sure some games worked well without plot and we played it for years( EverQuest, Counter-Strike, Battlefield 2). But those games never leave an impression on me. The games that I remember so fondly are ones with great story/single player: Betrayal at Krondor, Thief series, Baldur's Gate II, etc.
In fact I would argue you need both kinds of games. The really good story/single player games to give us bursts of fun. And those repetative multiplayer/no story games to help us endure the long periods of waiting before next single player experience.
It certainly isn't their inability to come up with exciting new game ideas which people actually want to play. Nooo. --Heck, I've pirated dozens of games, but very few of them were worth the trouble. Curiously, the games I actually forked over cash for were the ones which turned out to be leaders in the industry.
Let's see now. . . Let me think back a few years and count what I actually have receipts for. . .
1. Transport Tycoon.
2. Star Wars, Dark Forces
3. Quake
4. Command & Conquer
5. Balder's Gate
6. Masters of Orion
7. Total Annihilation
8. Grim Fandango (Lucasarts)
9. Fallout I and II
10. Jedi Knight
11. Full Throttle (Lucasarts)
I bought maybe two or three less than inspiring PC games the titles of which I now forget. But the above titles were nearly all highly innovative and entirely worth the money. Several of them also drove the industry and spawned countless copy-cats.
Now. . , by contrast, of the dozens of games I've not paid for, I can only think of perhaps two which were really good. Just two. The rest were so-so at best.
--Oh, and that list doesn't include any of the indy games I've bought. For under $20, a good indy game is a GREAT indy game, and every one I've stolen and enjoyed I've bought an official copy of. Good indy publishers deserve all the support you can give them.
Anyway. . , my point is one which has been stated several times already but it is well worth making again; too many poorly made, lack-luster games filling the signal with noise and spreading the buyer's dollar too thin are why the industry is failing. It's happened before. --It killed the first counsel game market back in the 80's, and it's doing it again now.
Piracy has been around forever. Bloated selections of mostly repetitive junk sink markets, not 'pirates'.
For as long as there is a Western Civilization, there will be distractions to keep people from noticing that Western Civilization is crashing and burning. Count on it.
-FL
The first piece of software I ever pirated was "Smooth Talker" for my Apple II GS, and I paid more in long distance fees than I would have for the retail software...
;).
Since then I have found morals... I aspire to make my living writing code, I've been doing a fine job of it, and because of that I have a hard time with the concept of piracy. On the other hand, I hate throwing money down a sinkhole of suckage.
So until the game industry writes games that are going to run stable and smooth on my PC, I'm going to "free trial" the software when I can. If the game is worth playing, I'll buy it. If it's trash, I'll throw it in the bin in short order, and the only thing thats "Lost" to them is the revenue they never should have gotten from me for creating a crappy game.
Note: In 99% of the cases I buy software it's not because it's the best graphics, smoothest gameplay, etc... it is because the game runs well, doesn't crash, doesn't require 24 driver updates to hardware that you don't even know you have, doesn't take a genius to install, etc.
Meanwhile, I think server maintainance is over, so I'll be logging back into WoW soon
Zanthor
Personally, I was more likely to buy games when they came in the larger boxes.
The manuals and extras were just more appealing when the boxes were big enough to hold something substantial.
Now that the boxes have shrunk, in most cases there's essntially no difference between the downloaded version and the retail one when it comes to the product you get (not counting special edition sets, those are still worth paying for in many cases).
However, i don't think this is the same scenario, because video game sales (in revenue) have been decreasing, with only a few companies showing growth. EA is one such company . This site Suggests sales are UP overall as an industry. Now then, are these companies showing growth because they are harder to pirate? Doubtful, as it doesn't seem to matter to piracy inclined people how difficult a game is to pirate, they will do it. So we must look at the content of the games, the originality, stability, re-play aspects, etc.
A game can be spectacular, like Fable but if it has 0 re-play value, don't expect a whole lot. On the other hand, games like TES: Arena (The very fist game in The Elder Scroll Series), TES: Daggerfall, TES: Morrowind, and TES: Oblivion (though I've yet to play Oblivion, can't as of yet afford it), will NEVER go out of style, because they have enormous re-play value. Many of these games you can go through twice, and with the exception of a few main plot-line quests (if you even decide to do those), it will be a totally different game. Games like THAT, are what's missing. Everything is a clearcut path to victory. A clear beginning, and a clear end. This is good for some people, who aren't interested so much in a story, or good gameplay, as they are in just killing stuff to unwind from a long day. But to the gamers, a gamer must have substance. there must be something to it. FPS games are a dime a dozen, RTS games have almost become that, but MMO, and RPG games are doing so well because they can be played radically differently. Clearcut easy games have their place no doubt. But if the gaming industry really wants to reclaim it's 1999-2000 throne of $$$$$, it's going to have to do something about it's content.
And on a side note, if piracy is really killing the PC Gaming industry this badly, why hasn't MS gone under yet from piracy of Windows, Office, their PC Games, and the myriad of other software that they sell, all of which ends up being pirated. MS Seems to be doing OK, in spite of the piracy they are faced with. And how many of you posting here are using XP Corporate, or a copy with wpa killed? I'd wager it's a pretty fair amount. *Shrug* It's just common. It's a reality of business in software. I haven't paid for a copy of Windows in several years, and yet every copy that I do run is totally legit. MS doesn't seem to be hurting for it (even with massive fines from various sources). So one has to wonder, is the PC Gaming industry REALLY in trouble because of piracy? Or are they in trouble for something else, and they're choosing to blame piracy as a scapebgoat? It's better to be seen as a victim, than as lazy and unimaginative.
Don't forget the increasingly obvious general unfitness of the PC for long-term gaming.
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.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
The reason for me is quite simple. I can't keep buying new PC's and video cards to keep up with the latest and greatest requirement for the next new game. And then the other thing... I don't have as much time anymore to play games.
"If you insist on using Windoze you're on your own."
I don't know that moving to subscription based gaming is such a good idea. Many of the PC games out there today are, for lack of better words, shit. Games that are subscription based tend to make me shy away unless they have the appeal that games such as WoW have. I pay for WoW because it's only one game that I do actually play on a regular basis for. I also pay for WoW because it is a game that I can't feasibly "beat". It has longevity under it's belt. It costs Blizzard money to keep those servers up for the strenuous load they receive, not to mention all other costs associated, and being a app developer/sys admin I understand that. If other games I play started to charge a subscription fee, I would be forced to choose one or two games. That's not the position you want your consumer in. Back to the subject of crap games. I'm not sure about many of you but I personally don't mind waiting on a game if that means it will actually be good. For example, I was waiting for HL2 to come out for a verrry long time (/flame, I know) and it got pushed back many times but I feel it was completely worth it. The game was amazing and the games that were released along side it give me more replay ability than any other games ever have. I also feel this way currently about the release of Twilight Princess(although not PC, still the same concept). Sure it sucks it's taking so long to come out, but will the wait be worth it? I don't suspect Miyamoto will let us down. What I'm trying to say is perfect your games. Also quit making so many cannon fodder games that are crap. Consumers will buy the games that are worth buying.
If they want to prevent piracy as best as possible I don't understand why many games don't move to an activation method after each install. Sure there are ways around this as well, but I'm sure that system can be tweaked to effectively prevent such piracy. Many applications do this but I've noticed most games don't. To be honest, other than Valve, I can't name one other that does. Sure all of them require a CD key, but these days that means nothing.
I will forever be a student.
Game pirating is not much different than pirating movies and songs. The peopel that pirate games are usually the ones that wouldn't buy these things in the first place. I see the bigger issue with poor game sales is the crazy pricing. Most games just suck. Back in the day many stores let you buy a game and return it for stroe credit. I did that many times due to the high suckage factor. WoW is not a good example. LOL!!! It's a game that can not be played offline. So they ask you to PAY full price for such a game THEN ask you to pay an additional $15 or so a month just to be able to play the very same game you already bought. This alone has kept me from plunking down my hard earned cash. Get this. I downwloaded the game from their site then started the 1 week free trial. when the time was up they flaty out told me I had to go out and BUY a copy of the game I already had installed. THEN pay the monthly fee. Why owuld I buy a copy of the game I already have installed? Why not just charge me the monthly fee? I refused to bend over for them. Diablo 2 was yet another example of garbage. I loved the first one and wanted to support Blizzard so I bought it. It felt like a freaking beta. The only reason for buying the game was for the online play which was free BTW. You spent way too much time waiting for a game slot to open up to allow you to play. Plus many bugs that made playing it a pain. I outright told the moderators of the chat area you waited in that I felt I was ripped off and wished I had pirated their game. THEN I owulhave felt I got my money's worth. Let's face it. If they release a good game people will buy it. Take a look at the makers of Galactic Civs 2. They are a shining example of this. PIracy isn't killing the game industry. Piss poor games are.
This may be an apple to grenades comparison, but with the Atari 8 bit machines it was user group meetings and the advent of the Happy Drive. With the Amiga it was packed disk formats easily transferrable over 9600-14400 baud modem. And as you say with P2P and fat pipes (along with some FTP sites) ISO images are easily transferred. I don't think PC gaming is going away (tho piracy killed the Atari and at the minimum seriously damaged the Amiga scene), but I can see these technologies administering a swift enough kick in the nuts that many publishers will move strictly to consoles.
In many situations I don't even think they'll bother.
- Madden Cards (Basically a powerup)
- Updated rosters DURING THE SEASON (Madden PC users had to wait until the end of the season to update rosters)
- In the new version of Madden, PC users will have the stripped old-code-base of Madden, meaning no new features compared to the "Next Gen" version. Such as new player attributes.
There's examples of other games that are released on multi-platform where the developer specifically gimped the PC versions to make it unappealing.Piracy will not kill any industry.
It's poor quality that makes the industry commit suicide.
Good game products have success just like in the movie or music industries.
Some companies produce poor quality content and never get good revenues, so they take piracy has the cause.
DRM and the constant obsession with games that push the envelope are killing it.
Personally I'd rather play a console game than have to worry about all of the issues associated with DRM. I won't go into too many details since it's been done here already: See The Problems With Game Copy Protection But, I personally spent 2 hours trying to run battlefield 2 only to find out that the reason it kept complaining about my CD key was that I'd installed one of the patches as administrator while I'd installed the game and it's expansion pack as myself (yes.. doing so was an oversight on my part..) but the DRM in that case made a game I'd legitimately paid for unplayable until I uninstalled 2 expansions, the game itself then reinstalled everything in the proper order, under the same account, with a couple patches thrown in for good measure...
Second Reason: patches... Console games just work... PC games on the other hand still have bugs rolling out years after release... Yes this can be good... But often its an excuse to release it before it's done.
Next add the fact that playing a new games at any decent resolution can require a video card upgrade, which can cost as much as a 'next-gen' console for the single component.
Toss in a side of a possible memory or CPU upgrade to play.
Throw in the necessary maintenance of the PC (latest video driver/sound driver/chipset driver etc) and it's no wonder that PC gaming is on the decline.
Why spend a fortune in time and money to get a system that can run the latest games only to be irritated by an unfinished game who's DRM makes it harder than it should be to play?
Right. Because consoles like the Playstation2 and XBOX don't suffer from piracy at all.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
Splurge, for about $80 you can get a geforce 6600 with 256MB ram . thats less then 2 of those games....
I think you and I read the post a tad different. I think he was saying that the game industry failing is because the games are crappy and no one is buying them. Frankly, that's why I don't buy games anymore. The games suck. I don't pirate them or play them either. Because they suck.
I think that's what he was getting at, I know it's true for me. If these companys made games that were more interesting and had things like plots instead of just being "here's a gun/sword/magic shoot stuff till everything is dead" then maybe the sales would go back up.
Say bad words about my book, in cold oatmeal, or I shall sue!
