NCsoft buys unreal 3 engine.. could it be?

Originally Posted by Fril Estelin

I guess you got immerged so much into 3d graphics that you forgot what normal people are. Normal people have better things to do than being snobs about polygons and FPS.

Originally Posted by zwei2stein

Seriously, printout some representative screenshots of variety of games and show it to your mom and have her rate them. Don't expect her to take shaders 2.0 into account.

Originally Posted by Fril Estelin

I'll spare zwei2stein the trouble of quoting your own words to show you the paradox (almost hypocrisy). I'll point you to his own words:



1) he knows what FPS is; 2) he's only asking for the game to be playable (that is, like video at 24-30FPS?), not 60FPS.

BTW you seem soooooooooooo knowledgeable that you even quote "hardware from the 90s". Guess what. Most people use integrated graphics! Hey, unmount from your cloud of l33t-graphics-ness and step back to the ground of real Earth where people do not put 1/3rd of their computer upgrade money on the graphics!

Well done trolling this thread uber-gamer!

Originally Posted by zwei2stein

average 1993 PC: all contemporary games run on it.

average 1996 PC: pretty much all games run on it.

average 1999 PC: most of games run on it.

average 2001 PC: okay amount of games run on it.

average 2003 PC: few games run on it.

average 2006 PC: pretty much no contemporary game runs on it.

average 2008 PC: there is no way you would run contemporary game on it.

Originally Posted by Numa Pompilius

games aimed at non-gamers

Originally Posted by Blackhearted

Peoples level of ignorance surprises me. Their ability to pull random figures out of air and use them as decisive and factual ones is funny too. Guess we need to educate some on how cheap a ue3 compatible upgrade from a barely gw capable machine could be. especially if you keep your current os, monitor, mouse, keys, case, etc.

MMk. So we will use newegg for this. Sorry if you're not american, but i don't know foreign stores. Anwyay..

Motherboard: Eh, this is really upto you and what you need to be honest. Most here could do with a $50 budget board most likely. So i'll just mark down $50 to $100 here.

CPU: Athlon 64 x2 4400+ $72.99. not highend but more than capable of ue3. quite overclockable too.

Ram: 2Gb ddr2-800 dual channel kit value kit $36.99. budget ram? maybe. but it will do the job in a budget system.

Video: MSI Geforce 8600gt OC $85.99(-$20 MIR) Far from highend yet still reasonably capable. Plus 20 dollars back!

Well, well. that covers all the basics of what is merely an "upgrade" and what's our total here you ask? i can't believe it. it's only about $300! and that's if you step up to a better $100~ motherboard! Wow, i must say, I'm rather surpisred at this. I just saved someone less knowledgeable on things 500 to 2750 dollars! and got them a pc capable of more than 30 fps all at the same time.

Originally Posted by You can't see me

If I claimed my numbers were accurate, it would be a different story. The problem isn't the price, it's the fact that you end up paying more to run the games coming out these days than you do for the game itself, and something is off there.

Did I get some figures out of the air? Yes. But the numbers aren't what backs up the real fact of the matter. It's the fact that no average gamer wants to do upgrades to run a game that may not even be half as enjoyable as another older game that can run on his PC. Graphic pushers are shoving the gaming industry down the toilet by demanding such requirements that the average gamer can't run it, and forces them to either upgrade or stick to older games.


And by the way, yes, I am American. I pay taxes. I have a limited wage. I have expenses to cover. If I had an extra sum of money bigger than the game itself to throw at a game I'd buy to unwind from all this in the first place, I would, but that's not the situation for me, or a lot of others who would enjoy the game world and won't be able to if the dung heap of graphics demand with ignorance to people's actually ability to run things smoothly.

If you ran a business, you would go bankrupt managing it because of the lack of customer availability compared to other companies and the engines they use. Simple as that.

Originally Posted by Fril Estelin

Big laugh of the day. (books for non-readers or software for non-users?)

Originally Posted by Numa Pompilius

Stephen King and AoL.

Originally Posted by Blackhearted

More of this blaming the people who push gaming forward on why your pc can't run anything? Jesus, if the industry had it your way it'd still be stuck back on 486dx cpus and chugging on pseudo-3d games like doom and we'd never improve or get better stuff. And no matter what it's always going to cost more than the game itself does to play it anyway. Your pc didn't come bundled in the same box as gw did it? I didn't think so. But you bought the pc anyway. So how's the current gw any different from this argument?

