quote: Original post by deadmilkman
and yes the pirate are the good guys, why? cause like napster piracy let you try the game to see if you like it. look, do i realy want to buy a game that i will play for 10 hours and said "the AI is just too crapy..." and you stop playing the game, well it''s a control of quality

Oh, shut up you juvenile asswipe. There''s a reason developers/publishers release demos - for free - and stores allow hands-on trials for many of the bigger titles - again, for free. You have no point.

quote: and here just for fun for all the one who bitch against piracy, i expect you don''t have any mp3 on your computer, cause you just don''t make sense, cause those 2 things are the same.

Firstly, I have absolutely no MP3s. Secondly, even if I did, it''s legal if I a.) obtained a digital license for it; or b.) own the CD. Read up on "Fair Use" and stop clogging the net with your ignorance.

quote: right now everybody dont care about each other and knowledge is given to the ones who got money to pay for it (and im lucky to have money cause i can have education and i can pay 100$can for a programation book (just bought game programming all in one and it''s really good)

By your rhetoric, though, the book should have been free. I mean "knowledge belongs to the people", right? Yet why aren''t you upset about the price of the book?

You. Are. Lame.

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Thanks to Kylotan for the idea!

Piracy != theft. They are different concepts. With that out of the way...

I think prices need to drop. Computer games cost a lot more than videos, DVDs, and music CDs, yet they tend to provide less hours of entertainment. And although games are probably on a par with books in terms of entertainment hours per dollar, they are almost all of lower quality than books. (And no, I don''t just mean storyline here - I mean overall.)

Of course, with the industry as it stands, the prices can''t drop because it costs too much to develop a game and the risk is too high. The industry is barely viable. In the future, I predict that tools and middleware will correct this problem and allow good games to be made cheaply without skimping on graphical or audio assets, or indeed requiring immense amounts of programming. At this point, the prices might drop again. So it''s a case of riding out the storm.

Games also need to be bug-free. This is what I meant by quality above. I used to be able to pay about $14 for a game that would give me 100 hours or more of playability and ZERO crashes. Now I would be expected to pay nearer $50 for between 10 and 20 hours of playability, and bugs and crashes as an added bonus. Pay more to get less. It''s no good the developers arguing that it costs more because they put more work into it - it''s a retail product and the worth is in what the buyer gets from it. Their extra work is largely a waste as it goes unnoticed. (This may seem to contradict previous claims by me where I''ve said that todays games are no worse than old games. However, I assert that the quality of games themselves has been constant over the years - it is merely the cost of development and defect rate that has risen.) While I''m on the subject, I won''t listen to anyone who says it is impossible to write a bug-free program, as that is a defeatist attitude as well as being a complete falsehood. So long as games are buggy, it not only reduces the desire to buy them, but it increases the desire to wait until they are sold at budget price with a patch. I will not buy full-price software any more.

Which leads me on to... budget software. This probably reduces piracy too, as you can now get games at a low enough price that it''s not such a major investment. However I worry that it damages the sales of new software. This wasn''t much of an issue in the 80s when budget software was around originally, but today games are more expensive to develop and more sales are needed. If I can get 2 games a month for less money than I used to spend buying 1 game a month, then I am getting more entertainment while putting less money in the developers'' pockets. But this particular point should be argued in the Business forum.

Now, a more practical suggestion - moving to a server-based industry gets around piracy. eg. MMORPGs. Instead of trying to be a manufacturing industry (and a pretty bad one at that), game developers are slowly becoming a service industry with these games. Anyone who wants to compete will have to have a high degree of technical ability, as well as to be able to host their own servers and so on.

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Let me just point out that if you want to "try out" a game before you buy it, you could always rent it for a measly $3.

It is true that you CAN pirate software "honestly." In my mind, if you "try out" a game and then either:

Immediately stop playing OR
Go buy it

You haven''t done anything immoral. But, does everyone who pirates games do this? Of course not. The vast majority just keep the game.

