Piracy and Small Game Developers

Chronictank said:
all of the above, i found bioshock pretty dull after the first hour or so personally
Seeing as it is subjective, good luck proving that i didnt enjoy those more than bioshock
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you didn't state it as your opinion. You said that you (as in other people) could pick 20 other games that are better than that, that were around at the same time. And nowhere did I say that Bioshocks sales were higher on consoles because of piracy. And only orange box is ranked higher on average compared to Bioshock.
 
Shamikebab said:
you didn't state it as your opinion. You said that you (as in other people) could pick 20 other games that are better than that, that were around at the same time. And nowhere did I say that Bioshocks sales were higher on consoles because of piracy. And only orange box is ranked higher on average compared to Bioshock.
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on what grounds do you base bioshock is 'better'
on graphics?
many games on that list has technically 'better' graphics

on gameplay?
This is subjective, you cant possibly quantify this

sales?
On that basis The Sims 2: Free Time is better than bioshock
Based on sales bioshock doesnt even appear in the top 20 on a popular website when you sort by best sellers

on game reviews?
these are irrelevant to what the consumer would actually buy

In the context of this thread 'better' is the view of the consumer, i.e. people like me
You asked for a list of 'better' games in the context of what games were there that i as a consumer would purchase over bioshock and i gave you my opion on the options i deem to be 'better' relevant to what i would buy over bioshock (incidently i would never buy bioshock for the PC because of the copy protection in protest, yes i do own it for xbox)
 
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I have downloaded games before buying them. If i find i play them more than say 48 hours and its still on my PC, i go and buy it as its worth the money. If, however, like 90% of games i have tried, its a cheap clone of another game, the same thing over and over, bad game play, buggy, or all of them, then i uninstall it and dont bother.

Like someone else said, the trouble with PC games isnt the price, or the game play mostly, its the fact the programmer release a game that isnt finished. Buggy to hell, updates of 1-800mb 1-7 days after release, more patches to fix stuff. As a programmer if i let my work go out as bad as some of the games ive played - id be sacked. Wether its rushed through, sloppy coding, or people who just cant do it right, it just leads people downa path of, omg - how can they charge for this bag of crap. This in turn leads them to think twice before paying £39.99 for the next game they see if they know someone can give it to them for free, they play it, and then they can make up their minds.

Take TQ, as others have. I for one have never played it, but google'd it to see what it was, never seen adverts for it, but looking at it, its a WOW clone without the multi player aspect to it. Do i want to play it, not really, i dont see anything new in it or anything that makes me go oooo thats nice...

So, instead of blaming pirate's for your bad sales, maybe a look in house at what your making/advertising, or lack of, may prove more fruitful. Give us a good game, let us see how good it is with a free level yes FREE, buy the mailing list from WOW and email us all or something, get your name out there, your game noticed and then, maybe, if its good, it will sell...

The only game i bought without checking was BF2140 [or something like that] and for god sake, was i ripped off.

I also hate paying fo a game that has monthly fees, stopped me buying that tobura rosa [something like that] game. Then you get cracking games like Snipe Elite, that due to lack of adverts, didnt have a 2nd game, shame as loads of people i know went and bought it after trying it from a online source.

So, at the end of the day. Give us a game we want to play, one that works out of the box, that has a FREE trail of it so we can see if we like it, advertise the game to people so we know its out there, setup a forum maybe, have an origanal idea and dont release until its 100% ready. Put a decent price tag on it, £39.99 for 40 hours of game play is steep when you can get 6 months on wow for the same price and a hell of a lot more game play. Maybe doa discount, buy this game for full price, get a token, by the 2nd part half price...

And stop treating all us game players as 10 year olds who dont know anything about coding or gaming, some of us have been playing games from the 1980's!

ColiN
 
Do you think the type of game has something to do with it?

I would imagine people who play the likes of the Sims are more casual gamers and generally dont know that much about how to illegaly download a game. People who are likely to play Titan Quest on the other hand may be a bit more computer savvy and do know how to illegally download a game?

