Iron Lore post-mortem interview

[EFG]

Originally Posted by 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?

tl;dr... or actually, ts;htr (terrible structure, hard to read... use paragraphs if you have to rant, that was a little bit painful to read)

[Narcolepcy]

Thank you for explaining your second leet speak, no clue what the first one means.

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)



1. The stardock developer mentioned this, the non savy computer users that protection theoretically would prevent from pirating their product, wouldn't pirate it anyway. Protection is unecessary if they don't know how to bittorent, as protection only applies to successfully bitorented files, and most bitorrent files have comments detailing how to break the protection. These customers are also the ones most inconvinienced by the protection, as they have no clue what to do if anypart of it goes buggy, and they are only punished with long serial codes that they would rather not deal with. I liked the way the devloper put it, it went something like this, Our paying customers are the ones we are concerned with appeasing, and they would rather not deal with it. Pirates don't get a say, and don't matter.

2. Most protections are broken the day of the game release, and the better ones cost alot more and will be broken anyway, so this is very much a cost/proffit analysis that will not apply to most games. Semi valid point.

3. Valid point, I have bought several games myself because I was in a store and they were there. Although that had nothing to do with copy protection, as I know that is not even a ten minute hassle, and alot to do with the day-2day dl of the torrent.

I've always thought propper grammer was the most important point in readability, and paragraphs and spacing much less so, but if you insist.

[EFG]

Originally Posted by Narcolepcy

I've always thought propper grammer was the most important point in readability, and paragraphs and spacing much less so, but if you insist.

I just reformatted, I'm too used to using spell-check software, and I didn't see any red lines (I only scan for punctuation and structural errors while proofreading). Also I'm not sure where that is coming from as your post was hardly perfect before you edited it.

[Narcolepcy]

I'm not sure where that is comming from as the only thing I edited was to add my comments about ADOM, which is a great game everyone should play. If you meant to imply my post is perfect now that I have edited it, then you unwittingly implied that it has always been perfect.

Also I'd think content would be more important than grammar, care to offer a counter rebutal to my rebutal?

[Munderbunny]

Oh man, I just read that Stardock article. Jesus Christ, are you kidding me?

I'd like to chime in late and say, what a crock of horse ****.

He goes on about how so many game companies out there are just going for what he calls the "cool factor." Right, they aspire to making big huge giant games that tons of people want to play and get featured in gaming magazines and appeal to hard-core gamers! Those idiots!

So when I make a game, I focus on making games that I think will be the most profitable.

But when HE makes a game, he doesn't care about appealing to hard-core gamers, or features in gaming magazines--he just cares about the money! How noble!

And then he goes on to brag about how much money he made with those games (which was all he cared about, not being considered "cool" or being featured in magazines and stuff) he goes on to whine about how his games aren't getting featured in magazines (though not for lack of effort) because his game genre isn't considered "cool."

So he DOES want to be featured in magazines and considered cool?

And then he goes on to make some confusing point about Railroad Tycoon and The Sims?

Those things just aren't that cool to the hard core gaming crowd that everything seems geared toward despite the fact that they're not the ones buying most of the games.

Wait, the Sims isn't cool to the hard core gaming crowd, which is why it's unpopular? And yet I think I've read more about the Sims than any other game in the universe? What the **** is he trying to say?

And then, one of the most laughable parts is saying that his games succeed because they're low-tech and appeal to people who don't steal games?

You know who absolutely pwns video game sales and suffers practically no software piracy? POPCAP GAMES!!! You know why? Because their games work on a wide variety of hardware configurations, and those games target the largest customer bases per cost to produce for (that last bit is pretty much meaningless). POPCAP games rakes in the dough hand-over-fist because they make simple games that will run on your microwave and that target old people, mainly bored housewives, the vast majority of which don't even know how to pirate games.

By this logic, the whole gaming industry should stop trying to be cool by pushing the envelope with their games that appeal to a huge population of gamers, and just focus on making the next Bejeweled, or Spaceship Shooter (when IS the next Wing Commander coming out?)

And what's this bit about not selling games that pirates would want to steal? Should our only video game options be those that pirates don't like or something? WTF kind plan is that?

