Draginol Draginol

PC Games need to deliver the goods to compete!

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PC Games need to deliver the goods to compete!

Don't blame pirates for PC game sales decline

http://www.totalgaming.net
from JoeUser Forums

This article from "Elf-Inside" about his experiences with games and with Stardock really underscores where the PC game industry needs to go. He has a really good analogy:

When I buy a pizza, I expect to get a pizza. I expect it with the toppings I order, and I expect it to be delivered promptly. By calling Domino's or Papa John's, I've contractually agreed to pay for a pizza when it arrives. But if the deliverman shows up 2 hours late, with cold pizza, with Anchovies instead of Peperoni, then, no, I'm not going to pay for that. The problem with typical game publishers, is they expect you to eat that pizza, and be happy for it. You paid for hot pepperoni, and got cold anchovies, but you have no recourse.

Which is so true. It is also one of the reasons why I think the console market is really starting to eat the PC's lunch. I've been outright hostile to consoles for years but even I find myself starting to buy console games. Why? Because they work out of the box. I don't have to "Wait for the first patch" to play the games.

And PC games have a perfect storm of bad habits:

  • First, I am expected to devote hundreds of megabytes to them. Okay, I can live with that.
  • But then they expect me to keep the CD in the drive.
  • And then I usually have to keep track of a little tiny paper serial number (usually taped to the back of the CD jacket).
  • And all that so that I can play a game that needs a couple of patches to play.

And when the PC sales go down, what's the reported reason? Piracy of course.  Yea, it's piracy. Sure. In my experience of writing games, it's not pirates ripping us off of our hard earned money, it's been publishers.  The tale of Galactic Civilizations is very similar to the tale of Swamp Castle from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

The other developers told me I was daft to write a space based strategy game for OS/2! So I wrote Galactic Civilizations for OS/2. I was a college student back then so I couldn't afford to get it into the stores. So a publisher called Advanced Idea Machines "published" it. They never paid us royalties and disappeared soon after. Since I had no money, I couldn't afford a lawyer at the time.

So I got smart. Stardock would publish the OS/2 sequel Galactic Civilizations II.  So we made the game, manufactured the boxes, took care of all the marketing and getting it into the stores.  And just to be safe, we had two distributors. One called Micro Central and the other one called Blue Orchards.  Both went went out of business owing us hundreds of thousands of dollars.

That particular incident nearly wiped out Stardock.

But no matter, we recovered. We clawed our way back up and made it into the Windows market.  We decided to make a Windows version and we decided to work with a well known publisher on it (Strategy First). This time everything would go perfectly...

Well, that was a year and a half ago and we're still waiting for royalty payments on most of their sales.  But this time, we had an out -- direct electronic sales. People were able to buy the game directly from us and download the game.

So don't talk to me about piracy. It's not the pirates that have ripped us off of hundreds of thousands in lost royalties. It's been "Real businesses" doing that thank you very much.  The position of royalty eating parasite has already been taken.

It's the demographic of people who allegedly do all this pirating that's been paying our bills. People with Internet connections who download games. They pay my salary. They are my overlord now.  So I hope you can excuse me if I don't lose sleep at night that some 15 year old might have downloaded my game while some executive at a company (or former company) is sailing on their boat paid for by my hard work.  The software pirate can go to jail on a felony, the business executive who doesn't pay royalties gets off the hook.

So yea, tell me again how I need to put some dongle or whatever on my game to keep 15 year olds from pirating? When our contract with publishers forces them to wear a shock collar that I can press a button to shock them if royalties aren't paid on time then we'll talk about forcing customers to deal with massive copy protection. But it's not the pirates I worry about.

I'm sure that Galactic Civilizations is pirated somewhere.  But I highly doubt it's pirated in significant quantities.  I know it sold over 100,000 copies out there. But people didn't pirate it much. Why? Because we didn't force them to pirate it.  We didn't make someone have to create a CD crack so that they could play it on their laptop on the plane where the CD drive is replaced with an extra battery.  We didn't make them have to download "patches" to get the game working.  The version of Galactic Civilizations that won Editor's Choice Awards from most of the major PC game publications was the 1.0 version out of the box.  And we encouraged people to pay their hard earned dollars for the game by giving them value by putting out updates after release. We put out a bunch of free updates that added tons of features. A BonusPak, a free expansion pack.  Heck, GalCiv 1.21 is due out this week!  You want to fight piracy, don't give people a reason to pirate.

