Yantelope V2 Posted January 30, 2012 Report Share Posted January 30, 2012 I dunno, even cheap games get pirated like crazy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deanb Posted January 30, 2012 Report Share Posted January 30, 2012 iirc didn't he just pull that figure out his ass? And incentives are rather damn nice. I'll point to Witcher 2 once more. Continuous updates, pre-order DLC thrown in for everyone, there's not really much of a "standard edition" as even the base edition has a fair few goodies thrown in, oh and DRM free. The £40 price point is definitely something that could be tweaked in games. No way are games all on the same damn pedestal, and it's certainly unfair to be taking chunks out and reducing the games value, both inherent and trade-in, while still expecting to maintain the same initial price point. Not that it matters much to me. I've not bought a console game for aagggeeess now, just renting them for £2.50 a pop, a far cry from the £40 they'd like to charge. (Though did keep me out of UC3's MP, but no way am I paying £6 for that) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thorgi Duke of Frisbee Posted January 30, 2012 Report Share Posted January 30, 2012 Makes a good point. Meh, I think that's kind of a silly over generalization. Since you can't really eliminate piracy then companies mostly work on making piracy as inconvenient as posisble. If you can make it a huge pain to pirate something (which usually isn't possible) then maybe you can discourage people from pirating it. I don't think that in and of itself is a problem. What is a problem is that they manage to inconvenience paying customers. It seems to me you should be doing everything possible to reward paying customers and hurting them is going to outweigh whatever minor gains you get from fighting piracy. A good example of inconvenienceing customers is DVD menus. Companies really need to learn to not punish paying customers. If it's easier to pirate something than it is to buy it then you're really shooting yourself in the foot. It's not a generalization if it's really as simple as that. Like it or not, piracy is now a competitor. You have to compete with piracy just like Target and Wal-Mart have to compete with Amazon. And if you want to win against piracy, you had better come up with reasons that make it better than getting the product for free. Laws can try to fight piracy (justifiably), but it will never work. The only way to win is through consistently offering a better service. End of story. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Johnny Posted January 30, 2012 Report Share Posted January 30, 2012 Re: Yantelope's stuff about inconveniencing pirates: I can only speak for myself, but as both a pirate and a customer the amount of times DRM has gotten me to buy a game is zero. The times it's been a pain for me as a customer are numerous. In fact, when I pirate to try out a game, if your DRM actually manages to make the pirated version unplayable, that will only annoy me and make me less likely to check out and possibly buy your game. I must say it's completely spot-on that what companies need to do is make paying a superior experience to pirating. That's not only related to DRM either. For an example, the pirated version of Mass Effect 2 is in my opinion superior to the legit version because the system that was used to handle the DLC was terrible. I spent an hour trying to figure out how to access the DLC that came with the steam version, by which point I had lost interest in playing the game. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yantelope V2 Posted January 30, 2012 Report Share Posted January 30, 2012 (edited) It's not a generalization if it's really as simple as that. Like it or not, piracy is now a competitor. You have to compete with piracy just like Target and Wal-Mart have to compete with Amazon. And if you want to win against piracy, you had better come up with reasons that make it better than getting the product for free. Laws can try to fight piracy (justifiably), but it will never work. The only way to win is through consistently offering a better service. End of story. It's an overgeneraliztion in that it's like saying shoplifting is a competitor to walmart. Well, shoplifting is a problem, one that will never truly be gone and something that has to be handled delicately so that you're not punishing paying customers. People generally don't say "shoplifting is always going to be there so just deal with it". You certainly couldn't beat a problem like shoplifting with better service. Edited January 30, 2012 by Yantelope V2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Johnny Posted January 30, 2012 Report Share Posted January 30, 2012 It's not like saying shoplifting is a competitor to Walmart. The effort and stakes for a pirate is nothing like that of a shoplifter, nor is shoplifting as common or largely accepted as piracy is. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hot Heart Posted January 30, 2012 Report Share Posted January 30, 2012 Not sure where you guys are going with this, but 'anti-shoplifting' measures are already a nuisance for paying customers. That shitty plastic packaging, those security tags stuck through clothes, things kept behind counters/in cabinets; that's all anti-shoplifting stuff. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Waldorf and Statler Posted January 30, 2012 Report Share Posted January 30, 2012 Piracy must be fought with incentives. The Witcher II might be a good example, but then the developer does shit like get people in trouble for torrenting [even when they haven't torrented their game] and expect them to pay a crapload of money [if I remember correctly] which only pisses off the pirating community. Publishers and developers need to realize as a whole that a large portion of pirates believe they are entitled to get this shit for free when you fight them for it. Look at how well the DRM thing went for companies like Ubisoft, compared to shit like Minecraft. Taking away content also pisses off customers. GIVE away content that adds to the game, not takes away from it. With such a large battle against piracy, they still have not done a major experiment to find a way to coexist with piracy. You can't remove piracy without removing rights given to people by the constitution and becoming North Korea, China, or Iran. You must learn to coexist with it. Crack down on the few people torrenting and all you're doing is using a scapegoat and maybe scaring away some people for a couple of months at most. Give me free shit. Or at least allow me to fucking rent games without taking away singleplayer content. Multiplayer I can do without. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mister Jack Posted January 30, 2012 Report Share Posted January 30, 2012 It almost feels like they have given up on these little programs and are just trying to go for the internet's jugular, what with all these bullshit copyright bills and trade agreements floating around. SOPA, PIPA, ACTA, Bill C-11...They just aren't giving up. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Connorrrr Posted January 30, 2012 Report Share Posted January 30, 2012 Not sure where you guys are going with this, but 'anti-shoplifting' measures are already a nuisance for paying customers. That shitty plastic packaging, those security tags stuck through clothes, things kept behind counters/in cabinets; that's all anti-shoplifting stuff. Just today I brought a DVD (Drive, go buy it too) and when I got it home they'd left the security thingy inside it that stops you opening the case without literally ripping it to pieces... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yantelope V2 Posted January 30, 2012 Report Share Posted January 30, 2012 It almost feels like they have given up on these little programs and are just trying to go for the internet's jugular, what with all these bullshit copyright bills and trade agreements floating around. SOPA, PIPA, ACTA, Bill C-11...They just aren't giving up. Oh the internet is just a new frontier. It'll probably be tamed eventually. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thursday Next Posted January 31, 2012 Report Share Posted January 31, 2012 Feels like publishers are damned if they do/damned if they don't. What's the difference between providing more content for paying customers in the form of DLC as an incentive not to pirate and locking out content to squeeze more money out of pre-owned buyers? Seems that some people were critical of Arkham City for locking out Catwoman content. Personally I got a pre-owned copy of AA for Christmas so I was more than happy to drop the extra £7 or whatever it was for the content. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post GunFlame Posted January 31, 2012 Popular Post Report Share Posted January 31, 2012 (edited) There are numerous things that Publishers, Developers and Distributors should try and do or improve: - Quicker localization and multiple region releases - Region free consoles - A flexible pricing model based on content (games do not need to be $60) - The above, but including DLC - No DRM - Cross platform support (Valve's lack of console support, and the Skyrim/PS3 situation) - Ownership bonuses/Club bonuses (Own a lot of CoD, get free stuff) There are currently very few (if any) piracy measures that actually improve the experience of owning a product. There is no incentive. Piracy measures actually make purchasing, playing and owning more difficult and less desirable. With this being the case, how can it be considered anti-piracy? It's more like anti-consumer. Steam shows people will buy. Software sales show people will buy. The fact that the game industry and market is growing, shows that people will buy. Piracy measures are in place to counter the mythical "lost sale". Instead of countering this, they should try and increase sales and appeal to more buyers, players and owners. There are loads of ways that companies can go about increasing sales. But to make it more difficult to buy and play, is certainly not a way to do that. Edited January 31, 2012 by GunFlame 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deanb Posted January 31, 2012 Report Share Posted January 31, 2012 Catwoman was cut content? Daamn. That was a somewhat decent chunk of the game. And it was the only time you go near Poison Ivys house. Something like Sazh phone calls is what I'd have thought'd be content to trim if anything, that'd be much easier to hide. But surely you'd notice that certain parts of the island are inaccessible to you as Batman? GunFlame has it spot on though; reward the gamer, don't attempt to punish the pirate. The pirated version has those annoyances removed(and many features such as the pre-order DRM etc included), whereas the legit version has to suffer through them. Doesn't really send the right signal. "we're going to charge you £39.99 for the worst version of the game, only give you a slither of the content that comes out on release because you didn't spend £160 buying it from all the stores, and then not let you play the game for the first two days properly cos our DRM servers will be going down". Oh and don't have a two month gap between global releases (in fact the current 3 day gap is pretty stupid this day and age. The game is clearly done, it's just arbitrary to not release at the same time) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheMightyEthan Posted January 31, 2012 Report Share Posted January 31, 2012 @Thursday: As a theoretical matter I'd draw the distinction at whether the content was developed as part of the game and then cut out for a project-$10-type thing, or whether it was developed separately as add-on content from the get-go. Obviously as a practical matter though that's impossible to determine for anyone outside the studio/publisher. The best you can do is consider what evidence there is and try to make a best guess. The Catwoman stuff, for instance, seems pretty shady cause it's pretty well integrated into the story, and without playing those parts certain scenes would just be total deus ex machina, not to mention what dean said about Poison Ivy, so it's pretty