When I first began writing shareware games for Palm OS, I created a number of small puzzle games, among other things, and found that it was pretty difficult to come up with an interesting concept every week or so. So, I can't begrudge BestGameEver if some of their new games build on their previous efforts. Besides, sometimes the most enjoyable games come about as refinements of previous (and possibly less-commercially-successful) ones.
But along those lines, Ludum Dare hosts 24- and 48-hour competitions to investigate innovative gameplay; folks who are interested in BGE's offerings for that reason might like to check them out.
I've used DigiBuy (now owned by Digital River) for a number of years, and am happy with them. Services of that type seem to be pretty straightforward -- DigiBuy, RegNow, SWReg, Kagi, etc. all offer comparable packages. There's a setup fee per product (for DigiBuy, this is $10), and a service fee with a per-order minimum, (for DigiBuy, their take is about 14% per order, minimum $3). The only "gotcha!" would be chargeback fees on fraudulent order, but that happens rarely.
One might think Valve would aim lower, given the results of its System Survey:
Video Card Description:
NVidia GeForce4 MX Series -- 15.35 %
NVidia GeForce4 Series -- 12.47 %
NVidia GeForce2 MX Series -- 10.86 %
NVidia GeForce FX 5200 Series -- 7.02 %
ATI Radeon 9600 Series -- 6.11 %
ATI Radeon 9800 Series -- 4.93 % . . .
CPU Speed:
1.5 Ghz to 1.7 Ghz -- 14.00 %
1.7 Ghz to 2.0 Ghz -- 18.33 %
2.0 Ghz to 2.3 Ghz -- 13.82 %
2.3 Ghz to 2.7 Ghz -- 16.62 % . . .
As a software developer, I actually don't want to have to produce a game with that much eye candy. But I feel compelled to concentrate on that, given that gamers and press go (in part) by screenshots and aesthetics.
Regardless of what I'd like to concentrate on, I think the hardware vendors, the software developers, the press, and the consumer are all in cahoots together. You, me, everyone -- we all want to see prettier games.
As dead or alive as Atari or Amiga games are.
on
Is DOS Gaming Dead?
·
· Score: 2
My money's on emulators like DOSBox; if the beloved Atari ST and Amiga can live on, then by gum, we're not going to lose Wing Commander, Ultima Underworld, or Starflight, either.
Isn't it only a matter of time before my PC can achieve the (arguably ridiculous, but surely wonderful) ability to emulate its 486-based ancestors at speed?
I'm surprised that this is being offered through the school of Cinema and Television, and further surprised to hear that USC's Anthony Borquez has nothing to do with it. From what I understand, he was pretty active in bringing game development to USC's curriculum, going so far as to establish a minor degree in game development to the USC School of Engineering. Regardless of what the degree will get those who obtain it, (somewhere else in these comments, I believe someone mentioned french fries), I think this is the first step in the right direction.
Remember that Computer Science was once a tiny, poorly-regarded field within EE. It'll take some well-respected work (and maybe a change in title) before a Bachelor of XYZZY in Game Development means anything positive.
Durn it. I often find a DVD director's commentary every bit as interesting as a movie, itself. I wish Lucasarts would release what they had, along with a postmortem/commentary. Aside from being a fan of the original, I'd like to see where the sequel production went "wrong," and try to pick the thing apart.
Hell, I'm probably in the minority, but I'd be willing to pay for such a thing.
How do you think Microsoft got so big? People used to copy DOS and Windows, and when their companies were getting computers, guess what software their employees were familiar with, and which was thus bought?
This seems more anecdotal than anything else; CP/M and DR-DOS were pirated, but that didn't do much for them in the long run. You could argue that MS-DOS was pirated more, and therefore became more popular. I think the more "obvious" explanation is that MS-DOS was popular, and therefore more widely pirated.
As a profitable third-party games developer, I don't think that piracy has hurt us in terms of pricing versus first-party developers; people assign some value to software based on price, and if anything, The big-name, $50-$60 games are pushing our prices higher rather than lower. Most people, upon seeing a $9.95 game, think, "crappy puzzle game."
Software piracy makes you serve as free advertising for the "victim" company
Dollar-for-dollar, I'd prefer to have the money, and put it towards development or media.
Valve has been conducting and publishing system specification surveys. It's interesting to see that the majority of their respondents are using GeForce 4 MX cards; I would have thought higher specs.
The most annoying thing about detail controls in games is that it's unclear what you (the end-user) are changing when you tweak the knobs. As a developer of 3d applications, (who's guilty of same), I think I'll approach this in the future by giving users immediate feedback: "Here's what your scene will look like with low shadow detail. Here's how smoothly it'll run, on average."