In fairness, the retail version of The Political Machine will have a CD check. However, the electronic version from TotalGaming.net will not and users of the boxed version will be able to forgo the CD check after January 1, 2005 as part of our compromise with our publisher. A win-win since the main problem with CD checks is losing the CD or damaging it in the long term and it satisfies the publisher's concern over "0 day warez" sites (though it'll still get pirated I'm sure).

I think that's a major reason consoles are starting to really crush the PC game market.  People are getting fed up. They're getting a cold pizza and being told to lump it. It doesn't have to bet that way.

For example, The Political Machine comes out in August.  We plan to have a free update available for it on the first week that adds some new features and extra goodies. There will be "bug" fixes but they'll likely be bugs no one would run into. And we'll put out updates as regularly as Ubi Soft will let us (unlike with GalCiv, The Political Machine updates have to go through Ubi Soft's outstanding QA department).

We don't do this because we're nice. We do it because it is good business.  If the competing technology (consoles) can't be updated with new stuff after release, then you should exploit that advantage.  And that means add new features, not use the Internet to supply updates that finish the game!

I'm not against copy protection schemes on the PC because I'm some sort of flower child developer. I'm against them because they're bad business. They discourage people from buying PC games in the first place.  Once you make someone have to hunt down a CD crack, you've set them on the path of pirating the whole game and future games.

That's what I hope to see TotalGaming.net prevent.  Make it a no-brainer for someone to purchase games electronically by keeping costs reasonable and make using the games they've purchased easy and convenient.  After all, it's their pizza, deliver it to them as they want and they'll support you with future orders.

322,459 views 115 replies
Reply #76 from JoeUser Forums Top
CD keys like SECU-ROM are not secure now, nor have they ever been. Online CD keys are not secure now nor have they ever been. These are simple facts of life.

We have long tried to convince sales executives of that fact, but EVERY TIME some jerkoff salesman from one of these "secure cd key" places comes and convinces these executives that typically have the technical knowledge of a bowl of cheese otherwise. No matter HOW much we would insist that the best they would get out of a CDkey would be 2 days after the game hit the streets, they insisted on believing what they wanted to believe.

And we would email links of where they could download our game's executable 1-3 days after release. We would link FTP sites to them with the full unlocked versions, and etc etc etc.

But see, sales executives get convinced by people SMARTER than they are with fancy words about how "our encryption was created by a flux capacitor and is totally unbreakable". They BUY that crap because they are clueless. Sales execs have about as much common sense when it comes to the realities of technology as a mentally deficient sperm whale.

BUT HERE IS THE GOOD NEWS! Spending unnecessary money on worthless CDkey encryption keeps the cost of your product high so publishers don't have to eat that cost.... YOU do. Oh and not only YOU, but it comes out of the COGs (cost of goods) and costs developers money too! Oh, and it can slow your game down by up to 30% since products like SECU-ROM check the CD so often. THIRTY PERCENT. That is why a compay like Epic removes their CD key, they patch their game and improve the hell out of their game's performance, and look like heroes (I don't blame them one bit byt the way, it's a genius idea). So who wins with CD keys? Only the CDkey manufacturing people and the publishers. EVERYONE else gets the shaft.
Reply #77 from JoeUser Forums Top
I'm a 37 year old professional. I own 5 consoles and buy $1000 worth of games each year. I've bought one PC game in the past 3 years. I would buy more PC games if they worked. The last one that I bought was Neverwinter Nights. It was a very good game, but it forced me to become a pirate in order to play it with my wife over my home network. After reading this article I bookmarked TotalGaming.net, I don't know if they will bring me back to the PC gaming market, but I think we need to reward developers who are trying to serve their customers well.

