Crysis 2

Quote from Bunglo

If a single player demo was put out, I think a lot of the negativity would be gone because a lot more people wouldn't have bought it. Or at least those who still did would have some idea of what they're paying for.

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The 360 accounts for 57% of Crysis 2's sales, with the PS3 taking 29% and the PC raking in a miserable 14%.

but even if pc gamers didn't buy it, not much would be lost. i posted that pic earlier with 20,000 people downloading the game on pirate bay (i wonder how many more on private trackers and other torrent sites, not to mention the warez group releases on the file hosts like rapidshare, megaupload and so on), so we're already in a state where i would estimate 50% of people who have played the game on PC haven't actually bought it.

what difference does it really make if some people who probably stole the game anyway are disapointed?

Quote from Rick_D

but even if pc gamers didn't buy it, not much would be lost. i posted that pic earlier with 20,000 people downloading the game on pirate bay (i wonder how many more on private trackers and other torrent sites, not to mention the warez group releases on the file hosts like rapidshare, megaupload and so on), so we're already in a state where i would estimate 50% of people who have played the game on PC haven't actually bought it.

what difference does it really make if some people who probably stole the game anyway are disapointed?

That's a really super fucking terrible attitude. Christ, dude. A less adult person would wish bad luck on you and yours over that shit.

Quote from Rick_D

The 360 accounts for 57% of Crysis 2's sales, with the PS3 taking 29% and the PC raking in a miserable 14%.

but even if pc gamers didn't buy it, not much would be lost. i posted that pic earlier with 20,000 people downloading the game on pirate bay (i wonder how many more on private trackers and other torrent sites, not to mention the warez group releases on the file hosts like rapidshare, megaupload and so on), so we're already in a state where i would estimate 50% of people who have played the game on PC haven't actually bought it.

what difference does it really make if some people who probably stole the game anyway are disapointed?

Sales figures rarely if at all put out digital download stats. PC gamers seem to be going with the digital buy more and more as time goes on, such as I did with Crysis 2. Crysis 2 was at the top of the Steam sellers weeks before it's release and even after, now being bumped down to second place by Portal 2. It's more than 14%, how much I don't know but I'd presume there's still a good amount of PC sales that are unaccounted for in such sales figures.

Onto your point though, I think the better question would be, "what difference does it make if the PC gamers who bought the game are disappointed?" If developers only focus on the pirates for PC development and don't give a shit that I just shelled out $60 for their work, fine, I wont bother playing the game. If a developer takes that stance, they don't care one way or another about my satisfaction, I'm not even a customer to them anymore at that point, even if I buy their games. They no longer want my business, that's what that type of philosophy says to me.

Listen to your fans, get them involved in the development of a game as much as you can, reveal your progress to them as much as possible so they can be your best critics, show them that you actually give a damn about who you're making the game for and that in and of itself is usually enough incentive for a PC gamer to buy your game. PC gamers are die-hard, dedicated, bastards when it comes to their games, it's just harder to please us and thank God for it because how else would the industry push itself to innovate if we all just accepted the same game every year (I'm looking at you COD.)

Pirating sucks, you can't get rid of it and you can't really improve it either. Focus on PC pirating, stop making PC games, move to consoles only. Realize that console pirating is a growing problem and then what are you going to do? Pirating is an inevitability, to use it as an excuse to ignore you PC supporters is to shoot your self in the foot. Not saying Crytek is doing that or that's what you're insinuating, but it doesn't make sense to ignore those who bought the game because of pirates.

Quote from Rick_D

Do those sales figures include Steam or any other digital distribution service?

Because this (Destructoid) is the source of the quote, and they quote this (videogamer.com? Is that a well know site?) as their source, then they quote the "All Formats All Prices UK video game chart", which I think is this, but I don't see the platform number breakdown.

I'm pretty certain most devs/publishers don't care to mention steam sales for the PC. I reckon they just see the PC as a pirate ship and ignore any sales at all made through digital distribution as those sales were probably pirated copies anyway somehow. Dirty dirty pirates. But don't worry though meights, DICE hasn't forgotten about its loyal fanbase. Notch even likes piracy - how about that.