If your attitude is "I want to play the game, but it isn''t worth paying for" well, you''re out of luck. If you want to play, buy it. Otherwise you miss out. Let''s not pretend there is some sort of consumer service being done by pirates.

I much prefer "I''m a cheap bastard" to total BS pseudo-intellectual arguments.

You all are to greedy deep inside.
Thats whats it all is ... greed.

I am developing a very complex and fast moving FPS game and guess what .... Im giving it away for free. I dont need money, money I can get from a regular job on the side, there is still time to code. Life is too short to waste on slow-coded monster games, go code some fractally expanded worlds instead and it will code itself.

It isnt very hard to do a game, only complex and it takes somewhat brainpower to do. (Sometimes I go into the wall...)
But I do it all just for fun, and I dont need to get paid for it.

Those of you who make games as a full-time job are somewhat lame or somewhat greedy, there is no middle-thing here.

I will laugh alot when my game take away alot of your potential market. Because I found out that good games can be made in your garage in 2 years, just as a hobby. Guess what game they rather play: My free one or your greedy one? Hihi HAHAHAHAHA.

If you say: Hey, you''re deranged, its not possible to code a game without getting paid ... I will answer: Then you either really never tried making a game || you don''t know enough to code it.

But on the other hand, I really hate piracy

quote: Original post by Kylotan
Piracy != theft. They are different concepts. With that out of the way...

I think prices need to drop.

right on! i''ve been having a related discussion about music with a friend of mine in the music industry and i think it''s relevant here.

the majority of the price of a CD, or more relevantly, a Game seems to come from all the middle men involved in the producer->consumer distribution chain (packagers, distributers, resellers). everyone along that process needs to make a profit or the whole thing falls apart. the only way to ensure the chains continuence, therefore, is to leave the consumers with a fatty price tag.

i think the answer to the cost problem is make use of the crazy new thing called the "internet" and cut out ALL the middle-men. with a rise in the percentage of internet users with a broadband pipe i think you can bypass the distro chain all together. the result should be much much cheaper games. with cheaper games, you put the game back into the pricerange of the majority of people and i bet you end up making more money. i think peeps would be willing to fork over 15-20 bucks to play a game that they only think might be good, rather than only paying for the top 5 games of the year.

i think people need to get out of the mindset of "priates are evil; kill them all". that stance is getting old and tired. there''s only so much you can do to maintain the status quo before you realize that you''re going to have to change your business plan if you want to survive. few, if any of the big players in the industry seem to be thinking in the mindset of "how can we change our business model such that people are incented to buy, rather than pirate, the product".

continuing to blame pirates and make harsher laws and make your product a bitch to install just alienates your customers and makes your product less desirable. why not try to make your product sooo desirable and sooo affordable that people will be breaking down your doors to get at it? make positive changes not more punishments....

-me

quote: Original post by Anonymous Poster
Those of you who make games as a full-time job are somewhat lame or somewhat greedy, there is no middle-thing here.

Yes, doing something you like for money is pretty stupid. I think I''ll quit and get a job I don''t nearly enjoy as much.

quote: Which leads me on to... budget software. This probably reduces piracy too, as you can now get games at a low enough price that it''s not such a major investment.

Find any game made by a company called ValueSoft. You''ll notice that practically noone pirates their stuff... but you''ll also notice that their stuff is SH!T. Production costs these days are huge, and for good reason. Though there might not be a direct proportionality between dev cost and the quality of the finished product, we can I think agree that a great game that''s professionaly polished will cost you. That coupled with the phobia (or pissing contest mentality) programmers in particular have about middleware and libraries and you''ll get high cost. Even the latest and greatest engines cost. It would be great if the price point of games was targeted towards volume sales rather than profit per game, but then again the music and movie industries have just as much piracy.

------------
- outRider -

quote:
but then again the music and movie industries have just as much piracy.

Hmm.. wouldn''t it be funny if computer games had video clips like pop music? People might buy the game "just so the clip stays on the tele!".

I think I''ll just hide behind that tree.

No design relation. Decent discussion, though, so I''m moving it to the Business forum.

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Thanks to Kylotan for the idea!