E
CursorFX - Customize your Windows cursor
Reply #78 from JoeUser Forums Top
Everyone here who loves Brad's post so much, go and put your money where your mouth is. Buy a Drengin (now Total Gaming.net) subscription and stick it to those publishers. I did.
Reply #80 from JoeUser Forums Top
Yeah he is pretty misguided. It has, and always will be, more difficult to develop for the PC because of the myriad of hardware/software configurations you need to account for. Plus, there are plenty of other reason why PC gaming is on the decline including the high cost in keeping hardware up-to-date for comps, the massive userbase for console games (far greater than PC games), and the shift in the industry as a whole to bring in new consumers (more women, more mass-market, etc...). They're no longer catering to the hardcore anymore guys - that's a fact. The margin on most games is crap - it's a hit driven industry and the only thing keeping game publishers afloat are the top few titles that sell tons of units. Everything else is a losing investment. Work on the publishing side, crunch the numbers like I have and you'll see. It's true.
Reply #82 from JoeUser Forums Top
When it comes to innovation, I definitely agree that it is in short supply. But we have to ask ourselves what degree of innovation are we demanding of developers. Sure there haven't been any kind of genre defining innovations like we had with the advent of the FPS, but if that's what you're expecting then more often than not, you'll be disappointed. If you just want a solid game that's fun to play, and offers you a few weeks worth of gameplay(or more given multiplayer capabilities), then you'll be far more satisfied. Perhaps these titles don't come along as often as they used to, but let's face it, our standards have been driven ever higher by those very innovations. Back in the days of the NES, Metroid was quite possibly my most satisfying experience with video gaming. Now, if we were to get a game which offered us no direction or instruction of any kind, which had no story to speak of, and relied on a combination of horrible confusion and outstanding ignorance of purpose to enhance its difficulty, it would likely recieve very little recommendation, save from Tommy Tallarico and his ilk.
If you want a unique and singular gaming experience, I wouldn't hold your breath. But if you're willing to take enjoyment where it's available, look around a little bit, go with developer's you can rely on whose games you've enjoyed in the past.
Case in point, Halo 2 is due to come out in the coming months, and from what I've seen, the only thing that could ruin that game is a failed attempt at innovation. The Halo was a great game. Yes I want improvement, but not when it affects the core of the game.
Reply #83 from JoeUser Forums Top
Awesome insights. Amazing to hear someone else say EXACTLY what my friend and I have been saying to each other for YEARS!
Reply #84 from JoeUser Forums Top
I agree completely. And as far as pirating goes (for the music and regular software industry as well) if given the choice between having to pay for something, and not having it, many people would simply not have it. For instance, I *own* most every Need for Speed game. They are great games, but I, and many other "pirates" dont have the games budget to pay for all of them. If the only way to have them was to pay for it, I simply would not have them.
Reply #86 from JoeUser Forums Top
Well I don't agree that much. I think there are great games out there and great innovation by smaller and larger companies. When I was 18 and working at McDonalds I had about $20 of spending money each month which I usually bought a music cd with. Napster wasn't around back then. That left me nothing to buy games with and a lot of free time so I pirated them all. Then when I got a job as a computer programmer (making web games no less) I was making enough money that it wasn't worth the time and effort to pirate anything so I just bought it instead.

I still suspect most of the pirating that goes on is done by kids with no money. $60 is too much for anybody to spend on entertainment unless you are making decent coin. I think games need to be the same price as DVD's to offset piracy because then college students don't go into sticker shock and have unrealistic expectations of quality because of it.

And don't give me any crap about pirating ethics. It's wrong and always will be wrong. I did it too and I was wrong then as well. There are plenty of review sites out there if you want to know if it's good or not.
Reply #87 from JoeUser Forums Top
You are a moron. It's obvious you don't know anything about business.

Ubi Soft? Are you kidding? Their Montreal QA department are incompetent. Their managers in both the USA and Paris are complete fools. Their marketing VP in the USA, Tony Kee is a punk.

You discount the piracy issue so I know for a fact that you are complete sod.

Of course console products work better, there is only one hardware standard that the developers need to code to whereas the PC had plenty of combinations and permutations.

It's obvious from your lineage of games and experiences that you are a complete moron.

Reply #88 from JoeUser Forums Top
"You are a moron. It's obvious you don't know anything about business."

Oh yeah, Brad just magically built a multi-million dollar company without having a clue.

