DRM vs. Unfinished Games 462
Rod Cousens is the CEO of Codemasters, and he recently spoke with CVG about how he thinks DRM is the wrong way to fight piracy. Instead, he suggests that the games industry increase its reliance on downloadable content and microtransactions. Quoting:
"The video games industry has to learn to operate in a different way. My answer is for us as publishers to actually sell unfinished games — and to offer the consumer multiple micro-payments to buy elements of the full experience. That would create an offering that is affordable at retail — but over a period of time may also generate more revenue for the publishers to reinvest in our games. If these games are pirated, those who get their hands on them won't be able to complete the experience. There will be technology, coding aspects, that will come to bear that will unlock some aspects. Some people will want them and some won't. When it comes to piracy, I think you have to make the experience the answer to the issue — rather than respond the other way round and risk damaging that experience for the user."
hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:hmm (Score:4, Insightful)
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Hence the "somrt sort of" and "thing" and quotes around "DRM."
The idea is the same; somehow make it so that you can't play the full version without paying for it...
In this case, it's easily cracked typically and isn't really all that annoying and you can move it around, etc. I don't mind the registration code thing at all actually.
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The idea is the same; somehow make it so that you can't play the full version without paying for it...
Except it's not. DRM is about preventing you from copying or using content in ways or on devices that the copyright owner doesn't want you to. It has no relation to having to pay for something as you can stick DRM on content you give away for free and never charge for.
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It does, somewhat, try to prevent you from copying/using the content in ways or on devices that the copyright owner doesn't want you to, though. I am not supposed to give you my registration code.
Now, it doesn't very strictly enforce this, obviously... it's quite weak and keygens are quite readily available... but I would argue that the idea IS the same. I would cede the point that someone else made, that it's doesn't limit it in the same way like encrypted exe's or encrypted cds/dvds.
I guess it depends
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To keep this whole discussion honest, yes it is. A registration code is a form of digital rights management. While more recent forms have been much more controversial, type in the wrong code and see if you get to play the game.
Re:hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
To keep this whole discussion honest, yes it is. A registration code is a form of digital rights management. While more recent forms have been much more controversial, type in the wrong code and see if you get to play the game.
Not really.
You buy a code, and that code unlocks your game, forever and ever, the transaction is finished. It's true you couldn't use the full game before the code, but you hadn't paid for it yet.
The problem with DRM is publishers retaining control on stuff you already paid for, after the fact.
Re:hmm (Score:4, Informative)
Uhhh, WTF?
If I go into a store and see a product hanging on the wall saying "Game X, $10" and I buy it, I PAID FOR IT. If I get home and find out I need to buy a "code" to play this game, I'm pissed.
And that's exactly what happened with some games I bought through a local Office Max. SD cards with some old arcade games for the Palm. Heavily discounted/closeout, like $5, but nothing on the outside said anything about having to buy a code to play anything. I get the games in the Palm, wham, thanks for buying us, here's 10 seconds of demo, now go to this website and get the registration code for $x. Fuckers.
The problem with DRM is publishers retaining control on stuff you already paid for, after the fact.
Yeah, like those games.
Re:hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Without web2.0, the internet, the cloud, dongles, or the latest buzzword, doesn't mean it isn't DRM.
The problem with DRM is that it makes using the content a pain. Finding the booklet is a pain. Running steam is a pain. Registering software on each new peice of hardware is a pain. Submitting to a full body search is a pain.
It DRM was painless, for now and forever, then I really wouldn't have a problem with it. Well... I'd argue that the poor need to be able to steal it easily.
Re:hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
You buy a code, and that code unlocks your game, forever and ever, the transaction is finished.
Well, unless you need to reinstall and can't find the code years later. For some reason I could hold on to the installers, but I could never manage to keep track of the documentation. Particularly when it's sold separately, it can be hard to keep track of that information. I remember getting locked out of Lemmings in college after needing to reinstall the OS. It's frustrating to own software but not be able to play it. Same with my old Forgotten Realms games, though in that case I could sometimes fudge it by just guessing E a lot, since it seemed to appear frequently on the code wheel.
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My answer is for us as publishers to actually sell unfinished games
Isn't that what they are already doing? Definitely most MMOs ship in that state.
Re:hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, but MMO's kind of inherently fit that model. Players enter into an MMO expecting the game will grown and change with the needs of the community. As the community grows larger, and develops specific interests in certain gameplay aspects, it is fitting that the developer continue to develop the game to meet that need.
