The thread that WOULD NOT DIE!

Again, thanks whoever wrote this letter to Activison also BTW, I think this was very much needed, I mentioned this on Blues one other time, because some demo what a fileplanet exclusive.
I really hope Activision wakes up on this one.

I refuse to pay for a subscription service to download game demoa maybe cause I got used to downloading them for free, with the idea that if i like the demo I will go buy the game. I will not whine about the fact about the money etc... to me its really not about the money, its hard to put my finger on it, but I guess it always gets me upset when I see middle men tring to come in and make a buck on things.
These game sites like fileplanet used to be free to get users and thier name out and about, most there software used to be free also, I used gamespy back when it was a much smaller simple peice of software someone wrote to help people out.
Now they are more a bussiness that is about making money, there is nothing wrong with making money, we all want to make money. But something still stinks here, in the same way that the Record lables use arts to make money almost.
These guys make deals with companies alike Activision, probally something like this, I will advertise your games write good reveiws really get the kids to like the game you make, since it a pretty good game anyway but kids think we know what it is we are talking about, big falshy sites and all that. and you give us exclusive rights to release your demos before others can get it. Ok thats all fine, and all in all I cant blame fileplanet, they suck but whatever I dont have to pay thats the way it works, fine!
But I do blame Activision, a company that i have paid tons of money to for a long time supporting their games and all that, they dont really owe me anything cause most the games were great, Quake etc... but they are pretty much forcing my hand here, they are saying if you want this demo (that we know you are dieing to get hold of) at the same time as Joe Dumass down the road you need to buy a fileplanet membership. I am sure people with a fileplanet membership dont have a probalem witht hat, but I do, their are tons of us out here that just want to download a demo of a game that we know we will probally love, maybe give them feedback on it and probally buy any sequal also. why should I have to give money to stupid ass fileplanet for anything? just for a download that many other game sites would be happy to let me get from thier servers.
Shit with the game industry becoming a billions of billions dollar market you would think these guys would launch their own download servers and offer the demos to as many kids as will come get it. not make people pay a membership to 3rd parties for letting them download it, thats crazy.
Plus I really feel for game sites that dont get the option to let their users download games that they might want to offer and other sites can offer it cause of thier deal, its bad news, no need at all for this. If you pay for fileplanet them fine you use them and get your fast downloads etc... but still let the rest of us just got get it from somewhere elase and not have to jump on IRC and beg others for it :/

Great post Earthworm personally i think of every game as a gift from the developers...probably because i code all day long and know that i get attached to a project....they most likely do to....i also know that when i was a kid i was bored lots and i had to find something to do......so i did something else till i could get what i wanted.....patience is a virtue.....in my mind it makes the whole game experience better.....

Keep em coming

If it was such a big deal, you would pay for a FilePlanet subscription like I did. Yes, I read post by "more patient and savy" gamers who feel such an expense is unjustified, and all I could say to them is.. each to their own. We live in a capitalist society, money and clout talk. Most of us owe our livelyhoods to this simple fact. My subscription to FilePlanet has been very worthwhile... I play games first, and I participate in many betas. I don't have to scour the net for downloads, and I dont have to put up with slow downloads. As for sites that have added there names to the cry baby list...hmm well, some of them may get fewer visits from me... all but my long time friend "Blue's News" lol.

You're gonna help me lengthen the thread, apparently...
=p

loser

Gah kitchen cleanup duty sucks... I can't believe no one emptied that grease trap over the entire summer O_O...
Current Date - 8/30/03
Thread Date - 8/28/03

It will become a pet project of mine to keep this thread going even after no one else will see it.
Current Date - 8/30/03
Thread Date - 8/28/03

Earthworm,

Thank you for taking the time out to type such a wonderfully well written piece that most of us keyboard jockey's couldn't verbalize. The damage has been undone and the "take a little this time..." has been defeated. Kudos to the websites for banding together. I hope more websites join this effort to watchguard against these moronic efforts by the unscrupulous publishers and retarded websites that attempt exclusivity with softwares.