Don't any intelligent people ever follow the link to RTFA? Sod off, trolls--go back to first-posting and flame-baiting on slashdot where you belong.
Reply #89 from JoeUser Forums Top
Wow, really well written, and explained points across this article, one of the best in this genre of topic.. After working with and playing a ton of games, mods, even doing some of my own for games in the past, you have it dead on the head.
Seems so many people look at the initial cost, and previous software releases from the same company to define how they have developed the game, and its code, updates and all. Much like the pizza, ( i was a pizza driver so this was perfect )
if you suck and cant deliver, you lost customers. If you Rock, have it on time, in a reasonable manner, at least, and arent too non-user-friendly, you can have clients for life.. Very few of the companies really have the best reputation all the time, so I hope and forsee your idea/concept of delivery works out for the best, for both client, and developer, as well as that ever pressing dollar count.
Reply #90 from JoeUser Forums Top
Brad,

While we don't always agree in our politics, I must say that you have really enlightened me about the gaming industry, and I was especially interested by your experience with Strategy First, as it puts some of the other stories that I've read/heard about them in the past 2 years into perspective.
Reply #91 from JoeUser Forums Top
unfortunate, Draginol, that you were another one of the developers drawn in by Strat First....their botched handling of Strike Fighters: Project 1 (not to mention some poor management on the part of the dev, imo) virtually sunk the title right out of the gate (Strat First actually released the preview code as if it were a full-fledged title to WalMart).

As an article in PCGamer I read years ago stated: we as consumers need to show the publishers that we're smart consumers - don't buy titles when they first come out on the shelf (at least not until we've returned to the days when you COULD buy a new game and be reasonably certain that it would work if you followed the directions), if it doesn't work - RETURN IT. Only when releasing an unfinished title starts COSTING the publisher more than they make by doing so will we start seeing them begin to allow the devs the time they need to complete their testing. It'd be nice to return to the days where 1.0 MEANT 1.0 and not .910.


While the titles you're currently offering aren't ones I'd be interested in, I'll keep watching TotalGaming.net in hopes of seeing some that do...I'd rather support (worthy) developers directly than continue to grease the palms that have been so happily ripping me off over the last 6 or so years....

My two cents worth...
Reply #92 from JoeUser Forums Top

While we don't always agree in our politics, I must say that you have really enlightened me about the gaming industry, and I was especially interested by your experience with Strategy First, as it puts some of the other stories that I've read/heard about them in the past 2 years into perspective.

One quick comment on politics, I'm actually not that political, I just magnify my views and post on them to help keep discussion on them going. I'd much prefer to talk about the latest video card tech or OS techs.

Regarding Strategy First. I should say that I *like* Strategy First but the problem with financially struggling companies is that they can take down good developers with them.  Not too many game developers could afford to absorb 6 digits in missing royalties.

Reply #93 from JoeUser Forums Top
Also : these days it seems Games are produced for the sole reason of pushing sales up ( classy graphics don't make a good game ) . BAck in the "old " days - talking about CBM 64, Spectrum , Amiga days - developers had very little memory and CPU ( and other hardware ) to work with so they had to be very creative indeed . These days - with the advent of incredibly sophisticated hardware - they can opt to produce very attractive graphics with little or no gameplay . I can name a number of games I bought last couple of months which suffered from this ( prime example being Tomb Raider : Angel of Darkness ) .In the old days developers had to make for the lack of sophisticated graphics by superior gameplay . Because the sales-argument is the prime concern for most major companies these days , it's not uncommon for them to push a game - by means of marketing and advertising - very hard and then release it before it's even finished . This is ONE of the reasons why piracy is so common ( the other reason being very obvious : the unwillingness to pay for anything ) .

In this respect an ineternet-games release makes more sense : you can offer a game in its beta-stage and then add all kinds of improvements free of charge for the people who bough a license ( including bug-fixes ) . That way there's no need to "rush " the developers into releasing an unfinished product and the gamers get what they want in the end : a very good game .

Let's face it : most of the games being released today are simply below-par in terms of gameplay ( and are only boasting incredible graphics ) and have no staying power whatsoever . Until this marketing-driven policy is being addressed nothing much will change I'm afraid .