Other games don't necessarily lend themselves to this. As a consumer, I can say that I am nervous that I will wind up paying more money for incremental delivery of content that should have shipped at release.
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Of course, I am the type of person that waits until all expansion packs are released and t
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Except for that little difference that shareware was free. Paying full price and getting half a game is something very different then paying nothing and getting the third of the game as in the case of Doom.
The one thing I don't really get is why there is so much focus on tons of tiny pieces of DLC. I don't want a game to be splintered into a dozen pieces that I then have to buy each on its own. For Mass Effect 2 for example I have no less then seven DLC things that I have to download and install manually on
Re:hmm (Score:4, Insightful)
While I agree that the game shouldn't be splintered, isn't Mass Effect 2 extremely long and in-depth on its own?
It is, but that doesn't stop the "What am I missing?" question from popping up and to find the answer you download all that stuff and install it. Of course, afterwards its easy to say that one could have just ignored it and it would have been fine anyway, but thats a question that isn't easily answered when you haven't yet played the game.
The whole DLC mess simply distracts from the overall experience, instead of having a single well balance experience, you have one with a whole bunch of optional bells and whistles. And finding out how good or bad each whistle is takes time and effort that I would prefer not to waste time on. Having games like Dragon Age: Origins constantly reminding you of the DLC you haven't yet bought of course makes things even worse.
Isn't this just DRM in little pieces? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Maybe I'm naieve or not understanding, but what will stop the pirates from unlocking/breaking/pirating the downloadable content? Aren't you just moving DRM from the front end to the back end?
It will make the life harder for pirates. Every little push helps. Personally I enjoy the easiness that Steam offers.
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It will make the life harder for pirates. Every little push helps. Personally I enjoy the easiness that Steam offers.
Not really. The pirates get off on the challenge of cracking this stuff, and prestige in the community is directly linked to difficulty of the crack and time taken to crack it. This kind of stuff will just get them off even more.
Re:Isn't this just DRM in little pieces? (Score:4, Insightful)
It will make the life harder for pirates. Every little push helps. Personally I enjoy the easiness that Steam offers.
Not really. The pirates get off on the challenge of cracking this stuff, and prestige in the community is directly linked to difficulty of the crack and time taken to crack it. This kind of stuff will just get them off even more.
What pirates are you talking about? Crackers, sure. But most people, the usual pirates, just want free stuff. When it's enough hard and complicated, they just buy the product. The casual users anyway, and that is what matters most to the game developers.
Re:Isn't this just DRM in little pieces? (Score:5, Insightful)
But only one (or a small team of) crackers needs to do the job once and assemble the all the files in one RAR, and then all the "usual pirates" will just pick it on their p2p networks.
Just like Securom: if each person needed to crack it individually, illegal downloads would be non-existent. The problem is that it only needs to be cracked once for all the other to use it easily, by copying a file or whatever.
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The battle isn't in the crack teams' favor these days:
The PS3 has been shown to be 100% secure after the years it has been out.
I believe GeoHot [neowin.net] might disagree with you in that regard
HD satellite is still unbroken.
Really? Which satellite network? BEV is cracked, as is N3 (So Dish) - Google "N3XT"
FairPlay for movies still has not been cracked, and no, using the analog hole or a program like SoundTaxi to "record" the played movie is not a crack. That is a transcoding.
I'm sure the QTFairUse guys would have done it, had not Apple C&D'd them into oblivion.
HDCP has been out for a while, still unbroken.
Really? Are you sure about that [freedom-to-tinker.com]?
Recent iPhones are still not jailbroken.
Really? Ask PlanetBeing [twitpic.com] about that.
Windows 7 activation has yet to have a reliable bypass that doesn't turn the desktop black.
Really? 'cause I'm using This release [thepiratebay.org] (For educational purposes only, of course), and have no black desktop on either x86 and x64. As long as you don't install KB971033 (Which can be blacklisted in Windows Update), y
Re:Isn't this just DRM in little pieces? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not really sure that's true...
I thought of some of the fairly recent games that have had downloadable content...a few spring to mind. Oblivion, Fall Out, Dragon Age, etc.
A quick search on any torrent site will show you distros all packaged together of the game plus downloadable content.
Meanwhile for those of us who did buy the games, you can't move downloadable content around in some cases. For instance in Dragon Age, my copy came with Blood Dragon Armor and Shale. If I resell / lend / etc the game out, nobody else gets access to those without buying them.