I would buy a game when I knew I could find a no-cd crack for it. It just annoys the hell out of me that I can buy and load other programs up on my computer but this 50 dollar game is so important that it needs me to feed it the install disk every time I want to play it. I've read here about the evil thing called 'Steam' and I've not put anything on my computer that has that. I'm thinking all new games have this crap or a variation of this crap and so I don't even look at PC games anymore. If PC game sales are down it's because of this sort of thing. You developers make it hard for me to enjoy and play a game by wanting to infiltrate my computer with your software protection stuff and phone home features and you know, I don't need it. Wake me up when they start advertising games without the copy protection and which allow me to actually load them up without having to keep track of the install disk. Im not holding my breath on that one though.
Enjoy your Karma, after all you earned it. Feel your Karma Joe, feel it burn.
Yes! Because only the well-off should have luxuries! The poor can entertain themselves by racing cockroaches and having antifreeze-drinking contests!
Fuckhead.
Maybe they should license Steam for their next release of 'interactive brown textures'. Perhaps its not piracy hurting id game sales.
Take it from an ex-pirate, they've been bringing this on themselves for a long time now. All games, (pc, console...etc) will be pirated into extinction unless companies start to give a shit about their customers and start working with them to deliver satisfaction. Blindly shelling out $40-60 per title with no recourse for dissatisfaction will surely expedite the demise of the whole industry.
the problem with games is the continue where are you ability. when that went away with the 80s and early 90s thats when games got boring IMO.
Since I was a kid with a Commodore 64, there has always been prevalent pirating (I used to copy commodore 64 games as a kid, cause my allowance didn't allow me to buy them). The piracy rate has been consistent over the years. The gaming industry thrived despite the piracy. What has changed, at least for me, is the use of invasive DRM. I always try to find out what kind of DRM is used on the games I buy, and it has become a major part of my buying decision. I buy all the games I own, I do not pirate them. Therefore, I hate being treated as a thief. I hate having my machine compromised by the malware they call DRM, like the starforce drivers. I hate having to use activation codes to use my game. I hate having my CD/DVD drive burn out, because the game keeps it constantly spinning to ensure I have the disk in the machine. If I'm done with a game, I want to be able to transfer the rights to the game to a friend or a used game store, just like a book. I don't want to have it tied to me forever. I love PC Gaming, but I hate the road blocks that the industry has put in the way of me enjoying a game. I think part of the reason Console gaming has become more popular is that you put the game in the machine and it works, you don't have to enter codes to get it to work, or any of that other crap. DRM does not stop pirates; it just inconveniences, and infuriates legitimate users. The other problem with PC gaming is the majority of people out in the world are not PC enthusiasts, like slashdot's readers. When they buy a PC they look at the implied speed of the processor, and that's it. They'll buy a dual core processor machine, but not realize that it contains an Intel graphics chipset (used by 40 percent of the market). When they then buy a game for their new PC, they are disappointed by poor graphics, poor performance, and a poor experience. When these same people buy a game console, they get a gauranteed gaming experience, that you can't get with a PC. Perhaps the ATI/AMD merger will improve this situation. Combine Intel Graphics with DRM, and it's no wonder PC Gaming is declining. People who can afford games, but choose to pirate them will not change their stripes. The game industry is so focused on turning these people into paying customers, that they are alienating their legitimate paying customers. That's my rant for the day. Cheers.
I'm the odd man out in an even number of participants
The reasons that PC gaming is having a hard time are:
1) Microsoft XBOX. Microsoft started buying up PC game companies. They put their focus on XBox gaming. They stopped treating Windows as a first class gaming platform.
2) No Linux Support. For some like me, I really believe that if and when Linux will reach a critical mass. When everyone knows a Linux user like they knopw a Windows user, I believe that the sheep will switch very quickly, and Windows will become a bit player if that. I don't want to buy a game that I will have to buy an OS to play, when my primary OS was free. So, I go without.
3) No cross platform support. There was a time that you could buy one box and get a disk containing the C64, Apple II, Spectrum, and IBM version of a game. It is dramatically easier to write cross platform software today than it ever has been, and given that 90% or more of any game is content, the disk space is less of an issue than it ever has been. But, even when the game is available on Linux or Mac, you are expected to buy seperate copies. My wife and son are exlusively on Linux. I primarily run Windows because of work. I want to know that I don't have to pay a second time if/when I join my wife and son in linux land. Besides, XP has 'activation', and Vista will likely be worse. I still pull out old games now and then to play. I don't want find out that I can't play them because MS is no longer supporting the old OS. So, I do without.
4) FPS. While there have been a few FPS that I really did enjoy, some of us are not obsessed with FPS. The market became so over saturated with FPS that it has to have driven off a lot of customers. So, I do without.
5) Multi-player. I don't know if there are more people that want to play multiplayer or single player, but the multiplayer group is definitly more vocal. The companies have listened. Unfortunatly, there are a lot of us with busy schedules. We can't get time scheduled to play with others, or we don't have enough friends that like the same games, or gaming at all. We like to play games that we can sit down to at 2 in the morning when the wife and kids are asleep. We don't want to play with a bunch of people we don't know, and quite frankly don't like. MMO gaming was a great idea on paper, but in practice it tends to draw exactly the kind of people I don't want to play with. Besides, I don't want to pay $10 or $15 a month to play for a total of 8 hours a month. So I do without.
6) Copy protection. Yes, this has been here since the C64 days, but back then we didn't have to worry about the copy protection breaking everything else. Some copy protection schemes prevent selling used games. Besides, we tolorated the copy protection. Given the other problems with PC gaming, it just isn't worth it anymore. So I do without.
7) Consoles. No, not that they are more convienent. But that many PC game manufacturers will cripple a PC game to make sure that it will play well on a console. PC's have you sitting 2 feet away with a keyboard and mouse. Consoles have you sitting 6-10 feet away with a game pad. These lend themselves to different kinds of play. Unfortunaly many PC game manufactures will write the game to be playable with only a gamepad because they feel the need to port it to a console. Can you imagine trying to play starcraft, or Master of Orion on a console with a gamepad? It would suck. So, even when a game is being made for the PC, it is often a console game being shoe horned in.
8) Cost. There is very little innovation going on in the PC gaming area. I'm not complaining about that, just as I don't complain that there is very little innovation going on in board game area. It is possible that the platform has been thoroughly explored. But if your going to sell me the same game with different graphics, give me the price break that that deserves. I don't need a new engine in every game, but I don't want to pay for a new engines development, and only get new content.
Pirating programs/games/music/movies has never cut down on anyone's revenue. In most cases it probably increases revenue. What is probably happening is that games like WoW are taking all the paying customers away, leaving only the non paying customers behind. Which means there should be more of an effort to turn these people into paying customers. But, the only solutions corporations seem to like is driving these potential customers away by suing them rather than offering deals or incentives to make them to want to buy a game.
An honour based deal tends to require a relationship. Diffused copies involve no such relationship; there isn't anyone from whom any such diffused copies may be purchased, nor in fact any need. Copy diffusion is a consequential benefit of the Internet.
The only person with whom a relationship is necessary is the artist, and that is between them and each member of their audience who would see them produce more.
The Internet enables this relationship, and consequently, with the necessary facility, enables honour based deals.
This is why I'm working on the http://www.contingencymarket.com/, so that it can enable sites like http://www.digitalartauction.com/.
It should soon be possible for a digital artist to sell their work just as it is for any traditional craftsman to do so - without needing the traditional publishers' agreement aka copyright.
I've read some of the discussions in the comments already and feel there are several points and views I think need to be mentioned.
...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...
First, in relation to the article itself:
From my position Kevin Cloud is not talking about the US market in particular. He is talking about world wide markets and particularly ones that have high piracy rates. As an example, I live near two military bases. In the last several months I have heard mention from troops coming home with games they bought in Iraq they thought were completely legit, that are completely pirated copies. Sparing that discussion, its the idea of a foreign market example I needed to place. These people were going to spend their money on the games, but it didn't end up in the right pockets.
Next, user "sumdumass" (711423), "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." and user "UbuntuDupe" (970646), "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." Finally, on this point, user "ArmyOfFun" (652320), "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."
Maybe you can see my point being put together for me? Have you ever filled out one of those system requirement surveys? Like back in the day for Half Life, or maybe if you played an MMO like Dark Age and they were getting ready for the next expansion and wanted to know what people were playing on. Oh, another good one.. Dungeon Siege. Some companies do pay a lot of attention to what people are using to play their games, others stay low end, or high end on purpose as well. I have always though that the ones who test the market and then aim for the upper middle ground do the best though. Win2000, XP? Are you kidding me? Its the same arguement I hear about why companies aren't making games for the PSOne or N64.... they're OLD, and not nearly as many people have them sitting around at home anymore. At least as their primary form of entertainment. I'm sure if a company wanted to, they could make games for Win98, or WinME, but you've gotta think of payoff here. How much extra time and effort they might need to spend to make that happen vs how many people will buy it for that reason. Not to mention the kind of features you might have to cut to make it work, too. Some of those fancy Direct X 8,9,10 features might not work in Win98. Ooops.
So before I go on too much of a tangent[rant]... Keep in mind there are some games that try to scale it in full. Dungeon Siege and Dark Age of Camelot are prime examples of games that could scale down pretty low, or up to the highest tier computers out there.
Now I wont cite others for this because they mostly haven't said it.
Games that use digital distribution are not evil. They're protecting their profits. They may, with the use of DRM, be hurting their popularity though. I think that is one of the key aspects that people are missing between Half Life [One], World of Warcraft, and Half Life 2.
Half Life [One] was probably one of the most pirated games I was aware of. Its massive popularity due to that and online mods like counter strike, also made it one of the best selling games I'd ever seen. [Word of Mouth is big $$$]
World of Warcraft is a Subscription based service, but like most MMOs they offer trial games. Blizzar
I've spent the last 20 minutes reading through replies on this one. One thing seems to be constant; "if they made better games...(insert argument here)". This seems to be, if they made better games, people would buy them rather than pirate, or piracy would be higher. While reading these arguments, I started thinking about whether games have been getting better or worse. Now through time, quality ebbs and flows, but overall, what has the quality been like. Let's look back to the dawn of gaming; Pong is groundbreaking. However, no one now will disagree that Pong sucks. King of the Hill summed it up nicely for those of you that have seen that episode. Moving forward, on the Atari 2600, there are numerous "classic" titles; Adventure, Yar's Revenge, Indiana Jones. I remember spending HOURS working to memorize the maze in Adventure, drilling a whole in the shield to fire the beam in Yar's and seeing how many times I can complete Jones without biting it. But in reality, 20 different screens do not an adventure make and completing the same 15 tasks successfully 7 times is not overly engaging. Move still forward, the original Nintendo had Ninja Gaiden, Mega Man and Super Mario Bros. These were certainly engaging, and sold very well. But looking back, would you play those with such vigor a this point? I know I wouldn't. In fact (looking at my antique NES), I don't. PCs have made serious strides over time. The original Doom was fantastic. Playing it in the computer lab with three other friends was about the coolest thing ever...then. If you load that game now, the graphics are painfully bad, the sounds, while memorable, just aren't as scary as I remember, and the storyline of the single player is as predictable now as it was then. Now a big leap forward in time to StarCraft. An amazing game to be sure. The story line was engaging, graphics were great, unit variance was fantastic. I loaded it a year ago, and was sorely disappointed to find it did not have the same draw that it once had. The same happened with Half Life Source. I purchased Gold because I wanted to play through the original before continuing to HL2; just as a refresher. About halfway through, it became tedious. I couldn't get past the "blocky" graphics of the scientists. I was itching to get to HL2, but I had dedicated myself to completing it, and muscled through it. I was rewarded when I played HL2, and it made it that much better. Plus, there were some nuances that would have been missed had I not experienced the first immediately prior to playing the second. I now there has been a lot here, but now my point. Gamers are ageing. Old school gamers are no longer engaged in the same ways. Meanwhile, new gamers have a completely different need. The 14 year olds like quick, simple "blow-em-up" games. If you look over time, games HAVE been getting better. Graphics have made leaps and bounds, processing power allows more intelligent AI that now responds to your every move, and the amount of sheer data that these games consist of is astronomical (remember the quote "No one will ever need more than 256K or memory") LONG story short, give'em a small break. I'm of the "they need to make better games" category too. But the conclusion I'm coming to is that, as a middle aged gamer (wow that hurts) I'm looking for a much more engaging and creative game than has ever existed. I won't pirate it because I have the money to purchase, but there was a time when I didn't. Access, either for financial reasons or sheer lack of existence, to new and creative games is limiting growth. Just like knowledge, the only way to grow is to share. There is a middle ground that no one has found yet. Unfortunately, that answer hasn't been found yet and that's what needs to be discovered.
