Sunday afternoon is filled with delightful free comedy (Ever get a chance, go see Brian Gittins). But the evening? It will be full of pasta and sleeping. But in between, in the meniscus between the two, it’s time to compile a list of writing on games found across the internet this week while resisting linking to some piece of music that caught our fancy.
- This is the heftiest piece of the week, and if I had more time to do a proper analysis, I’d have done a real breakdown in an longer post. As it is, you should just go through it. TweakGuides do an enormous and relatively non-partisan 10-page examination of Piracy which includes at least a half-dozen good ways to start fights. Some numbers comparing PC and Console piracy which make anyone playing a “But it happens on consoles too!” openly laughable? A vivisection of the “DRM doesn’t work” and “DRM is always cracked” argument? Arguing that there uproar around Starforce and Securom was just hysteria rather than anything rooted in fact? And while we’re there, a strong critique of Steam? I wouldn’t agree with some of the fine detail, but there’s a lot of stuff that’s well worth taking on board. And… go, comment thread, go!
- Cheery RPS-tribute site The Reticule – and I suspect none of the Reticule Writers will get that particular in-gag – have been motoring with the interviews recently. As we approach the release of Sol Infernum, they chat to Cryptic Comet’s Vic Davis about making a hell set strategy game. Good stuff.
- I’d missed this Ben Fritz has been doing some impressively in depth reporting around the fall of Brash Entertainment. If you’re the sort who cry out for investigative journalism in games, you’re pretty much duty bound to click through.
- Gamasutra has some interesting demographic information about people who game, which seems to confirm the older gamer = pc gamer idea. Perhaps common sense, but good to see evidence to back up assumptions.
- Not strictly speaking PC stuff, but I did a profile of Rare Software for OXM US which has been lobbed online. I think it’s one of the better more subdued pieces of games writing I’ve done this year, and find Rare’s dilemma fascinating. Get a chance, do read.
- Minor PC Games writer John Walker writes a piece for his obscure blog. I think it’s just about worth bringing to wider attention. Its subject: “On Why Games Reviews Should Be Subjective”. It’s strong.
- I really quite like the demo that Ex-Pipette Rose Elinor Dougall has up on her MySpace page. Very lovely.
Failed.
Related Stories:
Brad Wardell of Stardock said he could eliminate 100% of GalCiv2’s piracy by running the AI code through a server. Without a valid key code and access to the server, piracy would be impossible. I expect all games, singe or multiplayer, to eventually use such systems. In doing so, piracy would completely vanish. Those who object (and those with shitty internet connections) would probably be a minority and could be financially written-off, if you will. Brad said he’s not at that point yet, but my understanding is that such measures are comparatively trivial to implement.
If I had to choose between increasing amounts of Starfoce/SecuROM/[root kit] or constant online activation, especially if the publishers get rid of DVD checks and throw in Steam-like features, I would chose the latter.
I thought that Spore and other recent limited-activation games had a system which would give you back your activation ‘ticket’ when you legitimately uninstall?
I really liked that piracy article. I’m not going to use the ‘eww StarForce’ argument as a reason to not buy excellent products like LO:MAC Flaming Cliffs and DCS Black Shark now.
Insofar as I know, the problem with the activation ‘tickets’ is that they can be corrupted with bad installs, etc.
I’ve only ever ‘pirated’ two games though; Close Combat 3, which I tried to buy for a year and couldn’t, and Starcraft, because my CD was so scratched to shit it wouldn’t read. And I’d bought 3 copies.
Why is Walker’s reviews piece not on RPS?! I DEMAND SERIALISATION OF THIS ARTICLE TO RPS! THE INTERNET NEEDS TO HEAR THIS!
I’m happy with the Tribute status so long as we don’t have to pay you guys royalties! Friendly banter!
@RichP : I love how half my country could be written off here! I mean, I sure hope they improve by the time such measures come into place, but one thing that pleasantly surprised me since coming to the States is that our regular 1M broadband is only slightly faster than your 128K at peak times. No, I’m not being sarcastic, it’s just…ironically funny.
And it’s not a problem of people not having enough money. It’s a problem of there being exactly one national outbound bottleneck. Clearly the architecture can be improved, but well…
Of course, if people would simultaneously stop torrenting all sorts of things all over, we may just see a sharp increase! Now that’s something to look forward to.
