You guys calling bullshit on the piracy argument don't seem to fully understand the scale of the problem. I don't think I'm allowed to give percentages or anything for CoD4 but trust me- you'd all be floored. Between torrenting and bootleg copies being sold on the streets in some countries, it's a huge deal, and really demoralizing. Yeah, not all of those are sales lost, but certainly some are. Maybe a lot, there's no way of telling.
The "make it easy and people won't pirate it" defense holds no weight. CoD4 was available on Steam day 1. How much easier can it get?
I want PC gaming to be vibrant and prolific but there's no room to make money on PC exclusives anymore unless you have a Valve or Blizzard logo on the box. With average development costs on a top-shelf title up around $20 mil there's just no way for many developers to stay in business making only PC games. There are good reasons why former PC-exclusive franchises made the jump to console this generation (Oblivion, UT, Orange Box, C&C, and so on). Budgets have outstripped the PC gaming market's ability to sustain them. Pointing to Sins of a Solar Empire and Blizzard/Valve games as counterarguments is a bit like pointing to Kobe Bryant and telling your average computer programmer that, with a little elbow grease and Eye of the Tiger on continuous loop, they too will be able to dunk a basketball. The truth is much more complex.
I was under the impression that the law covering "circumvent copyright protection" had a suffix of "Unless said copy protection is very easy to circumvent" to account for ripping CDs.
Nope.
The issue is a contradiction between Fair Use and DRM. Consumers tend to err on the side of Fair Use.
Ok, let me put it this way.
If I buy a CD, and intend to listen to songs on it off my iPod in addition to listening to the disc on my HiFi, but my CD drive in my PC breaks, it would be perfectly moral (imo) to download MP3s of it, and listen to them on my iPod.
It probably would be illegal, but it damn well shouldn't be.
Is it legal or moral for you to let other people download it from you?
It would be entirely legal if I made people accept an agreement stating that they would only download material off me that they were licensed to use, and that they would be entirely responsible for any legal repercussions of them downloading content that they are not licensed to access.
That sounds comically flimsy. There's a reason my car needs a key to start up, instead of just having an agreement on the door not to use it unless I'm the actual owner and accept responsibility for any legal repercussions. Given that I'm a grownup and understand we don't live in a society of angels, it seems to me that, morally, it would be a pretty dick move for me to behave that way all of a sudden with intellectual property that someone's trying to sell.
Man not this shit again... are we going to argue over this once a week now?
If the guy wants to put his games on consoles, who cares. Ill NEVER play an RTS on a console and if his PC version is a port I wont play that either, I'll do without.
MistaCreepy on
PS3: MistaCreepy::Steam: MistaCreepy::360: Dead and I don't feel like paying to fix it.
I was under the impression that the law covering "circumvent copyright protection" had a suffix of "Unless said copy protection is very easy to circumvent" to account for ripping CDs.
Nope.
The issue is a contradiction between Fair Use and DRM. Consumers tend to err on the side of Fair Use.
Ok, let me put it this way.
If I buy a CD, and intend to listen to songs on it off my iPod in addition to listening to the disc on my HiFi, but my CD drive in my PC breaks, it would be perfectly moral (imo) to download MP3s of it, and listen to them on my iPod.
It probably would be illegal, but it damn well shouldn't be.
Is it legal or moral for you to let other people download it from you?
Neither. By purchasing the software, you pay for a license. Usually, you're only entitled to use the copy on that disc, or copies of that disc you made yourself.
Of course, there could be different license models, like what Steam has, but it's safe to assume you're only entitled to the copy on the disc you bought.
Frankly, PC gamers are culpable here and partly responsible for the current state of the industry. Do all PC gamers pirate media? No. But a hell of a lot do. And the ones that do usually scream the loudest about access control (for all digital media), complain loudly about devs who call out PC gamers for pirating, and like to split hairs over whether or not taking data that isn't yours and not paying for it counts as theft (hint: it is).
Sales figures or pirating figures for Crysis, or any other game, aren't the point. Read between the lines on what Taylor is saying: too many people steal shit in this industry, so we're taking our product elsewhere. I don't blame him one bit, regardless of whether he makes awesome games or shitty games. If I had a product sitting out on a table and lost even a single unit, I'd place it under lock and key in a display case and made sure a person paid me before they got it. And if that product took years to make and required a large team of people putting in 12+ hour work days 6 or 7 days a week? I'd have fucking claymores lining said display case.
Also, way back in the thread: something about, "well, make your game good and I'll buy it!" Yeah, no. There are no guarantees that even the best of games will sell and make a profit, so devs run a risk with the majority of games, and this is after spending all that time, money and effort to create a game. Slap piracy issues on top of that risk and, well... you get the picture.
NexusSix on
REASON - Version 1.0B7 Gatling type 3 mm hypervelocity railgun system
Ng Security Industries, Inc.
PRERELEASE VERSION-NOT FOR FIELD USE - DO NOT TEST IN A POPULATED AREA
-ULTIMA RATIO REGUM-
Are people seriously trying to justify piracy here?
Anyway, the problem with PC games isn't that they need "$5k super computers", but rather that many people think they do, either from having no experience with PC gaming, or from trying to run the new hottest games on their shitty pre-made computers with integrated graphics cards. For the most part, the only thing that's really necessary for games that isn't necessary to get good performance in general (ie just normal use like web browsing and music), is a half way decent video card.
