The hardware lock is probably way more effective than any online authentication and that's before you consider that many consoles aren't connected to the internet. They do use DRM on downloadable games.
I just wait for a pricedrop to a level at which I find the price acceptable for the game. It's easier and I can see beforehand how much money I'll pay rather than when I try to sell it back to the store.
AFAIK they face the threat of retailers refusing to sell their game if they release it online earlier or cheaper than the retail copy. Either way the 99% thing is preloading, it's common with digital distribution as a way of spreading the download load across several days instead of having everyone try to download it simultaneously on launch day.
1. Cheaper games are being produced, they just tend to be made on lower budgets too so people tend to ignore them in favour of AAA games. 2. Games drop in price, a brand new low budget game would go against a year old high budget game and probably suffer in the comparison.
Both claims are just baseless claims because both claim numbers without providing them. We have no evidence that the other classes are more likely nor do we have evidence that they are insignificant.
I really dont want to get up and drive to a gamestore to buy a $60 game, when I could download it for perhaps a fraction of the cost, because its a digital download.
Looking at Steam I'd say you'd still be paying 60$ even without retail overhead involved.
I'm kinda worried about the economy of a single service being paid for access to all games. How do you determine payouts to the contributors of those games? Will those payouts be enough to finance the games? If it's e.g. based on time played will that lead to more padding and grind being thrown into games that would otherwise be fairly short?
This struck me as a hypocritical position on the part of those game publishers. Either IP is property or it is not. If it is property, then there should be no restrictions allowed on whether or how frequently it can be resold
IP can be resold freely but you seem to misunderstand the term. IP refers to the copyright, not the copy. The copy is physical property by default though in some countries EULAs are allowed to mess with that for some reason. Either way nothing requires the physical item to be fit for resale, just that contracts can't prevent you from doing it. When there's a technical lock in addition to the contract I don't think the law objects to that.
Re:Play at your friend's house? Sell a game? Nope.
on
Why Bother With DRM?
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· Score: 1
Even the dreaded Slashdot phenomenon is a drop in the pond to Steam's full throughput. The recent roll out of of Left 4 Dead and Team Fortress 2 content packs have proven testament to this.
I think the download servers are operated by the publishers of the respective games, I've downloaded Valve games at my full connection speed but when Plants vs Zombies was released the download ran at about 10kB/sec (of course the game is only 25MB so that wasn't a long wait but still annoying). It seemed to depend on the publisher, some games downloaded faster, some slower.
Re:Play at your friend's house? Sell a game? Nope.
on
Why Bother With DRM?
·
· Score: 1
Other than Starcraft and Demigod, do you know of a list of PC games that allow such "spawned" installations?
Most multiplayer games from the era StarCraft was released in had LAN play with fewer copies than players, some had stuff like 3 players per original CD, others only required the host to have the CD. More recently I can only think of Arena Wars which reverts to demo mode when run without a CD (but lets you join any game over LAN, even if it uses stuff that's locked in the demo).
The other guy may have considered the likely resale value as part of the game's value at the purchase time and wouldn't have accepted the same price without that option. I think the perception of price grows overlinearly so the option to sell back lowers the purchase resistance more than the price and the person may be more willing to buy additional games even though he spends more money as the result.
However, we are also aware that DRM can make something 'hard enough' to copy that only really motivated people will bother-- the rest will just say, "heck, I'll just pay for this thing."
The problem there is that the hard part gets done by dedicated crackers, the average user just throws the torrent into his downloader and uses it with no thought spent on how the protection was broken.
That's only because people are no longer used to seeing it. Before the slaughterhouses it was commonplace for people to kill animals for food. If you make this experience more common again it might lead to a reduction at first but people adapt, after all humans have done it before.
Or they generate their art through the interaction, by utilizing the rules structure to deliver their message rather than spelling it out as part of some dialogue. If Ayn Rand wanted to make a game that promotes Objectivism it'd be a simulation that shows the superiority of the ideology (or fails to if it turns out the message is incompatible with reality).
