Piracy versus PC Gaming [Mar 09, 2007, 8:23 pm ET] – Share – Viewing Comments
Next Generation recaps a GDC talk titled "The Videogame Piracy Problem:
Fifteen Men on a Dead Man’s Chest" by id Software CEO Todd Hollenshead about the
impact of piracy on the game industry. They outline how Mr. Hollenshead says the
estimated $3 billion economic loss caused by piracy in 2004 does not include
piracy that takes place on the Internet. There is also an article about this
talk on
Joystiq that focuses on the statement that piracy is a factor in id's
embrace of consoles, quoting Todd as saying "Piracy has pushed id as being
multiplatform." On a related note,
Can PC
Gaming Survive in a Console World (thanks
Digg) recaps a panel discussion on the topic that brought up a similar
point:
Part of the problem is piracy. Big titles get stolen by cyber thieves, and it hurts revenue. "The market," said Capps, "that would buy a $600 video card knows how Bittorrent works."
Does that mean casual games, which exponentially outsell what PC gaming traditionalists think of as A-list titles, will one day rule? Hilleman made a point: casual is a poor choice of words. The average player on EA's Pogo "casual" game network plays "for 24 hours a week. There's nothing casual about that."
There is some light in the PC gaming world. World of Warcraft, for instance, is a massive hit, and the upcoming Spore looks not only creative and different, but promising. The MMO and other social networking games could become the norm for PC gaming, with big-ticket titles growing rarer with each passing year. Johnson added that MMOs are "successful because you can't pirate WoW. You cannot pirate an MMO. Period." Therefore, he said, "game design on the PC is going to bend toward persistence."
Lionhead used to be PC-centric too.
Lionhead used to make a lot of crappy PC games too.
People buy £250,000 houses on the basis of walking around them for an hour, yet somehow won't spend £20 on a game on the same basis.
Your analogy is flawed. When you take a tour of a house, you get to see the entire house. They don't limit you to just one room.
When you play a demo, you don't get to play the whole game. Just a tiny portion of it.
Now, imagine if you could only judge a house based on that one room. What if that room was rather cramped and shoddy? Would that mean that the rest of the house is cramped and shoddy? Fortunately, houses tend to be fairly consistent. Games do not.
As I mentioned in a previous post, demos are not always good indications of the final game. In some cases, poor levels are chosen for the demo (refer to the Hitman: Blood Money demo). In other cases, the demo level doesn't even exist in the final product (HL demo, DMOMM demo, DX:IW demo, etc).
Gameplay shown in demos is also not always accurate of the final game, either. You are often given powers or abilities in demos that you wouldn't have at that stage in the final game. This upsets the balance of the demo, making it too easy or too hard.
Finally, not all games even have demos. Most RPGs don't have demos. Oblivion and Morrowind had no demos, for example.
So no, playing a demo isn't like taking a tour of a house. Neither is reading a review of a game. Reading a review of a game is like reading a description of a house and looking at the nice photographs.
If I had access to it, I'd make an MMo or a console game tommorow.
So you'd make another generic MMO in an industry already oversaturated with them? Or a console game, dumbed down to appease the console kiddies? Congratulations. You are one more reason why PC gaming is suffering.
P.S. Seriously, learn to combine all your posts into one. You are spamming this topic.
P.S.#2: I played Oblivion for over 200 hours before I bought it. By doing so, I ensured that the game was worth every penny.
This comment was edited on Mar 10, 05:43.
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