Srsly, you people need to come up with something better than this same thing. Cause it really isn't those who push things forward who are to blame. Nor is it that "little extra" it may cost to play it. Cause that could apply anywhere and almost always will. Even on a console. Alot of it is actually on consumers who think their shiny new dell is invincible forever and refuse to upgrade it when it needs it and those who didn't tell dell they wanted actual 3d capabilities when they overpayed for thier pc. Another other part of it would be on intel for hampering the industry with their hideous gpus.

Originally Posted by semantic

you have to admit there's a definite segment of the player base (which I assume you would refer to as 'gamers') that collects graphical elements in their games like so many virtual titles.

Originally Posted by Numa Pompilius

I don't personally see it as a problem. I wont be happy until the computer graphics in games is indistinguishable from high-definition footage.

Originally Posted by zwei2stein

Assume you never heard of Offset? http://www.projectoffset.com/videos.php

Demo from 2005 is nearly indistinguishable from movie footage. Imagine what happened in 3 years.

Oh, and that trailer was filmed on 2005 contemporary HW. No supa-dupa machine.

Originally Posted by zwei2stein

Assume you never heard of Offset? http://www.projectoffset.com/videos.php

Demo from 2005 is nearly indistinguishable from movie footage. Imagine what happened in 3 years.

Oh, and that trailer was filmed on 2005 contemporary HW. No supa-dupa machine.

Originally Posted by Antheus

The reason for this lies somewhere else - piracy. There is none on consoles (noteworthy), whereas anything not completely online on PC has 90%+ piracy rate these days.

Originally Posted by Draginol

Piracy & PC Gaming
By Draginol Posted March 10, 2008 20:48:46

Recently there has been a lot of talk about how piracy affects PC gaming. And if you listen to game developers, it apparently is a foregone conclusion - if a high quality PC game doesn't sell as many copies as it should, it must be because of piracy.

Now, I don't like piracy at all. It really bugs me when I see my game up on some torrent site just on the principle of the matter. And piracy certainly does cost sales. But arguing that piracy is the primary factor in lower sales of well made games? I don't think so. People who never buy software aren't lost sales.
Is it about business or glory?

Most people who know of Stardock in the gaming world think of it as a tiny indie shop. And we certainly are tiny in terms of game development. But in the desktop enhancement market, Stardock owns that market and it's a market with many millions of users. According to CNET, 6 of the top 10 most popular desktop enhancements are developed by Stardock. Our most popular desktop enhancement, WindowBlinds, has almost 14 million downloads just on Download.com. We have over a million registered users.

If you want to talk about piracy, talk about desktop enhancements. The piracy on that is huge. But the question isn't about piracy. It's about sales.

So here is the deal: When you develop for a market, you don't go by the user base. You go by the potential customer base. That's what most software companies do. They base what they want to create on the size of the market they're developing for. But not PC game developers.

PC game developers seem to focus more on the "cool" factor. What game can they make that will get them glory with the game magazines and gaming websites and hard core gamers? These days, it seems like game developers want to be like rock stars more than businessmen. I've never considered myself a real game developer. I'm a gamer who happens to know how to code and also happens to be reasonably good at business.

So when I make a game, I focus on making games that I think will be the most profitable. As a gamer, I like most games. I love Bioshock. I think the Orange Box is one of the best gaming deals ever. I love Company of Heroes and Oblivion was captivating. My two favorite games of all time are Civilization (I, II, III, and IV) and Total Annihilation. And I won't even get into the hours lost in WoW. Heck, I even like The Sims.

So when it comes time to make a game, I don't have a hard time thinking of a game I'd like to play. The hard part is coming up with a game that we can actually make that will be profitable. And that means looking at the market as a business not about trying to be "cool".
Making games for customers versus making games for users

So even though Galactic Civilizations II sold 300,000 copies making 8 digits in revenue on a budget of less than $1 million, it's still largely off the radar. I practically have to agree to mow editors lawns to get coverage. And you should see Jeff Green's (Games for Windows) yard. I still can't find my hedge trimmers.

Another game that has been off the radar until recently was Sins of a Solar Empire. With a small budget, it has already sold about 200,000 copies in the first month of release. It's the highest rated PC game of 2008 and probably the best selling 2008 PC title. Neither of these titles have CD copy protection.