Re:Isn't this just DRM in little pieces? (Score:4, Interesting)
Ah yes, Steam. That program that wouldn't let me play Half-Life 2 when my Internet was out. Mind you, I purchased the CD version, installed it from the CDs, and yet Steam felt compelled to not let me play it because it couldn't verify I owned it over the Internet. So I uninstalled Steam and played Half Life 2.
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This is akin to sending an unencrypted, sensitive file over the internet in little pieces... Security by obscurity doesn't increase security at all. It, generally, just makes things more obscure and difficult to follow. This is something that a true hacker would have no problem spending the time to figure out, and would probably, ENJOY doing.
And in turn here in the real adult life people have better things to do than mess around with all kinds of tricks, spend time on it and then think if it really works. Note, I have been on both sides, but then I grew up. Now I enjoy just buying the product with a click of a button, see theres extra value in the product when you actually own it, and I also understand that people making these games wouldn't be making them if everyone were stealing from them like you.
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Now I enjoy just buying the product with a click of a button, see theres extra value in the product when you actually own it, and I also understand that people making these games wouldn't be making them if everyone were stealing from them like you.
You don't own it legally, because you just get a license, if anyone, the public domain owns copyrighted works, and authors have a monopoly on distribution.
If you are referring to the practical aspects of "owning", you don't own stuff that has DRM, because it can be taken away from you at the whims of the publisher. It's more similar to a rental. If you got it as an unauthorised copy, chances are that you get to keep it as long as you like.
Re:Isn't this just DRM in little pieces? (Score:5, Insightful)
First, parent *never* said he downloads stuff illegally - he's pointing out the flaw in the DRM system.
Second, good for you if you don't pirate, but that's irrelevant for the discussion, isn't it? We're discussing how this new system can stop "pirates", not if "pirating" is good or bad.
Illegal downloads exist, regardless of the morality of such actions. We're discussing a new system to stop them. If you're not interested in discussing that, why have you opened the story?
Re:Isn't this just DRM in little pieces? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm okay with Little Pieces of DRM if the game is like Firefox where you buy a stripped product, and then pay micropayments to get various addons. The product would still be "complete" and usable but minus the optional features/sidequests.
What I would Not be okay with is if I was playing Final Fantasy 12 or Zelda Twilight Princess and suddenly a popup says, "If you want to enter the final dungeon, please type in your credit card number. It will be charged $10." That would piss me off.
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What about the approach Ubisoft took in Assassin's Creed 2? Out of 14 Sequences (roughly equivalent to chapters), they shipped with 1-11 and 14. 12 and 13 aren't critical to the plot line, and they wrote around them ("These memories are corrupt, we'll skip to the next non-corrupt memory," which happens to be the final mission). 12 and 13 were later offered as DLC for about $3-4 each.
I played through the game before they were released, and the gap was a little weird, but given that they often skipped a year
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the basic idea is when your installation connects to their servers to download the content, it sends your registration key. They run the same sort of keyservers as do online activation. If the key is burned, it just won't let you download the update.
The "fix" for that of course is to intercept the download off a legitimate installation, and package it such that you can download the update via torrent etc and run it locally to get the new content. But that's a lot more involved than simply shutting off a S
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It seems to be working for Ubisoft. There still aren't a good cracked version of the newest Silent Hunter. The one you see on torrent sites only contain the tutorial. This is almost half an year later now.
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Except then he then details a system that could only be described as DRM.
Except that DRM doesn't mean what you apparently think it does. DRM is about preventing someone from making unauthorized copies or restricting using content on devices the copyright holder doesn't want you to. Having to pay something in order to get access to it is not a DRM scheme.
Please insert coin (Score:5, Funny)
Please insert coin to see the first of them.
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Please insert coin to see the first of them.
I put a quarter into the slot on the side of my iMac a few minutes ago, but nothing's happened yet. Did you get my money, or should I call the help desk?
Re:Please insert coin (Score:4, Funny)
<ducks>
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You idiot! Everyone knows the iMac only accepts bills -- specifically crisp $100s. People like you are the reason vending machines are always broken.
No. (Score:4, Insightful)
No no no no no no no. Microtransactions are NOT the way to go.
There really isn't any solid, fool-proof way to fight piracy. Most DRM schemes make things bad for paying customers, while pirates just play cracked copies that have less problems than the legit versions.
That being said, a $10 drop across the board for new console games would go a long way. $60 is WAY too much for a console game. Sadly, the Humble Indie Bundle proved that on the PC, there isn't much you can do to fight it...offering non-DRM games for a single cent don't even necessarily work.
Standard "only my opinion, no guarantees to work, etc." apply.