That is, except for crysis, which seems to fall into the problem of everyone demandign that it run at maximum settings on 1080p w/ 60 fps when those settings aren't even designed for modern hardware and medium looks better than every other game out there. And no one seems to have noticed that they were able to spec out a $900 pc that can run it well at 720p on all high settings. Also, I can see how you might miss the entire point if you try to play it like a normal shooter and say that it isn't that great, but how in the world would you say that it's generic?
You know, I should have seen that this thread would go the same place that every other thread that even mentions the word "piracy" goes: just a bunch of yahoos arguing over what constitutes piracy, and how it differs from theft.
That is, except for crysis, which seems to fall into the problem of everyone demandign that it run at maximum settings on 1080p w/ 60 fps when those settings aren't even designed for modern hardware
Hey, guess what happens to sales figures when you release a game that "isn't designed for modern hardware"?
Are people seriously trying to justify piracy here?
Anyway, the problem with PC games isn't that they need "$5k super computers", but rather that many people think they do, either from having no experience with PC gaming, or from trying to run the new hottest games on their shitty pre-made computers with integrated graphics cards.
yes and I think Intel is largely to blame here. The integrated video is so bad (and has remained unchanged for YEARS), it can barely play Quake3 at default settings, a game from 1999. That is so sad. Now that AMD bought ATi, hopefully they can come up with a much better integrated solution (at least some nvidia motherboards came with some low-end geforce cards built-in, miles ahead of intel's integrated bullshit) to get intel's ass in gear.
That is, except for crysis, which seems to fall into the problem of everyone demandign that it run at maximum settings on 1080p w/ 60 fps when those settings aren't even designed for modern hardware
Hey, guess what happens to sales figures when you release a game that "isn't designed for modern hardware"?
I, uh, think you came away with the opposite of what he was trying to say. I.e., you don't have to run it at the highest settings, and the lower settings actually run pretty well on modern hardware.
EDIT: Although, there is something to be said about integrated graphics, which a lot of people with Dells or Compaqs or laptops or whatever have to deal with, and how computers with it might actually not be able to run Crysis even on low settings.
That is, except for crysis, which seems to fall into the problem of everyone demandign that it run at maximum settings on 1080p w/ 60 fps when those settings aren't even designed for modern hardware
Hey, guess what happens to sales figures when you release a game that "isn't designed for modern hardware"?
50% of people that bought UT2004 never played it on line.
Really? Where's that from?
As someone else has mentioned, that's the number mark rein has thrown around in interviews. It is on the web somewhere, I just can't find it at the moment.
Budgets have outstripped the PC gaming market's ability to sustain them.
This is the main issue. The entire games industry needs to constantly grow in order to sustain itself. The PC market with it's slow or even stagnant growth rate is not able to keep up.
Piracy is an unavoidable part PC gaming. Trying to stop piracy is like fighting windmills. Developers and publishers should pick their fights and only fight those forms of piracy that a most detremental to sales (zero day piracy prbably being the worst).
In the end PC developers have to realise that they are catering to a limited audience and plan their budgets accordingly, because console ports are not a magic wand that will make all probles go away. For example, the dominance of PCs in the RTS genre is not only base on technology but also on culture. For an RTS the Asian and the european markets are the most importent ones with the US market a distant third. As long as gaming there remains centered around PC the RTs will remain on PC - no matter what controls Chris Taylor can come up with.
I think that anyone who starts blaming piracy needs to look at Sins of a Solar Empire. Its by far from a perfect game, (although it has the potential to be almost perfect with a few tweaks) Its sold like comparative hot cakes, and is the first game I've ever bought through online distribution.
The answer on the PC is to engage your audience regularly and directly with team production members, to offer online distribution, and to make that distribution the easiest way to get the product. A good fraction of pirates are simply too lazy to go to the shop and buy your game, and figure, I'll just download it. If you gave them a choice, many of them wouldn't steal.
And honestly, you need to cut down on your budgets. License your engine for a fraction of profits or something, and then work as hard as you can for the money you have but don't spend more than $15 million. People will still buy your game, in fact probobly more will since it will be closer to their power of computer! Spend your time increasing available complexity and offering something you can't get on consoles.
Here we go again.
Sins sold as many copies as Supreme Commander. There is a difference between an Indie game selling 500,00+ copies and a big budget game selling the same.
The key for PC games, I feel, is what Valve has tried to do and succeeded. Make your games look damn good on the machines that can run it with the bells and whistles, but also make it so that it runs on machines that aren't so hot.
Exactly. They need to scale. On my 8800GTX powered machine, Crysis had plenty of stuttering moments. Again, I loved the damn thing, but I can see why people were turned off.
Note where in the last paragraph of my post I said "Cut down on your budgets". Yeah, perhaps best to read the whole post.
Budgets have outstripped the PC gaming market's ability to sustain them.
For an RTS the Asian and the european markets are the most importent ones with the US market a distant third. As long as gaming there remains centered around PC the RTs will remain on PC - no matter what controls Chris Taylor can come up with.