Perhaps you're right. I've sometimes taken remarks like that and misunderstood them.
The problem with personal peeves is that sometimes one misreads the intent of another's statement, and I may have done that here. Thank you for gently raising that point.
Strike while the irony is hot! -- The Freethinker
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.
Maybe putting out a game that was extremely dark when many people were switching to LCDs (which don't handle darkness well) wasn't such a good idea? That lessened my opinion of the doom3 engine. The fact that everything looks like plastic doesn't help either. Sorry, but if I see a game that uses the doom3 engine, I just skip over it. I spent $50 (or was it $60?) on doom 3. I could barely see, it looked like crap when there was light, and it was boring as hell after an hour or so.
Sometimes people just dont want to buy your product. I doubt I'm alone.
Really, the gaming industry is dying? Huh, I'm always pleasantly surprised by the new, healthy growth I see over in the petri dish known as the Happy Penguin. The games there don't always have the faces of professional sports players or feature length cinametics staring Angelina Jolie or Brad Pitt, but there's always interesting things going as far as concepts and playability.
Um. . . isn't that pretty much the definition of "luxury?"
If fate makes you a motorcycle, you become a motorcycle.
No, it's like CLONING the car off a dealer's lot...
There is one problem with this. I WILL NOT buy a game if I cannot demo it, or try it, or copy it in some way. Blizzard has offered me no demo without signing over a CC number, therefore Blizzard will not get my business, it is this reason alone I have not bought WoW, nor played it, nor will I ever buy another Blizzard game.
A customer of mine bought FEAR some months ago. After finding out that the game will not run while AnyDVD was running, they became pissed and shipped it back claiming it was spyware (because it is). The online store refused to take it back, so they took them to small claims court, and sued for $500, and won.
People don't like to put up with that crap. It is annoying, and nothing short of highway robbery. People can only be pushed so far.
When government fears the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. - Jefferson
for both work and play, so i only buy games that have been released on linux. So far i have bought doom 3, doom 2, return to castle wolfenstein, neverwinter nights, heroes of might and magic 3, heretic 2, civilization call to power, postal, and some other titles by the now defunct loki games.
I may represent a small market but still a market. ID and bioware can count on me purchasing their games as long as they are released for linux also.
There is one simple reason they do this: Blizzard *needs* retail shelf presence to achieve Robot Jesus mindshare among gamers, because shockingly enough there are people who would balk at downloading a teensy itsy witsy 5GB demo. Retail wants 40% of a nice fat number to keep your product stocked on shelves next to other games which are giving them 40% of a nice fat number, and to pay for advertising which gets suburban housewives (who don't know Onyxia from Nelly but who still probably purchased about a million copies of WoW) to the store.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
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?"
You don't get this reasoning?
How about "I'm too poor to own a car, but I borrow my parent's whenever I need one".
I am too poor to own a microwave, so I borrow my roommates?
I am too poor to by an arc welder so I borrow one off a friend of mine.
It isn't that complex of a thought process if you really consider it for a moment. Imagine of the maker of that arc welder said that the owner of that arc welder was not allowed to lend it out. What's the difference?
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Personally I find the amount of information contained in this article lacking and misleading. From the sounds of the short article the questions were loaded, probably something like this, "How do you feel about piracy in the game market?" Everyone knows that piracy can be a problem on the large scale. However, I think it has absolutely nothing to do with companies moving their efforts to console. Also, I think charging users a fee every month isn't the answer either. As much as I disliked the concept to begin with, I have come to embrace the way Valve Software has moved in relation to content management systems with Steam(http://www.steampowered.com/). I think it provides a very effective and reliable system for distribution. While it can be inconvenient at times, I love the fact that I can download steam from any computer log on and have access to any games I have bought through the system. While the software maybe installed on three machines only the one with the account I'm currently using can access the content. Obviously, people could hack the system, yada, yada, but I think all in all it's a very good way managing and controlling data without being too inconvenient.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. ~Albert Einstein
This argument has an element of risk associated with it.
Often with risk, if you remove the most obvious risk, then you open up other types of risk to move in and replace it. For example, in the UK most playgrounds' concrete were replaced with soft foam to prevent kids hurting themselves. This removed the most obvious risk of kids falling onto a hard surface. The problem was that the accidents didn't diminish significantly. The reason for this is that other risks replaced the original risk of falling onto a hard surface. The parents would stand further away thinking their kids were safer. Swings themselves suddenly became a lot more dangerous as the parents weren't close enough to stop their kids from wandering in the path of one.
So to make a sweeping generalisation about piracy killing the PC games industry is extremely short sighted. Personally, I think it was easier to copy games in the 80s and 90s than today. So we need to look at what the difference is between then and now. I believe it's all related to the social interactions that go on within online games on the internet. Most social type games (MMOs, RPGs etc) tend to have subscription content. It's a vicious circle for some people as they often have many friends that they do not want to "lose" by not paying their subscription. Of course nothing stops people communicating outside the game, but often the game is what connects people together that wouldn't normally have anything in common to talk about.
It's the social games that are to blame, not the piracy of single player games.
I'm in almost the same situation. Games lately have been a let down. Games like Prey are fun, but I pretty much got my fill from the demo and multiplayer was just annoying from my experience. There's a few promising games out there on the horizon such as Spore, and UT2007 seems promising as well, but these are few and far between.
I do think the WoW factor seems to be a big one. While I personally don't play it or have any desire to, I know a lot of people that play it, and pretty much nothing else.
Cool. You borrow the game, the way you'd borrow a microwave, or a car, or an arc welder.
Except your rationalization breaks down when you consider that when you "borrow" a game by putting it on your computer as well as on your friend's computer. At that point, you are creating a new microwave, or a new car or a new arc welder. (How else are you and your friend able to use it at the same time?)
It's like taking a book and photocopying the pages so that your friend doesn't have to go and buy his/her own copy, but it doesn't seem to cost you anything, so why not?
And then you wonder how come the good video game developers don't stay in the business?
Strike while the irony is hot! -- The Freethinker
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...."?
No, it's like going to the dealer and test-driving the car you're considering for purchase and finding out that the suspension's loose, the clutch slips, and it's a complete piece of shit and you're glad you didn't start the sales papers on it.
...Rob
The American Dream isn't an SUV and a house in the suburbs; it's Don't Tread On Me.
The REAL reason the PC market is dying is the same reason the Atari market died: the games suck, and people are tired of being fooled by the sponges (eg. IGN) who push these shitty games as the 'next big thing'.
And the argument of "Piracy forces them to produce 'safe' titles to survive" is nothing but garbage, so don't give me that. The reason companies produce 'safe' titles is because they only care about the bottom line and quarterly profits, thus ensuring that the CEO gets a nice fat bonus.
The Battle for Wesnoth (http://www.wesnoth.org/) is an open source, turn based strategy game with binaries available for linux, windows, mac and more. It has a nice wikipedia page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_for_Wesnoth, if you'd like to have a look-see. It addresses each of your three points nicely I think.
It is pretty much the ONLY game I have been playing since I discovered it seven months ago. It is easy to jump into and VERY HARD to master. The multiplayer community is vibrant, and international.
See for yourself!
(no signature)
It's like taking a book and photocopying the pages so that your friend doesn't have to go and buy his/her own copy, but it doesn't seem to cost you anything, so why not?
Back in my university days I quite frequently copied journal articles out of academic journals so I could take them home and write research papers for my classes. Should the journal come knocking on my door?
Really, Libraries lend out books all the time, where people can make photocopies and use them privately as they please. As long as you don't commercially distribute the copy of that book, you are allowed to do so, at least in Canada. US laws are a bit more restrictive from what I understand.
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Dead on, in fact the following quote bears this out:
... said that when his company shipped its squad-based first-person shooter First to Fight last year, it found within a few weeks that more people were trying to log on to multiplayer servers with a single banned serial number than the total number of copies Destineer had sold combined."
"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.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
The definition I refer to:
"Something inessential but conducive to pleasure and comfort."
This is not the 15th century. We have more material wealth in the west than we know what to do with.
Please explain why only the wealthy should have access to such things.
I challenge these developers to actually go to a store (yes, get in your car and drive there) and tell me how many PC games you see on the shelf that are NOT sequels. Its going to be around 25%, if that. People are tired of playing the same games you keep dumping out with different graphics and a number one bigger than the last attached to them. There's no innovation, just IP farming.
People play MMO's because they embrace the spirit of the console in PC form. A bunch of people playing together and having fun. Its not sitting in a dark office at 1 AM playing a game by yourself. That and almost all the game development innovation has been happening in MMO form lately.
I'm calling bull on that one - a friend of mine recently tried to install GRAW (Ghost Recon 3) on his pc. Running at minimum detail levels and resolution his 6600GT (256MB) was struggling so much, it was unplayable.
They don't sell because they are crap.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
I've found I rarely buy video games at all anymore, aside from making sure I'm equipped for a multiplayer DS rumble. But I do still pay for games. WoW, like the article mentioned, gets my money directly.
But then there's GameFly. I tend to only play console games nowadays, because I can rent what I want, play them, and send them back for the next in line. As so many others have pointed out, so many new games these days are just incremental improvements over what came out the year before. In that light, there's not much incentive to keep the game, because if you get a hankering to play it, well, just grab the sequel or the knock-off and at least get some marginally different levels and eye candy out of it.
Back in the day, I used to pirate every game I played, console games included. The publishers got exactly $0 from me. Then I came to my senses, and started actually paying these folks for their time and effort. That got expensive, and I got burned a few times (though you do make a much more concerted effort to like and/or beat a game you paid real money for). Every couple of months, I would clean out the game rack and trade in the stuff I was never going to play again (which, let's be honest, was most of it) for credit to buy new games. This didn't make much sense, but if you weren't into this year's sports and racing lineup, you weren't going to find what you wanted at Blockbuster. If you did find an RPG, you had to power-play that sucker or it'd be cheaper to buy it.
Then along came GameFly, and much like NetFlix, they offer not only convenience and unlimited rental periods, but a library more extensive than your local Game Stop (especially if you want something that's been out a while). So now they get my money every month, and some of that money gets paid to the publishers. They don't make as much off of me as a sale, but it's certainly more than the $0 they got from me in my days as an IRC-faring scallawag.
But guess what? The PC publishers aren't getting their cut. I can't rent their games. If piracy's such a loss to them already, why not just rent your games out? If people want to just try out your game, it's a heck of a lot faster and easier to put it on your GameFly list than spend a week or two pulling it off BitTorrent. And you get paid for it.
Sure you'll get the same type of tools who rent everything Netflix has to offer and rips them to DVD-R, but like I said, you'll probably make out better in the long run. And I refuse to belive it's impossible to create some sort of solution to discourage that behavior. Nothing as odius as StarForce--after all, you don't need to make it impossible to copy (and it's not like StarForce does that anyway), just sufficently more difficult than renting. When the rental is essentially free through an online service, there's not nearly as much incentive to hack around.
Well let me see, to get the same performance than an Xbox 360 you need to get a +700 video card, +300 sound cards and a +1000 CPU + motherboard or pay 300. PC games go for +40 and Console Games for the same. So what do you prefer? And then the reall problem is that the user pirates the games
Did you copy the entire journal? And did you pass those copies on to your friends so that they didn't have to pay for their own copy? Then, yes, the journal should come knocking on your door.
Justify it all you want, pretty it up as much as you can, what you are doing is basically taking what isn't yours, because you want it but don't want to pay for it. If you don't think that's theft, then we don't have a whole lot more to discuss.
Strike while the irony is hot! -- The Freethinker
Most of us have seen this old anti-piracy ad campaign from the early 90s.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afuc8TmU2Rg
We heard this line about piracy killing the entertainment industry for 2 decades. What has changed?