Re:No. (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure there is: make software so crappy that nobody wants to pirate it.
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Why not? I get that you don't like it, but I don't understand your reasoning, you just make a flat statement that "microtransactions, they r teh devilz!" I'm genuinely curious, there's no "HA! IN YOUR FACE!" waiting, just curious how you're coming to the conclusion that it won't work.
I'm not certain it'd be effective, but I do see that it might raise the bar for people trying to pirate the games, which might be "enough" of a solution that it d
Re:No. (Score:5, Insightful)
Sadly, the Humble Indie Bundle proved that on the PC, there isn't much you can do to fight it...offering non-DRM games for a single cent don't even necessarily work.
At the same time, the Humble Indie Bundle also showed that there are a lot of people who are willing to pay for something that they could easily pirate. You had DRM-free games being offered in such a way that people could simply pass a link around and everyone could get free downloads, yet they still made over $1 million in sales.
And those people would wouldn't even pay a cent for those games-- do you really think they'd all rush out and buy the game if it were DRMed?
Re:No. (Score:4, Interesting)
I was already thinking about half of what you said:
To prevent piracy, you need to to two things:
1) Produce a decent game, for a decent price, and not lie to and abuse your customers.
2) Ignore the douchebags who don't ever want to pay anything for anything.
If you fail to do #1, you create pirates because people don't want to pay a lot of money for garbage, and don't like being treated like shit. This ties into #2 - if you spend all your time worrying about pirates, and adding DRM and other idiocy, you end up producing more pirates.
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You're right about the Humble Indie Bundle. They only made $1.3 million, that's shit!
You're going to charge me $30 upfront, right? (Score:5, Informative)
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Don't you usually pay $60 for an unfinished game anyways? What's the last game you purchased that didn't require at least 1 or 2 updates to fix things that were broken from the start?
Not really. Here's a few that I'm thinking of off the top of my head I've paid $60 for and are perfectly finished (though some offer extras if you like, but the game itself is still complete): Crackdown 2, Halo 3: ODST, BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger, Super Street Fighter IV, Assassin's Creed II, Splinter Cell: Conviction, God of War III, GRID, Singularity, Uncharted 2, Gears of War 2... All of those for $60 offer a complete package, many of them with free updates and all of them with optional additional c
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One condition (Score:2)
Not too different from shareware / demos (Score:5, Funny)
And okay, so long as the company is up-front about it and prices the add-on content fairly in relation to the additional amount of playtime which it adds and works it in in a way which doesn't disturb the gameplay experience:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/11/6/ [penny-arcade.com]
William
FU - Things are already worse (for consumers)! (Score:3, Insightful)
Companies are considering officially releasing *worse* and *less finished* products?? They call them MMOGs, bub.
I've always hated that, whether through DLC or episodes or... well I put up with DOW and Civ4 releasing expansions but...
Please, god, will someone release a finished game? When's the last time that happened?
8-PP
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Valve has released DLC's and patched TF2 for the last 3-4 years, since it's release. They have added content and maps and tweaked the gameplay. Blizzard has done the same with WoW, as have almost every other game company on the planet in the form of patches. Do you also bitch at them for releasing an "unfinished" game just because they add content later on?
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Please, god, will someone release a finished game? When's the last time that happened?
I happened this year actually, when Torchlight was released by Runic: http://www.torchlightgame.com/ [torchlightgame.com]
This is what a small game should be like. The best $10 I ever spent on a game, hands down. I want more of these type of games. It's just very refined. I don't need the Epic Tale of Games to have fun and Not every game has to be a blockbuster release to make money.
DRM on DLC (Score:2)
As of today, I can't think of a single DLC for any game that is actually worth it. They are almost all just quick cash ins.
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Shivering Isles for Oblivion.
Yep, that totally works in practice (Score:5, Insightful)
Yep, totally worked for Dragon Age, for example. You can't get the DLC if you have a pirated copy of the game, so you definitely can't download giant bundles of all the DLC that can be decrypted and plugged into the game. Said DLC isn't up on torrent sites 2 days after the release.
If you're going to release DLC with micro-payments, don't "punish" pirates by forcing them to also not pay for your DLC.
Only way to really combat piracy is to have an online element that only works with a valid CD key. That won't stop piracy, though; it'll just make it less useful.
