No way this game deserves a 4..

dzimm

I agree if they want us to drop a LOT of money they need to convince us other than just another FPS or another racing game. It has to INNOVATE and IMPROVE the genre to gain my HARD earned money.

acidBURN1942

That's the catch though, isn't it? Developers invest their HARD earned money making a game, piracy aside, there are a lot of risks in making a game, and a lot of money, too. Few games make huge profits so inovation is not often incouraged, or rewarded.

Bankable, reproducible, proven successes are rewarded. Unfortunately, most games that try to inovate are failures. They come up with interesting, but often half-baked ideas that may inspire others to try new things but the games fail.

The few games that do succeed, are copied to death since they are now the 'Bankable, reproducible, proven successes'.

So, as a developers, risking YOUR money, what would you do?

a) Try risky, unproven new ideas in the hope that thiefs who are used to stealing your games might suddenly start paying to show their support for your boldness. (While risking to lose the normal people who buy your games as they are.)

or

 b) Play it safe, counting on what the paying customers pay for time and time again, assuming even if you did inovate the pirates would still steal anyway because.... umm, they're pirates.

Is piracy in PC gaming really something new? I can´t really say games had better copy protection back in the days. Likewise, today torrents and DC are "killing music", not home taping.

 

Rostere

With 'home taping' you could buy an album and make a bunch of copies for your friends, true. But compare that to the internet these days where you can share if with 140,000 'friends' in the first weekend.

Piracy in not at all new but the scale of distibution is very new, back in the 56k days the idea of downloading 3-5 gigs, while tying up your phone line the whole time would have been near impossible. But now you can leave your computer and always on high speen internet conection on at night when you sleep and wake up to a finished download.

This is new.

 That being said the COMPANY holds responsibility in this as well, they should have done their homework and realized that if they wished not to be a subject to piracy that they should have spent the extra time and dough to stop it. 

   what they could have done to stop this would be to join a system LIKE Steam which is very hard to pirate from what I hear.  sSubZerOo

 In all fairness no amount of 'dough' would have stoped it, there is no protection, including STEAM that has yet stopped pirates.

Spending a few thousand dollars more on copy protection, only to be pirated from within 3 days of release (instead of 1 day) wouldn't have made a differance.

I think Cavemans point is more of the fact that people who pirate have convinced themselves that it does no harm at all. Then they are amazed when the favorate small company goes out of bussines, or is gobbled up by EA, etc. And wonder why.

They don't see the ancillary effect of piracy, for example: The $5,000,000 in lost sales, people are right to point out that that in NOT profit, in fact only a portion of that money goes to the developers, much of that money, about a third, goes to the retailers.

Now the retailer don't get that money. And people wonder why Gamespot is going to stop carrying PC games, why is the PC shelfs at thier local store keep shrinking, etc.

Will this stop a theif? No, not really. But at least they may lose the illusion that there is no damage from their actions, and when the stores, and developers focus more and more on consoles and the 'casual gamer' they can see that they reap what they sow.

That works out great for you, since you really like on-line gaming, though if you like single player games....well it would kind of suck.

So

That would make rentals tough. 

Taijiquan

Yes, it would. But why should game developers have to compete with Blockbuster video for money from their own game? True, Blockbuster stores do buy their games, but it still willl lose some sales for them.

Imagine if a Hollywood movie was avalible on DvD at Blockbuster the SAME day it was released in theaters, it would certianly kill the box office for the movie producers wouldn't it?

That is why it comes out for rental 6 months later, the same could be done with game rental, if you're willing to wait ^ months after release to rent it fine, that would allow the developers time to make some money without cannibalizing thier sales.

Chavez could be in there a long time yes, but as long as the people keep electing him, and he keeps inviting international supervision, something that people who are keen on becoming dictators don't tend to do, There's not a problem with it. It's when there's massive evidence of fraud, and there is no impartial supervision (like some OTHER countries' elections) that these things become worrisom Kodai_kun

You are kidding, right?

You have no problem with the fact that he can change their constitution himself with NO approvale of anyone? Term limits gone, prez for life, nationalize any industry include the media, all with a stroke of his pen? And How will this evidence of massive fraud come to light? Saddam held 'regular elections' that he always won with 98.5% of the vote, according to him anyway.:roll:

Chavez, just before his last election, told everyone that privately owned TV stations in his country that if a single station release an exit poll that didn't come from his official pollsters that the military would be at their doorstep within a half an hour to shut them down. Now he is treatening to refuse to renew any Licenses to opperate to anyone crittical of him, and will eventually nationalize ALL state media, that will certainly allow any 'massive fraud' to come to light.

Think Fox News? *gulp* You mean a free press, like CNN, ABC, NBC, MSNBC, CBS, etc?  Or Should only PBS, which is paid for by the government be allowed? I guess you think it would be fine if Bush shut down the NY Times because they didn't like him. But if Chavez does it it is OK?

Recently he has closed down grocery stores that charged more then his arbitrary choosen price for meat in the country. He actually DARED private store owners to choose their own prices and defy his idea of what their product should cost, threatening again to nationalize the entire grocery industry.

Like all socalist he has either no concept, or worse, blatant contempt for the idea of private property, or individual ownership of anything.

So... Yes, console games ARE "...just as easily pirated..." however, the market for the pirated games is much smaller. 

kafuffle

Consoles have a much bigger problem then internet piracy in the form of 'legalized piracy', meaning the used game industry. Gamestop, funcoland, game crazy, and now ever CircuitCity and Best Buy are getting into it.

Reselling used games is now a billion dollars a year industry that give zero money to the developers and publishers that made the games. Resellers make more profit off a used game then the maker made off a new game, then they can sell the same copy of the game multple times.

The developers see no differance from buying a used copy or downloading off the internet, they are all the same lost sale of a new game. Not everone knows how to find/crack /mod games, but they all know how to walk into thier local mall and buy a used game.

The worst part is that a new game is often only $5 more then the used one, I would rather see the money go to the developers that spent years making the game then see it go to the 'digital pimps' that make more profit reselling them, their mark up on games is often over 300%, for what? I little shelf space, while the developers make a  no where near that for all the work of accually creating something.

So, the moving into the console market to aviod internet piracy seems short sighted.