Production costs of new games keep rising while in my opinion, the fun factor is dropping. I rarely pirate games because so few of them are worth playing. I don't see how the industry has an edge in the console market, my friends that own consoles rarely buy new games, they do buy their games used or trade them. Lots of them use modchips too, but the vast majority of them rent. Why can't we rent computer games?
I wish I could rent computers games for a fair price and without all the copyright protection hastle of past rental schemes.
Just my two sense but easier, quicker and cheaper development is what's needed to breathe new life (and sales) into the gaming industry. Right now there are too many industry bottlenecks for creative designers to get their games produced. Instead all we get are cookie cutter clones of whatever game is popular at the moment.
If the poor can have the same luxuries of the rich, then what's the point of being rich?
And if you then return the car to the dealership afterward (translate: you uninstall the software), cool. I got no gripe with that (for what that's worth - I don't see my ethical dilemmas being a major factor in your decisions :) ).
Strike while the irony is hot! -- The Freethinker
When I first started playing computer games I pirated pretty much everything. I now know how the hype engine works, I know what to expect from certain genres and I am generally better educated on the industry as a whole. As such, years later, I have a more refined taste in games and am very selective about what I BUY, I dont have the time or desire to play + pirate everything because quite a bit of it isnt worth it. So I simply buy the games I know I will like.
The whole Piracy is killing the PC debate is dead as far as I am concerned. As well as the whole "we are going to move to consoles becuase they dont suffer from piracy" excuse too.
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.
Ditto. I put my money where my mouth is. I haven't bought a Windows game since AOE2, but I have bought a dozen or so Linux games since. Ditto with ALL Windows software. I have a license for Nero Linux for the same reason.
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato
> Don't you get kind of tired played the same game over and over and over ... for YEARS?
No i have a life - say Doom 3 is so different from Doom2 - kill monster, collect key, shoot mutant, dont get shot.
> Or, are you saying that you don't play games? Then I don't think you're exactly the target audience here.
Like literature has 8 base stories in total, do you read ?
> Or is there some missing factor that would make you start? What the hell is your point,
Most games wont run (linux), if i want to play soccer i could buy a ball.
> other than to express that you're old and grumpy, and afraid to change?
Face it, Doom2 is a cool game, I'd buy games if they were not clones of stuff. cyber tennis 2010 will be so radically different to tenis 2006 by ea sport.
Tell you a story: one christmas recently at the atomic family christmas get together kid got a new pc, and a car game with an aluring picture on (something tangible) to play rather do homework etc. - so kid loads up car game - and sans instructions discovers that the racing car game is really a car painting program.
Kid gave up,
Another story: we bought a x-box (old) as a promo giveaway and an f1 game, the car was uncontrollable, ok im a crap games player, would i buy xbox/mclaren control with 'feedback' and the game no
Now it might be how the cars handle, but its not driving (my manual car has five gears) i do every day
So while authentic handling might appeal to you, such games appeal not to child or me.
I can see why ID would complain - Single player games are by far the easiest to pirate. Games Liek Fear and Prey were extremly easy games to pirate, and you only really need a keygen and a no-cd/fixed-image. All the steam based games are hard to pirate, and in fact i just bought them cause I liked them (games, not steam) so much. Despite the annoyances of steam, it does an excedingly good job of preventing pirating. Also, games like BF2, which only have an online multiplayer worth playing, can check cd-keys on login, and are also difficult to pirate.
Copy protection that annoys the consumer. I've cracked 90% of the games I've bought in the last 10 years because having to put the cd in the drive to play the game when all the content is on the hard drive is... STUPID. Many of my friends and family have taken it a step further and don't even bother buying the software anymore the rational being- "If i'm going to crack the game and make it unplayable online, why not just warez it and save 50 dollars?" and I honestly find it pretty hard to disagree at this point.
Shadus
And maybe you shouldn't be a shithead. There's nothing wrong with being poor.
You can tell this article was written by someone who has little understanding of the issue since it claims that piracy is the reason console are doing so well. Anyone who has a clue knows that the console market has always done far better than the PC market. Console are just simple, effective and cheap. PC's are expensive, prone to failure and often times provide an inferior gaming experience. PC's still have no fully embraced the gamepad/joystick interface as many games are still made for mouse/keyboard only. PC games are always relased with bugs and performance issues. Console games are solid, highly effecient and usually made with very intuitive interfaces that focus on gameplay instead of endless options or customization.
While you can say everyone has their own tastes on a point for point basis console are by far the superior gaming platform for most people. Plug it in, pop in a game, no activation, no keycodes, no long boot time and boom your playing.
Another point the article seems to be unaware of and I didnt notice mentioned much here is that HELLO console are pirated quite a lot also. Ever since ps1 and the mod chip/boot cd people have been renting games and burning them for console. It works very well and its very easy since console games have no real piracy protection. Also since you can rent console games and not PC games it just helps the console piracy effort that much more.
So if piracy is so dangerous to profit then why doesn't it seem to hurt the console market?
The problem with the gaming market is that they try to keep selling the same games to the same people instead of increasing their user base. With console that works well since the demographics of people who own consoles are more similar than the demographics of those who own PCs.
However if we added up all those stupid online games, all those popcap games and other seemingly worthless creations many of which are still free I think we'd see more people do use the PC for gaming, just not for gaming as we think of it.
Id say half or more of PC gamers are not interested in 3d games like doom or WOW. They want to play dynomite or goldmine or some other game which require little commitment. However this demographics is not a profitable one so it is overlooked in statistics.
"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."
Let's be realistic, MOST gamers ARE pirates, plain and simple. No matter what you do, they aren't going to pay for it if they can get it for free.
Aside from all that, try this:::
I'll pay for the game, thats fine. BUT... reduce the average cost of the game when it requires a subscription, AND give me 1-3 month trial with a money back guarantee.
IF your game is good enough to keep my interest after that... everyone wins. The BURDEN is shifted to the Dev to produce a bit of QUALITY, and my RISK of getting a DVD of "crap" is mitigated.
Opinion:=TMyOpinion.Create(Me);
No. PC Games are killing PC gaming.
It's too damn expensive to purchase & get into all the "hot" games. It's too damn time consuming to install, patch, and get proficient in all the "hot" games. In Descending order, the last games I purchased are: GTA:SA - A good time waster - doesn't require much dedication. I can jump in, drive around & destroy things, maybe do a mission if i feel like it but isn't necessary. I can quit instantly. BF2 - It was fun (especially the enhanced team based stuff) but I swapped it for a copy of F.E.A.R because a friend said it kicked ass - I haven't tried F.E.A.R yet though. My lack of playing BF2 was hardware related (said harddware was working and then died). BF1942:Secret Weapons - meh. BF1942/DC - I still play this - it's a lot of fun & lets you do things BF2 won't let you. The DC mod is what keeps this alive for me - an excellent game. Too bad about it's patch history. UT99 - A helluva lot of fun and a lot of people are still playing it - tons of servers out there still. It is stable (except for some 3rd party mods), quick/easy to get into, quick/easy to quit. I did not upgrade because to UT2k3 becuase it did not have vehicles and I was mostly playing BF/DC at the time and then I didn't bother getting in to UT2k4. Shock rifle, teleporter, piston, and 3rd party maps make this game great in addition to the map downloads - why the hell can't other game developers catch on? downloading compressed & redirected maps INSTANTLY is kickass++. The game interface is also among the best. Medal of Honor:AA - beautiful maps, nice to play, no vehicles :(
Quake 3 - no longer play it
Quake I - no longer play it but I did try it once last week to DM a friend.
DOOM ][ - still love this game but haven't played it recently.
DOOM I - still love this game but haven't played it recently.
I also picked up a few games in various bargain bins (Descent ]|[, bloodrayne, another copy of BF1942 for the Ser # for lan games) for under 10 bux.
Geforce 6600 isn't native AGP, and the PCI-E to AGP converter doesn't work with some AGPx4 motherboard, in particular mine.
I know this because I've tried.
Steam doesn't require a CD to run. They answered your supposed HUGE concern and you still ignore them?
It doesn't really matter what anyone writes here defending piracy, btw. The people whose money is producing these games are going to find a way to stop it, like subscriptions and Steam. I'll be surprised if in 10 years even Yahoo Games doesn't use a Steam-like service.
And I continue to be amazed that Vista and Mac OSX don't have this feature built into their update services.
As I got older I stopped playing pirated games. I only borrowed them from friends. I don't know what the law actually says, in my area a library offered PC games to borrow. Borrowing books isn't breaking the law. The philosophical discussion doesn't matter, of course, eventually everything will be digital and controlled. Even the pirate web can't survive the coming Chinese hegemony.
I dunno, I have pirated some games in the past. I never would have bought them in the first place though.
I keep hearing this "it's ok to pirate something if I never intended to buy it anyway," line of reasoning. It's NOT ok for a person to pirate something they don't intend to buy it...if they don't intend to buy it, they have no right to have it, use it, or reap any benefits it may offer. The only exception is something being loaned (where the other entity no longer has it in their possession), rented, or anything that falls under fair use. Piracy (particularly "sharing with a friend") does not fall under fair use. Period. End of story.
Windows only- I simply do not want to buy another Windows computer. I prefer Mac exclusively and I want a game developed with that platform in mind. Hell, I don't even want Windows via Boot Camp
Games have definitely lost its luster. Rainbow 6 4 was DOA, Quake 4 was boring, and the Diablo genre is gone. Game developers are focusing on more flash and less substance. Consequently, the more flash there is the more money you have to spend on video cards and physics accelerators. Hell, after you have spent thousands of dollars on a gaming rig, how much money is left over for the actual games? I pirate too!!!
Get a life- The biggest regret I ever had in life was spending endless hours playing online games. There is a whole world out there brimming with infinite possibilities with diverse and interesting people. Yet, somehow, we are suppose to be inclined to substitute that for fanatasy world and a lonely room at $54.99 a pop. The hell with that!!! I personally am getting into motorcycles, swimming, cooking, reading, religion, and most importantly women.
You don't have to be smart to use a Mac, you just have to be smart enough to buy one
I also remember that in the 90's era of pc gaming, you could go online and download playable demos of games before buying them, a rarety now. Now you have to shell out 50+ bucks ahead of time, and once you open the shrink wrap you can't bring it back to the store, even if it sucks. I don't think its so wrong to pirate a game to see if it's any good before buying it. Also, alot of the anti piracy software used in the gaming industry has been a real pain in the butt. Preventing piracy is one thing, but inconviencing all your paying costumers to do it is a problem.
If it's dead, you killed it.
A hostile environment where developers' exposure to their consumers is flooded with full page ads, pop-ups, and subscription services like Gamespy. Crooked companies like BFG and ATI-useful idiots who give a similar impression of a stinky-greased-fat woman laying on the hood of the car you want to buy. Advertisers completely ignore the main demographic with the same pro-female/anti-male bullshit that is costing television billions per year, while misleading industry leaders to the reasons why their industry is failing.
On the positive side, I'll save 1500 dollars this year in not buying a new CPU, another ram upgrade and newer video card (and maybe 2000 on the new flat screen CRT's coming out this fall)
Deleting is possible on slashdot, eh? LOL, I wonder if this one will be deleted as well.
Pirates don't kill games, people kill games.
Seriously, I often wonder if all game developers are from a different solar system. Games just aren't that fun anymore, or they feature revolting design mistakes that take away from the entertainment factor. Take for example F.E.A.R., which is hailed as an impressive graphics extravaganza.. well okay, it's neat looking, but why the hell do the bullet holes vanish after a minute ? The first time I noticed my history of beautiful carnage gradually being wiped clean, it totally killed the sense of immersion and made this top-budget game just about as realistic as Commander Keen EGA.
That's just one example.. few games are released without these ignorant flaws. They build something up to be grand, hire a bunch of marketing monkeys to hype it up, then drop the ball. Coitus interruptus! "We maxed out our development budget", "That's impossible to implement with the current engine", "Our boss is being sued for totaling a stolen Ferrari Enzo". If the world of software had less idiots and more brilliant minds, maybe it wouldn't struggle so much to make a dime. Aggressive marketing can only go so far if the product sucks, eventually people figure it out and lose confidence.