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Oh, except that you actually CAN get the pirated DLC for Dragon Age, every bit of it. Check Pirate Bay. I did, and I'm running it. I have a legitimately purchased DVD version of the main game, and a legitimately purchased DVD version of Awakenings, but I flatly refuse to pay for something that is not issued to disk and that will only work if some server says I can run it. Now, if they issue all the DLC to a disk later, I will certainly be happy to purchase it (see Knights of the Nine for Oblivion), but.
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Correct, but you can't use the normal DLC with a pirated copy of the game, but you can use pirated DLC with a pirated copy. So you're "forcing" pirates to also pirate the DLC. The old "Cut off your nose to spite your face" strategy still doesn't work very well for downloaded content.
Heading the wrong direction? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is it that none of these solutions involve making a product that people are happy/willing to pay for to begin with?
It's always about crippling something then fixing it later.
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Why is it that none of these solutions involve making a product that people are happy/willing to pay for to begin with?
Because people show that they are still unwilling to buy something even if it's DRM-free and you can purchase it at any price you want (even as little as a penny)? Just look at how widely shared World of Goo is on torrent sites and it has never had DRM and it has had a number of "pay what you want" sales.
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Because even if YOU are willing to pay for it, there are a lot of freeloaders out there. See Humble Indie Bundle.
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Dear game industry (Score:5, Insightful)
Folks have been telling you this for years, but many of you still don't seem to get it, so I'm going to repeat it yet again. People who don't want to pay to play your games are never going to pay to play your games. Either they'll find a way to play it for free, or they'll go find something else to spend their time on.
The average age of the gamer has been continuously increasing, and a bunch of us who grew up playing games are adults now and still playing. We're out of school, we work for a living, we have some disposable income, and we're willing to spend a portion of it on games. There are more people able, willing, and interested in spending money on video games than ever before. Worry about us more than you worry about the people who aren't interested in paying for your product. You'll never make any money off of them.
Now if the industry has grown itself too fast, or you've let development costs get too high, or whatever you've done to make your businesses unprofitable...well that's your problem, not mine. Blaming it on people who don't want to pay for your product will not get you any sympathy or extra profits. Sorry.
Re:Dear game industry (Score:5, Informative)
You need to reread the snippet you quoted, very carefully this time, and go for comprehension of what was said.
People who don't want to pay to play your games are never going to pay to play your games.
People who want to play the game but are unwilling or unable to pay for it are very much included in the "people who don't want to pay to play" category.
The problem with DRM is that it takes a lot of us who were formerly in the "willing to pay to play" category and, because of the restrictions imposed by draconian DRM solutions, puts us in the "no longer interested in risking spending more time getting the game working than we spend actually playing it" category.
I have not purchased a game in some time (Myst: Uru was my last game purchase), and after having to go out and find and purchase an old DVD player because the game refused to play on a DVD drive capable of burning (lest it be copied, I guess), and dealing with SecuROM and a reinstall of my OS so I could burn music CDs from music I had purchased, and God only knows what other dumbfuckery I've had to cope with over the years, I decided I had had enough of having my system fucked with every time I wanted to spend $60 for a few weeks of entertainment.
I'd love to try a few games out here and there, and my wife and I used to be heavily into puzzle-type games (Myst series, Obsidian, Sanitarium, etc), and I used to enjoy an occasional FPS LANFest, but eventually I decided I pretty much needed a separate computer from the one that did my finances and email so I could reload the OS after each game to wipe out the latest crap introduced by the DRM. And, of course, that meant buying another $175 copy of Windows XP because, guess what? It had DRM too.
I decided bicycling and kayaking sounded like more fun.
Re:Dear game industry (Score:5, Insightful)
You're misunderstanding what I said. Say someone wants to play a game but doesn't want to pay for it, for whatever reason. Maybe they're a kid with no money, maybe they're just a cheap bastard, or maybe they think that by pirating games they're somehow 'sticking it to the man'. Whatever, doesn't matter, they've got three options. They can:
1)Decide to pay for it.
2)Decide to pirate it.
3)Decide to not play it.
If you take away option 2, then that does not force them to choose option 1. I would argue that they're much more likely to take option 3 before they take option 1. Factor in the fact that it's really hard to actually take away option 2, and as a developer/publisher, you're pretty much just throwing money away by trying to take away option 2.
So yeah. Some people are going to play your game without paying for it. Get over it, go worry about something you can actually control, life goes on.
Re:Dear game industry (Score:4, Insightful)
What he is saying is, as a gaming company, you should pay attention to paying gamers like me who will gladly drop a couple hundred dollars a year on entertainment. I have money to give you for great games.. just do that, and sell them to me, and you will have money.