Really? Aside from Starcraft and Korea I wasn't aware of this. They all seem to be made in the US; are the game lobbies for Dawn of War, Company of Heroes and Supreme Commander all filled with Asians and Europeans?
I did not buy UT3 because I never knew it was even out until like a month after. Reviews then said that it was exactly like UT2004 but shiner.
I did not buy Crysis because they flat out told me "You cannot run this ". So, I did not want to waste my money either buying a game I couldn't run, or upgrading a computer that runs perfectly fine otherwise.
I did not buy Gears of War because I already bought and played the game last year on a 360.
I did not buy Call of Duty 4 because... well, no real reason here. But I just want to play it, and will either rent it or borrow it from a friend.
I have a feeling my views are not unique and are actually quite indicative of a lot of people out there.
The Wolfman on
"The sausage of Green Earth explodes with flavor like the cannon of culinary delight."
I know I bought UT2K4 for Alien Swarm. Awesome mod.
Piracy is an issue to be sure, but I do think a good chunk of the problem is ballooning system requirements and increasingly unoptimized code. I think the current generation of programmers -- the ones actually doing the scut work -- have in the back of their heads that they have a shit ton of resources they can play with. Multiple gigs of storage space for the engine and the assets, multiple gigs of RAM and CPU power to run the game. Graphics doohickies that marketing and critics and gamers rave about (depsite most saying graphics aren't necessary). It tends to get sloppy all that code makes it hard for them to squash bugs in time.
Limits need to be placed -- build the game to run well at set low specs without going over that, don't try to hit the top end and work down from there.
Just look at XCOM. It's around 8-12MB hard drive space, runs on very little RAM, and it'll play forever. If a game of that quality can be developed with such low requirements, why are current games requiring so much more yet providing less and less gameplay?
Doronron on
0
Nova_CI have the needThe need for speedRegistered Userregular
edited February 2008
Alright, so:
Krunk, Pugnate, Spoit and Nexus,
Just who the fuck is trying to justify piracy? The only debate in definition came from whether or not downloading something you already own is legal or not. Also, a $900 computer to run Crysis at it's lowest settings is still twice the cost of the average console that can run almost equivalent games much better. So in terms of pure gaming, PCs still have a much, much higher entry barrier. Now, if you want a PC that's the equal of the XBox 360, you're looking at $1500 at least. A few more bells and whistles and you pass $2K.
I don't have a problem with that personally, but I think that has more of an effect on the PC games market than piracy does. Get a $500 PC that can run Crysis WELL and I'm sure Crysis would have sold 3 times as much, despite being one of the top selling games of 2007 as was already pointed out.
Besides, the markets aren't even comparable. This board loves to rail against Madden type re-issues - does that shit ever fly in the PC market? Totally different demographic.
Just who the fuck is trying to justify piracy? The only debate in definition came from whether or not downloading something you already own is legal or not. Also, a $900 computer to run Crysis at it's lowest settings is still twice the cost of the average console that can run almost equivalent games much better. So in terms of pure gaming, PCs still have a much, much higher entry barrier. Now, if you want a PC that's the equal of the XBox 360, you're looking at $1500 at least. A few more bells and whistles and you pass $2K.
I don't have a problem with that personally, but I think that has more of an effect on the PC games market than piracy does. Get a $500 PC that can run Crysis WELL and I'm sure Crysis would have sold 3 times as much, despite being one of the top selling games of 2007 as was already pointed out.
Besides, the markets aren't even comparable. This board loves to rail against Madden type re-issues - does that shit ever fly in the PC market? Totally different demographic.
And no one seems to have noticed that they were able to spec out a $900 pc that can run it well at 720p on all high settings.
Orogogus on
0
Nova_CI have the needThe need for speedRegistered Userregular
edited February 2008
My mistake.
The demo must've been a technical fuck up then, since high settings gave my computer a run for it's money at 1440x900 (What's this 720p bullshit? This is pc gaming, not consoles. :P)
Budgets have outstripped the PC gaming market's ability to sustain them.
For an RTS the Asian and the european markets are the most importent ones with the US market a distant third. As long as gaming there remains centered around PC the RTs will remain on PC - no matter what controls Chris Taylor can come up with.
Really? Aside from Starcraft and Korea I wasn't aware of this. They all seem to be made in the US; are the game lobbies for Dawn of War, Company of Heroes and Supreme Commander all filled with Asians and Europeans?
EDIT: I mean, "a distant third?" Seriously?
PC gaming in america is a distant third to the rest of the world generally. Anyways games like Company of Heroes sell in the 100,000s. Games like Cossacks sell in the millions.
With most titles totally bypassing the PC in order for the console, my computer has been relegated to internet surfing, Audiosurf (Which is probably the best PC game since Half-Life 2), and an Ipod dock.
I do understand that you don't need a super computer to play PC games, but why should I bother when every developer seems dead set on putting PC gaming as the 1-year late port platform?
I think that anyone who starts blaming piracy needs to look at Sins of a Solar Empire. Its by far from a perfect game, (although it has the potential to be almost perfect with a few tweaks) Its sold like comparative hot cakes, and is the first game I've ever bought through online distribution.
The answer on the PC is to engage your audience regularly and directly with team production members, to offer online distribution, and to make that distribution the easiest way to get the product. A good fraction of pirates are simply too lazy to go to the shop and buy your game, and figure, I'll just download it. If you gave them a choice, many of them wouldn't steal.
