What is Digg?256 Comments
- davenport651, on 09/12/2008, -5/+188I hope EA is reading this.
- aereaus, on 09/12/2008, -1/+139Be honest people...this is a very hard issue. Developers want to be paid for their work, and gamers want quality for their money. Rarely these two aspirations come together. This is a problem that will plague the industry for many years to come.
I still believe in the Demo/Shareware approach. Back in the bad old days, you could download for free a shareware version of the game. Most notably DOOM. You got a third of it, If you liked it, you bought the rest. This was the golden age of PC gaming.
The demand for new games and titles has driven the market to this end. Reprocessed cheese spread for your consumption.
Lets get back to basics. - Rapter09, on 09/13/2008, -2/+1041995: Descent is released. A young boy (that's me!) picks up the shareware copy for free. I can't remember from where. Tucows, I think?
I played a good majority of that game for free. Legally free. Because people weren't greedy back then. As was said above about the topic, and about Doom and that time: Golden Age of the computer game.
Remember when PC Gamer issues came out every month and they were literal *books*? They'd have so many pages of articles, reviews, and opinion pieces. They were so thick. You pick up a PCG nowadays, and its a paper-thin emaciated thing. But you know what rocked about every month of PCG? A demo CD filled with GOBS and GOBS of sweet game demos. Free! Most of these games were shareware and you could play a large chunk of them before it'd reach the end. It was a perfect way to get things hyped up. When you blew that last reactor core in Descent 1 and go to watch the cool mine-exit scene and the shareware demo ended, your only thought was: "Man! I want to play more!" because you had gotten such a good succulent taste of the game. It was binary crack cocaine. Heck, they even released the entire Zork series on those demo CDs one time - though, that might have been CGW, or something.
Point being: Compare that shareware atmosphere - the atmosphere that MADE companies like EA. The reason why companies like EA got so popular and get to have the *privilege* of making so much money - to today's current gaming atmosphere: A bunch of big name companies that are terrified of pirates, screwing legit customers and gouging for every penny they can.
Even as a poor little kid I still managed to buy a game. I wanted to. It was totally worth it. You also knew what you were getting when you played the demo; nowadays, i'm an adult with extra money but can't find a game worth buying. - deepcoiler, on 09/12/2008, -3/+88Cliff Harris has the right idea, it takes ball to stand up like he did, 1 guy making games by himself.
- KyloOb, on 09/13/2008, -10/+82Every time I see the "You wouldn't steal a car" horse ***** on a DVD I BUY I make sure I pirate twice the number to offset it... IF I'M GOING TO BURN THE DVD I'LL TAKE THIS USELESS CRAP OFF IT YOU STUPID DOUCHE. /rant
- Zippo, on 09/12/2008, -6/+76If you're open, honest, work hard, and treat your customers right, they'll repay you.
Nobody wants to pay for an OK-quality game for $50... but people will be reaching for their wallets if a good game is selling for a good price. - shoff88, on 09/12/2008, -1/+62So where can I download his games?
- Proel, on 09/12/2008, -0/+59I hope he ends up making more money in this manner than he was before, otherwise I doubt he'll hold on to these new views for long.
- TheKillDoctor, on 09/13/2008, -0/+58Check out his 'rights' for gamers...
The Positech Gamers Bill of Rights
* Gamers shall have the right to re-download a purchased game years later if necessary
* Gamers shall expect a demo to be made available, direct from the developers site with no sign-ups, adverts or other junk.
* Gamers shall not be charged anything to download their purchased game at a later date
* Gamers shall have a direct contact email address for tech support, which goes to a real person
* Gamers shall have flexible save game options, from any point, with unlimited slots.
* Gamers shall not be pestered by un-skippable FMV scenes
* Gamers shall not be bored by start-up advertising and logo screens
* Gamers shall be able to expect windowed, full screen and alt+tab support from their game.
* Gamers shall expect the developer to provide whatever information they can reasonably require in order to mod the game. - jggube, on 09/12/2008, -2/+56"The worst cases are where the person copying and posting your game on the internet insists other pirates 'thank them for their work'."
I never really saw it like that, from a game developer's perspective. - isunktheship, on 09/13/2008, -1/+53just one ball?
- HEAT85, on 09/12/2008, -4/+49Yeah EA, Microsoft and the other big publishers should act like that guy and instead wasting money on copy protection lower the prices for the games. 70€ for a xbox360 game is way to much
- ladyattis, on 09/13/2008, -4/+45The most sensible article on software piracy in a long time. Dugg!
- vtbarrera, on 02/03/2009, -1/+40Yeah. But EA won't just drop DRM the next day, like this guy.
- TwiiLight, on 09/13/2008, -1/+38Personally I pirate games cause NZ always gets them so ***** late.