Quote from SamCom

Do those sales figures include Steam or any other digital distribution service?

Because this (Destructoid) is the source of the quote, and they quote this (videogamer.com? Is that a well know site?) as their source, then they quote the "All Formats All Prices UK video game chart", which I think is this, but I don't see the platform number breakdown.

Not that it matters because dismissing 14% of the people that bought the game because "they probably pirated it anyway" is just abhorrent.

Quote from Jetsetlemming

Do those sales figures include Steam or any other digital distribution service?

Because this (Destructoid) is the source of the quote, and they quote this (videogamer.com? Is that a well know site?) as their source, then they quote the "All Formats All Prices UK video game chart", which I think is this, but I don't see the platform number breakdown.

Not that it matters because dismissing 14% of the people that bought the game because "they probably pirated it anyway" is just abhorrent.

calm down, or you'll get your panties all in a twist.

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Listen to your fans, get them involved in the development of a game as much as you can, reveal your progress to them as much as possible so they can be your best critics, show them that you actually give a damn about who you're making the game for and that in and of itself is usually enough incentive for a PC gamer to buy your game. PC gamers are die-hard, dedicated, bastards when it comes to their games, it's just harder to please us and thank God for it because how else would the industry push itself to innovate if we all just accepted the same game every year (I'm looking at you COD.)

but Valve don't do that, they have never shown progress or asked their community for feedback on a game halfway through.

when cod:mw2 was coming out everyone was super excited about it, then they released some details about the game and PC gamers shit themselves with rage.

in fact nobody does that. so why should that be a reason to do it now?

there were plenty of screenshots and trailers released during development, the xbox360 exclusive mp beta came out a long time before the release, and there was even a closed mp beta months before the official one.

there was lots of opportunity for feedback.

i remember working on mods and showing our stuff to people, then having weeks of complaining and nitpicking about everything. i am not too surprised that there's not more involvement from the community, because you can't treat them like adults, as is shown here when someone wished bad luck on my family and I because I ventured an opinion.

no thanks.

Quote from Rick_D

calm down, or you'll get your panties all in a twist.

Says the person getting angry and dismissing a huge amount of people over a fact of life for the industry??

The truth of the matter is that until PC as a whole (retail + digital) begins to rake in as many millions of copies sold as the consoles do by themselves, you will never see a studio focusing an entire team on making the PC game feature everything the hardcore PC market (which btw is only a fraction of all these sales) wishes they would have in their games.

So 14%, 20%, 25% doesn't matter diddly squat. Start moving 3 million copies on EACH platform then we can start talking. Until that comes, and it never will for AAA hardcore games anymore, you will continue to see PC games being ports of their console counterpart. That can, in some lucky cases, entail having lots of variable, or a DoF change, and plenty of options, but the game will remain designed for consoles in the first place.

You cannot, in this day and age, justify creating a team of even as low as 20 people to make a PC version of a AAA game that would be so radically different than the console version. In the previous generation, you saw the last examples when production costs were 10% what they are now. Not anymore.

Quote from Furyo

The truth of the matter is that until PC as a whole (retail + digital) begins to rake in as many millions of copies sold as the consoles do by themselves, you will never see a studio focusing an entire team on making the PC game feature everything the hardcore PC market (which btw is only a fraction of all these sales) wishes they would have in their games.So 14%, 20%, 25% doesn't matter diddly squat. Start moving 3 million copies on EACH platform then we can start talking. Until that comes, and it never will for AAA hardcore games anymore, you will continue to see PC games being ports of their console counterpart. That can, in some lucky cases, entail having lots of variable, or a DoF change, and plenty of options, but the game will remain designed for consoles in the first place.

You cannot, in this day and age, justify creating a team of even as low as 20 people to make a PC version of a AAA game that would be so radically different than the console version. In the previous generation, you saw the last examples when production costs were 10% what they are now. Not anymore.