There are more people than just me like this.. SELL TO US
Currently, the game companies do NOT do this. I, and those like me, get a teeny sliver of their attention time and effort, and it shows.
They spend all their time money and effort on people who clearly will never give them a dime.
The parents point is those people wont PAY for games. Your point is those people will PLAY those games.
If you as a game company only have one desire, to not have any pirates play your games, then just don't release software and you will have your wish.
Spending money on pirates to keep them from getting your stuff, just means less money left over to actually make games, which generally translates to crappy and broken games that just dont work.
When I buy a game, I /buy the game/ (Score:5, Insightful)
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Agreed. If the game that comes in the box isn't up to snuff, I'm not going to buy it. Put as many fancy bells and whistles on DLC as you want, I'm not going to see it. Particularly not at first.
You only have one chance to make a first impression.
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While I really enjoyed playing WoW, it cost insane amounts of money in the long run. I assume other MMORPGs are the same way.
I guess there
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Insane amounts of money? 200$ a year is insane amounts of money? (14$ a month*12 month + 34$ a year for each expansion pack(an expansion pack is usually around 50$ and gets released less than once every two years)) for a game that is continually updated with new content. That is less than the cost of 4 new A title games that you will probably spend maybe 20 hours each on. WoW is one of the cheapest forms of entertainment around.
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How does this make any sense? Avoiding games with limited activations is understandable, but a blanket statement that you won't buy games that have microtransactions/DLC just seems strange. Do you not buy games that are part of a series? What about books or movies with sequels? Do you not buy a se
Crystal ball time... (Score:4, Insightful)
Game maker: Just give us five more bucks, and it won't be so crappy.
Gamer: That's a little better, but it's still pretty crappy.
Game maker: Oh! We fixed that. Five more dollars, please?
Gamer: WTF?!?!? There's DRM on this download.
Game maker: Oh yeah. Pirates figured out how to pirate our DLC. Sorry about that. Five more buck and all the female NPCs will be topless.
Gamer: Sweet! Keep the change!
Call a spade a spade (Score:4, Insightful)
This is simply "Demo that costs money, and still has other DRM". When you buy a game, you're buying a demo in which you have to buy the real game after. And in order to tie the download content to the demo you just bought, you need an authentication system. Likely online activation.
The only thing Rod is saying is that game companies should double-dip to ease the DRM impression.
I don't know. (Score:4, Insightful)
How about I buy a game. I install to my home computer, and to my laptop. I have an experience I can complete, and don't have to connect to some server to verify so if I bring my laptop somewhere, lets say to New York City for an extended business trip where the Hotel internet is intermittent at best and my air card won't work because I sandwiched between two high rise buildings, I can still play a game that I bought.
Ok, maybe my circumstances are a bit extraordinary, but I want what I pay for.
It was refreshing to actually buy a game recently (Dragon Age: Origins) and have a complete game to play without having to worry about authenticating to outside servers. I also appreciate that there are expansions that are optional, but there is no wall I will hit leaving me unsatisfied with the original game.
I do play EVE-Online also, and I don't mind the subscription, but I don't just play MMORPG's. There are just certain games that I want that I feel I can put back on the shelf someday with the satisfaction of completing it, and also the option to play the game no matter what my circumstances are. Am I asking too much for my $50?
I guess as an 80's generation gamer, I have different expectations. I still like going to the store (gasp!) to buy games. Hell, if there were still arcades around me, I might even go and drop a few dollars there.
at least civ 5 will be mod open and steam drm that (Score:2)
at least civ 5 will be mod open and steam drm that way better then most of the other drm carp.
There is another model out there that fits this (Score:3, Interesting)
The BOOK publishing industry has had a model similar to this in place for a while, and I would love to see video games follow this. Most of the books I read are parts of a series, so I buy the first book ( the starter ), and then the next books ( DLCs ).
Just like with book publishing, you could do DLC packs with price reductions after they've been out a while.
As long as they deliver value proportional to the cost, I'm good with this.
Oh goodie (Score:2)
Just what gamers are waiting for. Unfinished games. Forget paid beta-testing, now they are going to ship alpha products. Nice engine, where is the content, oh just 10 bucks for another hour worth...
NO THANKS.
And as for it stopping piracy. one word "The Sims 3". Oh okay that is two words and a number.
That game has a horribly overpriced item shop, where you can download inferior custom content that you could just as easily get for free 100% legit, but all the payed content can be found on any filesharing n
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"A few minutes running from place to place" is the worst description of the game you could have ever devised
No, it's a very accurate description of the game.
