10-10-2004 08:46									#61
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I have copied games in the past. You used to be able to rent games like X-com and copy them to floppies. Such a great game, I wouldn't have minded paying for it. But it was my first foray into computer gaming, I didn't know what was good or not. And I actually got the copies from my roomate who rented the game.

I do get many copies from my brother (legit and pirated). But I never pirate games myself. And I mean never. I prefer to buy games I like. I try to keep my costs low by not buying crappy games. And if it's a game I'm not sure I'll like, I'll borrow it from my brother.

	10-10-2004 14:22									#62
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I buy games, and pirate games. There are certain games I'll always buy; up until now Civ games were on that list. After the Conquests "let's not bother to finish the game as we're too busy on Civ4" shenanigans I'll probably reconsider, but there are plenty on my no-worries buy list.

	10-10-2004 17:12									#63
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In the C64 and Amiga days I had a lot of copied games. You shared and traded with your classmates. I gave him something and he gave something back -complete trading mentality-. For the computer geeks it was also a sort of "gotta catch 'em all" -mentality. The more games you had, the bigger the boasts. I was a bit of an exception because i also bought a lot of originals (many also the equivalent of the bargain bin special now that i remember) in those days.


In the present day I only buy PC originals. These days time is a more essential factor for me than price. I don't wanna pay full price AND discover after 8-12 hours I've wasted it all for a turkey.

Last edited by CapTVK on 11-10-2004 at 00:21

	11-10-2004 00:19									#64
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quote: Originally posted by Comrade Tassadar OK, go on; recommend some of them to me

I can provides truckloads of freeware games if you want but I don't know your particular preferences. One site I always enjoy is Retro Remakes. Which has a large collection of modern day remakes (some good, some bad, some totally lame). They also hold an annual remake compo. Which, on occasion comes up with a few surprises.

The discussion forums at the site-that-may-not-be-mentioned are also a good start. They have a toplevel thread which gives an overview of the many freeware games available.

Wesnoth, Freedroid and ASC-HQ (Battle Isle) are both well done open source games and are available as windows binaries . Check out Happy Penguin for more.


And remember Open Source games are community efforts. Their success is ultimately based on the efforts we put into them.

quote: Nono, many "independant" games often ask for money, usually quite a bit of money, in order to purchase the uncrippled version of their product. Often times this is $20-30 and the quality would not justify the cost

Many independent games are usually aimed at a certain public. Whether the prices charged are fair is up to the player. But you usually get a free "crippled" version to playtest in advance. If we don't like it we leave it at that and move on.

	12-10-2004 17:40									#65
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quote: Originally posted by CapTVK IMany independent games are usually aimed at a certain public. Whether the prices charged are fair is up to the player. But you usually get a free "crippled" version to playtest in advance. If we don't like it we leave it at that and move on.

Which is the point i think. I can certainly see someone downloading a game that has no demo available, and playing it JUST LONG ENOUGH to see if its worth paying for, which is how im going to interpret what Tass says he does, and I'll assume Doc Spike as well. The crippled version essentially serves as demo. You like it buy it, you dont like it enough to buy it, you dont get the extra features. Seems reasonable to me.

	12-10-2004 17:43									#66
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quote: Originally posted by DrSpike I buy games, and pirate games. There are certain games I'll always buy; up until now Civ games were on that list. After the Conquests "let's not bother to finish the game as we're too busy on Civ4" shenanigans I'll probably reconsider, but there are plenty on my no-worries buy list.

So doc, I suppose one could make a case for "downloading" a game in a genre that one thinks is morally reprehensible, just to check out if that is really the case, no? A genre one consciously didnt support? OTOH even THEN i think there might be something hypocritical if one did such, and then KEPT the game on ones hard drive. Alternatively one who otherwise would even use a canine site might overcome scruples in such a case, no?

	12-10-2004 17:57									#67
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I just wonder how many of those that do download a game, principly because it has no demo, actually do then go on to buy the origonal if they like the game.
A pirated version as opposed to a crippled version is usualy the full game i think(with probably a few trojans/virus's thrown in ).

If i could walk into a store in town and buy(again!) origonal versions of Xcom1+2 i would(if cheap). I could try ebay, but with all the current fuss over security - i really am very unsure about on-line purchaseing at the momment

I cant help but feel worried for PC software, sure you can get pirated console games, but its much more of a pain and expense to bother? So i can see why in particular console games will increase in price - its a money winner for the game producers.