A lot of those same hardcore PC guys are fine with non-AAA games, though. I know I am. I don't even have a PC good enough to run Crysis 2 on Extreme, my video card cost $60 on sale

Anyway it's kind of a weird argument/discussion to have, because of what you might define as the features "everything the hardcore PC market wishes they could have". Frequently, that's "good controls, quicksave, options, stable". The "Just don't be RE4" school of thought. Even more frequently, that's "have the game be released at all (I want to play Red Read Revolver )". There really isn't that much of a difference for games made for the PC specifically from multiplatform games, just usability tweaks. I doubt you could find a single person on the internet to claim Half-life 2 is better than Episode 2, despite the former's PC exclusive development and the latter's multi-platform release. If you look past stupid stuff like "oh this one specific texture out of hundreds is lower resolution", the main issues I've heard with Crysis 2 are a) No quicksave, b) different from previous game in series, c) No security in online multiplayer, d) $60. B is kind of a marketing issue. D is out of anybody's control that would care about people complaining about it. A and C are totally fixable things that would make a lot of people happy. As far as the actual gameplay goes, I haven't read any real complaints about how it "plays like a console game" or something except for COD comparisons, which given the multiplayer model....

A lot of PC gamers use consoles as a scapegoat for gameplay elements they don't like because the console focus and focus on regenerating health, cover systems, over the shoulder cameras, and terrible port jobs came in unison to their videogames. But we can easily be more specific than that and find real issues that can't and shouldn't be handwaved away.

Quote from Jetsetlemming

A lot of those same hardcore PC guys are fine with non-AAA games, though. I know I am. I don't even have a PC good enough to run Crysis 2 on Extreme, my video card cost $60 on sale

Anyway it's kind of a weird argument/discussion to have, because of what you might define as the features "everything the hardcore PC market wishes they could have". Frequently, that's "good controls, quicksave, options, stable". The "Just don't be RE4" school of thought. Even more frequently, that's "have the game be released at all (I want to play Red Read Revolver )". There really isn't that much of a difference for games made for the PC specifically from multiplatform games, just usability tweaks. I doubt you could find a single person on the internet to claim Half-life 2 is better than Episode 2, despite the former's PC exclusive development and the latter's multi-platform release. If you look past stupid stuff like "oh this one specific texture out of hundreds is lower resolution", the main issues I've heard with Crysis 2 are a) No quicksave, b) different from previous game in series, c) No security in online multiplayer, d) $60. B is kind of a marketing issue. D is out of anybody's control that would care about people complaining about it. A and C are totally fixable things that would make a lot of people happy. As far as the actual gameplay goes, I haven't read any real complaints about how it "plays like a console game" or something except for COD comparisons, which given the multiplayer model....

A lot of PC gamers use consoles as a scapegoat for gameplay elements they don't like because the console focus and focus on regenerating health, cover systems, over the shoulder cameras, and terrible port jobs came in unison to their videogames. But we can easily be more specific than that and find real issues that can't and shouldn't be handwaved away.

Quite to the contrary, and only game developers would understand the ramifications behind these subjects. A) Quicksave is a very touchy subject. It's not just "save and load at any time, you're already doing it in some locations, just enable it all the time". Quicksave requires ALL entities in the world to be toggable in a few frames. That means saving all current states of everything that's active. AI, particles, logic, etc etc. This takes ENORMOUS memory space and a LOT of CPU time. Guess what. Consoles don't have much to go around on top of trying to run a game like Crysis 2 on them. The reason save is only at very specific checkpoints on console games is precisely because designers control where it happens and they can unload as much as possible before saving. Otherwise the console crashes out of memory and you don't pass certification by Microsoft and Sony.

B) is the hardest thing to do. Not different from previous games? Really? How many sequels have failed because they were "too much like the previous game". The reality is that consoles could not run Crysis 1 with the visual quality of the PC game. No way. Not this generation. So your decision is either change the design to something that can be run on consoles, don't go on consoles at all, or reduce the quality a LOT to try and fit it onto consoles. If you know anything about Crytek, you know two of these options are not even debatable.

C) Totally agreed, a MP release with such huge open flaws is an epic fail. I hope Crytek can fix that before long.

