Iron Lore post-mortem interview

[Sulus Nigra]

So sorry that Iron Lore went belly up!

This game has so many fans and is fun to play.

Piracy? Been disappointed with a quite a few games that I bought (Master of Orion3 etc.), have learned to read reviews and things got better - still buy all my games.

Back in the old Amiga days I didn't even know people that owned original games, everybody had copies. Though that piracy might not the solmn reason, but Amiga died out...

I don't like open servers, everybody wants to give you their duped stuff and cheat the game to no-fun-death. Multi-player is always more fun than single player, therefore I see the future in closed servers.

[Predling]

Not to be too condemning here but the excuse "Why should I pay for something that didn't keep my attention?" has the same merit as "Why should I pay for that food if I'm just going to poop it out?". Time and energy went into making a product to be used and you used it. That said, I'm merely being critical of your excuse. I've borrowed games from my friends which some might see as pirating. They paid for it but I am playing it and the company received no more money than the initial purchase.

[EFG]

Originally Posted by Predling

Not to be too condemning here but the excuse "Why should I pay for something that didn't keep my attention?" has the same merit as "Why should I pay for that food if I'm just going to poop it out?". Time and energy went into making a product to be used and you used it. That said, I'm merely being critical of your excuse. I've borrowed games from my friends which some might see as pirating. They paid for it but I am playing it and the company received no more money than the initial purchase.

First of all, terrible analogy, F for effort.

Here's a better one:

Food I pay for is food that will go through my system, allowing my body to absorb the nutrients and gain nourishment, then pass my system.

Food I don't pay for is food that has no taste, no nutritional value, or will probably be rejected by my body and vomited out.

Note to SC fans: I'm not saying I vomited Starcraft. Let's just say it is a different set of nutrients than my body can absorb.

Secondly, don't criticize my excuse and then admit to the same behaviour. At least I rationalized my behaviour, you are enjoying games without helping the creators as well, and then going, "Well, **** it, I can do what I want." I actually buy most of the games that go through this process, I only pirate games that got good reviews and such.

[Boombaye]

Titan Quest II ?

I'd buy it.

[TheFatKidDeath]

I work right down the road from THQ. I'm thinking of picketing during my lunch break demanding they hire Brian Sullivan to make TQ II!

[yerkyerk]

Let him make D3 for now..

[TheFatKidDeath]

Originally Posted by yerkyerk

Let him make D3 for now..

Sullivan is not working on D3..is he?

[yerkyerk]

Nah, but if you start demanding things, you might as well start there; it comes out sooner.

[Narcolepcy]

I like how in the sins developer interview hes talking about how they didn't copy protect their games because it bothers the people who buy them, and wow he is right on the money there. As a man who has pirated a few games (I feel not the need, nor the desire to rationalize my behavior) most of them old, a few new ones, it is not a matter of if the copy protection is broken, but when. Will it be a week or a few months? Take a look at the modded xbox and playstation consoles, that takes much more effort than any pc pirating. The people who are going to pirate your game, are going to pirate your game, whether or not you try to stop them. Considering getting your software protected would undoubtedly cost money, they probably made a wise dicision, at least their success seems to suggest they did. If anything pirating will not kill the gaming industry, but push it online, as online games seem to be the only ones with decent (not perfect) protection. All the games I've gotten recently I paid for as they were online games. Even if all the developers move to the console, as I've heard claimed a few times, its still fairly easy to emulate console games on your computer, or mod your console to play pirated versions. I actually bought TQ twice because I lost my copy the first time. There are still enough people buying games to make them profitable and as long as they are proffitable companies will continue to make them. Even in russia were pirating is rampant, as claimed in the afforementioned developer interview, people still buy games when they are priced cheap, even when they can get them for free. Also the sins developer kept refering to hardcore games as games that only brand new graphics cards can run, I always thought hardcore games were the non mainstream gameplay over glitter games. My favorite game ever just so happens to be free to download, legally as well, its ascii if you know what that is and you can get it here http://www.adom.de/ Now that is a hardcore game, how many games like this do you see being published eh?

[EFG]

The only really obscenely bad copy protection I've seen is Starforce. In all honesty, we can ***** and moan about DRMs and copy protection all we want, but they actually help the companies that use them, in a few ways.

1. Computer-illiterate people. These are the people that call you and ask how to add a torrent to BT, and they are stymied by copy protection, so if they want the game, they will probbaly just buy it. (I'm looking at most of EA's customers... Sims, Spore, Sports games, etc.)

2. With good enough protection, you can hold off the cracking of it for maybe a week, or a month, and this will help greatly for release sales, which, for hypd titles, are higher than average. Not to mention that a good protection system will instill confidence in your product and make stores more willing to stock it. (a good follow up is to get employees to register at torrent sites and downvote the torrents, or even report them as viruses and such)

3. Lazy people. Would you rather download 4 different files, risk a bad torrent and maybe get a virus, or just go and buy the game? If you answer the second, you are lazy (or ethical) and the copy protection has succeeded on you. (Unfortuneately, most lazy people just have consoles)

Stardock succeeded without any protection because the game was more of a cult hit than a real huge hit. If they had mainstream appeal, they probably wouldn;t make that many more sales compared to now, because it is just so easy to pirate that game, only the cult fanbase/ethical supporters would actually buy it. (btw, GalCiv is wa-hey-hey-hay better than SoaSE)

Iron Lore failed because of the way in which the implemented their copy protection. It isn't a fault of copy protection in general, it is a fault of the mysterious and infuriating copy protection that THQ slapped onto Titan Quest, coupled with pre-release leaks that gauranteed practically everyone would at least try to pirate it.

whew.... /rant