And honestly, you need to cut down on your budgets. License your engine for a fraction of profits or something, and then work as hard as you can for the money you have but don't spend more than $15 million. People will still buy your game, in fact probobly more will since it will be closer to their power of computer! Spend your time increasing available complexity and offering something you can't get on consoles.
Here we go again.
Sins sold as many copies as Supreme Commander. There is a difference between an Indie game selling 500,00+ copies and a big budget game selling the same.
The key for PC games, I feel, is what Valve has tried to do and succeeded. Make your games look damn good on the machines that can run it with the bells and whistles, but also make it so that it runs on machines that aren't so hot.
Exactly. They need to scale. On my 8800GTX powered machine, Crysis had plenty of stuttering moments. Again, I loved the damn thing, but I can see why people were turned off.
Note where in the last paragraph of my post I said "Cut down on your budgets". Yeah, perhaps best to read the whole post.
Yea but isn't that the point? You cut down the budgets, and you basically end up with an indie industry. That's the point of the whole argument, that big budget titles aren't doing so well.
That is, except for crysis, which seems to fall into the problem of everyone demandign that it run at maximum settings on 1080p w/ 60 fps when those settings aren't even designed for modern hardware
Hey, guess what happens to sales figures when you release a game that "isn't designed for modern hardware"?
You make one of the top selling PC games of 2007?
I don't know where you're getting your numbers from, but Crysis didn't even make the top ten among PC games.
edit: for those who don't want to click on a link, the list goes like this: WoW, WoW, The Sims, COD4, C&C3, SimCity, The Sims, The Sims, AoE3, and The Sims.
Daedalus on
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AxenMy avatar is Excalibur.Yes, the sword.Registered Userregular
Yea but isn't that the point? You cut down the budgets, and you basically end up with an indie industry. That's the point of the whole argument, that big budget titles aren't doing so well.
Hm, now that I think about it I don't think I have actually bought a game from a big developer in a long while. Most of the games I have been getting for PC have been either from Indie devs or small dev shops.
Even on consoles most all of my games are third party, aside from the Wii.
Axen on
A Capellan's favorite sheath for any blade is your back.
Outside of messages posted on these boards, I don't know what folks do on their own time (nor do I want to). That being said, anybody who pirates something is obviously justifying the practice. Taylor, and other developers, are saying they no longer wish to deal with that practice, nor the people who would justify that practice. I'm speaking broad terms here (i.e., the PC gaming community as a whole which, like any other community, is made up of swell folks as well as complete shitheads).
Granted, there are plenty of other business factors influencing Taylor's comments (and other recent comments like Cliffy's). It's a business so they're going to do what is in their best interests while taking what they believe is the best public relations/press slant--that's how people stay in business (or don't, depending on the decisions made).
PC games and PC gaming are great, but the industry can be a minefield for most developers. That's just the reality of the situation.
NexusSix on
REASON - Version 1.0B7 Gatling type 3 mm hypervelocity railgun system
Ng Security Industries, Inc.
PRERELEASE VERSION-NOT FOR FIELD USE - DO NOT TEST IN A POPULATED AREA
-ULTIMA RATIO REGUM-
$180 for an e8400
$100 for a motherboard
$50 for 2 gigs of ram
$230 for 8800gt
$50 for a psu
If you can reuse your HD, dvd-drive, case, there's a system that could run Crysis on high for around $600. Granted these are current prices and not the prices several months ago, but you don't need to spend big $$$ to get a good computer running these days. Myself, I do my gaming entirely on console as my 9800 pro would probably explode if I tried to run a new game on average settings, although I do plan to upgrade once Intel gets its yorkfields on the market.
Rakai on
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]XBL: Rakayn | PS3: Rakayn | Steam ID
That is, except for crysis, which seems to fall into the problem of everyone demandign that it run at maximum settings on 1080p w/ 60 fps when those settings aren't even designed for modern hardware
Hey, guess what happens to sales figures when you release a game that "isn't designed for modern hardware"?
You make one of the top selling PC games of 2007?
I don't know where you're getting your numbers from, but Crysis didn't even make the top ten among PC games.
edit: for those who don't want to click on a link, the list goes like this: WoW, WoW, The Sims, COD4, C&C3, SimCity, The Sims, The Sims, AoE3, and The Sims.
It's kind of funny that the first place title, the WoW expansion is well more than twice the next place title, which is WoW itself, which has twice the numbers of the next entry down. All the Sims 2 stuff added up is $1.2M, which seems like a pretty good return, considering how little it must have cost to produce the expansions.
Why is Age of Empires 3 on there? Didn't that come out in 2005? And people thought it was just so-so?
EDIT: Man, that doesn't even count the subscription revenue for WoW? Prints money indeed.
Thats the thing though, they aren't. There is a constant stream of rts games coming from european developers. Some appear in the charts, some don't but 6 month down the line there is alway a sequel or expansion pack, so somehow they have to make money.
You also have to remember that PC games account for less then 10% of the US games market. So even though the US games market is absolutely huge, PC games sales aren't that much bigger than those in other countries where PC Games have a much higher share of the market.
