Comments on: In The Company of Wolves: Celso Riva Interview

By: Arby

Arby — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 17:46:40 +0000

If a game is not worth buying, then it shouldn’t be worth pirating either! There’s no valid excuse. Can’t afford it? Too bad. Playing games isn’t a “right”. It’s like anything else. Can’t make your car payments anymore? Too f’n bad. No car! No money, NO GAME!

By: cliffski

cliffski — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 15:56:46 +0000

“Did a quick search for curiosity on some major torrent sites on Positech and Winter Wolves games. Well, while there’s some torrent for cliffski stuff I can’t really find a torrent for Celso games.”

Don’t assume torrents are pirated games. I know for a fact a lot of the torrents of my stuff are just the demo…
Most piracy of small games isn’t torrents, its sites like rapidshare, which is practically just a big pirate storage center :(

By: Jash

Jash — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 14:44:16 +0000

Nothing to add besides that the girl in the supernova II banner looks like a gelfling from the Dark Crystal.

By: darkripper

darkripper — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 13:58:45 +0000

Did a quick search for curiosity on some major torrent sites on Positech and Winter Wolves games. Well, while there’s some torrent for cliffski stuff I can’t really find a torrent for Celso games.

By: Al3xand3r

Al3xand3r — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 12:31:50 +0000

No case is foolproof, I’m sure many here can bring examples of the opposite happening (perhaps in higher ratio in the given narrow circumstances) like protection making them lose sales, piracy increasing sales after people tried and loved a game without or with a crappy demo, etc. Doesn’t really prove much. That’s why piracy is such an easy scapegoat, nothing can actually be 100% proven so the minute some big suit calls it the main issue the even more ignorant people around him just listen without thinking…

By: Kris

Kris — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 12:18:13 +0000

I know its a complex issue and there’s are alot of arguments for and against piracy and further arguments about the vailidity of arguments. However whilst Al3xand3r’s suggestion regarding ‘cant pirate, wont buy anyway’ does hold some water, its not always the case. That why 3 friends of mine each love playing the new football manager game each season / year using 1 purchased copy of the game and cracks. That is 2 lost sales to piracy, they did the same thing with C&C Generals, 2 more sales gone. So simple love of the game doesnt guarantee purchase and prevent piracy. If your sales are reduced by 2/3 amongst devotees of your games, wouldnt you be worried?

By: Al3xand3r

Al3xand3r — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 11:44:46 +0000

I don’t think they move the save games onlne for piracy but I guess we’ll see how they actually implement that in order to judge better.

Also, just because some companies which went defunct claimed Piracy was their main issue, doesn’t mean they were actually right. They could have just made many more mistakes, mainly of a marketing nature is my guess since we’re talking about Looking Glass and similar underdogs.

Again, the fact many people pirate a game doesn’t mean many people would buy the game if they couldn’t pirate it. Most would simply move on to the next game they could get for free, or, if we imagine a world where no game could be pirated, they would just forget about this game and play what they have bought which they happen to prefer and have more fun with. Enough fun to justify the purchase in their own mind.

Note none of the above says what’s good or moral about pirating, nothing is obviously, regardless of the reasons and excuses. However, that doesn’t make their reaction to a given circumstance any less factual and I’m pretty sure I’m dead on with the paragraph above…

By: celso riva

celso riva — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 10:40:22 +0000

FYI, from what I’ve heard, Valve is going that route soon (online savegames). Everything is moving online, for piracy reason but also for new features that can be introduced like ladders, multiplayer, chat, communities, and so on. It’s an inevitable step…

By: Jonas

Jonas — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 09:38:22 +0000

“A fairer way to judge an Indie game is on fun or originality, as this is the only way they can compete with a AAA game.”

Not necessarily true. There’s a significant difference between graphics and art. Plenty of indie studios have terrific art without spending too much money on the graphics, since graphics is about technology and art is about talent. Look at The Behemoth – they’re making 2D side-scrolling games (very very primitive graphics) but their games look fantastic because their artist is superb – and because 2D sprites are far faster to make than normal-mapped 3D character models with a million polygons, they make do with that one artist (Dan Paladin).

By: Dave

Dave — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 09:07:06 +0000

“Firstly, if piracy was as huge of a deal as certain companies make it, why are Blizzard and Valve doing so well? If I had to guess, it’d be because they don’t make shitty games,”

So Looking glass went out of business because they made shit games? At the time, they claimed a lot of their problems were rampant piracy of their games. But hey, if you only ever want to play W0W and TF2 (both games that have lower than normal piracy due to being online ones), then YAY! piracy FTW!
The smaller guys always feel piracy worse than the big guys. they don’t have phat retail deals to rest their asses on.

By: DaveMan

DaveMan — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 02:38:32 +0000

>I find that the piracy stance most people take is one of two extremes: Either you should be able to pirate pretty much whatever you want, or everything is piracy.

I find people in the piracy debate fall into 2 camps.

1) Its not a major problem: people who make casual games and pirates (of course) .

2) It is a big problem: people who make games targeting hardcore gamers.

>Firstly, if piracy was as huge of a deal as certain companies make it, why are Blizzard and Valve doing so well?

Because they have many millions to spend on art, programming and *promotion*. Most Indies have a few hundred dollars to spend. The most successful Indies have a few thousand dollars to spend *of their own money* on the art for their games. On top of that some of them sacrifice 6 months to a year’s salary on designing and programming a game that is not guaranteed to sell any copies.

Also Marketing 101:
People at the top of any kind of business make the lions share of the cash. The next competing tier (below) earns half of what the ones above earn. The next tier under that earns half again and so on until you get down to the Indie level which for the most part get nothing but scraps.

So before you tear an Indie developer down because their game art doesn’t compete with the likes of Blizzard, think hard. Because doing so makes you look very stupid in the eyes of anyone who understands the business.

A fairer way to judge an Indie game is on fun or originality, as this is the only way they can compete with a AAA game.

By: Hypocee

Hypocee — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:25:36 +0000

I guess he really does idolise cliffski.