You start the game, and have to sit through thirty-second animations just to get into the character creation. You create a character and have to sit through about ten minutes of poorly-acted, poorly rendered unskippable cut-scene in order to get to a point where you can actually control your character and make any kind of decision about what's going on. You go to a planet where you spend a minute or so running around before the game goes into another cutscene
Great idea! (Score:2)
That's a great idea. Sell games like the ones we find on the shelves today (ie uncompleted games) for $15-20, and charge an extra $5 or whatever if the user wants to play a single player game for more than 2-3 hours, or another $10-20 for functional multiplayer.
Wait, what? They plan to sell a fraction of the existing games for less, and the 'additional content' may add up to the existing games (which are, more often than not, incomplete/complete crap)? :-|
cut the game price and add on price! (Score:2)
cut the game price and add on price! $40-$50 + $30 is to much.
Option Multiplayer (Score:2, Interesting)
say it all you want (Score:2)
When it comes to piracy, I think you have to make the experience the answer to the issue — rather than respond the other way round and risk damaging that experience for the user."
but the vast majority of publishers still won't get it. But that's one of the most insightful comments I've ever read on the subject.
Re: (Score:2)
Ha! (Score:2)
That's right. Instead of having at least the semblance of a positive retail end-user experience, you sell a game that you know won't provide a good enough experience, then require they go online to get a chance of eventually getting a good game.
Sounds like an invitation to folks to not buy the game while they wait to find out if it is good enough to buy. The folks who torrent it will delete it without finding out if the game would be good, leaving no chance for converted sales. If there's no way to know
Uh, too late (Score:2)
"My answer is for us as publishers to actually sell unfinished games...."
Funny, it seems that the industry has been doing this for at least 10 years already.
It will have the opposite effect (Score:2)
I've pirated several games that I would have otherwise, and quite wanted to pay for, because they wouldn't let me just *buy* the damn thing.
I play video games to escape the constant buy buy buy money money money of the real world. Even with MMOs, you pay your monthly fee and it's done. So if I'm going to play a game, I'm first going to make whatever arrangements necessary so that I can do so without being interrupted by requests for my credit card.
With games that have DLC, my only option is piracy. I have t
torrent (Score:2)
double-dip (Score:5, Insightful)
This is not about getting rid or DRM, this is about the games industry figuring out how they can get more money by double-dipping. We all know that the price of games won't drop even though you now also need to pay residuals to get the full functionality.
Blizzard already trail-blazed that model with WOW and demonstrated that many people are stupid enough to pay full price up-front for a game that also requires monthly subscriptions.
Assuming the game is not fundamentally tied to playing on-line, such as an MMORPG, whats to stop pirates just extracting and distributing the extra downloadable content too (after they've got it once)?.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
WOW didn't trailblaze with that, SWG did
That's probably the most unintentionally funny thing I've read all day. Thanks for that.
SWG wasn't even close to the first multiplayer online game (let alone software) that required a subscription, or a pay-as-you-go model. In the 80s, online services like Q-Link, CompuServe, AOL, and GEnie charged pay-by-the-hour premium to play multiplayer games on top of by-the-minute connection fees in most cases. In the mid 90s, Kesmai, the developer of most of the games avail
Not a hacking solution (Score:2)
But it's a good marketing ploy. I'm not paying for a demo -- say less than an hour of playtime. But I'll pay for a good game and expansion packs. I'll also pay very little for a known few hours of playtime (I would have bought the Doom demo -- it was long enough -- if I'd had my own computer back then...I would have paid $5 or $10 for it). None of this will stop hacking, but it may get me to buy more games.
Sell $10 versions of the games on Steam -- readily downloadable, you can play them as soon as you
Won't bode well with the gaming community... (Score:5, Interesting)
As a member of the gaming community, I have come across a large number of discussions concerning DLC, and the vast majority of gamers I've seen online have been very vocal against this idea. The community as a whole doesn't care what the price of the game is--in this case, a game that would normally retail for $60 could be sold for $30 with DLC making up the other $30--they simply will not support a game that feels unfinished.
Ultimately, the gaming community feels (unrealistically) that video game publishers are trying to milk them for all the money they are worth and that DLC that feels like it should have been included on the disc (or that was included on the disc and then unlocked via purchase) is one of the greatest sins conceivable.