What games? Someone mentioned Cossacks, but Cossacks 2 was a 2005 game as far as I can tell. And Asia? I know Korea loves its Starcraft, but thought the Japanese hated PC games that don't run in browsers. What PC titles sold well out there?
Orogogus on
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AxenMy avatar is Excalibur.Yes, the sword.Registered Userregular
That is, except for crysis, which seems to fall into the problem of everyone demandign that it run at maximum settings on 1080p w/ 60 fps when those settings aren't even designed for modern hardware
Hey, guess what happens to sales figures when you release a game that "isn't designed for modern hardware"?
You make one of the top selling PC games of 2007?
I don't know where you're getting your numbers from, but Crysis didn't even make the top ten among PC games.
edit: for those who don't want to click on a link, the list goes like this: WoW, WoW, The Sims, COD4, C&C3, SimCity, The Sims, The Sims, AoE3, and The Sims.
It's kind of funny that the first place title, the WoW expansion is well more than twice the next place title, which is WoW itself, which has twice the numbers of the next entry down. All the Sims 2 stuff added up is $1.2M, which seems like a pretty good return, considering how little it must have cost to produce the expansions.
Why is Age of Empires 3 on there? Didn't that come out in 2005? And people thought it was just so-so?
EDIT: Man, that doesn't even count the subscription revenue for WoW? Prints money indeed.
If my quick calculations are near correct. WoW generates about 1.8billion a year in subscription fees.
Axen on
A Capellan's favorite sheath for any blade is your back.
0
Nova_CI have the needThe need for speedRegistered Userregular
If my quick calculations are near correct. WoW generates about 1.8billion a year in subscription fees.
Yeah, assuming everyone's paying $15 a month, which they really aren't but it doesn't really matter. What matters is that Blizzard makes back 3 times what they spent on initial development costs every single month.
That is, except for crysis, which seems to fall into the problem of everyone demandign that it run at maximum settings on 1080p w/ 60 fps when those settings aren't even designed for modern hardware
Hey, guess what happens to sales figures when you release a game that "isn't designed for modern hardware"?
You make one of the top selling PC games of 2007?
I don't know where you're getting your numbers from, but Crysis didn't even make the top ten among PC games.
edit: for those who don't want to click on a link, the list goes like this: WoW, WoW, The Sims, COD4, C&C3, SimCity, The Sims, The Sims, AoE3, and The Sims.
It's kind of funny that the first place title, the WoW expansion is well more than twice the next place title, which is WoW itself, which has twice the numbers of the next entry down. All the Sims 2 stuff added up is $1.2M, which seems like a pretty good return, considering how little it must have cost to produce the expansions.
Why is Age of Empires 3 on there? Didn't that come out in 2005? And people thought it was just so-so?
EDIT: Man, that doesn't even count the subscription revenue for WoW? Prints money indeed.
If my quick calculations are near correct. WoW generates about 1.8billion a year in subscription fees.
I don't know that they make that much in a year (as a lot of accounts are not based in the US, and have different costs) but I know that Blizzard said that they have a 50% profit margin, or something outrageous.
Any developer who thinks piracy is why Crysis didn't sell well is either deliberately lying or a damn fool. Crysis didn't sell well because its system requirements were way out of line with what the PC gaming market was actually running on. You want to know why WoW and The Sims do so well? They run on everyone's fucking computer, that's why.
This from the first page, pretty much sums up the state of PC gaming in my books. I didn't buy Crysis or UT3 because even though I more-than passed the min requirements, I just didn't pass them 'enough' that the games would run smoothly. The comments I read on Crysis at launch that 'even high end PCs cannot run the game with all the bells-and-whistles on' doesn't instill a sense of trust in my that the devs even gave 2-shits about lower-end machines (not 'lower-end' in general, just closer to what they've said is the minimum requirements).
Anyone remember Serious Sam? When it came out it, it didn't want much compared to other games, but it ran rock-solid on lower specs and that was with those huge open maps and dozens of enemies onscreen at a time. That was how to do a PC game.....
People need to optimize this shit - planning for tomorrow's PC is fine when you're building an engine, not when you're trying to sell me a game.
I didn't buy Crysis or UT3 because even though I more-than passed the min requirements, I just didn't pass them 'enough' that the games would run smoothly. The comments I read on Crysis at launch that 'even high end PCs cannot run the game with all the bells-and-whistles on' doesn't instill a sense of trust in my that the devs even gave 2-shits about lower-end machines (not 'lower-end' in general, just closer to what they've said is the minimum requirements).
I don't follow that reasoning. It might not run well on highest settings because they left some things open for future machines, so that there would be something to justify the purchase of the next generation of video cards and other hardware. You don't want your graphics heavy games like Crysis or Half Life 2 to max out on hardware that was available at the time of release, and I don't really think it speaks to the performance at lower settings at all.
I don't know that they make that much in a year (as a lot of accounts are not based in the US, and have different costs) but I know that Blizzard said that they have a 50% profit margin, or something outrageous.
Well, the NPD numbers are based on US data, so theoretically that would just be the US slice of the pie.
Hey everybody, let's just chill here. This thread is going well, but remember that discussion of methodology of piracy is an explicit no-no here at the PA forums.
Just a friendly reminder. Let's keep this thread above board.