RichP, they could do that, but then they have the costs of running and maintaining that server (well, the multitude of servers to satisfy demand), and that cost will likely have to be passed on to the consumer somehow. And what if the server had problems, bugs, what not, I wouldn’t be able to play the game whenever anything unexpected happened. So, again, legit customers would get the shaft, thanks to pirates. Just as bad as any DRM, and worse. How many would be willing to pay fees for a single player game anyway? Not many should be anyway.
I’m roughly half way through that 10 page piracy article.
I currently feel like stopping there and crying myself to sleep.
I mean, I want to get into the games industry and make games for my preferred platform, but as long as this goes on, and the free rider problem continues to gain traction, how can I possibly convince any publisher to do that?
Whats the point?
@semi: Wardell thinks such measures are several years off at the earliest, in part because broadband still sucks in many regions.
@Al3x: All valid concerns. Tens of millions of gamers already pay to play online-only games that can be shutdown at any time or rendered temporarily inoperable due to server issues. The challenge is getting people to do the same for single-player games. Maybe by adjusting the pricing model (subscribe instead of buy)? In any event, something has to be done, or there will be fewer and fewer publishers willing to assume the risk of PC-centric games. I thought Brad’s idea was novel, if impracticable for every game, because it’s impossible to circumvent.
Interestingly, EA’s next PC-exclusive RTS game, Battleforge, will be online-only and supported by microtransactions. Piracy is therefore impossible.
I did have problems with an earlier implementation of (Starforce or Securom I think) where a legitimate copy of Black & White 2 wouldn’t run until I downloaded a CD key cracker… Guess the DRM didn’t like my CD/DVD/Whatever drive.
More recently I haven’t had actual problems with an implementation of DRM, I still more or less disagree with them on principle of DRM potentially giving legitimate users a poorer gameplay experience than that of other users.
Another solution to the publishers-dying thing might be to have a timed lock on them, so that they no longer require server intervention after x years. Of course, that might be crackable more easily than forcibly doing some of the calculations server-side.
It’s a novel idea RichP, but again, one not applicable to every game. I’m sure the gameplay is vastly different to that of say, Command and Conquer, which allows for that model to work. That doesn’t mean “regular” games of the genre will disappear, though I guess they just might as no RTS has been able to make a big splash lately.
And on the opposite side we have Starcraft 2 which keeps a similar model to that of the original. Blizzard certainly know the game too, perhaps better than EA some would argue.
Piracy has been around on the PC since forever.
I didn’t know anyone with an original version of Doom.
What is most likely ‘killing’ big budget games sales on the pc are low budget laptops.
I don’t know anyone who is willing to shell out £600+ on rig when a £200 laptop can let them do the big 4 pc needs easily.
It’s about CHIME.[Chat,Internet,Music & Movies and Email].
If people no longer want to buy rigs then I don’t see a future for big budget pc gaming past hobbyists.
Lord knows I haven’t upgraded this machine since…’03?
That’s the developers and publishers fault again, even moderate PCs are capable of a lot these days. Instead of aiming for a decent middle ground though, they seem to just try to take advantage of the latest and greatest hardware, as if the market is ruled by the people who buy those, instead of the majority which uses much lesser PCs. Valve know their shit, that’s why for four years on almost all of their games have remained with almost the same requirements. Blizzard also know their shit. Studios like the Crysis’ developer clearly do not.
@Radiant : Hardware hogs have been around since forever, too. Lord knows, we had fun(????) making alternate autoexec.bats and config.syses on dad’s computer to squeeze out enough memory for our Ultima VII playing time. Although I suppose that with that line of logic, games was enough of a hobbyist thing back then that it didn’t make much of a dent. Saleswise or production cost-wise.
Ah, the good old days!
@Dan Lawrence: Yeah, I realise it wasn’t the main thrust of the argument; it was more for Theory’s benefit as he says he hasn’t encountered anyone whose had hardware problems due to Starforce. Don’t worry, I know that anecdotal evidence isn’t the strongest basis for an argument, so it would be foolish for me to even attempt to argue against it anyway.
I imagine Walker saying to himself “I’ll write something lengthy and considered about that innovation/role-of-the-reviewer debate, just sneak it in while there’s a lull in the piracy fu… Doh!“
@Al3xand3r
Although I agree with your point I don’t see it as anyone’s fault.
It’s more a side effect of the push for cyclical console gaming.