So, with no demo and really bad word of mouth that suggests the game demands a dual G5 to play decently, what do you expect people to do?
I would expect people not to buy the game from them. I would like for them to tell the developer, "listen, I'm not playing this game without a demo. You're not getting my money. End of story."
Pirating the game in order to try it out is a) illegal, and will damage the gaming public by b) arguably causing the developer to shift their focus away a particular platform (in this case, Mac OS), or at best, c) cause them to develop more of that annoying copy protection.
I dislike copy protection. As a developer, it takes up my time, which I would rather spend creating better levels, or tightening up the multiplayer code. As a gamer, it annoys me that I can't play Rainbow Six 3 if their CD Key servers are down.
From the perspective of someone who creates and sells small games for a living, I'd pooh-pooh most arguments legitimizing the act of piracy.
1. If the game "isn't worth buying," don't pirate it, spend 30 hours playing through the whole thing, and claim that you "wouldn't have bought it, anyway."
2. If you want to try the game out before buying, don't pirate it; play the demo.
3. If there's no demo, and you don't trust the developer enough to buy the game, sight-unseen, don't buy it. The developer doesn't deserve your money, but neither do you deserve to own a copy of their game.
4. Copy protection schemes that prevent you from playing the game you paid for are inexcusable. If the copy protection detracts from the game, tell the developer why you're not going to buy from them again. Don't pirate the game; piracy will only make future copy protection schemes worse for legitimate users.
Recently, a young man from the UK e-mailed us, requesting a free copy of one of our games, citing that he could not possibly buy it. Later, he e-mailed us asking for tech support on the full version. Is this audacious, or simply stupid?
I'm a PPC fan, and can't wait until my 120E can run MS's OS(*). AFAIC, J2ME's DoA, and while my HP's no PoS, it's too slow to run MAME, much less a DC emu. Anyone else still PO'ed that that platform's RIP?
(*Apologies to fellow Palm OS fans; you can't abbreviate that further.)
They left out games that fell under their A0 (Adult Only) rating, which according to their numbers made up about 3.6% of the "games that sold." I'm not sure if this is by units sold (in which case adult games sold 8.6 million units), percentage of titles offered via retail, or by sales (in which case "adult" games sold $252 million last year).
...are Cheapass' offerings. No doubt, many here have enjoyed Dr. Lucky. My favorite failure card, for when you're about to kill your host, and someone blocks:
Slashdot Mirror
When I first began writing shareware games for Palm OS, I created a number of small puzzle games, among other things, and found that it was pretty difficult to come up with an interesting concept every week or so. So, I can't begrudge BestGameEver if some of their new games build on their previous efforts. Besides, sometimes the most enjoyable games come about as refinements of previous (and possibly less-commercially-successful) ones.
But along those lines, Ludum Dare hosts 24- and 48-hour competitions to investigate innovative gameplay; folks who are interested in BGE's offerings for that reason might like to check them out.
I've used DigiBuy (now owned by Digital River) for a number of years, and am happy with them. Services of that type seem to be pretty straightforward -- DigiBuy, RegNow, SWReg, Kagi, etc. all offer comparable packages. There's a setup fee per product (for DigiBuy, this is $10), and a service fee with a per-order minimum, (for DigiBuy, their take is about 14% per order, minimum $3). The only "gotcha!" would be chargeback fees on fraudulent order, but that happens rarely.
There's a thread about this in the Dexterity indie developer forums. Some of these folks are from the industry, (i.e., having left development of commercial titles to work on independent titles) and are familiar with Hook/Pyrogon. Another developer offers a different perspective on Pyrogon's closing, here.
As a software developer, I actually don't want to have to produce a game with that much eye candy. But I feel compelled to concentrate on that, given that gamers and press go (in part) by screenshots and aesthetics.
Regardless of what I'd like to concentrate on, I think the hardware vendors, the software developers, the press, and the consumer are all in cahoots together. You, me, everyone -- we all want to see prettier games.
My money's on emulators like DOSBox; if the beloved Atari ST and Amiga can live on, then by gum, we're not going to lose Wing Commander, Ultima Underworld, or Starflight, either.
Isn't it only a matter of time before my PC can achieve the (arguably ridiculous, but surely wonderful) ability to emulate its 486-based ancestors at speed?
I'm surprised that this is being offered through the school of Cinema and Television, and further surprised to hear that USC's Anthony Borquez has nothing to do with it. From what I understand, he was pretty active in bringing game development to USC's curriculum, going so far as to establish a minor degree in game development to the USC School of Engineering. Regardless of what the degree will get those who obtain it, (somewhere else in these comments, I believe someone mentioned french fries), I think this is the first step in the right direction.