These days it seems the only games that are consistently successful are the sports franchises, and even they are starting to suck because the developers waste too many resources on non-gameplay aspects to make nicer box shots or boast some bullshit engine feature.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
"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 admittedly a personal peeve."
Well maybe you shouldn't have written such shitty software!
Abaddon: An Xbox 360 Indie game
one of the largest demographics of wow are urban housewives.
Strange, but true.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
But a "luxury" is, as you pointed out, something that is inessential. And there are lots and lots of things that are inessential. Most of them don't cost much. The amount of luxury you can have is directly derived from the amount you are willing to pay for. Now, there are some people in the world who are born into wealth and don't have to work for it, and that sucks. But it isn't many of us. For the majority of us, the amount of money we have available to spend on luxuries is the result of the amount of and quality of work we have done to earn it.
Now do you really need me to explain why something that is inessential and costs 30 dollars should only be available to someone who has 30 dollars to trade for it, in order to compensate the person who produced it? Your entire argument boils down to "I don't need it, I didn't earn it, but I want it, and fuck all, that means I'm entitled to have it."
There isn't enough material wealth in the world to support the "everyone gets whatever they want regardless of their contribution to society" model. You want to argue about how broken our system of wealth distribution is, how the rich get richer and so on, fine. I'll probably be on your side. But suggesting that the whole concept of luxury not being free is some oppressive feudal attitude that unfairly strips you of your god given right to video games is just assinine.
You get life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Actually obtaining happiness isn't a given. Welcome to the universe.
If fate makes you a motorcycle, you become a motorcycle.
For the most part of the last 10 years all games could run on all PCs and the only thing differing was the speed and sometimes graphical details for 3D games.
Oh, please. That is the biggest bunch of bull I've heard in a long time. Being a kid with no cash income and your parents were happy with their 75Mhz Pentium or their PowerMac 6800 made virtually impossible for me to play any of the new games. I couldn't play Starcraft for the longest time until my parents got a new PC. Did you forget that many computers from the previous decade didn't even HAVE graphics cards? I know just requiring some type of graphics card doesn't seem like a big deal, but it was 10 years ago. The current situation is no different. In fact, it's not even that bad. My Radeon 9800 is more than two years old and I can still play any game out there.
Of the three games I've tried recently none worked out of the box in a Geforce4 4200Ti
Dude, a Geforce4 4200Ti is easily 3 or 4 years old now and it was considered low end at the time of it's release. Upgrade your computer!
Abaddon: An Xbox 360 Indie game
Except your rationalization breaks down when you consider that when you "borrow" a game by putting it on your computer as well as on your friend's computer. At that point, you are creating a new microwave, or a new car or a new arc welder.
And when you remove the game after deciding it sucks, you've destroyed said microwave.
How is downloading a game, trying it out, deciding it sucks, and then removing it, any different from trying out the demo? Either way you've played it a bit, decided it sucked, and removed it, all without paying any money.
One thing I know for sure is that EA is killing the game industry by setting the example of a shortsighted, low-risk, low-innovation business model. And a certain segment of the consumer population is killing the game industry by proving time and time again with their nigh-freely given money that EA's business model still works.
The problem with 3rd world countries and piracy is this:
- the US/EU price is too high, sometimes as much as 50% of a month salary
- is a small market, because there are too few PCs
So, piracy in 1st world countries should be the problem. In that case, I think the solution will be to sell the games at cheaper prices, like 20$ should be fine. But, paying 60US$ for a new game is too expensive.
Get my e-mail after a captcha test in: http://tinymailt
Some of the things that paying customers have to go through in order to use software they've paid for may drive them to piracy. It's unbelievably annoying to be punished for being a legitimate user of software.
You may be right legally, but I believe you were responding to an ethical argument, not a legal one.
I think that if a piece of software is only available for Windows, the ethical thing to do is to pirate it and run it on a pirate copy of Windows.
No, I'm not trolling. Just as I refuse to shop at Wal-Mart and avoid buying Chinese goods, so I refuse to give financial support to the Redmond empire, directly or indirectly. I do my best to simply use alternatives, but if I have to get at some data that's only readable by some Windows-only software, I'll use a pirate copy. If the game is available on console, Mac or Linux, I'll buy that version. (Unless the game is from Microsoft, like "Age of Empires", in which case I'll pirate it.)
So, it's a given that there's no way I'd buy a piece of Windows software under any circumstances. That being the case, why does it matter if I pirate Windows-only games?
You say the companies will be deprived of revenue? Good, I want them to be deprived of revenue. They support Microsoft, I'd like to see them deprived of so much revenue that they go out of business.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
For example, back in late 1998, I had a relatively good PC, a P-200MMX, a 8 MB ATI card, and wanted to try one of the latest games, Final Fantasy VII.
So here I was, holding a genuine copy of the game, having paid about $40 or so at the store for it. After installation, I fired it up, only to discover that it wouldn't run, due to incompatibilities with DirectX 7 (even though they had released it at about the same time that DirectX 7 came out). So I had to downgrade, which was a pain in the butt in itself.
Then came an annoying bug with the ATI Rage II card, causing a grid pattern due to texture misalignments that would only happen with that card. Their solution? Throw another $80+ at a compatible Nvidia card.
But that was just the tip of the iceberg, almost every game released after that would require anything from simple but costly, or insane and even costlier, upgrades. And since so many stores have a restriction on opened software returns, you're paying $50 on average to play the "Will it run?" game. So in essense, you're better off by pirating a game, just to see if it works.
The irony seems more to be that they "strip" down the high end features for the same games to run on modern consoles. Even though it runs on a slower CPU, with less RAM, and a graphics chipset that's 3 years older than my budget FX5200, Doom 2, Halo, and pretty much every other XBOX game, run at a speed and quality that one cannot achieve on a PC. Not without spending twice the amount of money on building up a new gaming rig to get the same FPS.
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
A rig vs. a console. Consoles are easier to set up. They plug in the socket, plug in the video and audio cords, buy a game and presto, you're there. Then there's the emergence of FPS on the consoles. Though not as nimble as a keyboard and mouse, it makes it alot easier to setup a game pad than a keyboard and mouse. The only genre that the computer still has is MMORPG. When you buy a game for the 360, you know once you get it home it's going to work. And later down the road in a year you're not looking to see if your specs match up. For someone to start gaming on a computer they need to invest in a computer, setup windows, buy the game, and set it up and make sure it's patched (if it needs to be). Most people looking for games will see the acessibility of consoles and go with those.
In Soviet Russia, dots slash you!
My biggest thing with games is poor programming. Many PC games have really poor programming and crash ALOT. I cannt stand paying $30-$60 for a game that just crashes all the time. If game developers would do more time testing and stabilizing games I would buy more. The other big reason is DRM for games, such as STEAM. It really gets annoying that I have to be connected to the internet and verify and I legaly own the game when ive bought it and all I want to do is play the damn game. Because of STEAM and that HL2 based games are programed so poorly im no longer buying any games from Valve. id Software is a great example of how a company can get games right, there games are rock solid and dont interfere with my game playing. On a side note I tend to buy games that have a Linux port much more since they do tend to be programmed better and snce I only run Linux. I remember reading a long time ago that id software said they program their games for Linux, Win, and Mac because it lets them test on so many different platforms it helps alot with stability, and they usally get most of the bugs, other game place could learn from this.
Nowadays I don't even pirate a fraction of it and the number of games I consider MUST have and that I pay for (Oblivion being the most recent) are far and few between.
I blame FPS. Not that I don't like them myself. I played doom and quake to dead. That is the problem Quake 2 3 and 4 I just don't give a shit about and the numerous clones even less. Deus EX I payed for, Deus EX 2 not. Give me back the games of yesteryear, the ones with story and gameplay that ain't suffering from consolites. Give me adventures pure and straight, I bought nearly every single one ever released. Except "I have no mouth and I must scream" wich for some reason only seems to have been available in holland in the french version.
And that really is one major obstacle for me. The most excellent "The Longest Journey" was dubbed into dutch. Yuck. I have something against dutch dubs because every single dubber in holland seems to believe that quality dubbing == funny voice. I got my english version via the ABC but they stopped carrying games.
Usually that means I got to put up with some extremely bad translations into dutch wich make me cringe as well wait several months for the game to be actually rereleased. Sometimes it just gets old you know to only be able to play games after 99% of the rest of the internet.
and thenyou got companies that just seem to want to alienate their customers. Valve with their credit card only steam system. You only want credit card owners? Fine, I just pirate my stuff. Happy now?
Same with Oblivion, that was the last money Bethseda ever got from me. I bought every damn one of their games and then they pull their credit card only horse armor crap on me? Nice way to treath a loyal customer.
But wait a minute, didn't we have a story just a few weeks ago about how games sales riding on the back of oblivion were on the up?
Doesn't that just prove that gamers are willing to buy games? Just not the endless tired rehashes that make up most of the market.
The perfect example is Lucasarts. I used to follow them like it was a religion, nowadays I haven't visited their site in ages. Nothing they have come up with in a long time came even close to stirring an interest.
Where is my X-wing, my Ufo: Enemy unknown (if you know this game as X-com you are a heathen), my Monkey Island (the proper point and click versions), my B-17 Flying Fortress (let alone F-16 Fighting Falcon). Give me them and you can get my cash.
For now blizzard gets my cash as I finally caved in and bought WoW last week (well built, stylish but unambitious EQ ripoff) until I get fed up with it. The true horror? Nintendo has been getting a lot of my money recently with the DS. Yes a pc gamer turned to consoles for some good old fun. Be afraid, be very afraid. If Nintendo ever releases a true sim on the DS I fear I must bring about armageddon
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Exactly. Cross platform development is very expensive, even using high-level cross-platform languages like Java, Python, and doing any web development.
Game development generally uses lower-level more platform specific languages, so the costs are greater yet, since you're not only testing on multiple platforms, but using separate libraries and code fragments for the different platforms.
Maybe if the PC game catalogue had a ratio of genres likes the 90s there may still be mainstream games like Xcom, and Secret of Monkey Island. Then maybe you could claw back us lapsed PC gamers.
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Translation: Kids won't spend their allowances on games (that suck) when they can download (or copy) them for free.
No, I will not work for your startup
Huh-- most of the games coming out now have a downloadable playable demo...? There's been dozens released over the past few months here, for example:
GameSpot demos
"The human race's favorite method for being in control of the facts is to ignore them." -Celia Green
I'm in a similar boat, except it's less that I'm dissatisfied with current offerings than I'm satisfied with what I have. I have a couple different MMOs whose subscriptions I can always renew for a month if I want to go in that direction. I have Half-Life 2 and all of its mods to keep me busy if I want an FPS. Once in a while I'll feel a hankering for an RTS, and Dawn of War's got my back.
The only upcoming PC games on my radar right now are Portal and Natural-Selection: Source. Of course, console games are doing even worse for me right now, I use them for party games and (yeah, I'll admit it) DDR. The only games I've thought about buying are Suikoden 5 (waiting for a price drop) and Ico (just finished Shadow of the Colossus and I'm curious).
Begrudgingly, I will admit that piracy is hurting the software-gaming industry... but even if someone waved a magic wand and eliminated Piracy I think that the gaming industry would still be in the same straits they are today.
I have to agree with the posters who suggest that the market is reaching a critical mass. When I was in elementary/high school... I had a choice of playing a game in an arcade, on my home computer, on a nintendo, or a genesis system. These games fit on a disk, or CD and usually took a few weeks for the makers to code.
By contrast, today I have a choice of my computer(s), a PSX, PSP, Nintendo, nintendo DS, an xbox, xbox360, my cell phone, or an emulator that I can load up. Demand has grown, but not as quickly as supply... as evidenced by the mass closures of arcades all over the USA. Add to the fact that many games have extremely large development costs and lead times and now face competition from game rental services or way-too-easy-to-get pirated software (piracy has its place... but a publically accessible website in plain where all any AOL'er has to know how to do is click a mouse is ridiculous).