I'm not saying this is the case but it's an interesting view that probably isnt taken into account when calculating piracy figures in these reports.

It would be interesting to see a proper study into this taking into account the large amount of variables that actually exist, rather than just getting figures quoted from a potentially biased report on a huge scale.
 
Main issues:

Games are too short, full of bugs, dont run well on the hardware available (crysis) and generally the publishers dont give a damn once the games out in terms of support (Infinity ward especially).

If games were released complete and not full of bugs and were of a decent length then maybe more people would buy them
 
Ulfhedjinn said:
Good games will sell and that's a fact.
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Haha, no they don't. You even corrected yourself later in this thread. There's actually very little statistical correlation between a game's review scores, and it's actual sales.

I can't believe people honestly don't think piracy is a problem with the PC. You can cite music and movies all you want, and great, it kind of works for them, but it blatently doesn't for PCs.

Barely anybody is interested in working for PC games any more. The big, stable, well-funded companies are all on the consoles now, and it's far easier to develop for a supported, reliable platform, then a buggy, pirate-heavy, faceless entity. PCs are great for small teams or independent developers, but it's destroying itself when it comes to anything big in scale.
 
colinuk said:
Take TQ, as others have. I for one have never played it, but google'd it to see what it was, never seen adverts for it, but looking at it, its a WOW clone without the multi player aspect to it. Do i want to play it, not really, i dont see anything new in it or anything that makes me go oooo thats nice...
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It was nothing of the sort.

It was a Diablo2 clone that took a different story line and one that made it fascinating to play. It was damned good fun, and you're incorrect about the multiplayer aspect. I logged a lot of hours playing that online with friends.
 
thecremeegg said:
Games are too short..
If games were.. of a decent length then maybe more people would buy them
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Are you telling me no-one bought Portal? And don't say only because it was part of the orange box - I reckon most people bought the orange box *because* of Portal.

Phooey. A game is not its length.
 
The thing about the games console market is that its immensely oligopolised. Thats why they are able to charge the prices they can. On PCs however, anyone can develop with a very open market.

I compare this to the film market. One that is exteremely competitive and where films very often lose a lot of money. DVDs only cost £20 for films that have huge budgets (budgets that far surpass games).
 
Weebull said:
Haha, no they don't. You even corrected yourself later in this thread. There's actually very little statistical correlation between a game's review scores, and it's actual sales.
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He did say a good game, not a well reviewed game.

Weebull said:
I can't believe people honestly don't think piracy is a problem with the PC. You can cite music and movies all you want, and great, it kind of works for them, but it blatently doesn't for PCs.
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Do you know how many people pirate Half-Life and other such games yet they still make money because they are good games.

Weebull said:
Barely anybody is interested in working for PC games any more. The big, stable, well-funded companies are all on the consoles now, and it's far easier to develop for a supported, reliable platform, then a buggy, pirate-heavy, faceless entity. PCs are great for small teams or independent developers, but it's destroying itself when it comes to anything big in scale.
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PC's are not buggy, for the most part it is the games that are buggy and the developers not working hard enough on the games that they do release for the PC, often a poor console port. There is plenty of piracy on consoles you can't pretend it doesn't happen.
 
I do know more people with 'chipped' xboxes and PS3's and even DS lites than i do people with PC's..

Why dont they state how much they lose on the side for games on consoles... nothing to do with trying every excuse in the book to control the internet by making it the root of everything that is evil?

ColiN
 
Shamikebab said:
Where as I know nobody with a chipped console and plenty of people who pirate PC games.
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You dont know ANYONE with a chipped Xbox or PSP? you live on the moon?

Most people i know have kids who just want to turn it on and play, not boot up and install, log in and get to servers, they dont have the time to do it and consoles are a quick fix. Games cost what £40 each, kids burn through one a week, 2 consoles, £80 a week on games.... or chip it for £75 and then about £1 a game...

Loads more pirating on consoles than PC's, but PC's have internet access...

IMO of course.
 
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