But, my absolute FAVORITE part of the article is when he says lots of people poo-poo windows blinds as being too ugly, but the people who BUY windows blinds love it. 14,000,000 downloads, 1,000,000 registered users. So, what I can conclude from this is that if my product is ugly enough, and unpopular enough, no one will want to steal it, and what we can also conclude is that people with bad taste don't steal games.

Hey, maybe if windows blinds wasn't so ******* ugly, he could have 7,000,000 registered users! Oh wait, but then he might have up to 3,000,000 pirate users out there, and he doesn't make games for pirates.

I think it's dumb when companies ***** all the time about piracy ending their game, but their mistake wasn't trying to make a great game with a broad appeal; it's not like game developers who are out there pushing the envelope are saying, "How can we make this game so that it appeals to game pirates?"

And, frankly, all these medium and low-grade games benefit from the advances made by the cutting-edge game developers. The whole reason that guy's spaceship games even HAVE the graphical capacity they do is from some previous game pioneer's hard work. If everyone followed this dumb plan and just made yesterday's game to run on yesterday's box, nothing would move forward.

What a hack.

[Narcolepcy]

And what's this bit about not selling games that pirates would want to steal? Should our only video game options be those that pirates don't like or something? WTF kind plan is that?

I can see why you would think he is a hack when you don't get his most important point. Now pirates are just like normal people, they have the same tastes in games as normal people, so what are the only games pirates don't want to steal? Well the ones they can't of course. Now exactly which games can pirates not pirate? Well a good deal of the ones that use the internet.

I mentioned I bought the last few games I played even though I admit I'm a pirate, and why? Well I bought the orange box, tf2 is a great online game, also I have no clue how I'd pirate a steam game. I used to play WoW, even though I think it sucks now, can't really pirate that game, and I just bought starcraft again since I lost my copy a long time ago. Wait now why would I want to buy starcraft, I could of dled it for free. Well you need a cd key to install it, and they check that key when you try to get online, meaning its easy to pirate it if you just want to play it alone, but not so easy if you wana play it online.

He didn't really say much about the copy protection they did use in that article, but I read a few post by people complaining about it. To be able to update the game, you need to register it using a cd key, well normally cd keys are easily cracked, but they have a database of keys that multiple people have tried to use, so they can blacklist your key from being able to get the latest version. So you can play it for free, that is unless you want to get an updated version.

[Munderbunny]

I can see why you would think he is a hack when you don't get his most important point. Now pirates are just like normal people, they have the same tastes in games as normal people, so what are the only games pirates don't want to steal? Well the ones they can't of course. Now exactly which games can pirates not pirate? Well a good deal of the ones that use the internet.

It's like you didn't read his article at all. He does NOT say that the reason people don't pirate his game is because they can't.

[Narcolepcy]

Well it's in the comments under his article, and thats true anyway, you can pirate his game, just without updates. Anyway I have said it, its been said.

Edit, decent rebutals btw, I do so love debates.

[Munderbunny]

Well it's in the comments under his article

I never questioned other people's comments to his article (I'm sure they make much more sense).

[EFG]

Originally Posted by Narcolepcy

I'm not sure where that is comming from as the only thing I edited was to add my comments about ADOM, which is a great game everyone should play. If you meant to imply my post is perfect now that I have edited it, then you unwittingly implied that it has always been perfect.

Also I'd think content would be more important than grammar, care to offer a counter rebutal to my rebutal?

What? This isn't debate class. I was offering my opinion and you have convinced me of nothing, as all you did was offer your opinion, which HOLY **** WASN'T THE SAME. Don't care, really. Side note: I like how you evaluated the validity of my points, like I was submitting them for your approval. Nice touch.

Originally Posted by Narcolepcy

Well it's in the comments under his article, and thats true anyway, you can pirate his game, just without updates. Anyway I have said it, its been said.

Edit, decent rebutals btw, I do so love debates.

What are you talking about? Debate? You aren't debating, your just misquoting and misrepresenting facts/attempting to mount the high horse by evaluating and "disproving" our points.

The last thing I'll say before leaving this "debate" is that I never said I was in favor of DRMs, only that they do help companies, and it makes sense that they are put into place. Obviously they will remain for a long time to come, so if you don't like it you can either deal with it or buy a console.