The subscription model is a good one. If you make a game that is good enough that people will pay you monthly for it, then more power to you. I don't think this model is feasible for all games at the current rates (how many $15/month games would you suscribe to?), but I think its a healthy branch of evolution for the industry.
What do I think will fix gaming as whole? Added content in the mein of multi-player experience & social networking and the ability for a gamer to adjust their level of immersion with a reward system/pay-off for the hardcore gamer that likes to spend a lot of time playing. I enjoy both single player games and multi-player games, but it is usually only the multi-player games that I will come back to after a hiatus. For example... I still play warcraft 3 (4v4, baby!) after 5 years, but I have had to give up on tekken 3-5 because the only arcades left in which I can hone my skills against opponents are far away (since the close ones have all closed).
In any case, as for piracy... I think the most important thing a developer/company can do is use the carrot-and-stick approach. Provide the user with content/value that they can't get off a pirated download and you will attract back ~75+% of the users who are willing to purchase your wares.
Where did 10 million customers go?
Here is where.
Yes the parent is spot on,
the MMOG's took many customers.
Blaming Piracy like the music industry is not
going to bring the money back.
Perhaps some better MMOG's would.
I play WoW, is there room to compete?
I think so.
Who needs games anyway? I already have troubles gettin food on the table.
I'll second the suggestion. Virtual PC is currently a free download for Windows; however, I paid good money for it a few years back and have no regrets. Of course, most of the games I'm fondest of are turn-based, and not affected by a smidge of lag here and there.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
Let's see ...
... the music industry
... the movie industry
... the computer operating system industry
... the PC gaming industry
... two MMO games (Everquest and WoW) along with some FPS games that were fun - Star Wars Battlefront I & II. Couple of other off the wall titles but for the most part the gaming industry has been suffering from good titles.
Piracy is killing
Piracy is killing
Piracy is killing
Piracy is killing
The list goes on just keep adding your industry above and blame it on the pirates.
Much like the movie industry, PC gaming has been terrible. I haven't "pirated" a game since I was a kid on my Commodore 64 like 20 years ago. I've bought several over the years and really wish there would be some worth buying these days. I've ranted about "The Bard's Tale" a couple weeks back and I won't go there again. Out of the 50 or so titles I've purchased in the last 10 years, I can't say that beyond installation and the first hour or two of playitme I've liked them. Looking in my game bin, I have several decent titles I've still enjoy
"Keep at least 3-6 full bottles of hard alcohol on hand, a 2 week resignation notice,..." - Poetmatt
I'm not going to pretend to take a moral highroad here. Back in the day, I had no money, and I had a lot of time - so I would end up doing things to spend my time, like pirating games. Oddly enough, when I did pirate games, I would actaully spend MORE time in the pirate/cracking/installation process rather than the actaul playing of said game: I could spend hours digging around trying to get the darn thing to work, and once I got it all up and running, I would play it for 10 minutes, get bored, and then search for something else better.
It's as if I was more entertained by that process than the game itself. It's what all childhood geeks do, right? Right?
Now that I'm out of school and working full time, I don't have the time to do the things I used to do. But I still have a gaming itch I want to scratch, and every once in a while I will shop for a game. With my track record of playing games that sucked (since I've played a LOT of them during my pirating youth), I'm going to be pretty fickle on which game I purchase - because it better be worth it.
Many times I'll just walk out the door of the store without purchasing anything - unless I don't have absolutely anything better to do, and some extra cash I don't mind throwing away.
I've since been spending my money on bigger things - assorted geek gadgets! I've got WoW for my gaming goodness so I havne't bought anything since, and I'm pretty much happy with that arrangement: save money from buying games, spend money on new laptop and other gadgets.
I will probably get a Wii however, but that's starting to get offtopic. :-P
It's true, they cost way too much when they come out. But those of us who've been around a few years know that with a little patience, we can get them legally for practically nothing. That is, today's $50 release is next year's $20 game, and the following year's $10 (or even $5) game.
I'm so behind the times with games that sometimes I end up paying nothing, like with Starcraft 2.
Maybe the game companies need to rethink their pricing scheme, perhaps charging $25 from the start, and keeping it at that price.
I think "Digital Rectal Mangling" is a far more accurate representation.
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
for us, lack of time is only part of the equation.
the prospect of paying $60, $70 or more for a *GAME* is a much bigger factor. (you'll see games pushing $100 in the not-too-distant future.) as is the thought of paying once (in the store), and then paying again (subscription) to play. we won't do it, period.
and while we have a couple of ~2.5 ghz systems, we do not have the bleeding edge graphics cards that new games demand (have gf3, r9600, both purchased long after their respective glory days). we cannot justify spending $500 bucks or more every year on hardware just to play the aforementioned overpriced games.
on the console side, how about forking over a $250-500 on a glorified atari vcs and the above prices for the games to play on it?... only to find it's obsolete next year and undeveloped a year or two after that. if a console dies after it's short warranty period, you chuck it and buy a new one, if you want to play the games you've spent a fortune on... at least a pc is universally compatible, user-repairable, upgradable, and has a lot of life left in them when their game playing days are over.
and consider we want to play together? that usually means two of everything, doubling the already too-high prices.
the last consoles we purchased were: an original PONG and a 2600. that old atari, in its day, enjoyed a much longer lifespan than the consoles of today. and yes, we actually fire it up every now and then for a little defender or super breakout. on the pc? it's a little age, freelancer or hldm, played across the lan (combined cost of two copies of each? under $100).
its going on two years since we last bought a computer game. so happens to be about the last time we've purchased any music cd's as well...and we've limited online purchasing of tunes to a mere 50 bucks or so since. back when new cd's were less than ten bucks and video games were $25 or less, we'd purchase several hundred bucks of each, every year. but we refuse to pay the escalating prices any longer.
capitalism and a free market economy is great and all.. but you've got these very few greedy bastards who control it and squeeze every last dime out of the common man; eventually pricing themselves right out of the market. it's happening to music, it will happen to video games too. it may not happen this year, but the backlash will kick into high gear when the price of games hits $100.
If piracy is such an issue how did Galactic Civilizations 2 make any money?
And as for piracy on consoles, piracy on consoles is not that hard now-a-days, using swap discs and buying a system pre-modded with a modchip after a few years of the consoles life to play the majority of games you want to play in its library is a financially sound decision, those with patience reap the rewards.
consoles are not much better for the devs. cheapass bastards will rent, borrow a freinds copy or buy used. That's a lost sell for them.
Sounds like the problem isn't piracy beating down game DEVELOPERS, but rather their distribution model.
If they can't compete with the distribution model the pirates have, why don't they use it? Instead of selling media and a box, sell either licenses or a service. WoW has no piracy problems, which is probably why so many companies want to jump on the MMOG bandwagon: it's the path of least resistance. They don't have to come up with a new way of doing anything. But as they are all finding out, there is only room for one World of Warcraft. So either the companies have to be content with more modest goals (meaning, less money), or else they are going to have to try new things and see what works.
Two notable examples of "try new things and see what works" are Valve's Steam service, which gives people the electronic, on demand service they seem to prefer. The other is S2Game's forthcoming product "Savage 2", which will only be available exclusively via direct distribution (similar to Steam in some ways). What seems like it will distinguish S2Game's concept is that you can get the game and play for free in a "demo" mode, or you can purchase a license for the game and get more features while playing. S2's method strongly reminds me of the whole "shareware" paradigm which made id the company it is today (as well as Epic, we will just ignore the whole DNF thing as beside the point).
Another notable exception to a degree is Guild Wars, which in a way seems to represent the apex of the current distribution model, rather than a break from it.
GC2 "DRM" is pretty simplistic, after registering it will add a file called, I believe, "signature.bin" I don't have my laptop in front of me. It even pops a message saying you just need to copy that file on any re-installation. So just backup the file to a USB flash drive and you can schlep the install disks around and re-install anytime any where without any additional interaction with Stardock. Can't say from experience because GC2 bluescreens the ATI driver and and the vanilla drivers will not update amy laptop. I will admit that it is a kinda PITA to do the activation but from a business ethics point of view compared to other game companies, it is almost BSD-like in permissiveness. As for the game itself, I owned a copy of the Original OS/2 version and it just keeps getting better, if you like turn based strategy games. The tunibility for challenge level, size of playing area, # of AI opponents, each race has a different "personality" that governs its goal seeking, resource allocation and more give it an excellent replayability. At $39 at provides a great value for $/hour of entertainment. They have a free trial http://www.download.com/Galactic-Civilizations-II- Dread-Lords-demo/3000-7493_4-10518894.html to see if it suits you.
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
I haven't bought many games lately, because they SUCK! I haven't pirated any either for that matter.
Just like Hollywood and it's uninspired remakes and sequels, I can buy Quake 5 or a clone called some other name. Big flippin deal!
Seen "co-op" mode in any games lately? I haven't.
Noticed games no longer ship with 40+ levels?
Morans!
nope sorry.
choose one random game and 9 out of 10 times you can't get a demo of it.
also the ones you do get play better then the actual games now, company's have turned them into a form of advertisement which hurts your ability to choose IF the game is worth half a weeks grocery's.
i would rather download the full game, see that it sucks and be glad i did not waste the $50-$60. instead of download the demo, like it because they made it better then the game then go out and waste that money on the full game which i can't return because no store will accept a open box of software.
I can't even go out and sell it to a buy/sell/ or trade store because these company's actually go out of their way to close them down.
The real way to keep people from pirating a game is to: a) offer compelling multiplayer b) require company server authentication of the serial DONE Because of this I have actually had to buy Starcraft BF2 AOE2 AOE3 HL2 ETC ETC ETC
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But maybe PC game sales are slow because not everyone is jumping to upgrade their hardware every so often? WoW plays on my 2 year old emachine with no problems, but If I try to play something like F.E.A.R it doesn't work. As much as I would like to try out that kind of game, it just makes me want to stick to WoW. In fact most MMO's play on older hardware just fine. Maybe the gaming companies could focus less on realistic mega video card games. And MMO's also don't have to worry about piracy much. Of course not everyone plays MMO's, I just keep noticing non-MMO companies complaining that this or that is killing PC games the more MMO's make the news with subscription numbers. Thanks.
Blizzard could easily offer free downloads or dirt cheap demo CDs for people requesting them online, and still let Best Buy charge whatever they want for a fancy box on a shelf.
It's just price gouging.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
The gaming industry is now wholly run by capitalistic interests. This aren't the old days when games were created by gamers. Games today are being creatively and inspirationally driven by people who report to non-gamers for a paycheck. Those non-gamers are having a big say in what happens these days.
Look at the rosters for any given mainstream game and you see production assistants, artists of every flavor, managers, caterers, etc. just like a modern movie production. What percentage of movies these days would you spend $50 on, much less $50 and then $12 bucks just to watch it again every month?
Many of these crews are mostly made up by people who will never really get into playing a video game, much less the one they are working on. Heck, sometimes half of them are of the gender that is "less-enthusiastic" about video games.
Even the guys at the head of the game team are controlled by others not directly into the game. Many of the leads are older and really tired of gaming to some extent.
Many teams are also relying too much on what is being done in other games instead of using their own native creativity to do something DIFFERENT.
In short, the games are being made in the same sort of environment you might find at AT&T, GE, Disney, and McDonalds HQ.
Same old bitchs, same old bitching. If they can't stop pirates with their DRM might (and they can't) they need to stop them some other way... there are many other ways if they stop thinking the old IP/DRM is the only way to go.
Great Intellect...
This is the same garbage that the RIAA and MPAA churns out every few weeks to try and scare people into buying worthless music or tickets to bad movies. If a game is appealing enough, it will attract buyers through its publicity or word of mouth. When HL2 was pirated I didn't rush to dl it. I waited til it was out and I bought a hard copy of it because I liked HL and the previews I had seen of HL2. The same with FEAR. The games that I may or may not pirate are crap that won't hold my attention past 20-30 minutes. It's no wonder that a corporation screams bloody murder every time they see the word pirate, because without a scapegoat they would have to blame whoever internally was responsible for the game in the first place instead of looking toward innovative, and creative ideas.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. indymedia
Wah pirates beat us to market, wah wah what will we do? WAH
Hmmm maybe this is an indiciation that your business model has failed. When pirates beat you at the old game, isn't it time to change the game?