Rik Wessels
Reply #94 from JoeUser Forums Top
Nice. Plus the games you were making then are 50 times funner than the drivel that we have now. Last few monts ive been playing X-com and system shock 2. games i bought, actually two copies of SS2 for multiplayer. Publishers are losing money cause they are making crap.
Reply #95 from JoeUser Forums Top
Amen. A great example of this is Neverwinter Nights. A fantastic game made by a great company, but produced by Atari, who have slapped a POS CD-check on the game. I cannot play the game (and the two sequels I bought) without a no-CD crack. The stupid GD anti-piracy check times out 95% of the time. So I "pirate" a game I frigging own, just so I can play it. How's that for bitter irony?
Reply #96 from JoeUser Forums Top
The Political Machine updates have to go through Ubi Soft's outstanding QA department).

Well, you had me up to here. Are we talking about the same Ubi Soft's outstanding QA department that also aproved the outstanding Far Cry patches that did wonderfully outstanding things like cause the game to completely stop working?
Reply #97 from JoeUser Forums Top
Excellent article! Publishing companies are continually gobbling up these small developers and forming some sort of a uber-PC-monopolization all across the globe? This is going to kill the game industry.

Why, I remember back in the day when I could by an old 8-bit nintendo games on sale for $10. They want me to pay $60 for some of the new titles? Give me a break!? Where do they get off? And, now this subscription craze... where does it end?

On top of that (like mentioned in the article) the games aren't fully completed because of some publishers deadline, and they are just hard to play (always putting in the CD).

I think with the evolution of getting game development tools into the hands of gamers... we are going to see a revolution thats going to buck this coorperate view of gamming. Case in point:

http://www.wildfiregames.com/0ad/

I've been watching these guys for over a year, and I think they have a chance to put out a game that will rival some of the 'big' developers... and its going to be free?!

Look for the future of affordable PC gamming in garage games.

Jurenic
Reply #98 from JoeUser Forums Top
Excellent article. As George Dorn said, you had me up until you said Ubi's QA department was excellent. While they've made some of my favorite, and IMO some of the most innovative games in recent times, and Michel Ancel is my favorite game dev hands down....Their QA and Marketing departments are comprised of the most incompetent fools I've ever laid eyes on.


Beyond Good & Evil, my favorite game of all time, passed of by many as kiddy, developed by my favorite game dev Michel Ancel, had the potential to be a complete blockbuster, sell millions of copies. But Ubi's idiot marketing advisors, decided to make it an 'experiment' to test gaming community strength; the NA Vice Pres for Ubi admitted this. The idea was to release a game with lots of potential, that would get rave reviews, and practically anyone who played would fall in love with.....but give it next to none marketing (2 ads in gaming mags, one mythological TV ad); thus testing gaming community strength, i.e. word of mouth. As anyone with a brain could have told them, with no marketing, released at the same time as PoP: Sands of Time, and XIII, which got lots of marketing, it totally bombed. Because it bombed, they released one official patch for it that makes it compatible with older AMD CPUs, that also seems to trigger bugs, the community managed to make an unofficial patch, and some tools that sort of fixed that shit. So now we're left with an innovative game, a story that was meant in it's creation to continue on into a trilogy of games, unofficial patches (console people are fucked over, no patches for them), and Michel Ancel's masterpiece is left with no plans to be finished.

My advice to you Brad, after this game, avoid Ubisoft like the plague.


A bitter fan
Reply #99 from Stardock Forums Top
I used to purchase at least one game a month back in my high school days. I loved playing the newest real time strategy games, and some others like dungeon keeper. I liked EB and Software ETC's policy of return. I didn't mind when they went to store credit on returns because I usually wanted a game, if I returned it, I got another. Its just that, some games SUCKED, and/or they didn't work with my PC. I do not like buying suck. Some say demo's work, but alot of games do not have demo's, or they are hard to find, or you find out about them too late. or your connection was dial-up in the days of 100M demos, now they are going up to 400M a demo sometimes. Even on a broadband connection that is nothing to sneeze at.

What I am getting at is Things have conspired to make me not buy games anymore unless absofreakinglutely sure that I am going to play this game and like it. And I can't be sure unless I play the game, but if I have to buy it and can't return it, and have no demo, I must read the tips on the box, and/or read other peoples comments, but even then, its not going to tell me if I am going to like the game. I can see why people would pirate the game with my above reasoning, but I do not pirate, mainly cuz im too lazy, and like the network play on most games to fuss with a companies religious efforts to ban pirates from thier networks.