I didn't buy Crysis or UT3 because even though I more-than passed the min requirements, I just didn't pass them 'enough' that the games would run smoothly. The comments I read on Crysis at launch that 'even high end PCs cannot run the game with all the bells-and-whistles on' doesn't instill a sense of trust in my that the devs even gave 2-shits about lower-end machines (not 'lower-end' in general, just closer to what they've said is the minimum requirements).
I don't follow that reasoning. It might not run well on highest settings because they left some things open for future machines, so that there would be something to justify the purchase of the next generation of video cards and other hardware. You don't want your graphics heavy games like Crysis or Half Life 2 to max out on hardware that was available at the time of release, and I don't really think it speaks to the performance at lower settings at all.
I can see what you're saying, but this would only be reasonable if Cryis was going to be the last FPS ever made - but there's always going to be someone else putting out another 'big name' FPS in 6 more months that will push graphics even harder. To me, the planning for 'future' hardware is trying to sell to a market that doesn't exist (yet), over one that does. This is a setup for lower sales.
In other words, it's like every FPS is trying hard to be the next 'benchmark' game like Quake 3 was, or Half Life 2 is; the game referenced forever and ever when new hardware is released.
I don't know that they make that much in a year (as a lot of accounts are not based in the US, and have different costs) but I know that Blizzard said that they have a 50% profit margin, or something outrageous.
Well, the NPD numbers are based on US data, so theoretically that would just be the US slice of the pie.
Blizzard will let everyone know how well WoW is doing on their website ever so often. They count foreign sales in it. I think that's what Axen was drawing from for his calculations.
I didn't buy Crysis or UT3 because even though I more-than passed the min requirements, I just didn't pass them 'enough' that the games would run smoothly. The comments I read on Crysis at launch that 'even high end PCs cannot run the game with all the bells-and-whistles on' doesn't instill a sense of trust in my that the devs even gave 2-shits about lower-end machines (not 'lower-end' in general, just closer to what they've said is the minimum requirements).
I don't follow that reasoning. It might not run well on highest settings because they left some things open for future machines, so that there would be something to justify the purchase of the next generation of video cards and other hardware. You don't want your graphics heavy games like Crysis or Half Life 2 to max out on hardware that was available at the time of release, and I don't really think it speaks to the performance at lower settings at all.
I can see what you're saying, but this would only be reasonable if Cryis was going to be the last FPS ever made - but there's always going to be someone else putting out another 'big name' FPS in 6 more months that will push graphics even harder. To me, the planning for 'future' hardware is trying to sell to a market that doesn't exist (yet), over one that does. This is a setup for lower sales.
In other words, it's like every FPS is trying hard to be the next 'benchmark' game like Quake 3 was, or Half Life 2 is; the game referenced forever and ever when new hardware is released.
Well, I think a lot of companies are looking at engine licensing when they do this. Quake 3's engine was used in a ton of games (a somewhat modified version was still in use for CoD4) and obviously the Source Engine has been the bee's knees for this generation of PC Gaming.
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The "make it easy and people won't pirate it" defense holds no weight. CoD4 was available on Steam day 1. How much easier can it get?
I want PC gaming to be vibrant and prolific but there's no room to make money on PC exclusives anymore unless you have a Valve or Blizzard logo on the box. With average development costs on a top-shelf title up around $20 mil there's just no way for many developers to stay in business making only PC games. There are good reasons why former PC-exclusive franchises made the jump to console this generation (Oblivion, UT, Orange Box, C&C, and so on). Budgets have outstripped the PC gaming market's ability to sustain them. Pointing to Sins of a Solar Empire and Blizzard/Valve games as counterarguments is a bit like pointing to Kobe Bryant and telling your average computer programmer that, with a little elbow grease and Eye of the Tiger on continuous loop, they too will be able to dunk a basketball. The truth is much more complex.
That sounds comically flimsy. There's a reason my car needs a key to start up, instead of just having an agreement on the door not to use it unless I'm the actual owner and accept responsibility for any legal repercussions. Given that I'm a grownup and understand we don't live in a society of angels, it seems to me that, morally, it would be a pretty dick move for me to behave that way all of a sudden with intellectual property that someone's trying to sell.
If the guy wants to put his games on consoles, who cares. Ill NEVER play an RTS on a console and if his PC version is a port I wont play that either, I'll do without.
Of course, there could be different license models, like what Steam has, but it's safe to assume you're only entitled to the copy on the disc you bought.
Sales figures or pirating figures for Crysis, or any other game, aren't the point. Read between the lines on what Taylor is saying: too many people steal shit in this industry, so we're taking our product elsewhere. I don't blame him one bit, regardless of whether he makes awesome games or shitty games. If I had a product sitting out on a table and lost even a single unit, I'd place it under lock and key in a display case and made sure a person paid me before they got it. And if that product took years to make and required a large team of people putting in 12+ hour work days 6 or 7 days a week? I'd have fucking claymores lining said display case.
Also, way back in the thread: something about, "well, make your game good and I'll buy it!" Yeah, no. There are no guarantees that even the best of games will sell and make a profit, so devs run a risk with the majority of games, and this is after spending all that time, money and effort to create a game. Slap piracy issues on top of that risk and, well... you get the picture.