No pun intended above, but maybe half the impact of piracy would go away if they just stopped releasing these things at retail. HL2 anyone?
---Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A START
What's worse, if they try to introduce any kind of basic DRM, ala Steam, they get trashed for it. They just can't win, hence the move to consoles and the growth of crappy console ports to the PC.
ohh
Big money came to gaming market and it follows hollywood trends- stupid franchises , sequels , remakes with concentration on the shiney
Combination of all factors -lack of good games
That's why Galactic Civilizations II and Oblivion were total failures, with no one at all buying them, while more heavily-protected games like Runaway have been such consistent sellers.
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Its not piracy thats killing the industry. Its eMachines thats killing the industry. People buy crappy machines, and they think they can play a game. They buy a game, and of course it runs at turtle speed, and they never buy a game again..
my big problem with pay-per-month-to-play is the expensive up front cost and a monthly fee. I only got in to WoW because I found it on sale for $30 but I still think that is too much. If your going to charge per month then the client should be free for download. You can't play unless you login any way so what harm is there in giving it away. If some one wants a physical disc it should cost any more than $10 or $20. Doesn't need to be in fancy packaging to just get the client. Still make the special editions because I'm sure there are fan boys out there that want all the stuff and charge them for it. Subsription based I think is an okay answer but not per game. Should be per publisher may be like Sony Station has an offer to play a variety of games for like $25 or some thing like that.
So if the pirates releasing things before they go on shelves being the problem, why don't the releasing companies and distribution channels release things faster rather than sitting on the product for months while we all want them.
-M
I think (in the case of online games), they should give the game away FREE. It should be FREE for LAN use, and pay-for-play to go online. Your characters (if there are any), should be transferrable between online and LAN play (maybe some restrictions are needed to stop farming, etc). I like getting together with friends to have a LAN Party. I like to play online. If I play online I pay. If I have friends that only play at LANs, they'll just pirate the game anyway. Maybe giving it to them with a "trial" for online would encourage more online (hence paying) play.
Just thinking out loud...
What's On Your Network ??? http://www.open-audit.org/
But what is the solution? The pirates will ALWAYS provide a better product; it is impossible to compete with piracy because it isn't fair competition. Let's just assume for a second that copy protection will die overnight. Half-Life 3, the most anticipated game of the year, is released on totally unprotected DVDs and there is no serial number or registration of any kind whatsoever. Let's say they charge $30 for it. People will still pirate it. The pirates will be offering a 100% identical completely unprotected product for free. So they STILL have the edge over a completely open game because they charge less (nothing) for it. So now people will complain that $30 is too much and still pirate the game. Hell, people complain that iTunes charging $0.99 / song is too much (let's ignore the issue of how that money is divided). No matter what price you offer a product at, there will always be unreasonable people who think it is too expensive and use that as an excuse to pirate it.
Long ago, I realized I just could not afford to have nbig, involved PC games around because I could start one up in a fit of boredom and lose an entire day.
I just go and play a flash game for 20 minutes at yahoo games or clevermedia.com when I need a game fix.
- G
Start a happiness pandemic
I want to buy a racing game for the PC.
:(
:/
BUT i want to race online. I get bored by the bots usually after a couple hours.
What do i buy?
There doesnt seem to be anyone racing online. And i dont know if there are for most games unless i buy the game and install it. THEN i find out there is noone to race. Repeat until i tried most that sounded good. I find a couple dozen people WORLDWIDE (lag makes many unacceptable) in most of them except for the first couple months there may be more. I dont want to invest my time/money for a month of frenzied kids with nothing else to do. By the time ii master it most are gone
The only game i know people still play online (nascar 2003)is simply unavailable for purchase
I just cant figure out how to get my money's worth. So i will just keep my money i guess.
If the said person cant afford for the game, it is not a lost sale for the developers and publishers. And I bet that they are not worried about these guys.
In fact, they dont even campaign here in the good old 3rd world for people to buy games, like the movie and music industry does. They just ignore these poor souls. They dont even advertise their games. You dont see game ads in our TV nor in our websites. Games are sold in bookstores and computer shops, and its boxes there are the only hint you will ever have they exist here.
Its very understandable they complain about some americans, that earn something like 10x what we earn, and pay half what we would pay for games, pirating their games.
More like the fighting of piracy is only making it more attractive to pirate.
My brother bought a new game the other day, and it worked once. After the first run, StarForce decided that his media was not authentic anymore. I walked him through applying a no-DVD crack to it--and it works perfectly, plus he doesn't need the DVD. The game works better and more conveniently for pirates who would download an ISO and crack it, but the game doesn't work for a legitimate customer? This is not right.
If you're going to apply anti-piracy measures, do it right like Valve did with Steam. I don't have to keep track of any CDs, I can still share my games with my friends (by sharing account), I can still install it anywhere, and most importantly... it works!
~Ben
Give me the game for $10 and the first month is free. You can charge $10 a month after that. That way if I don't like your game, I am only out ten bucks. However, if you make a good game, you have the potential of making one hundred or more dollars from me.
This $50 for the game and $15 a month crap is too much.
Ok, lets see here. I can go buy a solderless modchip for my XBox and install it in a matter of about 20 minutes. I can go and rent a game or borrow one from a friend and shazam, its on my xbox. Hook it up via your network router or directly to your computer, copy off the files and burn a new DVD. Easy as that.
As for PC games, you can go to your favorite BitTorrent site and find a torrent file, hoping its free of virus' and actually works. Spend a day or two downloading the torrent because there are only 4 100% seeds and they are uploading at only 8k a second. Burn the ISO, find out its not even the game you were wanting to pirate. Go back to your torrent site, and find a new torrent. Same thing, happens...back to the torrent site. Ok, finally got the game I wanted, but oh crap, now I have like a billion virus'/malware/spyware attacking me from all directions.
PC games are not easier to pirate, console games are. People are going to consoles because of that reason.
PS...World of Warcraft is killing the gaming industry, not consoles!
Click Click Bloody Click PANCAKES!
I've only bought 2 games in the last year, AoE's colonization and Dungeon Seige 2.
Because the other games they are producing are not ones I want to buy. I'm not pirating, but since I'm not buying, the industry attributes the sales downturn as piracy losses.
I'll buy Sam and Max if it looks decent. I'd buy a Monkey Island, King's Quest, Indiana Jones story based game.
because that's the type I'd like to play again. I'm bored with FPS and RTS, give me a real storyline with an intellectual challenge, like insult sword fighting.
If I want insult FPS, all I have to do is load Halo 2 in Xbox Live and find a few 10 yr olds.
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You're right on this count - in fact, that's exactly how I got the game in the first place. After playing it for about a week (and collecting a paycheck in the interim) I went and bought it myself.
People will pay money for the games that they enjoy. The problem is that the market has a glut of games that simply aren't fun, and ones that try to capitalize on the name tend to screw them up even worse.
Graphics - With the adoption of high-res televisions and next-gen console horsepower, this gap is closing fast.
Online play- More and more consoles games are getting ONLINE finally and some even with headsets for communication, Don't forget the handhelds too so this gap is closing.
Mouse precision - With the Wii, we might finally be able to play an RTS or FPS and get the delicate response that makes a console controller unwieldy or undesirable for those certain game genres.
Episodic content or Expansion packs - Now that consoles are online and have drive space, this isn't going to be an exclusive PC advantage anymore.
What's really left? Modding?
PC games are competing against each other too, especially MMOGs. If I'm going to pay for a subscription, I'm gonna spend the time to play a game for all its worth which means I'm not gonna plunk down more cash for other games that I don't have time for.
Don't forget that PC games on average have a much longer amount of game play time. As console games have shortened the individual game experience, PC game developers have continously raised the bar on the sheer amount of extra playability. Downloadable content, mods and expansion packs have greatly extended the playability of an older game. Hell, my buds and I still play Frozen Throne often enough because of the plethora of fan created maps alone!! This gives me even less free time in which to get bored and look for another game. And now adays, there's a huge slew of PC games (and obviously console games) released all the time. There definitely is a saturation effect going on that no one is facing or wants to even think about.
The reason developers prefer to develop for consoles has very little if anything to do with piracy, although their real reason is still based on economics and the bottom line: it's the lure of the fixed hardware platforms that consoles represent, and the resulting dramatic reductions in development time and increases in profit margins. Why should they develop complex visually oriented software for a platform that allows perhaps AT LEAST 100 possible display configurations and all the innumerable design variables that presents, when popular platforms with ONE single configuration exist?
Kevin Cloud knows full well what this real motivation is, but he's too much the coward to voice it publicly and face a hostile backlash... instead he takes the easy political detour and lies and invents another target to point the finger at.
This argument USED to be true, and it's one of the major reasons why console gaming has thrived so much in recent years.
But I hate to break it to you... it simply isn't true anymore. Take a look at your numbers--$200-$400 The Xbox 360 Core is $300 and if you actually want it to come with a hard drive (why the hell haven't these things become a console standard yet? Swap space, greatly reduced load times, as many saved games as you want, official patches, actual MODS... the possibilities are endless) you'll have to fork out another $100. Already, we're at the top end of your price range, and there's rumors that the P3 might be even more expensive (Wii will likely be less expensive, but then again less graphically powerful, i.e. the equivalent graphics card would be much cheaper.)
On the other had, my gaming rig's processor and motherboard are 3+ years old and they run just fine, and I project it will continue to do fine for at least several more years. Instead of buying a $400 console every few years, I buy a $150 video card. Even if I did need to replace my entire system, I could pick up something decent from Dell for maybe $300 (if I waited for a good sale--usually only requires a few weeks; I've done this many times in the past, including my aforementioned 3+ year old gaming rig) or buy a motherboard+CPU combo from Outpost.com and some ram and stick it in my old box--this latter option should cost maybe $200 tops. The fact is video game consoles have been going up in price and computers have only been going down--and even the ones that are a few years old are perfectly capable so long as they have a decent video card.
Granted, a lot of people just don't want to fuck with computers (especially if you have to swap out hardware yourself) and that's fine, I can respect that, but don't try and tell me it's vastly more expensive. That was true 5-10 years ago--not so today, and I can't it changing in the near future.
Not to sound elitist, but I should also add that for most of the types of gaming I usually like, consoles simply are not a substitute:
1. Non-FF-style RPGs. Yes, there's always Morrowind, but Morrowind on the Xbox is buggy and laughable--Morrowind on the PC (with the official patches and a few mods) has almost no bugs, much improved graphics, VASTLY improved character models, improved physics, improved game balance, better [whatever the hell you didn't like about the original]. In a year or so, I wager the same will be true of Oblivion.
Also, I've yet to see a Black Isle-quality RPG released on a console (then again, we haven't seen one in a long time on the PC in a while, too, so maybe this isn't a valid complaint.)
2. FPSes. Sorry, they're a joke. Xbox fanboys talk about Halo like Jesus himself coded it, but in reality it was a very mediocre FPS... though it WAS admittedly fun to play with 4 people in the same room. (I do miss the death of "hotseat" PC gaming--this is one area I will admit we are sadly deficient in. I do own a Gamecube just for multiplayer games such as Mario Party/Smash Bros.) The fact remains, though, that just about any PC FPS released at about same time completely blows it away. Play the original Halo (or hell, the sequel) and then play Battlefield: 1942 and tell me that they are even REMOTELY the same in terms of general quality and fun (the hotseat issue notwithstanding.) I'm sure the 360 has some OK shooters now, but I highly doubt they'd compare well to Battlefield 2. Ok, so I see that by next year they're porting HL 2... wake me up when they have a have a console-original title (i.e., not a 3 year old ported PC title) that rocks.