And yet we don't get nearly the attention of other PC games. Lack of marketing on our part? We bang on the doors for coverage as next as the next shop. Lack of advertising? Open up your favorite PC game publication for the past few months and take note of all the 2 page spreads for Sins of a Solar Empire. So we certainly try.

But we still don't get the editorial buzz that some of the big name titles do because our genre isn't considered as "cool" as other genres. Imagine what our sales would be if our games had gotten game magazine covers and just massive editorial coverage like some of the big name games get. I don't want to suggest we get treated poorly by game magazine and web sites (not just because I fear them -- which I do), we got good preview coverage on Sins, just not the same level as one of the "mega" titles would get. Hard core gamers have different tastes in games than the mainstream PC gaming market of game buyers. Remember Roller Coaster Tycoon? Heck, how much buzz does The Sims get in terms of editorial when compared to its popularity. 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.

I won't even mention some of the big name PC titles that GalCiv and Sins have outsold. There's plenty of PC games that have gotten dedicated covers that haven't sold as well. So why is that?

Our games sell well for three reasons. First, they're good games which is a pre-requisite. But there's lots of great games that don't sell well.

The other two reasons are:

* Our games work on a very wide variety of hardware configurations.
* Our games target genres with the largest customer bases per cost to produce for.


We also don't make games targeting the Chinese market

When you make a game for a target market, you have to look at how many people will actually buy your game combined with how much it will cost to make a game for that target market. What good is a large number of users if they're not going to buy your game? And what good is a market where the minimal commitment to make a game for it is $10 million if the target audience isn't likely to pay for the game?

If the target demographic for your game is full of pirates who won't buy your game, then why support them? That's one of the things I have a hard time understanding. It's irrelevant how many people will play your game (if you're in the business of selling games that is). It's only relevant how many people are likely to buy your game.

Stardock doesn't make games targeting the Chinese market. If we spent $10 million on a PC game explicitly for the Chinese market and we lost our shirts, would you really feel that much sympathy for us? Or would you think "Duh."


You need a machine how fast?

Anyone who keeps track of how many PCs the "Gamer PC" vendors sell each year could tell you that it's insane to develop a game explicitly for hard core gamers. Insane. I think people would be shocked to find out how few hard core gamers there really are out there. This data is available. The number of high end graphics cards sold each year isn't a trade secret (in some cases you may have to get an NDA but if you're a partner you can find out). So why are companies making games that require them to sell to 15% of a given market to be profitable? In what other market do companies do that? In other software markets, getting 1% of the target market is considered good. If you need to sell 500,000 of your game to break even and your game requires Pixel Shader 3 to not look like crap or play like crap, do you you really think that there are 50 MILLION PC users with Pixel Shader 3 capable machines who a) play games and b) will actually buy your game if a pirated version is available?

In our case, we make games that target the widest possible audience as long as as we can still deliver the gaming experience we set out to. Anyone who's looked at the graphics in Sins of a Solar Empire would, I think, agree that the graphics are pretty phenomenal (particularly space battles). But could they be even fancier? Sure. But only if we degraded the gaming experience for the largest chunk of people who buy games.


The problem with blaming piracy

I don't want anyone to walk away from this article thinking I am poo-pooing the effect of piracy. I'm not. I definitely feel for game developers who want to make kick ass PC games who see their efforts diminished by a bunch of greedy pirates. I just don't count pirates in the first place. If you're a pirate, you don't get a vote on what gets made -- or you shouldn't if the company in question is trying to make a profit.

The reason why we don't put CD copy protection on our games isn't because we're nice guys. We do it because the people who actually buy games don't like to mess with it. Our customers make the rules, not the pirates. Pirates don't count. We know our customers could pirate our games if they want but choose to support our efforts. So we return the favor - we make the games they want and deliver them how they want it. This is also known as operating like every other industry outside the PC game industry.

One of the jokes I've seen in the desktop enhancement market is how "ugly" WindowBlinds skins are (though there are plenty of awesome ones too). But the thing is, the people who buy WindowBlinds tend to like a different style of skin than the people who would never buy it in the first place. Natural selection, so to speak, over many years has created a number of styles that seem to be unique to people who actually buy WindowBlinds. That's the problem with piracy. What gets made targets people who buy it, not the people who would never buy it in the first place. When someone complains about "fat borders" on some popular WindowBlinds skin my question is always "Would you buy WindowBlinds even if there was a perfect skin for you?" and the answer is inevitably "Probably not". That's how it works in every market -- the people who buy stuff call the shots. Only in the PC game market are the people who pirate stuff still getting the overwhelming percentage of development resources and editorial support.