- Altmnop, on 09/13/2008, -8/+40I'll be honest here and admit I pirate games because I don't want to pay. I am a bad person. :(
- moocow1452, on 09/13/2008, -1/+27Portal is exhibit A on this one.
I'm not one for PC gaming, nor FPS, but I saw the Portal commercial and it blew my mind. I went around the net, hoping to find a Wii version, but stumbled upon Steam and downloaded it to my computer. I figured, $20 bucks isn't that much of an investment, and bought the game. No serial number inputs, no upgrades to my system, no $50 dollar price point. That was the best $20 bucks I ever spent in my life, hands down. Especially useful when I found out my desktop was ill equipped for the game, and I was able to move it to my laptop, no questions asked. - Phil8, on 09/13/2008, -0/+25I loved that game.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sid_Meier's_Pirates!_ ... - aereaus, on 09/12/2008, -5/+27They are, or one of their paid employees. Digg is a source of feedback few companies ignore.
- BitKid, on 09/13/2008, -1/+23Exactly. Most games out there are either terrible or terribly mediocre. I downloaded a pirate copy of Portal, played it for a little bit and then bought it from Steam because it was a really amazing game. Steam is the only place I will get my PC games from now because it just plain works and it really is the future of digital content delivery. The same holds true for console games as well, although most of the games I play are Japanese only games. I don't think the Japanese realize or care that there are many people outside of Japan that are willing to pay full price for some of the awesome games we never see. I have a few games that I play on my PS2 with a mod-disk but when I get the chance to import them I pay full price.
- TheKillDoctor, on 09/13/2008, -0/+22Here's his site
http://www.positech.co.uk/ - isunktheship, on 09/13/2008, -0/+22jesus, 70 EUROS? thats over $100... there are a lot of games I wouldn't pay ONCE for ($50), and there are WAY LESS that I would pay twice for!
- inactive, on 09/13/2008, -1/+22In a perfect world.
- inactive, on 09/14/2008, -0/+17Removing the anti-piracy ads from ripped DVDs is always such a joy.
- Narcowski, on 09/13/2008, -0/+17Your doublepost made me think I had deja vu.
- gilbes, on 09/13/2008, -11/+27Uhg, I know I am going to get dugg down. People love their piracy and go to irrational lengths to justify it and see any criticism as a threat to their souls (the Scientology model I guess). But I have seen a lot of justifications for piracy and they all fall flat.
Ask someone why they are doing something wrong, or tel them what they are doing wrong and you typically get this as a reaction.
What I am doing is not wrong, how dare you judge me. And I do it for very noble reason because I am a good person.
Few people have the integrity to admit the truth. It's wrong and we do it because we can.
These justifications are just not good reasons at all:
"The top reasons seemed to be the high price of games"
Depends on the game of course. But it is amazing that over the last 25 years, despite inflation and increased development costs games cost around the same amount in dollars. Value wise, games cost less now than they ever have.
"the copy-protection used on them"
That basically boils down to "I pirate because they don't want me to." If you don't like the protection then don't play the game. Simple.
"and the quality of the games themselves."
I would imagine that people would pay for quality games and not pay for poor quality games. But since when do people clamor to play poor quality games. Are their other ways to determine a game without piracy? Reviews, demos, word of mouth? Do those suddenly not exist.
"Time and time again people claimed they were happy to buy good games, at sensible prices."
So why are they so bent on paying nothing to play crap games?
People pirate because they can, not because they are the non-violent resistors inspired by Gandhi. They basically say "***** you, I want your product and I don't feel you need to be compensated for the trouble." And if you now some basic economics, piracy is about the poorest way to to change any market. Not that it is always completley ineffective, its just very effective. - BitKid, on 09/13/2008, -1/+16Shhhh...don't remind us Americans how little the dollar is worth.
- Narcowski, on 09/13/2008, -0/+1525c per hour is a ton; I'd rather just pay $20 for a great game and play it online for free (TF2).
- TotalHalibut, on 09/13/2008, -3/+17Yeah, Cliff's a great guy. We did an indepth interview with him on one of our recent podcasts. Anyone that's interested can find it here - http://www.wcradio.com/archives.php?selectArchive= ...
I'm glad he took the step to ask, and I hope others follow suit. The recent Spore debacle only proves just how right he was to listen, rather than ignore players. Pirates are still players, pirates are still potential customers, if you treat them right. - inactive, on 09/13/2008, -0/+14http://www.positech.co.uk/talkingtopirates.html
- najdorf, on 09/13/2008, -3/+17People pirate games because they can. They couldn't care less about supporting the developer.
I know because I tried donationware and it's 10 times less profitable than shareware, despite all the cracks and torrents. - crapuccino, on 09/13/2008, -0/+14That's exactly how I read it! Pirates was great.
- imtigger2, on 09/14/2008, -0/+14Ok... hold on there for a second. Digging him down for that is 'ok' cause he just sounds lazy, but it's been shown that therein lies the biggest problem, and THE solution.
