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

[Sentura]

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.

[Erratic]

":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.

[FrieChamp]

@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.

[m8nkey]

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.

[Thrik]

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).

[e-freak]

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)

[hessi]

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.

[hessi]

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.

[Erratic]

Second Life is a game?

[dux]

No it's a pile of crap.

[Warby]

i read a lot of interesting posts on this thread each and everyone of them would stimulate me to make a precise respond to said post but that would result in a massive quote session that i like many other s here i want to avoid. so instead i am gonna make a bunch of bold statements:

- game reviews can not be trusted ! we all know why !

- game demos are too short to tell you if you are gonna like the "BIG PICTURE" also they always only show you the best level of the game which i consider down right spoiling ! ( however game devs would be dumb not to put the best level in there)

- 90%+ of the people who pirate games on the pc would not buy said games if there was a flawless copy-protection in place. with such a system you would only marginally up your sales but definitely cut down substantially on your player base/audience. i should really digg out that warren spector quote here

-any kind of copy protection that cuts down just the slightest bit of convenience from the legal buyer PUSHES piracy: unskipable FBI warnings ? 10 minute online activation request that time out 9 out of 10 tries ? 20 page registration formulas to fill out .... yeah right ! hell i even find entering a cd key totally unacceptable ! ... the worst i ever had was with my legit copy of splinter cell chaos theory where the starforce copy protection would just not work with 50% of the dvd drives out there i had one of those ... i payed full price for the game and my system was totally beyond the specified specs so i really feel like i have a right to play it and it just wouldn't work ... however what i did instead of downloading a copy is i abandoned the splinter cell franchise all together for good ! that hurt ubi soft more in the long run ... think about it !

so this may sound like i am all out pro piracy ... you couldn't be further form the truth. i buy all my games legit since i have a job and i even went out of my way to buy all the good games i pirated before that like:

- half life 1

- hitman

- quake 1 2 and 3

- unreal tournament

- gta 3

- mdk 2

- prince of persia sands of time

- syndicate

- syndicate wars

- dungeon keeper 2

- starcraft

i still download games on occasion like right now i am playing a pirated copy of fallout 1 and 2 even though i have legit copys laying around. the reason is i plain simply don't want the german voice acting and writing

here is what i suggest for all the pc devs out there:

+ spend less or better yet no money on copy protection it will only push piracy

+ cater less to teenagers and other social groups who cant afford to buy your games but to people who can afford to buy em and probably don't even know how to pirate something (the casual devs get this straight)

+ wider hardware range support please ! both in the blizzard sense of allowing low mid range pcs to play with good fps but also have more QA for different hardware and configurations!

+ have longer demos that show both the worst and the best level of your game or better yet the second worst and second best don't spoil too much !

+ every pc nowadays is online at all times anyway so embrace stuff like steam to bypass registration formulas and online activations just require the pc to be online while playing.

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now applications are a completely different kind of hat:

i like everyone here got started with pirated copys ... by now i am legit

but in the mean time have have made several companies buy at least 3xmaya 4xphotoshop and 1xmax for me in order to work.

now if i had my own floating license for these 3 tools that would be at least 5 less licenses sold

... i don't know but i feel like i owe adobe autodesk and alias wavefront absolutely nothing

i am a fucking money making machine for them !

[KoKo5oVaR]

Just to bring some numbers.. i was able to put my eyes on an Ubisoft's market analyze from last year

70% of the players are playing on PC

In terms of sells, the PC is only 11% of the market

[⌐■_■]

Warby's post made sense.