Remember that Computer Science was once a tiny, poorly-regarded field within EE. It'll take some well-respected work (and maybe a change in title) before a Bachelor of XYZZY in Game Development means anything positive.
Durn it. I often find a DVD director's commentary every bit as interesting as a movie, itself. I wish Lucasarts would release what they had, along with a postmortem/commentary. Aside from being a fan of the original, I'd like to see where the sequel production went "wrong," and try to pick the thing apart.
Hell, I'm probably in the minority, but I'd be willing to pay for such a thing.
How do you think Microsoft got so big? People used to copy DOS and Windows, and when their companies were getting computers, guess what software their employees were familiar with, and which was thus bought?
This seems more anecdotal than anything else; CP/M and DR-DOS were pirated, but that didn't do much for them in the long run. You could argue that MS-DOS was pirated more, and therefore became more popular. I think the more "obvious" explanation is that MS-DOS was popular, and therefore more widely pirated.
As a profitable third-party games developer, I don't think that piracy has hurt us in terms of pricing versus first-party developers; people assign some value to software based on price, and if anything, The big-name, $50-$60 games are pushing our prices higher rather than lower. Most people, upon seeing a $9.95 game, think, "crappy puzzle game."
Software piracy makes you serve as free advertising for the "victim" company
Dollar-for-dollar, I'd prefer to have the money, and put it towards development or media.
Valve has been conducting and publishing system specification surveys. It's interesting to see that the majority of their respondents are using GeForce 4 MX cards; I would have thought higher specs.
The most annoying thing about detail controls in games is that it's unclear what you (the end-user) are changing when you tweak the knobs. As a developer of 3d applications, (who's guilty of same), I think I'll approach this in the future by giving users immediate feedback: "Here's what your scene will look like with low shadow detail. Here's how smoothly it'll run, on average."
So, with no demo and really bad word of mouth that suggests the game demands a dual G5 to play decently, what do you expect people to do?
I would expect people not to buy the game from them. I would like for them to tell the developer, "listen, I'm not playing this game without a demo. You're not getting my money. End of story."
Pirating the game in order to try it out is a) illegal, and will damage the gaming public by b) arguably causing the developer to shift their focus away a particular platform (in this case, Mac OS), or at best, c) cause them to develop more of that annoying copy protection.
I dislike copy protection. As a developer, it takes up my time, which I would rather spend creating better levels, or tightening up the multiplayer code. As a gamer, it annoys me that I can't play Rainbow Six 3 if their CD Key servers are down.
From the perspective of someone who creates and sells small games for a living, I'd pooh-pooh most arguments legitimizing the act of piracy.
1. If the game "isn't worth buying," don't pirate it, spend 30 hours playing through the whole thing, and claim that you "wouldn't have bought it, anyway."
2. If you want to try the game out before buying, don't pirate it; play the demo.
3. If there's no demo, and you don't trust the developer enough to buy the game, sight-unseen, don't buy it. The developer doesn't deserve your money, but neither do you deserve to own a copy of their game.
4. Copy protection schemes that prevent you from playing the game you paid for are inexcusable. If the copy protection detracts from the game, tell the developer why you're not going to buy from them again. Don't pirate the game; piracy will only make future copy protection schemes worse for legitimate users.
Recently, a young man from the UK e-mailed us, requesting a free copy of one of our games, citing that he could not possibly buy it. Later, he e-mailed us asking for tech support on the full version. Is this audacious, or simply stupid?
I'm a PPC fan, and can't wait until my 120E can run MS's OS(*). AFAIC, J2ME's DoA, and while my HP's no PoS, it's too slow to run MAME, much less a DC emu. Anyone else still PO'ed that that platform's RIP?
(*Apologies to fellow Palm OS fans; you can't abbreviate that further.)
They left out games that fell under their A0 (Adult Only) rating, which according to their numbers made up about 3.6% of the "games that sold." I'm not sure if this is by units sold (in which case adult games sold 8.6 million units), percentage of titles offered via retail, or by sales (in which case "adult" games sold $252 million last year).
Yeah; I think "moody lighting" is all a matter of contrast rather than overall darkness-of-scene.
...are Cheapass' offerings. No doubt, many here have enjoyed Dr. Lucky. My favorite failure card, for when you're about to kill your host, and someone blocks:
You Forget.
I'm a Python fan, myself:
for c in [78,111,119,32,72,105,114,105,110,103]: print chr(c),
"But now if you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don't have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one." -Jesus Christ [Luke 22:36]
.sig, but you had me wondering for a minute...
"Where the choice is between only violence and cowardice, I would advise violence." -Mohatma Gandhi
"Gold still represents the ultimate form of payment in the world." - Alan Greenspan
I realize that the last quote is part of your