Cheers,

Jay K.

Damn, Damn,

Yep was too late, just read the news article posted today, that their would be no exclusive.

So I guess. . . . Yeah to us!

Damn,

I typed this all into Word and pasted it since i can't edit after posting, and still need to edit what I wrote. (Like adding extra line breaks between each point. Sorry for the uglyness.)

I maybe ringing in too late on this topic, but after reading a whole bunch of these posts, I have a few things to say about some of these arguments. (Warning long post)

1. All those saying, “So File planet paid to get the release a week earlier, so what let them have it.” This is incorrect. Fileplanet did not pay to get the demo earlier, they paid to get the free release pushed back by a week. Thus Screwing all of the other sites out of page views. Other sites that help the Publisher and producer of the games by distributing the game for free to all of the Publishers and Producers customers, without the Publisher or producer having to shell out $$’s for distribution. Thus this deal hurts everyone except “FilePlanet.”
2. All of those saying, “Hey get with the idea of capitalism, and quit bitching about a company trying to make some dollars.” This does not at all match the idea of Capitalism. Capitalism is based off of making a dollar by providing a product or service to the consumer. If you make that product or service too hard or too limited to get access to, you loose dollars. If you make your customer base angry, you loose dollars. If you don’t get feedback, but loose dollars, you start grasping at straws, and make wrong/bad decisions to correct the issue. Complaining when a new process for delivery emerges that the masses doesn’t like, aids the company into making better decisions next time. Thus helping them to make dollars in the future.
3. Those comparing exclusive Demo’s to exclusive screenshots/news articles, are ludicrous. Exclusive Screenies/articles are a way to set your content apart from others that provide similar content, and keep your subscribers/viewers, without withholding vital information (If it is vital others will find ways of reporting it without breaking your exclusivity rights). Paying $$’s to hold off a Marketing technique from the rest of the world, is bad for the consumers that rely on said marketing technique to base their decisions off of.
4. For those saying “You are making a big deal out of nothing.” Yeah this time it is not really that big. I will admit a week is not that long to wait. But if the idea of paying for something that you believe should be free irritates you, speak now, or forever hold your peace. If you let it go now, Marketers will determine “Hey this was a great way to make an extra buck earlier, and it had no side affects that we heard of, or noticed, what if we try making the exclusive period longer? We could charge more for that right?” They will try it, that is what they are paid to do. Then it gets longer, and longer, and I can see a marketing person deciding it isn’t that bad to release “Better demo’s, than the free one, exclusively for $$’s.”
An example of marketing taking off with something to where we can’t control anymore. Commercials in Movie theaters! The first one wasn’t so bad, so we grumbled a little then accepted it and kept going to the big theaters. The last time I went to a theater I saw 5 commercials, 1 of which was 2 minutes long!
5. For those saying "PC Gaming is the only genre that demands demo’s" also is not very informed. What do you think a Movie trailer is? It is a small demo of the movie. How many movies have you “gone” to see that you never once saw a preview for? I know I haven’t seen many. I can think of many other demo’s for lots of other products, that help that product make more money, many of which are not viable options for PC Games, such as the Renting of Console games. I have played every console game I own before I bought it, either at a friends, or renting it. PC Games are so easily pirated, that renting is not really a viable option in most circumstances. And “Game Trailers” only go so far, adn without giving you the “hands on” on your computer to know how well it will run.

I think I have rambled on enough, all comments are welcome.

In conclusion:
Is fileplanet/Activision doing anything “Wrong”? I would have to say, No! Do I like what it is they are doing, and the trend it hails the start of? Definitely Not! And I will voice my opinion with my voice, and with my $$$’s.

Demo's are PR, sadly this is just giving Activision a lot of free PR. Everyone will know about Call of Duty, if they have happend to miss it before now. In the quest for good intentions these web sites forgot the first rule of PR: there is no such thing as bad attention. Popularity and familiarity. breeds sales, not quality and this is definatly going to breed popularity.


