A PC Dev on Piracy and PC Gaming

for GuildWars? not anymore...

http://guildwars.incgamers.com/forum...d.php?t=475551

Well, they might also want it to be playable...

Yeah, that's quite a huge bummer : (

I don't care what anyone else here says, Crysis was a well made and fun game. While GW might have more "replayability" (in the form of grind), Crysis was a far better gaming experience for me, far more immersive with far more freedom of movement. Yes, they're different games yet that didnt prevent people from bashing Crysis with or without comparisions to GW in this thread. Both are good games and both being good for differing reasons.

I agree that the technical requirements were insane, but I could see why when I played the game. I have to wonder about the guy who said it looked like "WoW", did he actually play the game?

And to say that a game MUST have been a failure and MUST have been a bad game because it didnt sell well is jumping to conclusions. We all know that in every medium, there are great quality shows, movies, music, etc etc that don't sell well while crap does.

While I don't necessarily disagree with your points, starting your argument with:

makes you sound like a whiny sack of snot. Just saying.

As for Crysis, you'll never get anywhere arguing whether it was good/bad - some people are going to enjoy it, others won't. Unless somebody actually bothers to set forth a reasoned argument on the merits, the 'debate' is just treading water. What's funny though, is that it's largely irrelevant whether Crysis was a good game or not, because the number of people who can even run it is too insignificant to matter in any practical sense.

Which, of course, is one of the key issues being discussed.

Pretty much agreed with what people are saying here. It's why developers are starting to complain about the quality of Intel's on board chips, because it's Intel who really owns the graphics market, and therefore Intel who sets the graphics benchmark for the masses.

Not quite, utter means absolute and Crysis was not an absolute fail. Theres still hardcore gamers in the market, and personally I enjoyed running Crysis on the closest to max settings I could run it on, it looked amazing; and the solid sandbox gameplay was still there. I honestly feel there won't be another FPS that relies so lightly on prescripted encounters as good as Crysis until well... the next release by the company. I doubt Ubisoft will know how to keep the torch going on Farcry 2.

No more China, which means fewer bots and the better part for players:

Pandas and other pets that were changed/removed because of China and their laws can now be readded to the game!

It's not like being better than FarCry is going to be hard. FarCry sucked.

Maybe Crysis wasn't an epic fail, but it wasn't super awesome next-gen fpp either as they advertised it to be. So yeah, they failed. It wouldn't be a problem if they just said "hey guys, we have a nice, fun fps for you, enjoy it".

And on the piracy... while I hated piracy some time ago, it doesn't bother me as much now. I mean- how the hell are players supposed to test games, when there are less and less playable demos? It's cool with GW and MMORPGs- there are trials but somebody is out of their frikkin mind if they think I'll give my money for something We-don't-know-what-it-does. Who am I supposed to trust? Idiotic 'profeshunal' game journalists, who don't even see the difference between real-time-with-pause and turn-based system? Advertisments? Lawl!
Game devs "this is awesome, buy this, you won't regret it!!" ?
Give me a break.

Oh the PC games I've bought, there have been demos. This lack of demos people cite as an excuse to pirate games is usually just laziness on their part of actually go find a download for the demo.

The server run by The9 for continental China was completely separate from our network of servers. There will be no change in the number of bots on our turf.

Regarding the panda/crane problem: as far as i know, Hong Kong is still part of our network of GW servers and Anet/NCSoft still has to observe chinese law.

I see this argument a lot, and it is absolutely without merit. "Try before you buy" is shareware, not piracy. People who pirate games do so because they want something without having to pay for it. You can dress it up however you like, but I don't hear about crowds of people going out and buying the games they've already downloaded. There are, of course, the honest few, but they are without a doubt an insignificant minority of the larger pirate pool.

If a game doesn't have a demo, you take a chance - either you buy it without trying, or you don't buy it at all. Nobody is compelling you to play the game, and not having a demo doesn't give people free-reign on five-finger discounts.

Not many people have any sympathy for heavy-handed content managers like the RIAA/MPAA, and I'm certainly not one of those people, but I still agree with their position that the entire concept of "Intellectual Property" seems alien to people in the modern era. The fact that most people don't seem to find anything particularly wrong about piracy is rather telling - especially when people aren't even afraid to admit to illegal downloading in public.

