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id and Epic: Multiplatform because of piracy
by Chris Faylor, Mar 10, 2007 9:17am PSTAcross two separate lectures at this week's Game Developers Conference, id Software CEO Todd Hollenshead and Epic Games president Michael Capps both admitted that piracy of PC games caused their companies to pursue developing beyond the PC platform. "Piracy has pushed id as being multiplatform," stated Hollenshead, whose company contracted Z-Axis to handle the PlayStation 3 version and Nerve Software the Xbox 360 edition of Splash Damage's forthcoming Enemy Territory: Quake Wars (PC). Comments made by Epic's Capps carried a similar tone. "PC gaming is really falling apart," he revealed. "It killed us to make Unreal Tournament 3 cross-platform, but Epic had to do it," adding "the market that would buy a $600 video card knows how Bittorrent works." Epic is currently developing Unreal Tournament 3 for the PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in-house. Meanwhile, Firaxis designer and programmer Soren Johnson remained confident in PC development. He suggested that "game design on the PC is going to bend toward persistence," noting Blizzard's World of Warcraft is "successful because you can't pirate WoW. You cannot pirate an MMO. Period."
Comments
It does speak volumes that every time someone from the industry says piracy is hurting them, the threads on Shacknews, a site whose participants should, in theory, be the same people who understand the industry better than the casual observer, fill up with people obsessed with ulterior motives and piracy justifications. I'm not saying that the Shack is made up entirely of people like this, but look at how many people pile on a RomSteady comment when he dares imply that maybe piracy is a bad thing.
flame on
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I have no fucking idea what MSO would be like, but they have to come up with something, it's the only way!..
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Hey mr pirate (and I have done it myself before) will you stop your ways if games are cheaper?
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In reply...
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Pay to beta test a game
Pay to play a demo
Pay to read a preview or watch a video of the game
When you finally get the game, it still isn't finished and is full of bugs
The MP component of most RTS titles is utter shit, and any FPS games with GSI tech are always horrid to find servers with.
PR monkeys are so anally retentive that they don't actually do anything good for the game and keep so much secret that it gets no pre-release buzz and dies.
Games are getting more expensive, while the contents of the box is becoming more sparse. This is especially true in the EU, as now we have DVD boxes there isnt any room for a manual of any worth.
We can blame Gamespy for a few of those, too.
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I will say though that I am pretty disappointed that both of my favourite PC developers of all time would be so quick to chalk up PC’s gaming problems simply to piracy. These two companies I virtually go out of my way to buy products from them, owning, in some cases, multiple copies of the same games in different packages. They make, and have always made, quality products.
To not address the two major problems that plague PC gaming at this juncture, at least in the same sentence as piracy, is a disservice to legitimate PC supporters.
Quality of PC games has be steadily declining over the years and eroding consumer’s confidence in PC games in general. I remember back in the golden days where I used to use id software games to gauge the stability of my entire computer. I would install my OS, Drivers, and Quake / Quake 3, in that order; JUST to see if everything was working correctly. If I could play Quake, I knew my system was fine. If I couldn’t, I must have screwed up a driver install somewhere. It was testament to quality which was never to be seen again. The thought that I would install one of today’s games to test the stability of my system is absolutely laughable. As I recently posted, Rainbow Six Vegas is completely unplayable on the PC and now UBI is stopping support for the product. The same game works great on my 360. How much confidence do you think I have in the next PC game I buy? And the next 360 game?
Finally, price is most certainly an issue. You guys are quick to pick on ohalger (and rightly so) but at least in this case : http://www.shacknews.com/ja.zz?id=13993134 , he does have a point.
Walk up to anyone on the street and give them this offer: For 600 bucks
you can buy:
1 Video Card
1 Xbox 360 with controller, hard drive, live arcade games, and ghost recon (standard pack in Canada)
2 Wiis with controllers and games.
Half of a Play Station 3 – hah... had to be done :)
I really do hope that Nvidia and ATI are found guilty of Price Fixing because Video Cards are the only realm of pc components where the price keeps going up. Every other aspect of PCs has virtually gone down in price, by hundreds and even thousands of dollars in some cases.