	12-10-2004 18:42									#68
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At the moment I'm 50% done with the new Larry game, but I'm still going to buy it when it's released... ok, wont be the same day it's released, but the beginning of the next month (money shortage )

	12-10-2004 18:44									#69
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And I downloaded SimCity 4 two days before release, and bought it the same day it was released... (Later I then found out it was a very smart move, because of language problems in the European version)

	12-10-2004 23:36									#70
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I've bought several games after downloading them; often in the past I played SP and if I liked it bought it to play MP.

	13-10-2004 20:16									#71
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Yeah, that is a good point. I always buy a good multiplayer game because I know I'll get my money's worth. Multiplayer is really like a critical feature for me because even if it's bad there will usually be a player effort to fix it. I play multiplayer like 5:1 to one over single player. I don't much like MMORPGs however.

	18-10-2004 15:04									#72
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quote: Originally posted by lord of the mark Still, IF (as the article stated, and i dont see anyone really disputing it) the price of games has been steady, that means a decrease after inflation. All that theyre talking about is raising prices to offset that. I dont see that they need to INCREASE quality to justify that.

The flip side of the coin is, the size of the gaming market has also been increasing, sometimes much faster than inflation.

	18-10-2004 15:42									#73
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I would say the flipside is that you would expect 'standard' games to get cheaper in real terms, just as you expect 'standard' electronic equipment and other technologies to get cheaper in real terms over time.

Also, what you are paying for is the labour cost of programmers, isn't it? So I would only really expect innovative or higher quality games to cost more in absolute terms, and about the same in real terms.

	18-10-2004 18:16									#74
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quote: Originally posted by Urban Ranger The flip side of the coin is, the size of the gaming market has also been increasing, sometimes much faster than inflation.

well thats a question of the supply side, the cost factors effecting the supply curve, not the reasonableness on the customer side.

The market has been growing rather slowly on the PC side, much faster on the console side. Although if we're going back 10 years or more, i suppose there IS considerable growth on the PC side. Of course there are also a lot more titles. But i suppose the big sellers today have much bigger sales than the big sellers 10, or especially 15 years ago. Which is how the prices have remained stable - despite increasing costs, those almost entirely fixed costs have been spread over more sales.

How would one compare this to films say?

	18-10-2004 18:19									#75
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quote: Originally posted by Dauphin I would say the flipside is that you would expect 'standard' games to get cheaper in real terms, just as you expect 'standard' electronic equipment and other technologies to get cheaper in real terms over time. Also, what you are paying for is the labour cost of programmers, isn't it? So I would only really expect innovative or higher quality games to cost more in absolute terms, and about the same in real terms.

electronic equiipment gets cheaper largely through Moores law, and general experience curves in manufacturing. Are there similar experience curves in coding? IS the cost of programmers stable? Per hour? amount of code in recent games? and IIUC theres plenty of other labor besides coding, there all that art, design, and QA. Look at the list of credits on your game. (not all full time of course, but still)

	18-10-2004 20:25									#76
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I come it from the angle of this. Suppose you wanted to make the game called Civ2 and assume that the original game of Civ2 had never been written. I would suggest that it would be cheaper now to develop the game we now know as Civ2 than it was then.

Why? Because technology has advanced. Take you art example - its easier to make graphics because the tools to do so have come on leaps and bounds since then.

	18-10-2004 20:29									#77
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What I am saying is that if a game made 2 years ago is of the same like for like quality as a game made now, then I certainly will not pay more for it now (inflation accounting) than I did then.

	18-10-2004 20:30									#78
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As well as less need to optimise code to achieve the same results due to greater hardware capabilities of the average consumer.

	18-10-2004 20:54									#79
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quote: Originally posted by child of Thor So its all short term thinking driving game development at the momment, and eventualy the money will dry up. Backers/Financers will steer clear of game production if we continue on this tack - it may take another 5-10 years to reach critical mass, but we dont have a healthy consumer friendly games market at the momment. Costs are way to high, Hype way to important and 'bucks per hour' of entertainment given much too much importance in calculating the accountants returns, so to speak.

This is the situation regardless of industry. Long Term Planning is "What do we do next quarter?".

	18-10-2004 21:02									#80
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Programmers aren't necessarily getting better (just look at all those bugs ) but it's getting easier to write programs than in the bad old DOS days.

Back then, programmers pretty much have to deal with raw hardware, nowadays API's are everywhere. On top of that you have toolkits, and they probably also have automated tools to help them along.