Instead of pushing newer innovative game experiences; what drove the last two console cycles was wiz bang graphics.
How many power point presentations did we see Microsoft and Sony pull out in an effort to excite us?
And you know we sort of bought it… so blaming publishers and developers for giving us things we were already sold on isn’t really something we can hold them them for.
If we can take anything from Kieron’s Rare write up is that devs and publishers really are in a bind when it comes to innovative games now. It’s simply easier to sell 50 eleven million copies of Metal Gear Halo 12 then it is to sell the same amount of World of Goo.
@Radiant
The guy uses the sales of add in GPUs from Nvidia and ATi to guesstimate the PC gaming userbase. Since they’re still selling 20m per quarter it’s safe to say there’s at least 60 million PCs capable of playing the latest games. I agree that cheap laptops and integrated graphics aren’t good for PC gaming but looking at those numbers the market is still very large.
It’s true. Chaos Theory took a year to get cracked, and Beyond Divinity never was (though the devs later stripped Starforce out of it.) But they were distinct exceptions to the rule, and many other games shipped with Starforce that were all over torrent sites almost immediately. One or two exceptions does not disprove the rule.
I sincerely disagree.
Also, I am deeply skeptical that heading off zero-day piracy really has a significant impact. Who are these pirates who’d rather drop $50 on a game than wait a week or two to download it for free? Mythical creatures, in my estimation.
That’s always been my biggest point of confusion too. I can’t really concieve of anyone except some 5yr old screaming “Gimee NowNowNow!” tipping an otherwise free game into a sale that quickly. They can’t account for very many sales.
Many do assure me that it’s a huge factor in how many get sold at all, but it’s rather inconcievable to me. Game copying was always about patience when I was a kid, sometimes waiting months. Sure the world’s changed and sped up but people who’d rather pay ninety dollars than wait a week? Who are these people?
@malkav: Yeah, I’ve never understood why preventing zero-day piracy is such a big deal. Are publishers banking on people impulse buying? (What!? No pirated copy!? Well, then, time to drop $50 on game X!)
PC gaming is a crazy thing that defies easy explanation. Just look at this thread. Piracy killing PC-exclusive genres? Maybe, maybe not. Stardock makes great PC games that sell enough copies to make the endeavor pretty damn profitable. StarCraft II and Diablo III will sell millions and millions of copies; WoW is one of the most profitable games ever made; Valve’s games still better on PC than the 360… That Gamesutra story indicates that plenty of people still play PC games of all sorts. We clearly need DRM that reduces or eliminates piracy, yet publishers create DRM schemes that piss thousands and thousands of people off.
Then again, if PC gaming was easy, and easily categorized, what the hell would we have to talk about? :p
Gosh, there’s so much wrong with that piracy article I can’t even start or I’d be typing all night. Here’s a fun thing to try: count the number of times he supports his argument with anecdotal evidence without presenting any actual facts those statements were based upon. Or save yourself some time and count the number of times he doesn’t…
Dan Lawrence,
I mentioned in my post that ‘wrong in one thing, wrong in all’ is a silly conclusion to come to when a mistake is made. But in this case, it isn’t a mistake that the author neglected to mention the outrageous pre-conditions the Russian firm demanded(mirring that of Creationist or anti-vaccine loons that want many irrelevent or burdonsome criteria to be filled before they accept evidence proving them wrong) whilst still using the fact that no one had come forward to ‘prove’ SF was harmful to demonstrate there was no evidence at all.
I am not going all the way to Russia to show them how installing PoP 2 or 3, or PsiOps leads to a gradual reduction in speed until useless.
A mere mistake isn’t enough to justify use of ‘wrong in one, wrong in all’, but downright dishonesty is. I simply can’t believe the author was unaware of the policy on StarForce where the makers insisted people go all the way to Russia and even then, they will only refund the proven damage, not the expense of flying and staying in a hotel for a few weeks coming into their building every day to repeatedly boot up your PC, load the SF-infected game, re-start, etc.
Theory,
I’ve been using Vista since last summer when I built this new machine. When was this update for XP released? I encountered the problems with my drives in 2005, so did it really take Microsoft two or three years to fix it if it is the real cause? I noticed my drives refused to play DVD games at first, ones on CD were fine. They would still run, but only after about five minutes of a strange clicking noise being made.