He said games that rise to the level of high art (what a vague term...), not a game tied to some high art to float it. Braid is a nice puzzle game and a collection of tedious texts written with the rule "if it's confusing it's art" that get thrown at you for no appreciable reason except to make you believe you're going after some "princess" (which seems to be the sidescrolling platformer story equivalent of "it doesn't matter why you're doing this, just get moving!") and to show you that one nice sequence. Sure, the sequence was good but it had little relation to the rest of the game and would not have suffered significantly if the rest of the game was simply cut away. Outside of that one part Braid was a game with some art ducttaped to it, the game was not an integral part of the art nor was the art an integral part of the game.
Information provides entertainment. It releases some happyness hormone AFAIK. Reading about the human condition triggers a feeling of happiness as you learn additional information. Just because a subject isn't fun up front doesn't mean humans don't derive enjoyment from it even though they may not describe it as "fun" per se.
As for serious people ("real" adults is a No True Scotsman) wanting to explore the human condition, I have this feeling that authors of books, no matter how deep their prose, aren't more qualified in analyzing that than any other guy. It may sound sophisticated when it's coming in a literary wrapper but the core thoughts are still coming from a human like any other who most likely just got a random idea about people with little real data to back it up. It may be more convincing wrapped in art but it's still just an idea from a random layman and likely to be wrong, over-simplified and whatnot.
The funny part is that the Fallujah game is the type of controversial topic that can use video games for exploring the human condition. Which is exactly why it's blocked while *cough*"adult entertainment"*cough* runs rampant.
Sounds like it successfully explored the human condition then.
I disagree, without hard numbers we can't say anything. Fans have a lot of devotion, games like Gotcha Force are known for their fanbases but they sold terribly. It only takes a very small number of people to form a fanbase, no matter how devoted but it takes a large number to make any money with a sequel. Without numbers (like, say, sales for the DS re-release, hint hint) we can't say how popular a sequel to CT would be. With numbers we could guess.
We also have to account for CT being one of the biggest blockbusters of its time, AFAIK it was developed by a "dream team" of developers and very expensive compared to its contemporaries, it's unlikely that a CT sequel made these days would receive the same level of care and would most likely compare unfavourably to the original.
Slashdot Mirror
WF is score based, track that.
Wait, you point at the 360's following as the reason it'll do better than the EyeToy? You realize the PS2 had about 5x as many users as the 360?
The hardware lock is probably way more effective than any online authentication and that's before you consider that many consoles aren't connected to the internet. They do use DRM on downloadable games.
I just wait for a pricedrop to a level at which I find the price acceptable for the game. It's easier and I can see beforehand how much money I'll pay rather than when I try to sell it back to the store.
AFAIK they face the threat of retailers refusing to sell their game if they release it online earlier or cheaper than the retail copy. Either way the 99% thing is preloading, it's common with digital distribution as a way of spreading the download load across several days instead of having everyone try to download it simultaneously on launch day.
1. Cheaper games are being produced, they just tend to be made on lower budgets too so people tend to ignore them in favour of AAA games.
2. Games drop in price, a brand new low budget game would go against a year old high budget game and probably suffer in the comparison.
Both claims are just baseless claims because both claim numbers without providing them. We have no evidence that the other classes are more likely nor do we have evidence that they are insignificant.
I really dont want to get up and drive to a gamestore to buy a $60 game, when I could download it for perhaps a fraction of the cost, because its a digital download.
Looking at Steam I'd say you'd still be paying 60$ even without retail overhead involved.
I'm kinda worried about the economy of a single service being paid for access to all games. How do you determine payouts to the contributors of those games? Will those payouts be enough to finance the games? If it's e.g. based on time played will that lead to more padding and grind being thrown into games that would otherwise be fairly short?
This struck me as a hypocritical position on the part of those game publishers. Either IP is property or it is not. If it is property, then there should be no restrictions allowed on whether or how frequently it can be resold
IP can be resold freely but you seem to misunderstand the term. IP refers to the copyright, not the copy. The copy is physical property by default though in some countries EULAs are allowed to mess with that for some reason. Either way nothing requires the physical item to be fit for resale, just that contracts can't prevent you from doing it. When there's a technical lock in addition to the contract I don't think the law objects to that.
Even the dreaded Slashdot phenomenon is a drop in the pond to Steam's full throughput. The recent roll out of of Left 4 Dead and Team Fortress 2 content packs have proven testament to this.
