GameFront - SOPA Isn’t the Solution, But Can We At Least Agree There’s A Problem?
Game publishers are caught between a rock and a hard place when it comes to battling piracy. If they do nothing, they are essentially ceding a good portion of their sales to pirates who have no intention of ever paying them a dime. If they institute a simple DRM scheme to try and protect their games, some gamers will get annoyed and others will get to work breaking the protection within days or even hours, making it worthless. If they institute a strong DRM scheme, such as Ubisoft’s recent efforts to require a persistent Internet connection to constantly confirm the validity of a played game, it ends up negatively impacting a good many legitimate customers and also cause the esteemed, self-appointed “Internet Representatives of Gaming” to go into a collective hissy fit so large that it ends up costing more sales than it saves.Raph Koster - Improving F2P. Thanks Ant via Boing Boing.
The thing to understand about the free-to-play market, and its best developers, is that F2P developers treat everything as science. Everything is subject to analysis, and everything is subject to proof, and the business process is about seeking what works. If what works happens to also be an original, innovative, interesting design that meets a checklist set of criteria for being art, well, all the better. But really, it’s about what works.
We have to be honest with ourselves. There is an awful lot of stuff that we have cherished for a long time in the games business which turns out not to work. Sometimes it takes us years to shed the scales from our eyes about the fact that hoary conventions of yore are just that — conventions, mutable and open to change.
You're so right yet so wrong. It has nothing to do with "wanting to pump out sequels on a yearly basis."
People keep throwing out DX:HR as a long game here. I spent 12 hours on it. I felt like I saw all there was to see. I spent a good amount of time wandering and jumping (but next to none reloading and replaying.) I opened every single door I found in every single level. Still 12 hours. In a game that recycled content and had you criss-crossing. If it was like most other FPS games, which keep you moving, it would have been 5-7 hours.
Creston wrote on Jan 12, 2012, 18:53:That's not my point. Modern singleplayer games - like Far Cry 2, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Batman: Arhkam City, Assassin's Creed series, The Witcher 2 - last 30hrs+. Modern multiplayer games with singleplayer - like Call Of Duty, Battlefield and Medal Of Honor - last 4hrs+ but can easily offer 60hrs+ with multiplayer. I have no reason defend the gaming industry for the sake of it - I do so because I hugely enjoy gaming as much as ever.
Dude... please. Now you're just coming across as trying to defend the industry no matter what facts say.
Yes, Prince of Persia was 60 minutes long. OMG, my entire argument is invalidated!
There are always exceptions. By and large, game nowadays are FAR shorter and have FAR less content than they used to. Not everybody sees this as a problem, which is their right. But I used to buy shooters and I'd get 10, 15 or 20 hours out of them. Now it's mostly 4-5.
And if you want to pretend that that isn't so, then... whatever.
Beamer wrote on Jan 13, 2012, 08:18:And by that metric Pacman has precisely 30 seconds worth of gameplay before you've seen all there is to see. It's about the experience. That's why multiplayer games are so popular - because the core gameplay is enjoyable.
People keep throwing out DX:HR as a long game here. I spent 12 hours on it. I felt like I saw all there was to see. I spent a good amount of time wandering and jumping (but next to none reloading and replaying.) I opened every single door I found in every single level. Still 12 hours.
Jerykk wrote on Jan 13, 2012, 02:24:Sure, but why are those the only 2 options? Why not 30 hours of modern shooter? Quality increases don't have to come at the expense of quantity.
They do when publishers want to pump out sequels on a yearly basis. It takes considerably longer to create assets these days than it did back in the 90's so if you have a one year dev cycle, you can either have a short game with high quality assets or a long game with low quality assets. Ideally, games would be given enough time to have both high quality assets and a lengthy play time, but the realities of the business only make this possible for a minority of games.
Sure, but why are those the only 2 options? Why not 30 hours of modern shooter? Quality increases don't have to come at the expense of quantity.
I don't care if I'm alone on this, but I'll take 8 hours of modern shooter over 30 hours of Doom.
Prez wrote on Jan 12, 2012, 19:40:Beamer wrote on Jan 12, 2012, 16:30:
I don't care if I'm alone on this, but I'll take 8 hours of modern shooter over 30 hours of Doom.
You are not alone, but 8 hours for a modern shooter SP campaign is long. Most clock in around 5 hours. That's just too short for me to pay full price, especially when I hardly touch the MP.
Creston wrote on Jan 12, 2012, 18:48:
1) You'll note that I said ON AVERAGE. Yes, there are always exceptions: Skyrim has more content than every Call of Duty game combined, for example. In general, and on average, games have gotten much, much, MUCH shorter.
2) The old audience has gotten savier, but the new audience has not, because they're just getting exposed to gaming, and they're the target audience, not you or me. Ergo, this argument is flawed. The idea that "no one would put up with that today" is proven false by the rather huge success of indie games in general, which mostly look like shit and re-use stuff all the time.
