They Wonder Why People Don't Make PC Games Any More

geez. i didnt say "ok folks. priate what ever you want. never pay for anything" you absolutly didnt get my point. this whole discussion is useless because each side ignores what ever the other says. there will be no debating on a possible solution to make all people happy.

keys to a solution:

- make production less expensive to make a price drop

- work with less people to lower coordination costs

- give the people a way to honor what should be honored

- punish those who ignore player needs or testing before the actual production, since they might create shit

- destroy all game magazines since they are "paid" for their ratings

- include the customer into the production so the developer notices in early stages wether his product wins or fails.

- support user generated content. a game a user creates will be as close to his expectations as it could possibly get. it might only please him, but who cares if anybody can make changes as he wants.

- punish all people that do not coop with these rules.

i think lots of you people still live in the year 2000 where game is product noone sees before its released or previewed. even the previews are being made like 2-3 months before a release. so there wont be any big changes. game flaws will be in the game. no matter what happens.

bottom line:

make games that people want or better: let people make the games they want.

... and piracy possibly will be lowered. there will always be some people who cant afford or buy games because they are assholes or just dont have the money.

since it fits in here so well:

[Blocked Image: http://img85.imageshack.us/img85/3732/piracykb0.jpg]

Games in the UK aren't really overpriced in my opinion. PC games are much cheaper here than console games; for example, a new PC game is £25-£35 while a new console game is often £40-£50. I think £35 is a perfectly acceptable price to pay for a game considering a DVD or book is only £10-£15 less in many cases and it lasts much longer. Console games are admittedly a bit expensive, but it's how they make back the costs of giving you well over a thousand pounds worth of hardware for £300-£400.

I'm guessing most arguments about overpricing come from countries where the laws might push the prices up, but I can't really get involved with that. $65 seems fine to me, although I know some countries like India get raped on prices. In those cases piracy is probably more acceptable because the people couldn't afford to buy them anyway (while in Europe/US they can -- they just choose not to).

Game quality is obviously a valid reason to not buy it, but in those cases you should just not play it rather than see it as a justification for pirating it. If a game gets shit reviews, has a shit demo, or just generally looks a bit shit, you're under no obligation to play it. Just move past it, and by not playing it you'll hopefully discourage more from being made.

Games on the PC sell really badly in general at the moment, much less than they do on consoles, so from the publishers' perspectives all their games sell badly. How are they meant to know which are good, and how are they meant to be convinced it's worth investing loads into a great PC exclusive when it's ultimately going to sell pretty badly anyway because of people who've been habitually warezing for years? Remember, it's the sales figures at the launch of a game that largely determine its success. If they're bad, which is what the 'pirate it and then buy it if I like it' mentality causes, it basically says to the publisher "People don't want more games like this" -- even if it's great!

I see the point you're trying to make about how people might pirate less if the games were better, but in all honesty I don't think they would. People will always get away with as much as they can get away with -- just look at the music industry, where a lot of people have entire collections of music they love but have never paid a penny for. And music is priced incredibly cheaply, so there's even less excuse for it than with games! IMO the 'if it's good they will buy' it argument is false.

The only way to stop piracy is to make it difficult for people. BioShock did this in a way that didn't really affect anybody who bought the game, but effectively stopped the piracy for a few weeks and thus those people dying to play it bought it rather than doing the usual "Oh I'll just get it off BitTorrent tonight because I want to play this game sooooo much and can't bear to wait!". It's just like how even though music is very cheap and samples almost always exist of each track on an album, if people can get away with just getting the whole thing for free in high-quality off BitTorrent, they will. Sure, some might do that then buy it later, but most won't The only way to stop it is to deny both of them that luxury.

I just hate the whole PC piracy mentality in general. The platform really is going to shit, and I think the gamers aren't as willing to take as much of the blame for it as they should. There's a reason consoles continue to get loads of great games while the PC just gets ports and shitty games, and I believe piracy sits squarely in the middle of that reason.

I started by trying to quote lots of people and making rational counter-arguments to their points, but it simply got too long, so I decided to just jump in and shoot from the hip. So let me start of with this:

If you pirate games, you're a fucking dipshit. Period. No arguing. Man up, save some cash, and buy your games. If you're short on funds, trade games with friends so you don't have to buy everything. If you're not short on money, and you're just being cheap, then you can go screw yourself. If you don't like that opinion, that's fine. You're still a fucking idiot, so I'm not going to lose sleep over it.

If you pirate games for the PC, you're just shooting yourself in the foot. Barely anybody wants to make PC games anymore, despite the fact that we develop on them. You ever wonder about that? It's already a small market, because you rely on people having good hardware, but then it shrinks even more because piracy is such a huge problem on PC. You know for every one copy you're selling, another 2 or 3 people are getting it through piracy. PC game sales (except subscription based games) are tanking, and piracy just keeps pushing that bar lower. That leaves us, the devs, with 2 options: ditch PC development or sign on with Windows Live/EA Line/Ubi.net/etc to have some sort of secure log on/player tracking to make sure that players have a legit copy. You think it's annoying signing into that to get in to MP, it's going to get to the point that you'll have to do it for SP as well if things don't turn around. There is just zero trust left in the PC market from developers. So go ahead, keep pirating. Fuck yourself over. Have a good ride.

And trust me, I get that you don't want to spend a huge chunk of change on a bad game, but come on, you're not dumb people. You some how managed to build a state of the art gaming computer and have access to the internet. Surely you can read reviews, watch gameplay footage, or find a message board (hey, like this one), IRC room, or blog where you can ask people what they think of whatever game you're interested in. You can throw out all the "game reviews are paid for" arguments you want. Same thing goes for movie, tv, and music critics. Cry me a river. Turns out the internet is a big place. Surely you can find somebody out there who can give you advice you trust, even if it's just some dude with a livejournal.

And my last comment is this: A lot of us do get paid based on sales royalties. I know that GBX is lucky in that respect, but I know from a lot of other people on this board that they get additional bonuses, raises, etc based on sales as well. So in a lot of cases, you're taking money out of our pockets. I don't say that to be greedy. I say that because I live in the real world and I have real bills to pay like everybody else. Yes, I can afford to buy nice things like a good TV and a comfy couch, but I live in a modest 2 room apartment, and turn my A/C and heat off during the day to keep my bills low. I know people on this forum with wives, and kids, and mortgages, and college debts, and all kinds of things they have to take care of. When our games don't sell, we make less. When our games don't sell, retailers buy less of our next game. When our games don't sell, our companies cut back. So yeah, when I read shit about people proudly pirating games, and acting like it doesn't hurt anybody here. I get mad.

My 2 cents.

If something is "to expensive" you still don´t go and steal it. You just don´t buy it until you can afford it.

And the "why should I pay if it sucks"-attitude is just retaded, but Im to tired to write a wall of text now anyways

I've been playing pirated games like from 1998 because my father gave me free copies of games but I never knew that, they were pirated/ripped.

"A law is valuable not because it is law, but because there is right in it."

we had that same discussion loads of times. pirating games isnt right yet if you dont care its one of the easiest things to do (like frie said most games arent really secure enough). as for now the only real solution (for multiplayer games) seems to be something like steam where you have to register your copy online with a valid key.

on pirating a game as a demo replacement: i dont think its a valid reason. it's not like people would go buy the game once they figure out its fun. usually they finish it and if they remember it was nice they'll buy it with some bargain deal.

additionally there are so many videos and trailers of games available on the net to give a proper insight into how much fun a game can be (i never played cod4 but judging by the videos i'd buy it right now if it'd run on my machine). on the other hand i have to admit that demos sometimes don't show enough of the game. sometimes they are a bit too short (probably to keep filesize down?). maybe if there was more playtime and some cliffhanger it'd convince people to go to the store and buy it.

the guys at infinity ward have to remember though that an unknown number of people who pirated the game probably wouldnt have bought it at all if they werent able to get it for free (which obviously still doesnt make it any better).

Quote from killertomato

Algor, im not picking any fights here. calm down, and read the whole discussion before your start throwing mud at somebody.

this coming from you after what you said to me in the fistful of frags thread is amazing, yet you call others hypocrits.

with that said, i used to pirate games as well some.... what, 9 years ago? when i was 13 and practically never had any money. it was also when we (our household) got internet for the first time and naturally, i'd try and take advantage of it. however, the numbers (which at any rate was below 10 games at most) soon rocketed as good games got few and far inbetween, because i for one was modding for half life, but also because a few years later i was thrown into a mmorpg craze along with a few friends of mine (i had aids before it was cool etc.).

i continued pirating games with my last two ever being max payne 2 and vice city somewhere around 2003-4 i reckon. pretty much after that half life 2 came, and i started modding again; and have been buying games pretty much ever since. now that i work at a gamestop, i pretty much get games at a near free discount so paying games is turning out to be a delight rather than a burden. present day i have about 5 or so games i still have to play from past and present lying on my table, and i've purchased around 16-20 since i started working (late sept.).

my point is that i think i am very stereotypical in my childhood, but i came out of it. i reckon there are many people with different effects on them that more or less need to take advantage of warezing because otherwise they cannot get to play those games. while i dont consider myself lucky to be where i am, i know that i am in a position of choice whether to buy or warez. and in my right mind i always decide which games to buy and which games not to buy or warez at all. but for others, let's take an example:

this past season, with about 10 major releases, how many of you want to bet that the amount of warez has been extreme due to poor marketing skills from the different sales departments? we've had a bland summer where alot of games could have been out, or games could have been postponed to the new year, yet all these different companies decided to release games more or less a day apart. now i am not blaming the publishers so much for the warezing (in the end, the person at the end of the line still has to make the final decision whether to buy or not), but honestly they could have expected something like that.

dont coppy that floppy. this was like 15 years ago and there is still a pc game market. oh and btw. those who claim that warezing is evil and shit all the way through: i cant imagine you got your first software licenses legally. i wonder how many people here got legal copies of 3dMax Maya Zbrush Photoshop Mudbox or what ever. and i am talking of those licenses you bought for your self and not those you use at work. so better think twice.

Unsurprised by these findings, kind of worries me that if this gets worse (and it most likely will), titles for the PC are going to go into decline. I think it's fair enough if you want to download a game to try it out for a bit to see if it's any good because sometimes demos are either so shit or contain some of the dullest moments from the full-game that you never quite know what to expect. Then you either buy the proper article or you delete the game from your hard-drive, there's no excuse for piracy here, the whole argument about downloaded music doesn't even come into this either.

as far as downloaded music goes, there are major record labels that have surrendered more or less, removing whatever copy protection that was on their products before. there's even a small record company in denmark that encourages people to pirate their music.

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":3rwgrrle]Totally agree, most of us that used Max or Maya in the beginning, and actually got a professional work with it, remember that you earn that knowledge with a pirated copy of the program! Because, yeah, a 30 day trial is not enough, and I hope nobody comes telling me there is Student licenses, even those are VERY expensive, at least for my pocket it was. And now that one is working with it, as a professional one has to buy a legal license! It's a cicle...

Autodesk is the leader of the 3D apps market because of the warez.

As well as Microsoft is for the SO market.

There's a big difference. Autodesk doesn't make their money from individual user purchases. They make it from bulk purchases by software companies and educational institutions. Games make their profit from the individual.

i dont think the argument that soon there will be no more pc games because theres too much piracy is valid. it may be a less atractive market, but it stays attractive, whatever threats are made. as long as there is profit, there will be a market, dont worry. if you take a look at the statistics of the gamesmarket you see there is no need to worry about the moneyflow. it keeps even growing. i think the real thing gameartists should worry about is the way the money is devided within the market.

take a look at the average age of the gamer that actually buys your games.. it's 37! teenagers and students dont have a steady income. should they just not play at all? how can you expect people to buy stuff if the pricing is so ridicoulesly high that it has become unaffordable to most youngsters..? isnt that stealing from the public? it sure feels that way. and as an artist, should you not be more concerned how the game is conceived within the public then how much you will profit from it?

i wish all of you get rich doing the things you love but it's funny to see how art suddenly seems so dependent on money.

maybe this is why i love mods so much.. theres stil that love of creativity for creativity's sake.

@KT: Try make a living from developing mods and see how that goes. You can't live from creativity and passion alone and even if you work for a studio - I think Fletch's post said everything about game dev salaries.

I know what you mean with the games prices, I also think they are too expensive. 65 (or even 69) € for a 360 game, that's way too fucking much. 50-55 € for a new PC game, could be cheaper too, but what makes you believe it is fair to steal the games for people who don't earn much (as in students). I am a student too and when I see a 50 year old guy driving a Porsche, I don't go to the car dealer and steal one, because "hey, the car is so expensive, I can never afford it! That`s why I am allowed to take it for free!". Sorry bro, that doesn't make sense.

I don't think the games are so expensive for no reason, development has become increasingly expensive over the past years. Maybe developers should scale down, invest less in technological features and other extras to push down the price? I think so too, but you better make sure your game comes across as fun in the first 3 seconds people see it, because otherwise their reaction will be nothing but "looks like shit".

@ Mr Hessi: I think I better understand where you are coming from now, I sense lots of frustration about recent game releases and the industry as of today in your posts, but none of this justifies piracy in my opinion. When you say you want developers to make games that "people want to play", don't you mean games that "you want to play"? You say studios should be punished for things like "too complex, confusing menus" - that's pretty harsh to base a game or an entire studio on a menu.

@Peris: I also wouldn't let the argument count that Crysis is just graphics and no gameplay innovation, looking at its genre competition, but that's beside the point. I agree that the target group of the game, especially considering its steep hardware requirements, is probably prone to download their games illegally, but is that Crytek's fault? Or Epic's, or IW's, for making hardware demanding games? If those games don't sell enough because people can't afford the hardware - fair enough, but if people buy a 2000 $ PC but don't spend 50 $ on the game, something's going wrong.

Although this discussion is creating lots of heat and people might feel offended by other people's opinions, I think it's interesting to talk about it.

All media has always had piracy and I'm sceptical about the impact it has on actual sales. There's no way every pirated copy is a lost sale, there's no financial loss so people will pirate anything, even if they wouldn't normally buy it. I also believe that just because illegal copies are very accessible, people won't purchase what they can. There's absolutely no quality guarantee on bootlegs and you're typically getting an inferior product. In the case of games you probably can't update a bootleg or play online.

The games industry, including PC is massive and I'm sure it's only getting bigger. Eventually it may even eclipse the movie and music industries. To me it seems like a lot of creative roles aren't getting their fair share of that money. It seems like the income of a typical game related artist doesn't acurately reflect the level of technical skill, creativity and training (either formal and self taugt) that is required to perform the job. You guys are being robbed by someone and it's not the pirates.

This is just my 2cents and I have nothing to support my argument other than pure speculation.

/runs and hides

Frie: it sure is! and i agree with you. the principles of pirating are just wrong, no matter how you look at it.. reading my post now makes me realise it might have been a little shortsighted.

The PC games market has become critically damaged though, while the console market which has little in the way of warez is absolutely flourishing. Like it or not, the PC games platform is suffering. I personally believe warez is at the core of that, both with regards to quality of the games and their sales.

Everyone can deny it all they like, but then you might as well spit in the face of developers like Fletch who have put across their side of the story.

The simple fact is that there's no excuse for piracy unless you're a kid, and even then it's questionable (seeing as kids have to wait/etc for console games as copies are so relatively hard to come by). I think just about every angle of the argument has been covered so far in this thread so there's little more we can do other than just continue living by our own beliefs.

I won't be picking up any pirated games, and nor will those who are on the 'it is wrong' side of the fence. If you want to continue warezing then go ahead. Just don't even think about moaning on IRC/forums like so many people did when more games do what BioShock do and ship with relatively aggressive activation systems (although it didn't negatively affect about 99% of people who bought it).

The only two games I pirated were Quake 3 and UT because ffs they are not availble in germany and I was 12 at that time and couldn't just use amazon.com to get it. I bought UT2004 for 50 bucks afterwards and since I do modding I decided to not pirate anymore aswell. But I see alot of truth in the fact that you are going to be frustrated by most games nowadays because most fail to deliever in the end. To get onto FrieChamp's example with the Porsche. Most Demos and Gameplay Footages are like driving the damn cool car till the 3rd gear and then it will just block. You buy the Porsche (Game), the 4th Gear is still good and 5 and 6 just suck as well as the reverse gear (MP/SP Part not in the demo).

I didn't buy Crysis yet and neither did I buy Unreal 3 yet. I downloaded the Demos and as much as they are fun I have no clue on what's going on after two MP-Levels in UT3 (why are the other 14 levels different, any more good MP-Modes) or if the real part of the storytelling on the long run will convience me in Crysis. They just lack to transport the message why I should buy these games. If I had have pirated those games (which I didn't - I want to point out that again) I would have had the chance to look into these aspects like I do have the chance to test out every game mode, every weapon and every map at a freeweekend of TF2 or DoD:S and I can play every mod and map for that game aswell (Crysis Demo even crashed for a replacing autoexec.cfg for some shader testing).

And last but now the most important point: I think that it is with intent by some game developers to demolish the image of the PC-Versions. I can't help but think like this if I play the third console-port in a row which tells me to "Press the Start-Button" or will allow me splitscreen co-op if I buy a f*cking gamepad for some extra bucks. Even worse is trying to put cameras in pre-set positions which may work with a gamepad where the console interprets a joystick up still as running forward but it doesn't work if I play Prince of Persia and fall of a cliff the third time because cam changed and my "W"-Pressing somehow turns the character away from the next enemy to the sure death. That's not so much on piracy and stuff but about the beginning-title "They Wonder Why People Don't Make PC Games Any More" - it's because they don't want to. They have to do because they still hope for some sells but they don't do because they are willing. Infact I think that's one of the reasons Valve's titles still sell extremely well on PC - not only Steam. They sell because they have proven the PC-Gamers they will get a game that doesn't try to turn your keyboard into a grabberstick and like hessi said allows you to modify the game later (SDKs, Mods, etc.) and they sell at a fair price (but that is infact depending on steam alot)

my point fo creating your own games goes far beyond what we got today. eve nthe whole SDK is much too complex. you need like 6 months or years to make something decent and fun. a lot of the technical stuff should be put underneath a nice interface allowing less experienced people to make what ever they want. also another way to drop down prices: sell a game in different versions. for exmaple in some games i wouldnt play like 50% of the multiplayer maps. so why pay for those? there should be something like a 5$ deal. get the game for 5$ and customize it with the content you want or buy all the stuff for the regular 50$ or what ever. in this context opening a market to Hobbyists to sell their work would be genious. like "make a map publish it on our platform and for each 1000th download of your map you get a gift (like a mappack or what ever). the money from buying would go to the game developer." new strategies such as those are needed. this would help improve games a lot. thats what i was talking about user generated content.

i didnt play second life but all i know is that this was a successfull game that looked like shit. but who seriously cares on graphics, if the game runs on any computer and you can make things you couldnt do in aother games before.

if the visuals are more important than the game you shouldnt be in the game industry my very friend.