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Which is worse: Downloading a game or buying one that's been traded in to a shop.
I vote buying a used copy because if you buy a used one you are in a shop with money and instead of buying the new one (which the shop will replace, thus funding the developer) you are paying the store which encourages them to keep taking used copies. It's also far more widespread than piracy.
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The games that get pirated and not bought are crappy games. The only things that should get pirated and not bought are the things that suck. ~95% of games suck.
Agree or Disagree? - Disagree on all counts
Citations:
http://www.shacknews.com/ja.zz?id=13993096
http://www.shacknews.com/ja.zz?id=13992657
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I'm willing to bet that Enemy Territory sells better on the PC than any one console.
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That's what returns are for. Quit making excuses.
Hugs and kisses, node.
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I know everybody has a copy/license of HL2, but how do people handle less popular games? I assume media and keygens gets passed around. How do dev's feel about that situation?
I'll only pay for absolutely amazing games such as Resident Evil 4, Half-Life 2, Twilight Princess, World of Warcraft, and so on. How do I know whether a game is good or not? I play it at a friend's house or I download it to see what it's like.
Why not just try the game's demo? Why pirate the full version? Well, companies like id release demos for their games 3-4 months after they're in stores. That's kind of a problem.
Before anyone says anything ignorant, a lot of people do pirate games just to test them out. If developers want us to pay for games that are merely okay, then they're going to have to lower prices on them. If they'd just work on increasing the size of the market by pricing games lower, they'd probably make more money than they do now anyway. If games were around $20, is it far fetched to think that twice as many people would buy them?
The games industry is going to have to price games at a point that make piracy a waste of time.
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Not to mention you need a legit key to play online, who the fuck buys UT to play single player?
Don't use piracy as an excuse to develop multi-platform, it's a crock of shit. You do it because there's a greater audience to dump your shovelware on. And then to rub it in the PC gamers face, we're stuck with dumbed down console interfaces because you're lazy. And guess what, this makes us bitter and not wanting to support you anymore because you treat us like shit.
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The price of the PC gaming rig is quite expensive, and this one of the reasons why its hurting this platform
But a big part has to do with how a platform is marketed. I have taken many marketing courses, and learned that if a product is marketed correctly it will push the product to sell.
Quite honestly I have seen any product or software demonstration of a pc rig in game store or electronic store. From a marketing perspective it is way to difficult to market the game on pc vs a console simply because a pc does not have fixed components vs components that are more proprietory found in consoles.
As a pc gamer choosing the correct gaming parts makes it the most enjoyable platform, but quite honestly ppl in general do not have the time to choose and build parts (even though it takes a short time). Within this in mind, there are so many configurations out there that the pc platform cannot be really marketed to the general public as a gaming rig.
I can see why console purist prefer their console as a gaming machine, because its base on 3 principles, in general its cheaper, its easy to get a game started up solo and friends in front of a tv, and its marketed as a gaming rig.
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That has to cut very deeply into console sales, not only is it legal, but places like eb games try to push it on you.
But it does make sense to go multi-platform. It seems that you invest a little more and then you've got a larger market to sale to.
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Games like that are exactly the type that don't have to worry about piracy. 99% of their value is to be had online and it's easy as pie to implement a system that checks for the authenticity of the purchase in that case.
this video sums up this whole debate nicely....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Xfqkdh5Js4
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PC gaming is the most expensive gaming market, and it's also the smallest.
Of the new consoles, the cheapest machine (Wii) is selling the most even though it has far less good software than the 360.
The PS2 is still currently outselling EVERY new console. Why? Cheap as dirt and has an established game library.
Step outside the hardcore gamer mindset, and you'll see that people are more money minded than omfg I'm running shit at 4000x3000 with 30x AA. If gaming really wants to be a healthy industry, it's going to need to find a way to bring costs down. $600 consoles and $60 for a game is a joke particularly when it's a shallow or short game with no replayability. It's even worse for PC gaming, which pretty much requires an upgrade of around a grand every 2 years.
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