Instant:

Erm. If I read your post right, you're preaching to the choir... I was trying to tell Campaigner that I think Mr. Fawkner perhaps made a mistake in attributing his extra sales to adding CP, since GC2 is also getting extra sales (and at launch date, for that matter) *without* adding CP.

Peace & Luv, Liz

Oh, might have misread something then, or miscommunicated it.
I'll blame it on spending 5 hours in Blackwing Lair today, additional 30 minutes on Onyxia, and topping it off with not having slept since... I cant remember, Friday. :-]
WOW is hard work.

There is one side of this SarForce debacle that does bare thinking about and it goes in hand with the big publisher ego and their business models. It goes something like this:-

Publisher a uses developer b to make game c. Now developer b is a small independant developer working on their first title.

Publisher a has a reputation for using Starforce and other draconian anti-piracy mesures. Developer b produce a AAA game so SF is slapped onto it by publisher a to 'protect' their investment.

The games buying public boycot the game because of SF and for no other reason. Publisher a cannot accept that it is SF that is effecting sales of game c, so it has tobe the game. Either the developer is penalised by publisher a for not producing the game that they (Publisher a ) thought that they would and move on to developer x for the next project.

Developer b still has to pay the excess of the developement costs back to publisher a, this bankrupts developer b.

The other thing that happens is that publisher a then switches it's developement over to the consoles because, the custopmer (as a rule) has to buy the game to be able to play it therefor maximising profits. Then pc developement of games gradually dies because there is not the quality games, that the players want. So publisher a stops/minimalises developement of games for the pc because it is not a profitable platform.

The thing is though that publisher a does not accept that the fault of the above is their fault, it is just a declining market.

For that Stardock deserve all the sucsess that they get. The relasionship between a supplier and it's constomer is a two way interaction, built on mutual trust and respect. For that reason I bought 2 copies of GC2 one electronic and one hard copy.

Those companies that treat ther clients (us) as criminals or stupid (by pushing out the same game just tarted up for full price) deserve to go under, it is just a shame the amount of developers that will go under with them.

I think the problem is when people see piracy as a global issue, when it's actually a regional issue. In certain places, MOST of the copies of a game being sold are manufactured by pirates. In certain places, MOST of the market either can't afford a legitimate copy or are just used to pirating. I think that's how StarForce sees everybody everywhere.

That said, StarForce punishes legitimate buyers, and feels okay doing that because it assumes MOST people everywhere are pirates. Their general PR strategy seems to bear this out, "What? People are complaining we're destroying their CD drives? Most people are pirates, so those people must be pirates. GRR! StarForce II will fire the CD from the computer and remove their testicles, let's see what the pirates think of THAT!"

Okay so maybe a bit of an exaggeration. But the moral problem is that they're punishing legitimate buyers. If even one legitimate buyer has a problem because of a copy-protection scheme, then that's a bad scheme. StarForce doesn't see it that way at all.

And what the hell happened to our RIGHT to make a legal backup copy of our software for our own personal use? Companies who employ Starforce and other copy protection schemes are deciding that most people who want their game won't pay for it(even if they could), and would rather pirate it; they're assuming most people are bad people, essentially, so they're restricting everybody's rights to use their software as they wish(making personal backups, playing without the CD in the drive, not having constant cd-checks that hurt performance etc).

Cynicism by and large does nothing but breed the very thing the cynic is afraid of. StarDock went with the optimistic route of figuring if they make a good game then lots of people will buy it, and that's what happened.

edit: And just to make sure, note I didn't say anything about people pirating it. There may be very few pirated copies, there may be tons, 1% of installed copies may be pirated or 99.9% may be pirated. For all we know there's a Sectoid satellite up in space beaming out copies to all corners of the universe and less than one-millionth of one-percent of installed copies are legitimate copies... But umm... Galactic Civilizations got really good sales, here on Earth. And that's what matters. And tommorow the Sectoid president's going to open a commchannel and ask for the next patch in exchange for warp drive technology. Hey it could happen. Let's be optimists here!