Personally, I think that the gaming community is largely built of alarmists and that these changes wouldn't seriously hamper gaming at all (especially if the retail price was lowered), but the community as a whole simply will not stand for this, and any attempts to roll this out in the near future will fail.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Huh. I don't think you're seeing a representative sample of the gaming community. I think the majority of gamers, even on the PC, are willing to fork over cash for DLC. (Slashdot is not a representative sample, and neither are the modding forums I frequent. Visit some Steam forums, or Fileshack, or pretty much any non-technical gaming forum, and you'll see that the overwhelming opinion is that people are willing to pay for DLC, as long as it's more elaborate than horse armor.
Oh, you'd probably like a so
what about later? (Score:2, Insightful)
already doing this... badly (Score:3, Insightful)
They're already doing this, in the wrong way that they can only be expected to implement it: selling half-finished buggy crap at full price then charging for patches + content that they took out from the original game and calling it "DLC". I'm not against DLC in principle, it has excellent potential IMHO, but rather how it is often being implemented in practice.
Also, I'm not going to buy half a singleplayer game unless I can get the second half as soon as I've completed the first. Just like I don't watch half a movie or read half a book. I get "into" a game and play it a lot, then drop it and maybe have a run around a year or two later. The games that I'll pick up for long sessions with long breaks are few and far between (only one I can think of is Civ).
Multiplayer games however, this could work. I find:
- MP games often come out with too much content for people to get properly into, resulting in a long lead time of people being inexperienced with the levels.
- related to above, many people tend to pick a few favourites and just ignore other maps, even if they're still quite good. These maps may offer more value if introduced when they are adding freshness as the old favourites are getting a bit tired.
- the high initial price puts people off because MP games are "high risk" - good balance is hard to achieve.
- related to above, enjoyment of a MP game isn't only related to the quality of the game itself, but the quantity (and quality) of other players.
Most of the MP games I've got really into have stagnated from lack of fresh content as the game gets "old". Often these games go on for years longer thanks to some good modding, though fan made maps rarely fare so well.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Strangely, Valve has combated this in Team Fortress 2, but Valve hasn't try to monetize it. The latest (11th major) update came out last week with 4 new maps, 4 new Engineer weapons, and 38 new Engineer achievements. This is the last of
Prince of Persia: Epilogue (Score:3, Insightful)
They're already pulling this shit. The new Price of Persia game doesn't really end and it is painfully obvious it's that way to sell you the "DLC", which is essentially the ending of the game. I got the game for 14, I would have murdered someone if I paid 60 and had to pay another 10 to witness the climax. For the PC version you can't even buy "Epilogue".
Fucking whores.
Do this instead : (Score:5, Interesting)
put out new storylines/episodes as time goes by, and sell those to us, as DLCs.
do not sell us half finished, half assed games to rip off money like base swindlers.
Rod Cousens doesn't fully understand the issue. (Score:3, Insightful)
My answer is for us as publishers to actually sell unfinished games
I'm pretty sure that's what most of them are doing now. Things certainly are nothing like they were in the 8-, 16-, and even 32-bit days; back then, it was a little hard to find a truly shitty game and even the mediocre games were worth at least one play-through. Nowadays, they are so focused on fighting these different wars ("piracy", second-hand market, etc.), making games look good, and turning an easy profit that I actually think they forgot what goes into making a good game. There are still some truly great games here and there, but overall the bar has been lowered.
Personally, I don't think people really started pirating until after getting burned too many times by greedy publishers looking to milk their cash cows. So, instead of being smart and going back to making games that are actually worth paying money for, they waste all this money on stupid shit. As a result, people are a lot more careful with their money when considering purchasing a game and a lot of them don't see a problem with trying before buying, even if it is technically illegal, because they no longer have good reason to trust these publishers..
Long story short... MAKE BETTER GAMES!
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, I'd say it's working out quit well for at least one [technewsworld.com] company [wikipedia.org].
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
As usual, he should look at what Valve is doing. They are doing it (mostly) right, and always have.
Ironically enough, when my internet went out last week, I was unable to play Half Life 2, because it couldn't connect via steam. But I bought the game on cd and installed it from that. I shouldn't have to have a steam check. So if that's "good" drm, I don't want to see bad drm.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, I wouldn't feel that bad if I were to get the PC version off of a torrent, because I already own the PS3 version. Not saying it's right, just feels less wrong.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Dear game companies, when you make a game worth paying for, people will stop pirating it.
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That's just stupid. The playability of a game is dictated by its cost? A game is more or less fun depending on if it costs $60 or $30?
You'd play a pirated version of a $60 game that wasn't worth paying for? If it wasn't worth paying for, then why would you waste your time playing it in the first place???