As both a hobbyist developer doing a bachelor in game development, and as a gamer, I am quite interested in both sides of this issue (or "issue" if you will). As a gamer, I often get annoyed by all the DRM and what-not developers put into their games, and as a developer I get annoyed by how boring, repetitive and utterly useless a game can be.
Right now, you have 3 ways of knowing how a game will be:
1) Play the game demo.
2) Pirate the game.
3) Do neither, just soak in as much information as possible from game sites and reviews and what-not and make up an opinion of the game.
Number 1 and 3 is often not enough.. no matter how much you read about a game, most of it turns out to be empty promises, hype, false information or useless information. The demo can also be quite useless, as the developers might have picked the one tiny bit of the game that is fun, or perhaps the one tiny bit that was crap, while the rest of the game could be crap/great and you would never know it unless you bought the game.
Most of the time, it turns out crap, and with all the games coming out there, spending 90-100 bucks on games (which is the normal price for new games here in Norway, expensive as hell T_T) you'd either have to settle with like 1-3 games per month you know is great, go broke, or pirate.
Number 2 is the most viable option. First of all, we can test the entire game and learn if this is a game we wish to keep or if it is a game we most likely would put in the toilet and flush down at the first chance we get. Second of all, if we like the game, we keep it in mind and buy it at the first chance we have money.
PC-gamers have left the era of mindless games and demand value for their money. Few games out there give it, those who does hardly feels the effect of piracy. Valve has a cool concept where they have a free weekend, where you can play the full version of the game for free for a weekend. As far as I know, sales spike whenever they do it, and it is a good counter for piracy.
Blizzard is known for making games that run on almost any computer now-a-days, and people know by playing their old games that they give you your money worth when it comes to making games. Even thought many has a pirate version of the game, they also own the legit version, but might either have lost their cd, broken it, or as mentioned earlier pirated it because of the usual no-cd cracks that comes with them, making them a much better option instead of bringing all the CDs to lan-parties and stuff.
As for Crysis, all I have to say is that those boneheads like Yerli is yet to realise a couple of things:
1) Crysis is bloated with DRM and MUST-HAVE-CD stuff. It creates alot of hazzle for the legit guy like me who buy their games. Thus I have two versions of Crysis: Legit and pirated. I move from place to place due to school and study almost every year now, no way im dragging along 200+ worth of game CDs T_T
2) Crysis is a very demanding game when it comes to computer specs. I have a quad core 2,4GHz, two 8800gt in SLI and 4gig ram and I still get FPS-losses at places in Crysis where I consider the game almost unplayable. I can only imagine people who are still sitting with 1core and 1-2gb ram and even worse graphic cards.
3) The game wasn't really as good as they make it out to be. At best, I found it mediocre. Some like it better, some worse, as every opinion of a game is like your ass anyway, 2 sided and full of crap on both sides =p But most likely, alot of people found it lacking severly in depth and gameplay, and thus never bought the legit copy.. heck, most of them might have just downloaded it, played it for 10-15min and deleted it, like many of my friends did.
4) You will always have those who will never buy it for several reasons: They dont have the money, they just checked it out and didnt like it, they would never pay for it anyway or they just download and seed it because they can, never really playing the game itself.
And then you have all those games that should never have been released anyway, as they are just stupid, mindless crap developers hope people will buy just to milk money out of people. In a way, sorry to say this, you kinda deserve the fate you got, and I hope I never end up in a company like that if I get in the game dev business.
There is probably alot more to say about this, but point is: piracy will always happen in one form or another, and your not really loosing money on it as people who do it would never have payed for it anyways. Stop making crap games, bloat them with DRM and other crap and perhaps people will buy them... and make them easy to buy. Did you know around 25% of Norway (Source: http://www.nationsencyclopedia.com/economies/Europe/Norway.html but compared to game stores versus what is considered urban area I think it is higher) would have to spend up to 3-4 hours driving to the nearest town to buy a game, spending well around 100 bucks on gas alone for it then 100 more for the game, while now 99,8% (Source: http://itpro.no/art/12997.html ) now has access to broadband and can buy&download the game from services like steam?.. and you don't have to worry about the CD there either :o!