I believe that GalCiv II has the serial that is required for updates to thank for some of its sales as many people tries to get most stuff for free but in order to get a better product they'll have to buy this game.

And back in the day of Warlords II & III, cd-burners and empty discs were expensive. And most people didn't know how to get free games since there didn't exist any P2P software. Today, any 10-year old can download DC++, UTorrent or some other client and download every game he wants.


I split this computer era in three parts.

Settler days
The day of computers up to the 486 as the "settler" time where things have just started development and were hard to use (DOS, BBS, 28.8K modems)

Wildwest
the day of the Pentium up to Windows Vista as the wild west where there were some lawenforcement (copyprotections, early DRM & MPAA and RIAA) but if you're a cunning computer user you can still do almost whatever you want.

Todays USA
Windows Vista with early TCPA and forward. This is today were cops are patrolling everywhere (Fritz chips in the cpus which will monitor everything you do!) and will fine you if you break a rule or throw you in jail if you do something worse (up- or downloading copyrighted materials).

Not really relevant but I wanted to say it I think it's a great comparsion.

Steve Fawkner ...(post)....

I was a BIG fan of the Warlord series (It was the only cool title for Mac people at a certain point in time) and in fact ended up purchasing several versions of the same title for different systems that I had over a couple years.

However for the last version of it simply lost its "pizzazz" for me and I elected to stop supporting the title. The DCM system was one of the things that clinched it for me.

Anyway, if you read his post more closely he suggests that maybe it is time to reconsider things. I hope GC2 is the reason for this sediment.

Well, with VISTA and TCPA its gonna be even harder to be a Customer rather than a Consumer.
You're even gonna loose control of what you can do on your computer. (As in not being able to install any driver you want)

@Jeysie: So all they know by those numbers is that, if you have one game 'released' into the wild, the sequel (if the original was good) will sell better due to all the free advertisement they got from the first version.

I dont think Copy Restriction had anything to do with the increased sales of version 2. Since it was also cracked and released, and if people managed to get the crack for version 1, I'm sure that -- 2 years after (guesstimate) there are a lot more people who are able to get a warezed version of the game.

Diablo / Starcraft had a good feature on the game disc, you could "spawn" a copy that could be used for multiplayer/demo purposes, I'm sure that got them some extra sales. -- > Good Demo ->> More Sales ---> NO Starforce

I wonder if a big part of Gal Civ 2's sales isn't the cost factor.

See, I didn't plan on buying Gal Civ 2. However, I bought a Drengin.net subscription a year ago to play GalCiv 1 and The Political Machine. I paid something like $80 to get access to a small library of a dozen games, of which I actually played about 4. Even if most of those games were not what I considered great (Celtic Kings, I'm looking at you), it FELT like a great deal. As a side note, the game I got the most mileage of was the Disciples 2 Ultimate Edition, since I got a job in foreign parts with a really old computer, and that was the only game that would run on it.

Then, fast forward nearly a year, and I get an email saying I can download Gal Civ 2. I've gotten more gameplay out of those $80 than I have from any other gaming dollars I've spent.

Value for money is worth something.

Instant:

*goes a bit cross-eyed in utter confusion*

Again, uh, why are you addressing this to me? I already said I don't think adding CP had anything to do with the increased Warlords sales, and I never offered an opinion either way on the increased GC2 sales. Are you sure you didn't intend to address Campaigner, perhaps?

Peace & Luv, Liz

I think i'm just agreeing with you... I'd have to go back in time to check what I was thinking when I wrote it, of course.


I wrote your name since you brought up the subject.. although I could have written something like "Thats Right

Instant:

Ahh. Perhaps it was just the way you worded it... or more possibly it was lack of sleep on my part. The end result of spring cleaning is great, but the process is a bit wearying.

Peace & Luv, Liz