Get the media to the customer and make it VERY easy for them to purchase (and make returns), and you'll make a sale. Make it difficult for most lazy-ass, pizza-ordering, Mountain Dew-drinking game players to purchase games, and they'll find torrents to be an easier solution.
Do we need an iTunes-type solution for games? Should Sony, MS and Nintendo go with digital distribution for all their games? I believe we need the ease of ordering system that iTunes provides, with a digital dowload/instant delivery system that WORKS. That will bring more profit to the game companies. - dogfood, on 09/14/2008, -1/+14Stardock has a great Bill of Rights as well:
* Gamers shall have the right to return games that don't work with their computers for a full refund.
* Gamers shall have the right to demand that games be released in a finished state.
* Gamers shall have the right to expect meaningful updates after a game's release.
* Gamers shall have the right to demand that download managers and updaters not force themselves to run or be forced to load in order to play a game.
* Gamers shall have the right to expect that the minimum requirements for a game will mean that the game will play adequately on that computer.
* Gamers shall have the right to expect that games won't install hidden drivers or other potentially harmful software without their consent.
* Gamers shall have the right to re-download the latest versions of the games they own at any time.
* Gamers shall have the right to not be treated as potential criminals by developers or publishers.
* Gamers shall have the right to demand that a single-player game not force them to be connected to the Internet every time they wish to play.
* Gamers shall have the right that games which are installed to the hard drive shall not require a CD/DVD to remain in the drive to play.
I met some of these guys at PAX this year. They make great games: (Galactic Civilizations, Sins of a Solar Empire, Demigod) and are really committed to putting out high quality stuff.
If you want things to change in the game industry, quit going to Best Buy and buying EA's and Microsoft's ***** blockbuster sequels and start trying out some of the stuff from the smaller developers. You'd be surprised at how many great games are out there that are lower-cost, DRM free, more fun, a lot more imaginative than the big developers are putting out. The Steam stuff like Portal and Audiosurf are just the tip of the iceberg. - choppergirl, on 09/13/2008, -12/+25Speaking as a shareware developer game developer who develops games based on EA products, I have to say, most everybody has it wrong bashing the 'big evil game corporations".
It may make you feel good to take a stand against some supposed big greedy corporation, but games companies are not it. Big Oil Corporations like Shell, I can see... tiny little game houses like DICE, I can't see. A person maybe buys a game once a year at best. But every day people put $20 into their tank in the form of gas. The scale and comparison, just does not compare. It doesn't compare to the military spending in this country, the cost of fuel, taxes, or anywhere even in or close to the ballpark. Games companies are in the league of starving musicians, surviving on their wits alone, frequently not surviving at all, but mostly doing it for the passion of creating something awesome to play.
The problem is the players. I won't say a majority of players, I will say *ALL* the players, are tightwad little dicks who want everything for free and do nothing but bitch, complain, and try and screw with and crash servers. Who am I talking about? I'm talking about YOU. Yes You. Thousands of people have played on my server (at least 400 a day) and not one donated... so I feel I can pretty much make an on target broad generalization, that YOU have never donated towards the cost of running a game server, unless it was wrung out of you.
Six months ago I set out to run one of the best BF2142 servers in the world. I spent thousands of hours modding the code and learned quite intimately how complex and fragile the game code is to support a 3D virtual reality. In this six months time, I asked for donations to defray the cost of electricity and bandwidth... not much to ask at all. In those 6 months, I have received not one damn ***** dime from any player, period. Despite having requests posted throughout the game, despite having the most popular demo server, despite having an easy to contribute paypal button on the website, and despite setting up an online store where the could make a donation and at least get half back in the form of something purchased... a gift.
Still, not a damn thing. You talk to the players and you learn, they are a vast majority of 13-18 year old little *****. They don't have credit cards. Oh, wait, they've got an expensive gaming rig with the latest Nvidia 8x00 GT based PCI-e video card... but not a dollar to donate towards the bandwidth of running a game server. In otherwords, again, a bunch of *****.
At the end of this all, I have to decided, I run my server for me. ***** all the players. For real. They are nothing more than targets for me to shoot on my own server, if I can even get in, because it stays packed all the time. And ***** the noobz, because they bring nothing to the game at all. Kick them out, at least veteran players contribute some action on the server. Noobz can play elsewhere. And goodbye to all those nefarious little jerks that run aimbots and hacks and interfere with your TCP/IP stream.
So yeah... I"ve developed an awesome game as an amateur 'Level Lord' at least as far as can be done inside a demo, let people play it for free, and not gotten a dime from it, even though I've asked and begged and pleaded in the nicest possible way, and offered intentives in return. And not gotten any dime and paid myself for it all. People are *****. They really are.
CHOPPERGIRL's AIRWAR
http://choppergirl.anarchy-tv.com - mCanada, on 09/13/2008, -1/+13*Gamers should expect a reasonably bug free , not alpha / beta product. Nothing's perfect, but the general public are not your beta testers.
- therightclique, on 09/13/2008, -7/+19do you honestly believe that? nobody gives a ***** about this site, but us nerds.
- Narcowski, on 09/13/2008, -2/+14Selling more copies for less?
- Stormwern, on 09/13/2008, -1/+12I sincerely hope this change of mind turns a profit for him, but it can't be easy being an independent game developer in an industry that has been plowing in the wrong direction for 15 years, no work done for you exactly..
- Metasquares, on 09/13/2008, -1/+12The DRM is really the worst part. All it does is make the pirated copies superior to the purchased ones.
- dtfinch, on 09/13/2008, -1/+12Kind of makes me want to buy one of his games.
*downloads Democracy 2 demo* - aereaus, on 09/12/2008, -1/+11Google him.
- fouber, on 09/13/2008, -5/+14Bollocks. The vast majority of illegal downloaders have no intention of ever paying for the games they play They are not protesting high prices. They are not evaluating games before buying. They are not even protesting obnoxious DRM schemes. They are just grabbing ***** that ain't theirs when no one is looking.
I have stolen games, music, and movies from the internet. Being a petty thief is kind of embarrassing, but I'll be damned if I'm going to spout all this philosophical sewage in attempt to justify my moral failings. - scamper22, on 09/14/2008, -0/+9Sorry, but what kind of self-righteous ***** are you talking.
You want to go ahead and host games and servers for free... go ahead. But don't expect any donations.
Feel free to open up a pizza shop and hand out pizza for free too... with a small sign saying "donations accepted"
See how much money you make.
sure, we people are the problem. But YOU are also a problem. Ignoring thousands of years of human history and capitalism. Labor is not free. Electricity is not free. Games are not free. You have to sell your product and make money off it. - magamiako, on 09/13/2008, -1/+10Choppergirl:
The big problem is how people view games and the internet, and PCs. A whole wide range of entertainment opportunities cause people to make a choice between gaming and "the real world".
Reality:
If I like to go out with friends, and I know it's going to be at least a $30 night not including gas, and I do this once every week or once every 2 weeks--do I really want to spend money on a video game?
So many things pulling our time and money, and you aren't any different.
You're right, most people won't pay for something "out of the goodness of their heart", at least not in American society. - Orsenfelt, on 09/13/2008, -1/+10"I would imagine that people would pay for quality games and not pay for poor quality games. But since when do people clamor to play poor quality games. Are their other ways to determine a game without piracy? Reviews, demos, word of mouth? Do those suddenly not exist."
Demo's, In the traditonal sence of the word, Don't exist anymore. You get 15 minutes of gameplay that isn't even remotely like the game. Look at the spore creature creator that was released.. Brilliant! Innovative, Everyone got hyped up to play the game and look at what happened? The creature creator is the only non-boring part of the entire title.
I'll go one further and say that quality games are just not being produced anymore. Take a look at the market as a whole, What do we have? Franchise titles churning out slightly updated versions of the same game year after year. Small development teams being picked up, Their games ripped apart in order to cater for mass market. 90% of what is on the shelves is utter tripe. Tripe that they charge you a fortune for, Only to give you terrible story lines, Buggy software and WAY less gameplay time than you expected.
The 1 or 2 really good, Innovative and dare I say traditional game creators out there ARE successful. Take a look at VALVe. Every game they release has had a lot of time and care spent on it, They are good ideas executed well. Their software is rarely buggy, It's open to customizeation, The company doesn't come off as a sold out corperate behemoth, It's sold at a fair price (Orange Box.. The value for money is through the roof!) and most of all, It has copy protection that is actually effective.
Valve games are one of the lowest pirated out there. People want to reward the creators of good games with a fair amount of compensation.
EA games on the other hand? Terrible customer service, Terrible DRM, Terrible software, Terrible prices and worst of all.. they honestly don't give a ***** about the content. No wonder people pirate them, Not only do you get a few hours of mediocre fun.. It's EASIER than going to a store and buying the disc, Which is absurd.
If you create games that not only suck, but are also so riddled with problems and DRM that it's easier to HACK it than it is to buy and play legit. You should get out the game industry.. - felyduw, on 09/13/2008, -0/+8Just bought one of his games.
- craeyon, on 09/14/2008, -0/+8I agree with that. I never bought a single game in my life but I have never been hesitant to buy Half LIfe 1, 2, ep 1 and the Orange Box.
Publishers like Vavle generally make really good games and I don't hesitate a single bit to give them my money. Because its worth it. - Sabretou, on 09/14/2008, -0/+8You wouldn't burn a car...
- inactive, on 09/14/2008, -0/+8Are any his games actually good???
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