3. Strategy. Civilization 3 and 4, Warcraft 3, The Sims (and the rest of the Sim series) etc. are PC-only. I think Starcraft had an N64 port, but come on... no multiplayer, no custom maps? From what I can tell, console strategy is not only dead, but I doubt it was ever alive (at least, it hasn't been alive since the 80's--I've heard good things about M
You can get 14 day trial versions of WoW for cheap. They have been also giving these away as promos with companies like ibuypower.com or services like fileplanet.com.
Sometimes my arms bend back.
On such DRM systems, the signature file depends of a "machine hash". So you reinstall the game on the exact same machine with the file, yes it will work flawlessly. But if you change some piece of hardware or the OS, it won't work, the signature will not match.
Let's face it, for a company like CompUSA or BestBuy that tend to have PC support staff in store at all times, PC games are fine, but the fact is that there are a huge number of people out there that can't handle games that have to be installed "properly". For example, what if they need a new sound driver or graphics driver... how about that they thought their Intel Integrated Graphics was a high end graphics card, after all if you read the Intel website it is. Or if you go to BestBuy to purchase a computer, the sales person is happy to tell Ms or Mr Mid-30's banker type that it has a 3d graphics accelerator... "Excuse me what does that mean?", "Well Ma'am/Sir it means that if you want to play video games on the machine it's capable of it with this card".
Now we come to Walmart, the grocery store, the local TV shop that now sells PCs (circuit city for example). They don't have the people on staff to help install a game. They don't have the people on staff to upgrade your video card. They can't even explain why the game wouldn't work on the PC, they don't know.
Now, look at Playstation, GameCube, and XBox. Put the disc in the machine, power on the machine, press start, play. That's right, that's all. If you were Walmart, what would you prefer, to have to employ 10,000 PC "Experts" in 5,000 stores nationwide. Pay for training for them and the new guys each time someone quits? Or would you prefer to keep with employing people that would actually make more money on welfare and food stamps?
The fact is, the console market is killing the PC market in retail, nothing else, that's all. Since Walmart can sell probably 3 times as many copies of a video game as all the rest of the retailers in America combined, oh, BestBuy probably coming in #2. It's what Walmart and BestBuy wants that matters and selling a copy of "Star Wars 659383 The Jedi Use Hemeroid Cream" for PC or for Playstation, they get better profit for the Playstation game and best of all, if the user comes back and says "It doesn't work on my playstation", they stick it in their Playstation console, if it doesn't work, then they send it to the game publisher for a replacement or a refund, if it does work, then they tell the user "Bring your Playstation in for repair" which they also make money from.
If a consumer comes back with a PC game "It doesn't work on my PC", they are stuck with the game and have to stick it in the junk bin hoping someone will actually buy it for whatever they paid for it. Maybe BestBuy can convince the user to bring their PC and then sell them repair or upgrade services on it. But not Walmart or the grocery store.
i first pirated the game, because i refuse to buy a pig in a poke. easily cracked and played, it felt like the old days. kinda. so i bought it.
at first starting the game would give me a bluescreen and also a nice reboot of my pc. after hours of reading the ubisoft forums i decided to look for driver upgrades. maybe something would help, and really, upgrading my via chipset drivers, resolved the reboot issue. the only problem now was, that i couldn't get into the game, because that crazy securom refused to detect my original dvd. i've yet to find a non-crack solution to play a game i bought a month ago. now who's willing to put up with that shit more often than once?
and besides: pirating games was making games popular really (as pirating windows, made microsoft popular). if i hadn't pirated (and thus played) games back when i was to young to afford them, i wouldn't have bought those 30 titles now residing on my shelf.
it's all but whining, that tells a tale of a healthy industry worth billions. i could go on, but i think you all know, what i'm talking about.
This is my biggest complaint and the reason, besides being poor at the moment, I have avoided buying any new games. I have too many games I can't play anymore as I've lost the install media during a move. I've written the maker about getting a new install/key media in a couple cases for old games I still would like to play and have received no response. I figure if the company won't respond to requests for help in replacing old failed/lost required media why should I reward them by buying anything from them now? If they maybe would release an update a couple years after the game release that would fix the game so you no longer needed the install media for copy protection I'd be more interested in buying games at stores rather then via online download.
I don't pirate games or software. The problems with copy protection and tracking install media and haivng to have specific types of drives for the media to be recognized (you need a cd drive, the DVD burner isn't recognized by the copy protection) means many games just no longer work. It's become too much hassle.
I use several computers (w2k, xp, linux) via a KVM switch as I tend to do alot of data crunching (video) at times. Depending on which machine is crunching data determines which one may be free for gaming. I'd prefer to be able to use whichever one is free for gaming since most of the games don't like to compete with data crunching. It is even worse when I'm doing video capture since I don't want to loose frames when doing tape conversions for professors.
Except, in most states you can now take the Car back and demand a refund or that the dealership fix it, you know, within a reasonable period of time.
You don't get that with software. This is my biggest gripe - if it doesn't work right, or at all, or just sucks and I don't like it - I can't get a refund. I might be able to get a new copy of the exact same thing, but it's likely to fail in the same way unless it was a bad or damaged disc.
This is the major difference for a lot of software and games. Music you can hear on the radio, and listen to in the store before buying. Movies you can rent. You can test drive a car.
But PC Games? It's like playing craps - you usually can't even try it out till you bought it, and you can't take it back after trying it out for a refund in a day or two if it sucks. And there's no warrenty on the thing. Actually, it's the same for all PC software.
So I like shareware, I at least get a little time to see if it's going to FUBAR my system, or crash a lot, or do what I want. I've bought a lot of shareware recently as I can see if it's going to be decent - Clipmate, Directory Opus.
I'd feel a lot safer buying a game for the PC if I could take it back like the laser tag system I bought that sucked. But with the equivelent game, my choice is to uninstall it? Yay, that's like I could stop driving the car. Great - what about the money I paid for a POS? If I could take the game back to the store 2 days after buying it and say "This sucks, it doesn't run well even though I have over the minimum requirements, crashes all the time, and the gameplay is inane (Warlords 4?), give me my money back, here's the POS!" and get a refund, we'd be talking.
Opera, Proxomitron-Grypen,GPG 0x0A1C6EE3
More fundamentally, I have issues with the way developers treat the customer. Starforce is a case in point - if I am to purchase games it will largely be on impulse. Starforce is *horrible* now its not "gee that looks interesting....I'll buy it". Its more a case of "gee that looks interesting... go home.... google for half an hour to make sure it does not have starforce or something nasty .... maybe come back and buy tomorrow". By then, interest and impulse has faded, NO SALE. I don't have HL2, I was actually interested and had the cash but I read a few pointed comments online about Steam and decided (rightly or wrongly, I don't actually care, so any flames that I am an idiot and it's not so bad are wasted on me) that it all sounded like too much of a pain in the backside and I couldn't be bothered.
I do agree strongly with others' comments that devs need to treat their customers better. It's a fairly sad day when a pirated game performs better than a paid for original (eg no CD needed), a ripped DVD is better than a store bought one (no region, prohibited ops etc), and a downloaded MP3 is better (no SONY system crippling rootkits included) - and vendors need to think about the incentives they set up when the bootleg product is much better than the real thing!
... an entire separate gaming system....
This sounds like a job for VMware-Man!
they wonder why people are pirating games??? look at the cost of them. and now with WOW and others they want you to pay each month to play online??? no thx. im a pirate and proud of it
I completly disagree with those assertions. There are always going to be people who want something for nothing, but the problem here is the various copy protection schemes that the game companies are using.
They cause problems on peoples machines and in some cases they break them. Anybody who's ever been stuck with starforce drivers, long after they uninstalled the game that put them there can appreciate that.
Back in the day you could install a game to your hard drive and play it from the hard drive. In fact, a hard drive wasn't used to store the game long term, it was instead a way to speed up retreival. Then they made the games install to the hard drive but still required the CD/DVD to be inserted in the drive. Then they started adding the various product keys and serial numbers so that people who lost the instruction booklet or threw the game box out are hosed when they go to reinstall the game. Then on top of all of that they started doing internet authentication like in Quake 4 where the game checks in with a server. Then you have your starforces and various other mechanisms that fundamentally alter the driver structure in windows and prevent some people from running the game.
The problem is that we didn't drop one thing for another, instead they keep piling it all on top of each other. If I'm going to be required to have the DVD in the drive to play, then whey do I need to waste 6GB of hard drive space? If I have to use a product key then why do I need the disk inserted?
To really put this in perspective consider the pirated alternative.
I can buy a game like Fear, and have to jump through all those hoops or I can download it off a newsgroup after some hacking team removed all the DRM.
The people who pirate these games don't have to put up with all that crap, they just remove the protection. So the only people left stuck with all of these anti piracy measures are the paying customers.
Why should I pay $50 for a game that treats me like a criminal and locks me out of functions of my own computer, when I could get the same game free minus the headache?
I do not beleive this is the case with Stardock. Admittedly I have not tried to do it, but probably will soon as emachine/gateway does not seem to be inclined to provide an ATI driver sufficiently up to date to run the game and I'll have to move it to the desktop.
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
You have to provide something of value to consumers. A game that they can duplicate for pennies is only worth pennies to them. Consumers are not mindless sheep waiting to throw money at the next big thing. They work hard for every penny and will do whatever it takes to spend less money on non-essentials like games and Internet web sites.
Game producers, and software producers need to provide a feature to consumers that they can't get off the disk. With games it is easily the network play features. Only allowing one person into the game area at a time that has the same serial number will make the serial number for the game a scarce commodity that people will guard.
Similarly software producers can do the same thing with applications. Imagine if when you started up your office application if it only had a minimal spell check and thesaurus built in, but if you were connected with a valid serial number then you could get access to a high end grammar checker, spell check for specialized areas such as law and medicine and had full access to a thesaurus and encyclopedia.
Or if you logged your desktop into a central network and it kept your local clock set to atomic clock time, fed your computers entropy with high end random goodness, tied you into an encrypted onion routing network to anonymize your identity, had large nodes to auto bit torrent large files and auto cached popular sites so that you never had to wait for content from sites being slash dotted or dugg.
For me it's hardware. I have a few year old computer that just can't play anything new. Plays UT 2004 well and that's about the only PC game I still play. I don't feel like buying $300 video cards to be able to play something new when I can go to my 56" DLP TV and play a 360 game.
If you want RPG's, the Xboxen are the wrong systems to own, the PS2 is what you want. Admittedly most of them will be FF style but there are some that aren't. The PS2 wizardry game is very much like an old school PC RPG. The Persona games also feel more like PC RPG's. The PS2 also has the best action RPG's out there.
For FPS's the Xboxen seemed tp be preferred by dev houses, though the PS2's USB ports enabled it to have keyboard/mouse control in certain FPS's. The third person shooters however, are excellent. I also thought that HL2 had already hit the Xbox..last year.
Strategy games are a strange dilemma. While a bunch got ported to the PSone (Warcraft, CivII, Dune2000, C&C, X-com) , very few got ported to the PS2. The consoles also host the Sims and Sims2 Strategy RPG's on the other hand are plentiful.
I'm not sure I like "old school" PC RPGs, if by "old school" you mean hack 'n slash. I prefer open-ended story-based, which is really rather a rarity even on the PC. Black Isle games (Planescape: Torment and the Fallout 1 & 2) and Elder Scrolls series are really the only quality titles that spring to mind. And like I said, Elder Scrolls may be available on the Xbox/Xbox 360 but the lack of patches (Bethesda games are notoreously buggy immediately after release) and mods makes them very unappealing compared to their PC counterparts.
HL2 did hit the Xbox last year but it's a complete joke (on a machine with a 733Mhz proc and 64 megs of shared ram? what did they expect???) The 360 version is not due out until Februrary.
Third person shooters and platformers--yes, consoles have traditionally dominated both.
Curious about the Sims... according to Wikipedia they're PC/MAC-only, but I checked and you're right--they are available for a wide variety of consoles. Someone should fix that, but it's nearly 6 am so that someone shall not be me.
"They don't sell because they are crap."
Quite right - its funny so many produce lousy games and then complain that the only reason they are not selling is because they must have been pirated.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating