Nice article on PC Piracy

[Ivo]

This is probably known article, but I hadn't read it and it is interesting.

http://draginol.joeuser.com/article/303 ... _PC_Gaming

Ivo.

[xraydash]

Thanks, that was an interesting read. But if it all comes down to consumers dictating the market, where does artistry come into play? Obviously it must but by failing to mention it he makes it sound like it's not a factor at all. I would have liked for him to have addressed how his company balances those considerations. After all, Sins of a Solar Empire is an original title and not the umpteenth reiteration of an existing IP.

[Ivo]

Thanks, that was an interesting read. But if it all comes down to consumers dictating the market, where does artistry come into play? Obviously it must but by failing to mention it he makes it sound like it's not a factor at all. I would have liked for him to have addressed how his company balances those considerations. After all, Sins of a Solar Empire is an original title and not the umpteenth reiteration of an existing IP.

I thought it was fairly intuitive what he meant, but maybe I'm wrong.
Blizzard and Valve are successful not just in making good games but also because they get the sales (in Blizzard case, through a combination of making players think "Blizzard deserves not being pirated" or perhaps mostly because of multiplayer).
I found this article on reading about Crytek being very upset with high piracy for Crysis.

It seemed to me the author was mostly discussing commercial considerations... Artistic / Indie (not Indy ) games have their importance, but is somewhat a separate issue. I think it is fair to say those should be exclusively done by smaller teams considering the inherent financial risks. I believe we (as game players) don't want 1 more good artistic game if it comes at the cost of losing a studio to bankruptcy, and it's obvious by now it's not enough for a game to be a good game to get high sales (and if it cost a lot to make because it was from a large team...).

Artistic movies don't typically have state of the art special FX like "Summer blockbusters" do, for a reason. Although the movies / games analogy is often overused, movies are the only medium I can think of that can work as entertainment and art form, where the art is created by smaller or larger teams - instead of basically by one artist as many other art mediums function.

Ivo.

[xraydash]

I guess I wasn't so clear. I understand what his point is. I would just like to hear more about this issue he brings up, which is how to make a good game (the "artistry" I mentioned above) with commercial potential:

So when I make a game, I focus on making games that I think will be the most profitable. As a gamer, I like most games. I love Bioshock. I think the Orange Box is one of the best gaming deals ever. I love Company of Heroes and Oblivion was captivating. My two favorite games of all time are Civilization (I, II, III, and IV) and Total Annihilation. And I won't even get into the hours lost in WoW. Heck, I even like The Sims.

So when it comes time to make a game, I don't have a hard time thinking of a game I'd like to play. The hard part is coming up with a game that we can actually make that will be profitable. And that means looking at the market as a business not about trying to be "cool".

In other words- With the limits they place upon themselves, how do they go about making a game that their customer base (or anyone) will want to play? Obviously there has to be some compromises. The purpose of the article wasn't to address those considerations but it is something I personally would be interested in learning more about.

[Ivo]

I think what he basically does is only slightly compromises the "quality" of the game they decide to make - they seem to compromise more on the choice of what games they can make. As far as I see it, for example, they won't do FPSs, as those get pirated a lot and practically "require" hi-tech graphics - they also obviously compromise on graphics, so FPSs are a double no-go.

Ivo.

[jackspicer]

"Blaming piracy is easy" yep

[Ivo]

I was thinking about something. Many PC games are going online only, or have big parts of them online, where they can control piracy.
Then I had a realization: many gamers still play single player only (clearly, all these people pirating games on the PC are mostly doing that?). Others play multi player only.

What about selling sp only and mp only versions of a game? If the sp only version was rather cheap (and had less draconian copy protection) it may actually sway more people to buy them. People don't like paying for stuff that they don't use (whereas the problem with piracy is many people don't mind not paying for stuff that they do use).

Ivo.