But this catagorically did *not* happen during 2006 when my games with StarForce were not installed at all because I was drunk on World of Warcraft. It wasn’t until I went away to college in 2007 and took Prince of Persia: special edition and my laptop there to play as it was residential. Drive gave in after 2 months and I didn’t catch on until I decided to transfer save-games and finish the two thrones on my home PC. Drive packed in. Sod it, I used my savings to build a new comp with Vista. Then I read about StarForce and what it does to optical drives. I’m just lucky StarForce caused my Vista machine not to start at all after installing PoP and I had to go into safe mode and do a system restore. If it had allowed Vista to start and play PoP 2 or 3, it would have destroyed my latest drive too.
After reading about the policy where they actually want you to show them your machine disintergrating in front of their eyes(something that actually happens over a period of time rather than instantly) which was widely disseminated on the numerous complaint forums, I decided against contacting them about it.
I’m waiting for UbiSoft to finally sell their Steam games in the UK so I can play two of my favourite all time games again, without StarForce.
The only problem I have with the piracy article is that it makes it seem like piracy is a recent issue.
In the 80s and 90s, piracy was standard here in Portugal, and I have a very hard time believing that it has changed in any way until today. I literally had over 200 pirated games at home for the Spectrum, my next door neighbour had dozens and dozens of pirated games for the Amiga, my first PC came with a bunch of pirated games installed by the store, and until the age of 16 (that’s the year of 1996), I played dozens of PC games while only having bought a single one(Chip’s Challenge, at Selfridges, of all places). Obviously, this was all without Internet. Everyone who used computers pirated software, back then, and I have a hard time believing that things have gotten any worse. In fact, things have probably gotten better over the years.
Tweak guides need to stick to things they know. That article had massive amounts of FAIL!
The person who wrote the article I’d question if he used the internet in the 90’s at all and obviously had no clue about the BBS scene(80’s) or IRC which was very popular in the 90’s. Plus the fact since most games averaged 10 or less floppies you didn’t need fast internet or could pass it on to mates.
That article fails to mention that even tho Starforce did stop the scene to release a working crack for 12mths+, you could still d/l a clonecd of the game and with a special app could get around the starforce BS. Alot of legit owners did it this way as well, to avoid having starforce installed. The only problem was you had to physically disconnect the drive to get it to work! That alone would make you wonder what starforce was doing in the background…
He obviously now has a pro-starforce stance. He tries to compare it to speedfan yet fails to mention that speedfan is
1) Freeware,
2) The developer is open to what he is trying to achieve
3) Is an app that is monitoring your pc, not trying to stop certain software from working
4) is considered safe from security software companies.
Starforce
1) developers are making money on starforce
2) Secretive about what star-force did early on
3) the earlier versions did not uninstall themselves from the system even when you uninstalled the game/demo.
4) had an arrogant view about the program and anyone questioning them, must of ment you were a pirate.
5) they covered their ass by saying it was part of agreeing to the EULA.
The whole 0-day discussion is flawed. They complain that they lose sales if a game is released on the net b4 it’s sold in shops and people will always get whatever comes 1st… Well it takes up to a month for a game to go from GOLD to shops. That is at least 2weeks before the scene gets their hands on it. That is plenty of time for the publishers to release a special DD “GOLD” release on a system like STEAM and still release the normal “retail” box version. The DRM haters can wait for the drm free box version and the so called players that just want to be 1st to play will have put some money down. I know some people have cracked STEAM games but they still have to wait till the day its released.
The Spore and Amazon issue was not because they needed to install a serial number or have the CD in the drive to play. The issue was DRM limiting how many times they can install the game before calling support. The concept of calling anyone in 2008 is ludicrous. He rambles that the DRM haters are only 1%, well that’s because most ppl can’t be assed to make an effort. I’m sure if RPS showed us some stats on how many ppl RSS/read this site vs how many ppl post, the ratio would be large. 500,000 d/l vs 2mill sold would suggest DRM haters are more than 1%. He even mentions that its the most pirated game That would imply that more people than usual went to the effort to d/l a pirated version of the game.
He finally mentions the business of piracy which is indeed an interesting subject but again his logic is flawed and is picking on the wrong crowd. WareZ sites make money from traffic not from selling games, noone is fooled here. You don’t put money down to buy a game. Google makes money the same way, you could search for kiddie porn and google will make money from it.