I've often been sat on a bus or been walking through town and a couple of people will be sat/walking near to me talking, rather loudly, about illeagle downloading. I find it amazing people yell it out in the street

Yeah, now go and find me a demo of the most hyped game in the history of time- Oblivion.
Oooh, can't? Well, too bad. But I can find on youtube AMAZING vids from oblivion, with its amazing radiant AI. Sucks it turned out to be pure PR BS.

Well, then, how about Neverwinter Nights 2 demo? Shoot! The Witcher? Shoot!
There were demos of games. But "were" is important word here. Really.
Oh, sure, but it's not the right way to do bsns. "Believe our bs, or f off".

You really don't need a demo to know whether you'll like a game or not. It's not as if games these days are so innovative that you're going to be completely surprised by what you pick up.

As for piracy, it seems that whenever a topic like this shows up, people come out of the woodwork proclaiming that they would never pirate a thing. Some of them may be telling the truth, but I really doubt most are. I used to manage the internet connection for a dorm, and was the guy that had to pick up the phone for MPAA complaints. Almost everyone is pirating stuff. The particulars and the excuses may vary, but they're all doing it. The only ones who aren't don't use their computers for more than word processing. It's just a fact of the business.

Part of the problem is certainly with content providers. Before the latest writer's strike, I downloaded almost every show I wanted to watch, rather than deal with my tiny tv and its crappy reception. Thankfully, the networks have now come around and fixed this, but back then, it just wasn't worth 4 bucks per show to me to watch free television.

However, the root of it is that people want stuff as cheaply and conveniently as possible. Piracy is always cheaper, and often distributes a superior product. Companies are beginning to make progress here with digital downloads through services like Steam, but the "screw those greedy customers" ideal still exists in a lot of big companies.

Reread what I said. I haven't bought any of those. However, most high profile games do have demos. Not all, obviously, but most do.

Demo's very rarely give you much of an idea of the entire game. They are designed to get you interested, not show you everything. So by your retarded logic here, demo's wouldn't do you much good anyway. But if trying to justify theft makes you feel better, go for it.

Not all, thats the point. If you say one game isn't worthy of a demo, your wrong . I've seen people rate a game REALLY low and when i play it its a heck load of fun. If a game doesn't have a demo, not lots of people will be willing to buy it, seeing as about 1/2 will want to return, or Ebay the BS game.

If GW didn't have a demo, would people buy it? If WoW didn't have a trial, would people buy it? Look at the games that DON'T have demos, they're sails are pretty much LACKING in comparison to games that DO have demos. Only thing that I see that isn't like that is Orange Box- TF2, and I got orange box cause of HL2 and its mods. Which HL2 had a demo also.

torrent site is smallkid stuff...bbs and password ftp is the big deal

"Is it about business or glory"....the web is a sick place...I got a sick mind so I understand the web.

CD copy protection....is a big joke.
it take any warz fanboy 30 sec to find a webpage..."how to byepass blowfish 664 bit " page

In the end, the pirates hurt themselves.....not...the dont care or move on

high end graphics cards sold ....Moore's Law (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page)
so most hardcore players wait ½ year and pay 1/4 of the price on a card.
"Gamer PC"....U build U pc...shop a pc....ew, that’s necrofilia

"satisfying the people"....yep U got it right...piss me of and I got the web.

To make a subtle point, piracy isn't stealing, it's copyright violation. There's a pretty significant difference between the two. That doesn't mean it's legal or moral, it just means it isn't the same thing as walking into a store and stealing it, both in a moral sense and in the eyes of the law.

To continue with what I was saying before, the reason piracy is largely irrelevant to Guild Wars is that it's inconvenient in the extreme to set up a pirate server, not to mention that you'll be getting a lower quality product. It's worth the 50 bucks not to have make a pirate server and deal with the game updates.

these real-world comparisons.....

a 24/7 pirate server..get real...10 sec to track....2 uhr to shot down....8 uhr U got the : bend over and smil.