	18-10-2004 21:24									#81
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quote: Originally posted by Dauphin I come it from the angle of this. Suppose you wanted to make the game called Civ2 and assume that the original game of Civ2 had never been written. I would suggest that it would be cheaper now to develop the game we now know as Civ2 than it was then. Why? Because technology has advanced. Take you art example - its easier to make graphics because the tools to do so have come on leaps and bounds since then.

if civ2 were released today, would it sell like it did? I dunno. Galciv maybe the test case - thats been touted as a TBS with relatively low budget, thats had pretty decent if not blockbuster sales. How does Galciv compare to Civ2 in things like graphics, AI, number of civs, units, stuff like that?

Of course other genres may not be similar to TBS in this regards.

	18-10-2004 21:46									#82
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heres what phil stein posted on quartertothree

quote: However, of course in the long run, developers and publishers have to make money or they will go out of business. And yet, games cost ~10 times more to develop than they did a decade ago, yet sell for probably 20% less, inflation adjusted, than they did back then. How is this possible? Volume. The overall market is bigger, and publishers invest more money in fewer titles (i.e. shooting for blockbusters, rather than 'B' titles). So the average AAA title now, costing $5-15 million to develop, sells a lot more than what would have been a AAA title in the early 90s (costing ~$500K to $1.5M to develop). If you ask why pubs don't just develop titles at $500K to $1.5M now, and reap the big volumes for even greater profits, the answer is that the consumer market now is interested in flashy blockbusters, the Doom 3s, Halo 2s, and GTAs of the world. There's a viable market making low budget valueware - $19.99 PC games that cost $50-200K to develop. But the $1M budget range is too low to attract the attention of the press and generate buzz, yet too high to profitably chase the $19.99 budget market. So overall, the gam market has split into two classes - blockbusters, plus a few low-budget PC games

	18-10-2004 23:06									#83
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quote: Originally posted by lord of the mark heres what phil stein posted on quartertothree quote: However, of course in the long run, developers and publishers have to make money or they will go out of business. And yet, games cost ~10 times more to develop than they did a decade ago, yet sell for probably 20% less, inflation adjusted, than they did back then. How is this possible? Volume. The overall market is bigger, and publishers invest more money in fewer titles (i.e. shooting for blockbusters, rather than 'B' titles). So the average AAA title now, costing $5-15 million to develop, sells a lot more than what would have been a AAA title in the early 90s (costing ~$500K to $1.5M to develop). If you ask why pubs don't just develop titles at $500K to $1.5M now, and reap the big volumes for even greater profits, the answer is that the consumer market now is interested in flashy blockbusters, the Doom 3s, Halo 2s, and GTAs of the world. There's a viable market making low budget valueware - $19.99 PC games that cost $50-200K to develop. But the $1M budget range is too low to attract the attention of the press and generate buzz, yet too high to profitably chase the $19.99 budget market. So overall, the gam market has split into two classes - blockbusters, plus a few low-budget PC games

Well my feeling is that the industry can't complain about what they have created to a greater extent. Since the 90's when the first real leaps in pc power came along(the massive increase in power in the pentiums), and the appearence of dedicated graphics card, it can be argued that it was largely industry driven, the makers of graphic cards and pc componants wanting to encourage users to upgrade every other year etc.
The games industry could have just carried on making very efficiant software(games like Frontier model a whole galaxy - on one floppy disk!!), but decided to play the game, so they decided early on to go down the route of improving graphics above all else(or even at the expense of all else?) - which is the most cost intensive option to take when making a game.

So we end up where we are today with IMHO an industry awash with sexy looking games that get boring far too quickly or are just very short games - all the effort goes into making a game look good.

Is there a way back from here? If there is the games industry doesn't seem to think it has a problem with its current approach(even though more game developers go bankrupt than new ones get created - one of the reasons we end up with just a few very powerfull producers).
And im also not sure taking games into a mainstream market(ie a non-computer game fan one) is the correct thing to do if you want to make cheaper better games?

It might make you more money in the short term, but these customers aren't loyal to your product - when you make enough rubbish they wont be as forgiving to give you the benefit of the doubt next time; they'll just go do something else with their money. We live in a world with plenty of things to waste your money on

Also you run the risk of alienating your past fan-base, who are mostly fairly dedicated gamers. Maybe we're harder to please, but we will encourage the producers to make better and better games, as we actually care about it.

	19-10-2004 10:26									#84
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What I hope happens is eventually graphics reach a peak. A point where improvements are so slow in coming that graphic expenditure levels off. Look at sound, it's not really getting any better for the last couple of years. I hope that is what happens to graphics too eventually because then gameplay, story, style, etc will become the deciding factor when you want to buy a game.

Last edited by pg on 19-10-2004 at 10:31