The real issue has always been the street sellers and counterfeiters which would make money on unsuspecting customers trying to get a bargain and its still a big problem in alot of markets. With police crackdowns in the western world its not so much a problem as it used to be so people just don’t know that existed and point fingers in the wrong places.
His “conclusions” show a lack of understanding on the topic. Everyone whined about Bioshock and what did EA do? Release another game in exactly the same fashion! Alot of poeple whine about the way Steam works when it was 1st released yet it still works in a similar fashion today.
How much more “working with publishers” do we need to do??
Not buying games as a protest, does not fix the problem the market is still large enough that the big games make money so any so called protests are silenced, if it really worked we would of had DRM-free games by now on all releases and all games would only cost $10 a pop.
Ha, support Starforce now? Back in 2006, Starforce posted a link to a GalCiv2 torrent on its official forums in response to Stardock’s anti-DRM stance as a twisted way of proving a point. What a dick move.
WareZ sites make money from traffic not from selling games, noone is fooled here.
I wonder what brings in all that traffic.
Alot of poeple whine about the way Steam works when it was 1st released yet it still works in a similar fashion today.
my steam experience in 2004/2005 is far different than my steam experience these days.
your experience may have been different.
Yeah, I’ve never understood why preventing zero-day piracy is such a big deal. Are publishers banking on people impulse buying?
flip it sideways – they’re banking on preventing impulse downloading.
And games tend to sell the most in their first few days, especially if they are greatly anticipated.
@dhex
“flip it sideways – they’re banking on preventing impulse downloading.”
And keeping those fans who are SO HYPED UP THEY’RE GOING TO THE MIDNIGHT OPENING TO BUY THE GAME from downloading the pirated version that’s available a week earlier.
That Gears of War 2 article John links is really interesting and everyone should read it. Here’s a couple paragraphs:
“Over the last ten years, shooting has taken the place of jumping as the lowest common denominator mechanic in gaming. Gamers instinctively reach out for a trigger button and right analog stick in the same way that they would have mashed a jump button during the 8-bit and 16-bit eras. Shooting as gameplay can be a powerful and expressive mechanic, but I can’t recall many instances where I would call it fun. Cliff Bleszinski has compared the act of shooting in a 3D environment to touching. He’s right, to an extent, but it’s an exceptionally limited kind of touch whose only outcome is destructive.
The inherent power in shooting is that we’re subconsciously aware that it’s wrong. We’re not supposed to kill people, or destroy things. Games that guide us through simulated thrill rides where shooting is required to progress is a perverse kind of wish fulfillment. Like a lucid nightmare, shooters sate our morbid curiosity. Unlike Mario’s jump, or Madden’s juke controls, I don’t wish I could shoot and kill in real life. When I shoot at something in a game I’m not delighted through empowerment or wish fulfillment, I’m subconsciously horrified. That experience, like a great horror film, is a psychic acknowledgement of fear and mortality without having to endure any of the painful consequences. It’s pornographic in the best sense of the word.”
The part about shooting replacing the jump is just cool to think about it, but I don’t agree with being horrified by the shooting. I suppose I could have just forgotten my initial reaction, but whatever remnants I have of that fear seem to be long gone. I think it’s more of a wanting to be an action hero thing, like the gun nuts who own 10 guns for self defense yet live in the suburbs.
http://uk.xbox360.ign.com/articles/933/933174p1.html
Or, you know, talk more about starforce because it’s so fascinating and I have never heard it before.
He repeats the popular lies about Steam. The software has an offline mode where one can play installed games without contacting the server.
Fondness for Steam is not the overflowing of love for certain titles: a miniscus is clearly visible. Steam is well liked because:
A. Purchase-to-download-to-play is fast. It’s faster than driving to the store, and faster than downloading a pirate copy.
B. Patches are fast and applied before launch. It’s irksome to load a title, then be told a patch is out.
C. Data collected is also used to improve the games.
D. No limits on installs.
E. A whole catalogue of titles is available, not just the “flavour of the month.” If I go to retail, they probably won’t have what I’m looking for, since they concentrate on things that sell in high volumes for the first month.
F. It just works.
True, you can’t resell a Steam game, but seriously, does a used PC game market exist?
I also find it weird that he’ll refer to casual piracy to explain drm, then use downloading figures to explain why consoles aren’t a problem. People rent console games, and they buy them used, and guess what activities the game industry wants to shut down? Counterfeiting and piracy on consoles is a different world with different rules.
DRM systems like Starforce and Securom can only damage the consumer’s perceived value of a product. They sit in the game’s critical path, and break stuff. It’s a bigger risk the more games and high-end hardware is installed. But the point is to get people to BUY more games.
Some stuff like StarF*e detect CD emulators and refuse to play, if detected. Now, can a game choose what software I am able to run? and, what If I can’t uninstall the emulator, because i deleted it the bad way?
DRM is evil, but the implementation of DRM in a PC using a driver is a serius precedente. TweakGuide is not taking the issue in a serius way, so I will lower my expectations for future TweakGuide articles.
I quite liked the piracy article. I learned a lot from it. There was one thing said which didn’t make any sense to me, though: “If Valve is serious about getting digital distribution to truly take off it needs to insist that publishers sell their games for a much lower price on Steam.”
I don’t think that this is fair. I doubt Valve has the clout to insist on such a thing. If they tried, the publishers would probably just decide not to put their games on Steam.
“Oh yeah, as for giving Valve the online monopoly, uh, so what?”
Wow. you should maybe look up why monopolys are bad on wikipedia.
Would you like microsoft to have a veto on what games get made? If not, why valve? what makes you think valve will be owned by the same people next month as own it this month?
Lets say microsoft buy valve next week. Still happy that 100% of PC games are controlled by them?
What is so fucking hard about going to a developer’s site to buy a game?
What is so fucking difficult about developers just selling you a link to a DRM-free exe installer with no bullshit bloatware taskbar-hogging crap attached?
Dan(WR) – you don’t make it clear: were the drives actually physically broken? ie were they still no good after you reinstalled and started boycotting starforce games?
I don’t think even the most ardent Starforce apologist, or even the company themselves, would say there weren’t software incompatibilities and that in certain situations and with certain versions you can a) Not be able to access the starforce-protected game, or even b) have starforce vomit all over your OS and cause problems with the drive in _other_ situations
is b) what happened to you, or was it genuine hardware failure? If so, then that’s at least 2 people claiming it’s happened to them now, who, given the relative intelligence of RPS readers, I’d be inclinced to believe. That’s up from 0 when I actively went looking at the height of the hysteria.
Anyway, not a bad article that (although it could have done with mentioning Lenslock :P )
That’s it, I’m boycotting Steam for the rest of my life.
SAY NO TO VALVE!
“Digital distribution should logically be about reducing prices due to lower production costs.” We’re talking about IP. The ‘production costs’ come in development, not making the friggin’ disc!
Re Cliffski: The only problem I have with going directly to a small developer (and I do it pretty frequently) is because y’all aren’t completely reliable. I buy stuff online so that I don’t have to back it up. Even if you don’t crash, I’ll have to keep a copy of my passwords, etc. to download it again and check your site for the latest patches.
Fuck you and your selective quoting and pretend-responses.
@frymaster
I used to regularly reformat and reinstall windows to clean up my PC – and I ended up doing it a lot when I was experiencing drive problems. But those problems persisted afer OS reinstalls, until my drives were no longer able to recognise CDs. I was sure at the time that that Starforce was the trigger.
I’m not an expert by any means. Perhaps I was wrong. I don’t think I was, but I can only look at how many other people had the same problems as a way of verifying it now.
I don’t like software piracy, despite being rampant with it while growing up. I just wish I knew what the solution was. The thing that’s left a bad taste in the mouth recently is law firms sending out letters to people on the flimsiest evidence and demanding compensation. Atari dropped a certain firm like a bad penny, but there’s nothing to stop the bigger games companies from hiring lawyers for the same sort of horrible shit.
This is getting pretty damn tiresome. Next time there is a cue for a very low quality discussion of piracy/DRM, it should be in a separate comments thread from stuff that nice people want to discuss ;<
I like John’s subjective games reviews post. I want more subjective reviews. Objective and formulaic reviews that list everything in a game are why I’ve given up on most reviews and try to rely on demos.
My favourite example of reviewers trying too hard to be objective was the spate of reviews for Earth Defense Force 2017. There were a heap of reviews talking about what enormous fun in was, and then refusing to give it more than 70%. IT WAS FUN. They should be focusing more on that than anything else.
A-Scale: Yeah, so you disagree. Surely the point of the discussion is to say why? So, for example, explain why World of Goo had a roughly 80% piracy rate.