Devs really need to wake up from the self-centered hole they have dug T_T
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Wolferey's Comments
As both a hobbyist developer doing a bachelor in game development, and as a gamer, I am quite interested in both sides of this issue (or "issue" if you will). As a gamer, I often get annoyed by all the DRM and what-not developers put into their games, and as a developer I get annoyed by how boring, repetitive and utterly useless a game can be.
Right now, you have 3 ways of knowing how a game will be:
1) Play the game demo.
2) Pirate the game.
3) Do neither, just soak in as much information as possible from game sites and reviews and what-not and make up an opinion of the game.
Number 1 and 3 is often not enough.. no matter how much you read about a game, most of it turns out to be empty promises, hype, false information or useless information. The demo can also be quite useless, as the developers might have picked the one tiny bit of the game that is fun, or perhaps the one tiny bit that was crap, while the rest of the game could be crap/great and you would never know it unless you bought the game.
Most of the time, it turns out crap, and with all the games coming out there, spending 90-100 bucks on games (which is the normal price for new games here in Norway, expensive as hell T_T) you'd either have to settle with like 1-3 games per month you know is great, go broke, or pirate.
Number 2 is the most viable option. First of all, we can test the entire game and learn if this is a game we wish to keep or if it is a game we most likely would put in the toilet and flush down at the first chance we get. Second of all, if we like the game, we keep it in mind and buy it at the first chance we have money.
PC-gamers have left the era of mindless games and demand value for their money. Few games out there give it, those who does hardly feels the effect of piracy. Valve has a cool concept where they have a free weekend, where you can play the full version of the game for free for a weekend. As far as I know, sales spike whenever they do it, and it is a good counter for piracy.
Blizzard is known for making games that run on almost any computer now-a-days, and people know by playing their old games that they give you your money worth when it comes to making games. Even thought many has a pirate version of the game, they also own the legit version, but might either have lost their cd, broken it, or as mentioned earlier pirated it because of the usual no-cd cracks that comes with them, making them a much better option instead of bringing all the CDs to lan-parties and stuff.
As for Crysis, all I have to say is that those boneheads like Yerli is yet to realise a couple of things:
1) Crysis is bloated with DRM and MUST-HAVE-CD stuff. It creates alot of hazzle for the legit guy like me who buy their games. Thus I have two versions of Crysis: Legit and pirated. I move from place to place due to school and study almost every year now, no way im dragging along 200+ worth of game CDs T_T
2) Crysis is a very demanding game when it comes to computer specs. I have a quad core 2,4GHz, two 8800gt in SLI and 4gig ram and I still get FPS-losses at places in Crysis where I consider the game almost unplayable. I can only imagine people who are still sitting with 1core and 1-2gb ram and even worse graphic cards.
3) The game wasn't really as good as they make it out to be. At best, I found it mediocre. Some like it better, some worse, as every opinion of a game is like your ass anyway, 2 sided and full of crap on both sides =p But most likely, alot of people found it lacking severly in depth and gameplay, and thus never bought the legit copy.. heck, most of them might have just downloaded it, played it for 10-15min and deleted it, like many of my friends did.
4) You will always have those who will never buy it for several reasons: They dont have the money, they just checked it out and didnt like it, they would never pay for it anyway or they just download and seed it because they can, never really playing the game itself.
And then you have all those games that should never have been released anyway, as they are just stupid, mindless crap developers hope people will buy just to milk money out of people. In a way, sorry to say this, you kinda deserve the fate you got, and I hope I never end up in a company like that if I get in the game dev business.
There is probably alot more to say about this, but point is: piracy will always happen in one form or another, and your not really loosing money on it as people who do it would never have payed for it anyways. Stop making crap games, bloat them with DRM and other crap and perhaps people will buy them... and make them easy to buy. Did you know around 25% of Norway (Source: http://www.nationsencyclopedia.com/economies/Europe/Norway.html but compared to game stores versus what is considered urban area I think it is higher) would have to spend up to 3-4 hours driving to the nearest town to buy a game, spending well around 100 bucks on gas alone for it then 100 more for the game, while now 99,8% (Source: http://itpro.no/art/12997.html ) now has access to broadband and can buy&download the game from services like steam?.. and you don't have to worry about the CD there either :o!
Devs really need to wake up from the self-centered hole they have dug T_T
All Wolferey's Comments