The path to hell is paved with what?

Thanks for the comments Pedle.

Once the end-user upload feature is finished, people like yourself will be able to create file sections and upload things like UT2K3 and Q3 files.

The hope is that through gamer contribution (uploads, news, etc.) and participation, our file archive will rival that of FilePlanet but without any of the hassle of registration, queues, etc. or the necessity to pay a fee just to get these things.

If people want to pay extra for something, so be it.
If a website is savvy enough to arrange for an exclusive, so be it.
Part of competition means there are winners and losers, and I think perhaps the undersigned web sites are just poor losers.
This is not an example of competition be stifled, it's an example of how competition offers more goods and options to the consumer (like the option of paying more for earlier access).

I wish they had elaborated more on how they felt this hurts the industry. This just looks like market-economics working as it should.

And by not offering the demo, these websites are essentially restricting the supply of the good to the market, which sounds to me an awful lot like collusion (exploiting a monopoly). It's like OPEC restricting oil production to put political pressure on the US.

I strongly urge you to read the very first piece of news at the bottom of the page

Interesting site, will definately have to keep my eyes on it as time goes on to see if it lives up to the expectations. As it stands now I didn't think all that much as most of the files I'd download weren't there (no UT2K3, Q3 sections).

I can't believe though that a thread on whether a demo should be released exclusively or not a week early has spawned close to 400 posts. People, get a life.

PZ
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Currently Reading: Douglas Adams' "The Hitch Hiker's Guide to The Galaxy" -- Last Read: Robert M. Pirsig's "Zen and the Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance"

I'm a FilePlanet subscriber.

I subscribe because I like being able to get just about any file I need for a game in an instant at high speeds. I used to keep files I needed often (UT bonus packs, CS patches, custom maps for games, etc.) on a seperate hard drive and would plug that into whatever new PC i recently built so I could grab the files from there with no need to download.

Now however, that 80GB hard drive is full. With so many games out and that fact that I play most of them, it's getting tedious to update files on that drive such as when a new full install version comes out for DC or CS or something.

So one day I decided to subscribe to FP. There wasn't one file I needed that I couldn't find. I decided to scrap that hard drive and use it as an mp3 drive.

FilePlanet offers me the service I need. However, I do disagree with these exclusives. I do not think demos and betas should be offered to the gaming community for a price. Like most people have said, you can just wait for it, but I think we all know the gaming community is ravenous and needs to devour the latest thing the moment it comes out. We are all up on the latest technologies, we tweak our PCs, edit registries, edit files, all to get the best performance and best experience for these things that are 'just a game'.

There is a solution though. What if there were a community setup like FilePlanet where gamers could upload files, add links, add news, and basically all contribute to a single database that could be accessed by everyone? Where gamers could get the files they want instantly, for free, with no wait queue, and most importantly BLAZINGLY fast (faster than FilePlanet)?

So what if this site already existed? What if they promised not to charge you money, but hoped all gamers would realize to run such a site as it grew would require serious money due to bandwidth issues, and decided to donate a few bucks here and there to keep things ad free and free to all?

Well, the site exists. It's about a month old, and these are the ideas we have for it. So spread the word. Upload your files, add your news, monitor your servers and your buddies regardless of what game they are playing all from an easily customizable webpage. Make it yours.

http://www.gamingasylum.net

I strongly urge you to read the very first piece of news at the bottom of the page.



http://www.gamingasylum.net
Track your favorite game servers and buddies! FREE high speed, no wait downloads!

Well I pay Fileplanet each month just to get consistent fast downloads with no wait...unlike downloading from some other sites....**cough--cough** so I expect exclusive content for my money.....if you can't come up with 4.99 a month to get unlimited and uniterrupted downloads of a shitload of stuff....thats not my fault...get a fucking job and quit bitching.

Digital Morphine