The important thing is also to be honest about your own motives. There’s no reason why people should pirate in my opinion – PC gamers with a rig good enough to play Crysis have enough money to buy the game itself. If there’s no demo or good reviews, wait for the internet buzz to see if you like it. If games cost too much, then don’t buy them.
Like I said, it’s a crime of convenience. The most important thing is to be honest with yourself about everything you do, and don’t make excuses for committing crimes if the main reason for doing it is because you can.
On the point of John’s article: I was reading Kieron’s Eurogamer Space Rangers review, in which he slates the poor translation before noticing a line in the manual that says that the game is set in the future, so “correct” future English has drifted away from modern English. Genius.
In any case, I don’t think any review I’ve ever read has been truly objective.
Seems to be a lot of steam bashing going on in this thread. Not sure if I like that. I’ve been very happy with the service despite a few initial setbacks (and also Far Cry 2 took me a few days to download). The best thing about it is that I can re-download my games again and again. I bought the orange box and the disc got stood on, but I discovered all the games from it were downloadable once I had initially registered (BTW I think every publisher should be offering this service anyway….).
I understand people’s issue with the monopoly, but valve have been very open about the system. They’ve given it away for free as an SDK to anyone, so anyone can set up their own Steam based distro service, without having to pay any money to valve. But so far, no publishers have actually embraced this, they’ve just happily sold it all through valve’s version of steam.
HOWEVER. Although I’ve been recently quite happy with steam, I’m sensing that my love may be coming to an end. This new localised currency stuff they’re trying out is all well and good for you lot, but its hugely unfair to Euro people. Lets take Left4Dead as an example:
Left4Dead
US Price : $49.99 (= £33.36, €37.13)
UK Price : £26.99 (= $40.44, €30.03)
EU Price : €49.99 (= $67.30, £44.91)
For now, I can still buy in dollars, saving myself €12, or £11, or $18 on the US price, but once this leaves beta, I’m assuming I won’t be allowed to buy from the US store anymore. I certainly can’t buy from the UK store.
Try it out yourselves.
http://store.steampowered.com/?localizedcurrency=1&cc=ie
At this price, its almost the same as the retail price of games here, which is at best cheeky, and at worst an absolute crime. (€54.99 in GameStop for Fallout 3, which is £49, or $74)
I initially thought that this was due to what we call ‘Rip-Off Republic’, or sometimes ‘Paddy-Tax’, which is the outrageous mark-up we suffer on EVERYTHING in Ireland which is often erroneously attributed to us ‘being an island’ (even though the UK, malta, crete, cyprus etc don’t suffer the same). However, it turns out that substituting any other Eu country code for IE results in the same prices.
http://store.steampowered.com/?cc=fr
http://store.steampowered.com/?cc=de
http://store.steampowered.com/?cc=es
http://store.steampowered.com/?cc=nl
http://store.steampowered.com/?cc=it
RE: Review Subjectivity (NOT PIRACY)
I think I have mentioned in the past that I’d prefer an objective review to a subjective one. I just wanted to point out that this is simply in terms of using the review as a buyer’s guide. Personally I don’t find descriptions of the reviewer’s unique personal experience to be a very reliable way to gauge what my experience will be like.
That said, I don’t just use reviews as a buyer’s guide. Sometimes they are a form of entertainment in their own right (imho this has been true of all art-criticism since the dawn of critics – and in terms of a lot of high profile literary criticism I think that the articles in question sometimes approach 100% entertainment) and in those cases I enjoy exploring the reviewer’s personal perspective.
I think the honesty problem only exists if you are thinking in terms of readers demanding an objective take on the subjective experience of playing the game. Personally I agree such a thing would be impossible or at least unhelpful in practice, but what I am after when I am looking for an objective review is really just an overview of those features of the game which really are objective.
I realise that writing about things like performance, stability and number of hours of gameplay might not be much fun, but if I’m looking for a buyer’s guide, and a discussion of your subjective experience isn’t very useful to me, then these are the things that are going to have a bearing on my decision to purchase. I don’t expect reviewers to exclusively write this way of course; if I am just collating info to help me decide whether or not to buy I don’t begrudge having to skim-read a bit!
As I say though, this is just me as a buyer, as a consumer of entertainment I do sometimes enjoy getting a bit more NSJ ;)
I think I may have gotten a little off topic there, apologies for that