Ng Security Industries, Inc.
PRERELEASE VERSION-NOT FOR FIELD USE - DO NOT TEST IN A POPULATED AREA
-ULTIMA RATIO REGUM-
Anyway, the problem with PC games isn't that they need "$5k super computers", but rather that many people think they do, either from having no experience with PC gaming, or from trying to run the new hottest games on their shitty pre-made computers with integrated graphics cards. For the most part, the only thing that's really necessary for games that isn't necessary to get good performance in general (ie just normal use like web browsing and music), is a half way decent video card.
That is, except for crysis, which seems to fall into the problem of everyone demandign that it run at maximum settings on 1080p w/ 60 fps when those settings aren't even designed for modern hardware and medium looks better than every other game out there. And no one seems to have noticed that they were able to spec out a $900 pc that can run it well at 720p on all high settings. Also, I can see how you might miss the entire point if you try to play it like a normal shooter and say that it isn't that great, but how in the world would you say that it's generic?
Pirating is stealing.
It sickens me how many people try to justify their behavior. They are killing it for the rest of us.
Hey, guess what happens to sales figures when you release a game that "isn't designed for modern hardware"?
yes and I think Intel is largely to blame here. The integrated video is so bad (and has remained unchanged for YEARS), it can barely play Quake3 at default settings, a game from 1999. That is so sad. Now that AMD bought ATi, hopefully they can come up with a much better integrated solution (at least some nvidia motherboards came with some low-end geforce cards built-in, miles ahead of intel's integrated bullshit) to get intel's ass in gear.
I, uh, think you came away with the opposite of what he was trying to say. I.e., you don't have to run it at the highest settings, and the lower settings actually run pretty well on modern hardware.
EDIT: Although, there is something to be said about integrated graphics, which a lot of people with Dells or Compaqs or laptops or whatever have to deal with, and how computers with it might actually not be able to run Crysis even on low settings.
You make one of the top selling PC games of 2007?
As someone else has mentioned, that's the number mark rein has thrown around in interviews. It is on the web somewhere, I just can't find it at the moment.
This is the main issue. The entire games industry needs to constantly grow in order to sustain itself. The PC market with it's slow or even stagnant growth rate is not able to keep up.
Piracy is an unavoidable part PC gaming. Trying to stop piracy is like fighting windmills. Developers and publishers should pick their fights and only fight those forms of piracy that a most detremental to sales (zero day piracy prbably being the worst).
In the end PC developers have to realise that they are catering to a limited audience and plan their budgets accordingly, because console ports are not a magic wand that will make all probles go away. For example, the dominance of PCs in the RTS genre is not only base on technology but also on culture. For an RTS the Asian and the european markets are the most importent ones with the US market a distant third. As long as gaming there remains centered around PC the RTs will remain on PC - no matter what controls Chris Taylor can come up with.
Note where in the last paragraph of my post I said "Cut down on your budgets". Yeah, perhaps best to read the whole post.
EDIT: I mean, "a distant third?" Seriously?
I did not buy Crysis because they flat out told me "You cannot run this
I did not buy Gears of War because I already bought and played the game last year on a 360.
I did not buy Call of Duty 4 because... well, no real reason here. But I just want to play it, and will either rent it or borrow it from a friend.
I have a feeling my views are not unique and are actually quite indicative of a lot of people out there.
Piracy is an issue to be sure, but I do think a good chunk of the problem is ballooning system requirements and increasingly unoptimized code. I think the current generation of programmers -- the ones actually doing the scut work -- have in the back of their heads that they have a shit ton of resources they can play with. Multiple gigs of storage space for the engine and the assets, multiple gigs of RAM and CPU power to run the game. Graphics doohickies that marketing and critics and gamers rave about (depsite most saying graphics aren't necessary). It tends to get sloppy all that code makes it hard for them to squash bugs in time.
Limits need to be placed -- build the game to run well at set low specs without going over that, don't try to hit the top end and work down from there.
Just look at XCOM. It's around 8-12MB hard drive space, runs on very little RAM, and it'll play forever. If a game of that quality can be developed with such low requirements, why are current games requiring so much more yet providing less and less gameplay?
Krunk, Pugnate, Spoit and Nexus,
Just who the fuck is trying to justify piracy? The only debate in definition came from whether or not downloading something you already own is legal or not. Also, a $900 computer to run Crysis at it's lowest settings is still twice the cost of the average console that can run almost equivalent games much better. So in terms of pure gaming, PCs still have a much, much higher entry barrier. Now, if you want a PC that's the equal of the XBox 360, you're looking at $1500 at least. A few more bells and whistles and you pass $2K.
I don't have a problem with that personally, but I think that has more of an effect on the PC games market than piracy does. Get a $500 PC that can run Crysis WELL and I'm sure Crysis would have sold 3 times as much, despite being one of the top selling games of 2007 as was already pointed out.
Besides, the markets aren't even comparable. This board loves to rail against Madden type re-issues - does that shit ever fly in the PC market? Totally different demographic.
$900 was for high settings.
The demo must've been a technical fuck up then, since high settings gave my computer a run for it's money at 1440x900 (What's this 720p bullshit? This is pc gaming, not consoles. :P)
PC gaming in america is a distant third to the rest of the world generally. Anyways games like Company of Heroes sell in the 100,000s. Games like Cossacks sell in the millions.