I think the download servers are operated by the publishers of the respective games, I've downloaded Valve games at my full connection speed but when Plants vs Zombies was released the download ran at about 10kB/sec (of course the game is only 25MB so that wasn't a long wait but still annoying). It seemed to depend on the publisher, some games downloaded faster, some slower.
Other than Starcraft and Demigod, do you know of a list of PC games that allow such "spawned" installations?
Most multiplayer games from the era StarCraft was released in had LAN play with fewer copies than players, some had stuff like 3 players per original CD, others only required the host to have the CD. More recently I can only think of Arena Wars which reverts to demo mode when run without a CD (but lets you join any game over LAN, even if it uses stuff that's locked in the demo).
The other guy may have considered the likely resale value as part of the game's value at the purchase time and wouldn't have accepted the same price without that option. I think the perception of price grows overlinearly so the option to sell back lowers the purchase resistance more than the price and the person may be more willing to buy additional games even though he spends more money as the result.
However, we are also aware that DRM can make something 'hard enough' to copy that only really motivated people will bother-- the rest will just say, "heck, I'll just pay for this thing."
The problem there is that the hard part gets done by dedicated crackers, the average user just throws the torrent into his downloader and uses it with no thought spent on how the protection was broken.
That's only because people are no longer used to seeing it. Before the slaughterhouses it was commonplace for people to kill animals for food. If you make this experience more common again it might lead to a reduction at first but people adapt, after all humans have done it before.
Or they generate their art through the interaction, by utilizing the rules structure to deliver their message rather than spelling it out as part of some dialogue. If Ayn Rand wanted to make a game that promotes Objectivism it'd be a simulation that shows the superiority of the ideology (or fails to if it turns out the message is incompatible with reality).
He said games that rise to the level of high art (what a vague term...), not a game tied to some high art to float it. Braid is a nice puzzle game and a collection of tedious texts written with the rule "if it's confusing it's art" that get thrown at you for no appreciable reason except to make you believe you're going after some "princess" (which seems to be the sidescrolling platformer story equivalent of "it doesn't matter why you're doing this, just get moving!") and to show you that one nice sequence. Sure, the sequence was good but it had little relation to the rest of the game and would not have suffered significantly if the rest of the game was simply cut away. Outside of that one part Braid was a game with some art ducttaped to it, the game was not an integral part of the art nor was the art an integral part of the game.
Information provides entertainment. It releases some happyness hormone AFAIK. Reading about the human condition triggers a feeling of happiness as you learn additional information. Just because a subject isn't fun up front doesn't mean humans don't derive enjoyment from it even though they may not describe it as "fun" per se.
As for serious people ("real" adults is a No True Scotsman) wanting to explore the human condition, I have this feeling that authors of books, no matter how deep their prose, aren't more qualified in analyzing that than any other guy. It may sound sophisticated when it's coming in a literary wrapper but the core thoughts are still coming from a human like any other who most likely just got a random idea about people with little real data to back it up. It may be more convincing wrapped in art but it's still just an idea from a random layman and likely to be wrong, over-simplified and whatnot.
The funny part is that the Fallujah game is the type of controversial topic that can use video games for exploring the human condition. Which is exactly why it's blocked while *cough*"adult entertainment"*cough* runs rampant.
Sounds like it successfully explored the human condition then.
I disagree, without hard numbers we can't say anything. Fans have a lot of devotion, games like Gotcha Force are known for their fanbases but they sold terribly. It only takes a very small number of people to form a fanbase, no matter how devoted but it takes a large number to make any money with a sequel. Without numbers (like, say, sales for the DS re-release, hint hint) we can't say how popular a sequel to CT would be. With numbers we could guess.
We also have to account for CT being one of the biggest blockbusters of its time, AFAIK it was developed by a "dream team" of developers and very expensive compared to its contemporaries, it's unlikely that a CT sequel made these days would receive the same level of care and would most likely compare unfavourably to the original.
But they already C&Ded CT Resurrection and it didn't kill them either.
It's a ROM hack, even if it were changed into a total conversion it'd still be derivative of the original game.
Here, take Spring, no need for Supreme Commander II.
What if the program uses the GPLv3 and you refuse to make your script GPLv3 too?
The worst case is SE losing sales on their own Chrono games because of competition from fan works.
SNES games don't come with EULAs so it's an actual sale, not a license.