I like only a few publishers anymore, Gas Powered Games with Chris Taylor has my support, Total Anihilation ruled, and Dungeon siege was good while I played it. Philosophy was that people could mod to thier hearts content, and he even put out the expansion pack with the full version of DS with it at a lower price than it originally came out for when the expansion was released. Now That I respect.

used to be that a game was 50bucks on release, EB usually had it 5bucks cheaper than normal retail, so I got it thier, then during the boom years EB was selling them for 39.99 for MOST new releases, which was cool, made me go into the stores to actually look for the games I might want to read the box on. Then come the Bust years in the last 2 or 3, something was altered, the smaller boxes were spose to herald in a new age of cost, lower mainly due to storage space, production costs, etc...but its funny, the price of new games has rebounded back up, to 49-50bucks for MOST new games, some even get rediculous at 55bucks (silly microsoft games)...What affect does this have on me? some people don't think 10bucks is that big a deal, but the marketers have it right, when they go 49.99 instead of 50, its all about perception, I can't afford 50bucks, but 40bucks? sure (shhh dont tell em its 49.99) Now, I don't even bother going into the stores anymore cuz of the return policies AND the raised prices, for what amounts to expansion sets to games that you pay a service fee on (MMORPS/ORFS/ORGS whatever) Shouldn't they give you the expansion for FREE, you are afterall financing thier world with your anual aren't you?

All this rant has one affect on me, one of apathy after awhile, yes I have been playing games for over 15 years now, 20 if you really want to get technical, but I still enjoy, want to enjoy, would LIKE to enjoy a good game every now and then, without having to break the bank, take a roll of the dice to see if it will be good, and not be crapped on by the publishers/producers who think I might be a pirate, so make it quite annoying to even play the game with CD keys, needing CD's to play being just a few...

Sorry for the long winded exposition, but, the finality of it is, I saw a link to this intriguing site (I hate being one of the followers, but I was) from the afformentioned Penny-arcade.com. I said to myself, with just the games listed, I could get my value out of them, even if I played only 1 or 2 of them. Heck I had even purchased one of them awhile back (O.R.B) as I loved Homeworld, and it was sposedly simular (actually quite simular after playing it). Even more value to me was the promise of new games added to the subscription over the coming year. And, the way I figure, if the $50 re-up fee is still kept when I go to renew and the service has maintained what it said it would, then I figure the money would be worth it to stay on for another term to support it.

If there is only one thing that does turn me off a little but, it is the fact that some of these games are a bit dated, if not quite dated. which does not mean that they are any less decent, but, it won't always attract the number of people who want the newest, biggest, best graphics, or other game play etc...
Reply #100 from Stardock Forums Top
Now, I have had an idea in the last while of time. I have thought of in the past, that there are many sites out there who like housing out of production games, because well, you can't get them anymore in any retail channel. Software companies do not like this, bad bad piraters they say. These people hosting the software say 'good good, we save these games from doom and gloom, otherwise, where would they be, in your vaults collecting dust making you nothing ANYWAY'.

Idea expands into the older software arena, and maybe the principles behind this operation are thinking this way too, but to approach (I trademark, patent, and copyright this idea unless prior art exists , so pay me due proceeds) publishers to create an archive of older software coupled with software such as stardock (which seems perfect delivery medium) to be put into the system on specific sunset dates set by the publisher. Publishers should not expect to make a ton of money on such archive, but if setup like the new totalgaming subs, it could be a nice anciliary source of income from games that normally wouldn't be produced and made any money off of. Course sunset dates would be a tricky thing, and some publishers would get greedy of course, but games 3-4 years out of print (except those pesky blizzard titles) generally have no shelf life, heck, even ones 1 or 2 years are generally forgotten by marketters...

I assume of course the company like stardock would need to employ some coders to keep the games up to date (to a point) on the new graphics and audio, or at least tweak things so they dont crash. But I think most people could still install a good game of dungeon keeper, or Total Anihilation right?

Price the system right for an Annual membership, or split it up into monthlies that are a little more over the long haul...

Such a repository of old games depending on the library size, and number of publishers could get my 20bucks a month, or 99bucks a year sub for games the publishers dont even make anymore...