Plasma TV, Controller, Couch.
With most titles totally bypassing the PC in order for the console, my computer has been relegated to internet surfing, Audiosurf (Which is probably the best PC game since Half-Life 2), and an Ipod dock.
I do understand that you don't need a super computer to play PC games, but why should I bother when every developer seems dead set on putting PC gaming as the 1-year late port platform?
Yea but isn't that the point? You cut down the budgets, and you basically end up with an indie industry. That's the point of the whole argument, that big budget titles aren't doing so well.
I don't know where you're getting your numbers from, but Crysis didn't even make the top ten among PC games.
http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/36322/Top-10-Best-Selling-2007-US-PC-Games
edit: for those who don't want to click on a link, the list goes like this: WoW, WoW, The Sims, COD4, C&C3, SimCity, The Sims, The Sims, AoE3, and The Sims.
Hm, now that I think about it I don't think I have actually bought a game from a big developer in a long while. Most of the games I have been getting for PC have been either from Indie devs or small dev shops.
Even on consoles most all of my games are third party, aside from the Wii.
Granted, there are plenty of other business factors influencing Taylor's comments (and other recent comments like Cliffy's). It's a business so they're going to do what is in their best interests while taking what they believe is the best public relations/press slant--that's how people stay in business (or don't, depending on the decisions made).
PC games and PC gaming are great, but the industry can be a minefield for most developers. That's just the reality of the situation.
Ng Security Industries, Inc.
PRERELEASE VERSION-NOT FOR FIELD USE - DO NOT TEST IN A POPULATED AREA
-ULTIMA RATIO REGUM-
$100 for a motherboard
$50 for 2 gigs of ram
$230 for 8800gt
$50 for a psu
If you can reuse your HD, dvd-drive, case, there's a system that could run Crysis on high for around $600. Granted these are current prices and not the prices several months ago, but you don't need to spend big $$$ to get a good computer running these days. Myself, I do my gaming entirely on console as my 9800 pro would probably explode if I tried to run a new game on average settings, although I do plan to upgrade once Intel gets its yorkfields on the market.
It's kind of funny that the first place title, the WoW expansion is well more than twice the next place title, which is WoW itself, which has twice the numbers of the next entry down. All the Sims 2 stuff added up is $1.2M, which seems like a pretty good return, considering how little it must have cost to produce the expansions.
Why is Age of Empires 3 on there? Didn't that come out in 2005? And people thought it was just so-so?
EDIT: Man, that doesn't even count the subscription revenue for WoW? Prints money indeed.
Thats the thing though, they aren't. There is a constant stream of rts games coming from european developers. Some appear in the charts, some don't but 6 month down the line there is alway a sequel or expansion pack, so somehow they have to make money.
You also have to remember that PC games account for less then 10% of the US games market. So even though the US games market is absolutely huge, PC games sales aren't that much bigger than those in other countries where PC Games have a much higher share of the market.
If my quick calculations are near correct. WoW generates about 1.8billion a year in subscription fees.
Yeah, assuming everyone's paying $15 a month, which they really aren't but it doesn't really matter. What matters is that Blizzard makes back 3 times what they spent on initial development costs every single month.
I don't know that they make that much in a year (as a lot of accounts are not based in the US, and have different costs) but I know that Blizzard said that they have a 50% profit margin, or something outrageous.
Any way you cut it, it's a ton of money.
This from the first page, pretty much sums up the state of PC gaming in my books. I didn't buy Crysis or UT3 because even though I more-than passed the min requirements, I just didn't pass them 'enough' that the games would run smoothly. The comments I read on Crysis at launch that 'even high end PCs cannot run the game with all the bells-and-whistles on' doesn't instill a sense of trust in my that the devs even gave 2-shits about lower-end machines (not 'lower-end' in general, just closer to what they've said is the minimum requirements).
Anyone remember Serious Sam? When it came out it, it didn't want much compared to other games, but it ran rock-solid on lower specs and that was with those huge open maps and dozens of enemies onscreen at a time. That was how to do a PC game.....
People need to optimize this shit - planning for tomorrow's PC is fine when you're building an engine, not when you're trying to sell me a game.
Well, the NPD numbers are based on US data, so theoretically that would just be the US slice of the pie.
Just a friendly reminder. Let's keep this thread above board.
I can see what you're saying, but this would only be reasonable if Cryis was going to be the last FPS ever made - but there's always going to be someone else putting out another 'big name' FPS in 6 more months that will push graphics even harder. To me, the planning for 'future' hardware is trying to sell to a market that doesn't exist (yet), over one that does. This is a setup for lower sales.
In other words, it's like every FPS is trying hard to be the next 'benchmark' game like Quake 3 was, or Half Life 2 is; the game referenced forever and ever when new hardware is released.
Blizzard will let everyone know how well WoW is doing on their website ever so often. They count foreign sales in it. I think that's what Axen was drawing from for his calculations.
I could have misinterpreted him though.
Well, I think a lot of companies are looking at engine licensing when they do this. Quake 3's engine was used in a ton of games (a somewhat modified version was still in use for CoD4) and obviously the Source Engine has been the bee's knees for this generation of PC Gaming.