clear that they developed the whole game with the Catwoman segments in mind and then cut them later. This is all pretty theoretical for me though since I buy pretty much every game new anyway, so it doesn't really matter to me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thursday Next Posted January 31, 2012 Report Share Posted January 31, 2012 (edited) Taking both Ethan and Deans comments... Since this is regarding the nature of the Catwoman content, spoilers abound. The game's story is complete without the Catwoman content. Yes, Catwoman's appearances are deus ex machina without it but you aren't playing Catwoman's story, you're playing Batman's. At no point is there a situation where Batman suddenly appears in a new area after a significant period of time (a la Deus Ex:HR) nor are you told that certain content must be acquired separately as in Dragon Age (that bloke in your camp) or Assassin's Creed (missing memory sequence). It's less than 10% of the game content if you factor in all her riddler challenges and trophies. Far less if it's just pure story. There are one or two areas that are visibly inaccessible without the Catwoman content (Ivy's lair and the vault). However as Batman you only ever need to fly around them to pick up Riddler secrets. Other baddies have their lairs or get mentioned without actually appearing or being interacted with, if you didn't know any better you'd get the impression that Ivy is another of these easter egg baddies like Scarecrow. As for whether content was cut or developed separately, what's the standard of proof for that? Take Mass Effect 2, the extra rooms on the Normandy really pissed a lot of people off, some thought the content was cut, others thought that it was done to niggle the completionists and force them into buying more stuff. So what do you do? Weave your content in to the game so that it dovetails nicely and get accused of cutting content? Or bolt something on the end and get slammed for poorly thought out DLC that adds nothing to the core experience? If the publisher publicly produced balance sheets showing that Catwoman content had an entirely separate P&L would you accept that it is extra content and not cut content? As I said, it seems that publishers can't win. You lock pirates out of content so that the new purchasers get a benefit and it gets spun as punishing poor disadvantaged pre-owned purchasers. Yet a lot of people here are insisting that you need to reward customers and not punish pirates. Here's a final question, how, as a publisher would you attempt to reward paying customers without "punishing" pre-order purchasers? I promise if you come up with a decent idea I'll share it with whomever I can and see if it flies (unless you'd prefer I didn't of course, please indicate either way). Edited January 31, 2012 by Thursday Next 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Johnny Posted January 31, 2012 Report Share Posted January 31, 2012 Personally I don't care when the content is developed or whether it's even on the disc or not (though others will disagree). What I do care about is whether the game feels like a complete product without the DLC content. I don't like DLC that you need to play to feel like you've gotten a complete experience. By those criteria, the catwoman lock-out is bad. I also remember some game (don't remember which one) having the final chapter as DLC, which is just mind-boggling to me. Edit: in response to Thursday: I do not think by any means the Catwoman sections were unimportant to the core games. Granted, I did not complete Arkham City since Games For Windows Live fucked out and removed my saves, but as far as I played it was a really major part of the game and one of the most impressive additions going from Asylum to City. The Mass Effect 2 complaints I thought were pretty silly. My personal theory is that the planned DLC content's rooms were in the game because it'd be fairly silly to have the rooms appear out of nowhere when you bought the DLC. Furthermore, there are many ways to reward customers without locking pirates out of content via online pass style deals. Steam is great at this with how easy and painless it makes buying games. Also, take a look at The Witcher 2. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thursday Next Posted January 31, 2012 Report Share Posted January 31, 2012 (edited) Personally I don't care when the content is developed or whether it's even on the disc or not (though others will disagree). What I do care about is whether the game feels like a complete product without the DLC content. I don't like DLC that you need to play to feel like you've gotten the whole story. By those criteria, the catwoman lock-out is bad. I also remember some game (don't remember which one) having the final chapter as DLC, which is just mind-boggling to me. Ok, but that's my point. You get the whole Batman story without the Catwoman DLC.There are (I think) two occasions where Batman and Catwoman actually meet. Once at the start where your mission is to rescue Catwoman because she stole a thing from Two-Face (you wouldn't know what the thing was, but it is in no way relevant to Batman's arc) once near the end where Catwoman appears to help you escape from a collapsing building. The second appearance is a little deus ex machina, but then again, it's Batman and this is not the "shark repellent spray" level of convenience that Batman has come up with before. (PS I think you're thinking of Prince of Persia, which I also found galling). Edit - Spoilerinos Edited January 31, 2012 by Thursday Next Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Johnny Posted January 31, 2012 Report Share Posted January 31, 2012 Story was the wrong choice of words. As you can see, I edited my post, although not quickly enough apparently. It's about making the buyer feel like he's getting a full product. This can be very hard to quantify, I know, but cutting out such a major piece as catwoman's portions guarantees that it won't feel like a full product at all. Additionally, I feel it's silly to excuse one instance of deus ex machina (bad storytelling) by pointing out the same brand name has made worse offenses in the past. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thursday Next Posted January 31, 2012 Report Share Posted January 31, 2012 Story was the wrong choice of words. As you can see, I edited my post, although not quickly enough apparently. It's about making the buyer feel like he's getting a full product. This can be very hard to quantify, I know, but cutting out such a major piece as catwoman's portions guarantees that it won't feel like a full product at all. Ok fair enough, it's a subjective thing, but I didn't feel like the absence of Catwoman content made the game seem incomplete. We'll just have to agree to disagree on that point. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yantelope V2 Posted January 31, 2012 Report Share Posted January 31, 2012 TN has a point that people automatically assume evil intentions from the standpoint of developers and publishers. We ask for rewarding purchasers but we complain about harming the used game market or something else. I'm as guilty as anyone for assigning evil intentions to game publishers/developers but perhaps we sometimes don't give them enough credit. I don't know. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hot Heart Posted January 31, 2012 Report Share Posted January 31, 2012 I'd agree with T-Next, I reckon that if people didn't know better, they'd see Catwoman as just another appearance. Her own story is pretty inconsequential, and you'd compare her actual appearance in the main storyline as akin to Robin showing up for a cutscene or two. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deanb Posted January 31, 2012 Report Share Posted January 31, 2012 Mass Effect 2 had the characters with the ship modelled around them, the ending coded to take into account both Zaeed and Kasumi being in your party (there's even a video around the web somewhere where the game was beaten with Kasumi in the party before her DLC was even released). So yeah as has been covered many times before, it's pretty hard to believe it wasn't cut content. Mass Effect was perfectly modular, as seen with all the other DLC(and original missions too ¬_¬). Missions could quite easily be plugged in. Oblivion had no issue adding in DLC, the Knights of the Nine and Shivering Isles plonked in quite well. ME2 was a bit like being given a frame with scraps of canvas around it. Oh and you have a handy roll of canvas you're up for selling me. It's not really a black and white of "make the game, think out everything you can have as DLC and put in all the places before-hand just minus the content" or a "shit out an idea and tack it on somewhere". Though of the two I'd rather have a well made complete game, with optional extras on top to expand the game, than a game that feels like swiss cheese. The game should be well made enough that the thought shouldn't even cross my mind that something is missing. (as happened with ME2, Assassins Creed etc. Not so much with Deus Ex cos it made sense you got on boat, woke up on arrival. The Tong mission though is missing.) btw we're veering towards used game stuff here, not anti-piracy. Cut content for DLC is not an anti-piracy tactic because pirated versions tend to come bundled with everything. So which do you want, info on rewarding new purchasers, or info on rewarding actual purchasers full-stop? (Or is that not a typo and you didn't mean pre-owned but pre-order? Which pre-order people are being punished when publishers break up the day one DLC and dish it out between a dozen retailers and regions. "Hey gamers, thanks for loving our game, let us fuck you over as fan service") How to reward actual gamers full stop: Include access to other titles. Such as Portal 2 on PS3 coming with PC version, or iirc Bionic Commando coming with Re-armed (I think a COD title has also done this recently too). "Buy Mass Effect 3, get Baldurs Gate thrown in. See where it all began" kinda deal. It provides content, and next to no expense to the publisher too, without having to effect the main game by finding which content can be offered to "reward gamers" with codes needed to plonk it back in. How to reward pre-order/early buyers: Put the DLC up on store free for a week or something. whatever you do DON'T make it store/region exclusive DLC bull shit if you're really wanting to do DLC for pre-orders. tbh the main incentive to pre-ordering should be it being a damn good game that you don't have to hold out for reviews for. How to punish pirates and used game folks: Just don't fucking bother. If just one iota of your development time is being focused on putting in effort into attempting to piss off pirates or used game folks, then that's time not spent on making the game perfect for the actual gamers who are giving you actual cash. If whatever crazy scheme you're coming up with is partly to deter pirates/used games then just stop. 1. It's pretty much a complete waste of time. 2. it makes you fucking lying out your teeth when you say whatever this new incentive is to "reward the gamers". 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheMightyEthan Posted January 31, 2012 Report Share Posted January 31, 2012 @Hot Heart: If it were just the appearance near the beginning with Two Face, I'd agree with you, it's the later one that I would take issue with. As I said in my previous post, I don't know of a practical way to really make that distinction, because you can't know what the developer did or didn't do in most cases. And honestly this project $10 stuff doesn't really bother me at all; sometimes it seems kind of shitty, but I almost always buy my games new anyway so meh. Alright, I was going to say more but dean posted while I was writing so I want to read his before I go on. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hot Heart Posted January 31, 2012 Report Share Posted January 31, 2012 Frankly, I don't see why you'd take issue with the later appearance. Batman showed up and saved her earlier, she returned the favour. That's all you'd see. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.