When you blame piracy for disappointing sales, you tend to tar the entire market with a broad brush. Piracy isn't evenly distributed in the PC gaming market. And there are far more effective ways of getting people who might buy your product to buy it without inconveniencing them.

Blaming piracy is easy. But it hides other underlying causes. When Sins popped up as the #1 best selling game at retail a couple weeks ago, a game that has no copy protect whatsoever, that should tell you that piracy is not the primary issue.

In the end, the pirates hurt themselves. PC game developers will either slowly migrate to making games that cater to the people who buy PC games or they'll move to platforms where people are more inclined to buy games.

In the meantime, if you want to make profitable PC games, I'd recommend focusing more effort on satisfying the people willing to spend money on your product and less effort on making what others perceive as hot. But then again, I don't romanticize PC game development. I just want to play cool games and make a profit on games that I work on.

Originally Posted by Blackhearted

piracy exists on consoles more than you think.

Originally Posted by Antheus

Can I play it? No? Right... Just another of million vaporware titles of coders who can make engines but couldn't make a half-decent game to save their lives.

The reason some titles started defining what gaming means is because they realized that it's the game that matters. So they got rid of coders making games for geeks, and got game designers making games for entertainment. And presto - we have EA and Vivendi defining what games are.

As for the hard-core market, that one is as big as it always was, hundreds of thousands. It's not growing or shrinking, it's just no longer financially possible to make games catering to them.

And as such, all games are getting "dumbed down" or Ursaned, by providing stylish graphics rather than ultra-fidelity for octa-SLI graphic cards.

The business reality meanwhile moves on, regardless of elitisits or populists.

PCs are now online gaming platform. Web 2.0, MySpace, Facebook games, flash games. Oh, and WoW.
Everything else is going on consoles. Development costs are 1/3 to 1/10 of PCs, there's almost no support needed, and market is well defined, so are the publishers.

Soon, PC gaming will be akin to Mac gaming. There will be literally a handful of titles, but the AAA market will move to consoles, which will perform all the functions that PCs to today with regard to entertainment.

The reason for this lies somewhere else - piracy. There is none on consoles (noteworthy), whereas anything not completely online on PC has 90%+ piracy rate these days.

And all of this has nothing to do with gamers in any way, it's just the way business works.

Originally Posted by JeniM

What hasn't used the U3 engine lately?

Seems every game I see uses it

PS. StarDock are great. I hate CD protection on games, sitting at the PC and thinking "hmmm I feel like playing xxxxx game". Double click the icon, "Please insert the xxx play disc", Spend 5mins looking through all my games for the right box (It's always at the bottom of the lot ) then take out the dics thats in the drive and have to find that box.

Basically starting games normally takes more time than playing a round

Originally Posted by Dr Strangelove

Best stuff I've ever read on the topic here

Originally Posted by StardustDreamz

Congratulations on Godwinning the thread.

Anyway, the competing ideals here are elitism and populism, and neither is right or wrong. For people who want to advocate better graphics at the expense of losing some low-end machines (just an FYI, I had to turn down settings on my machine when GW came out, so it's not like it was always "low end") the main argument is that people are ignorant in their purchasing of computers and need to educate themselves so they stop getting ripped off.

The populist argument is that people don't want to learn about computers and that games should target a broad consumer base.

Personally I lean more towards the elitist crowd because making informed choices about your purchases is just a plain common sense thing to do. It wasn't that long ago when tinkering with electronics and building your own computer was normal. And, generally speaking, people who are technophobic about computers are still willing to put the effort into researching their TVs or stereo systems or cars. So the argument that game developers should cater to peoples' ignorance doesn't really fly that well with me.

Originally Posted by Antheus

Soon, PC gaming will be akin to Mac gaming. There will be literally a handful of titles, but the AAA market will move to consoles, which will perform all the functions that PCs to today with regard to entertainment.

The reason for this lies somewhere else - piracy. There is none on consoles (noteworthy), whereas anything not completely online on PC has 90%+ piracy rate these days.

Originally Posted by IlikeGW

This is silly. GOOD PC games do decently. It's the bad ones that had better watch out for piracy because people can get a free full demo and know to stay the hell away.