The game industry WANTS you to believe that every level now has to have 9000000000000000000 polygons visible at every time, because otherwise it's not "real" enough. So Devs spend 17 hours crafting realistic looking beams in a tower's roof somewhere, and players run past it without even noticing. But hey, at least that's a really, really, REALLY realistic tower!
Deus Ex : HR reuses a lot of textures, and I didn't hear anyone complain.
3) That's your opinion. It's not somehow Truth for the rest of the world. You want games to be railroaded and action packed and full of loud noise for 4 hours. That's cool, and more power to you. I prefer a game like Deus Ex. That actually lets me play for a week or so before I see the end.
I used to get a lot more games like that than I do now. Shooters especially have suffered heavily in this department. What shooter released in the last four or five years even lasted as long as NOLF?
Creston
Beamer wrote on Jan 12, 2012, 16:30:
I don't care if I'm alone on this, but I'll take 8 hours of modern shooter over 30 hours of Doom.
theyarecomingforyou wrote on Jan 12, 2012, 16:24:
The idea that games are shorter now is just not accurate.
jdreyer wrote on Jan 12, 2012, 15:44:Creston wrote on Jan 12, 2012, 13:33:Lokust wrote on Jan 11, 2012, 22:11:
They already ARE doing this and have been for years. 25 years ago new video games were around $50. Now they are $50-60. Adjust for inflation and that's a steal. Games cost far more to make now, but they make up the difference between higher development costs and lower (relative) prices through volume as the gaming market is larger.
This argument is bunk. I know the industry loves to bleat it over and over again, but they (and you, seemingly) also ignore the fact that ten years ago, I bought games that had 15-20 hours of content on average. And now it's an average of FOUR.
If they want to charge more for games, maybe they should put some more content in. (Games like Skyrim obviously excepted.)
Creston
Creston, There are lots of things you're not taking into account.
Creston wrote on Jan 12, 2012, 13:31:But that's exactly my point - you're not using it for "backup" purposes but you're using multiple copies at the same time. That's taking away money from the publisher and abusing the free-market. Now if they want to give you the right to do that in order to add value to their product then that's fine but you don't have a right to it regardless. And where do you draw the line? What happens if a parent buys a game for the family but then they kids move out to go to university in another town/city/country? Is it still valid for them to have a copy? And what happens if they then decide to lend that copy to a friend?
I don't really agree with your "Single use at a single time" point, though. You're legally allowed to burn a copy of a DVD you own for backup purposes, and once you've allowed that, how are you going to stop a family from watching that movie on two TVs in the same home at the same time?
Creston wrote on Jan 12, 2012, 13:33:Deus Ex: Human Revolution - 30hrs+. Skyrim - 100hrs+. Tropico/Civilization/Anno - 50-300hrs+. Team Fortress 2 - 100hrs+. Borderlands - 35hrs per playthrough.
This argument is bunk. I know the industry loves to bleat it over and over again, but they (and you, seemingly) also ignore the fact that ten years ago, I bought games that had 15-20 hours of content on average. And now it's an average of FOUR.
Especially with half the stuff in my Steam account unplayed...
Beamer wrote on Jan 12, 2012, 15:34:
Games fall in price quickly. I bought most brand new games for $30-$40 around black friday, and many of those have been $19.99 since.
Waiting isn't hard.
Creston wrote on Jan 12, 2012, 13:33:Lokust wrote on Jan 11, 2012, 22:11:
They already ARE doing this and have been for years. 25 years ago new video games were around $50. Now they are $50-60. Adjust for inflation and that's a steal. Games cost far more to make now, but they make up the difference between higher development costs and lower (relative) prices through volume as the gaming market is larger.
This argument is bunk. I know the industry loves to bleat it over and over again, but they (and you, seemingly) also ignore the fact that ten years ago, I bought games that had 15-20 hours of content on average. And now it's an average of FOUR.
If they want to charge more for games, maybe they should put some more content in. (Games like Skyrim obviously excepted.)
Creston
Lokust wrote on Jan 11, 2012, 22:11:Cutter wrote on Jan 11, 2012, 20:29:
The najor problem with the larger devs is they all think they can continue to ask premium prices for games in a shitty economy. Come in a lower initial price point and make it up on volume. And get it on sale ASAP the moment initial sales start to slow. What`s the point of having a product sitting around not selling at $50+ dollars when there would be some movement at $25 and a lot at $10 or less. Hell, things are going to get worse before they ever get better if they ever do, so only a handful of established IPs will get the premium money. The others just need to adapt quicker or perish.
They already ARE doing this and have been for years. 25 years ago new video games were around $50. Now they are $50-60. Adjust for inflation and that's a steal. Games cost far more to make now, but they make up the difference between higher development costs and lower (relative) prices through volume as the gaming market is larger.
theyarecomingforyou wrote on Jan 11, 2012, 18:24:
I'm not sure why my posts warranted such hostility. I'm not even sure we're actually disagreeing on anything.
I fully accept that that's not the reality and that publishers need to respond to the marketplace realities.
And morals have nothing to do with whether it is right or wrong.