D) Publishers are trying to maximize their earnings on games they feel are strong enough to warrant it. MW2 started the trend of 60 dollars games, others have followed and more will come. They do it because they can, and if people aren't willing to pay for that, they simply wait and that's no reason to be complaining at all. Can't pay for it, don't get it. Period. Any self entitlement from any gamer to any developer because "they put the studio where it is by buying their product" goes right out the window if you know anything about the gaming industry. Publishers put the studios where they are, customers put the publishers where they are.

I think you missed his point on A, furyo, just because the console can't have quicksave doesn't mean the PC can't.

Quote from Jetsetlemming

Says the person getting angry and dismissing a huge amount of people over a fact of life for the industry??

that doesn't make a lot of sense, and besides, i am not angry at all.

Quote from Vilham

I think you missed his point on A, furyo, just because the console can't have quicksave doesn't mean the PC can't.

doesn't make sense. if the system doesn't work well with quicksaves then it doesn't work well with quicksaves, it has nothing to do with console vs pc.

Quote from Rick_D

doesn't make sense. if the system doesn't work well with quicksaves then it doesn't work well with quicksaves, it has nothing to do with console vs pc.

wot? Did you read furyos comment at all?

Quote from Vilham

doesn't make sense. if the system doesn't work well with quicksaves then it doesn't work well with quicksaves, it has nothing to do with console vs pc.

wot? Did you read furyos comment at all?

it's got very little to do with performance on the PC, but rather the fact that maintaining multiple code bases (one for each platform) is a monstrous task, save and load is the lowest it goes for game code and it's very risky to develop different systems for each platform. The key to developing a multi platform game is to not separate too many features until the very end, once it's basically done. That is assuming you invest equal budgets to each platform, 33% ...

The best "console to pc ports" I've seen take the finished console game and adjust it to fit the pc market (think mass effect) but for obvious reasons Crytek couldn't do that Rest assured we are supporting PC with unique features in the coming months.

I think allot of people here who have not worked on a multi platform game won't understand that it's another league all together in terms of a design and technical challenges, it's very easy to criticize when all you look at is one platform.

Lets not hope your boss gets any ideas and announces "Ok guys, we're porting Crysis 2 to the 3DS and iPhone as well, we'll start on monday."

Quote from 2d-chris

doesn't make sense. if the system doesn't work well with quicksaves then it doesn't work well with quicksaves, it has nothing to do with console vs pc.

wot? Did you read furyos comment at all?

it's got very little to do with performance on the PC, but rather the fact that maintaining multiple code bases (one for each platform) is a monstrous task, save and load is the lowest it goes for game code and it's very risky to develop different systems for each platform. The key to developing a multi platform game is to not separate too many features until the very end, once it's basically done. That is assuming you invest equal budgets to each platform, 33% ...

The best "console to pc ports" I've seen take the finished console game and adjust it to fit the pc market (think mass effect) but for obvious reasons Crytek couldn't do that Rest assured we are supporting PC with unique features in the coming months.

I think allot of people here who have not worked on a multi platform game won't understand that it's another league all together in terms of a design and technical challenges, it's very easy to criticize when all you look at is one platform.

I have worked on a multi-platform game, admittedly we decide to scrap a PC version entirely. But as a new franchise our fan base didn't come from the PC, so we weren't screwing anyone by significantly changing a game system.

Thinking about it our game did basically quick save as it autosaved at many points (it was an open world game) and saved as much data as we felt necessary without breaking the gameplay.

Quote from Vilham

I think you missed his point on A, furyo, just because the console can't have quicksave doesn't mean the PC can't.

You missed my earlier point that PC games of multiplatform games will remain ports of the console versions since it costs too much money to maintain different assets and code bases for all.

Quote from Vilham

I have worked on a multi-platform game, admittedly we decide to scrap a PC version entirely. But as a new franchise our fan base didn't come from the PC, so we weren't screwing anyone by significantly changing a game system.Thinking about it our game did basically quick save as it autosaved at many points (it was an open world game) and saved as much data as we felt necessary without breaking the gameplay.

So you're saying that since we were a PC only game in 2007 we need to stick to these roots only until the end of time? The hardcore AAA PC market was still ok in 2007. This is 2011 now.

If your point is that the game shouldn't have been called Crysis then, just try and pitch a brand new IP concept to a publisher that doesn't even own you. Good luck getting any funding.