Jereel Hunter said:
mirgro said:
Exactly the piracy grew with the industry so while there were less pirates there were also less people to use it. Proportionally it has been more or less the same.
Well, that's a guess. You really have no idea. I'd guess it's grown, as it's so much easier to get a pirated copy nowadays with fast internet connections and Bittorrent.
As for Valve and Blizzard, they were doing just fine before Steam and WoW, how do you explain that? Also there is no hassle in pirating WoW. Just download it, install it, and run the crack, done, just like any other game.
There is a hassle in playing WoW. It's a MMORPG, and MMORPGs have a big social aspect. People want to play with their friends. Yes, you can convince everyone you know to play a game illegally, and get on a pirate server, but due to the type of game it is, people are far more likely to pay the fees and play the real thing.
So far your explanations have been lacking. My theory is that developers noticed that PC gamers have a much higher standard of quality than do console gamers. Then a lot of the less good devs jumped ship to consoles (look at Bungie pre-Halo to see what I mean). (Bungie was VERY highly regarded before Halo. Infact, they didn't "jump ship." Their new game in development was so impressive (the first Halo) that Microsoft bought them to get their hands on it. Then companies make a crappy game that is not up to snuff to PC gamers' standards and then they blame piracy on it (Assassin's Creed, new PoP, Crysis, I can keep listing these mediocre games all day long). Meanwhile the people who DO create amazing games flourish, ala Valve and Blizzard.(Some valid businesses flourish in Nigeria. That doesn't make it a good place to do business. Yes, Valve and Blizzard are the best of the best, and will sell millions while getting pirated too. That doesn't mean it's viable for everyone) If anything developers are putting themselves out of business by producing subpar games.(One of my all-time favorite game franchises, Wing Commander, had extremely high production values, and the highest development budgets of its time. Simply producing a quality product didn't save them - you also need sales... something greatly effected by piracy) Then they don't wanna admit they made a mediocre game so they just use piracy as a scapegoat and cite how people with lower standards (because they never had any great games to raise their standards to begin with) are buying the game by the millions.(You seem to consider anything that isn't AAA to be subpar, as the only examples you list are companies that make AAA games. Am I to assume, that you think only games with $30M+ budgets by top tier developers should be produced, and everyone else should fold up? that way each genre can get 2-3 games a year and gamers get a few dozen games a year to choose from? Your only argument seems to be that anything that doesn't sell on PC but sells on consoles must be terrible, because PC gamers are better. Period. When the only FACTS we have to work with, are that PC gamers are far more likely to steal games, while console players are far more likely to buy them. We haven't even so much as anecdotal evidence that console gamers have lower standards than PC gamers, other than games you find to be bad on the PC sell more on consoles. (Newsflash: most everything sells better on consoles. Good games too - except PC focused games)
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P.S. I am assuming this is an altername account of Vlad's. He's normally be posting in these discussions with almost the same argument word for word. Oh, and he's banned.
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The game Bungie made last before halo was Oni, which was pretty interesting but it had bland envoronments wooden characters and a few other problems, solid fighting system though. I played it on the PS2 and it worked fine with the controller. As you said, Valve and Blizzard make plenty of money because they make good games and give their audience what their audience wants, when they deliver they get rwarded. Somehow recently companies have begun to think that they know what consumers want better than the consumers themselves. Then they whine about their games getting hacked by their consumers....
As for WC, the last one I played was Prophecy and I heard the follow -up was more or less a rehash, they got bought up by EA and they started just rehashing their games. I mean come on, the follow up to Prophecy came out a year later, not enough time to make a new great game, what did they expect. If anything I'd blame EA mishandling the company and running it into the ground by making it developer subpar games than anything else. Wing Commander and Privateer were very high quality products that only declined when the developer started releasing them year after year after year when they were forced to by EA. See, even you don't want to admit the games decreased on their innovative side (I honestly didn't buy the last WC because I saw it was the same as Prophecy more or less) instead you just want someone else to blame. Well blame EA if anything. Also I don't know if you know but after the last WC came out EA said that Origin will be an online game only studio, working on Ultima and stuff. Wing Commander is dead because of EA, not because of pirates.
That is an issue you don't see with Valve or Blizzard (at least before AV got its hands on Blizz). They made games the way they wanted to make them and they released a game once every few years, not once every year. Also yes I consider anything that isn't innovative subpar and generally "more of the same." AAA doesn't really mean anything because I nejoyed Machinarium and that was ranked in the 80s, yet it was pretty innovative and well told. Also look at Deus Ex, X-COM, and other games which also top "best of all time" lists, they never had strict publishers interested in only money breathign down their necks either.
Also the $30M+ budgets come from people focusing too much on graphics, which let's face it, don't make a good game. Blizzard makes tons of money because you can probably run their games on toaster ovens even when they come out. It's the developer's fault they invest in shiny graphics instead of making an innovative product.
I woudl also rather have 1 great game in a give genre a year instead of 2-3 all of which are subpar and more of the same, or repetative, or whatever other things the developers didn't do. Also I disagree with the "if it doesn't sell on PCs it isn't good" statement. Platforming games, fighting games and just about any game that has platforming elements would be absolutely horrible on the PC and there are many many great games like that on the consoles.
As for PC games being better and the gamers having higher standards just look at this very MW2 thread. It's obvious that the game has the exact same features on all platforms, yet people widely consider the PC version to be trash. Why is that, if not higher standards and expectations?
Last note, plenty of people also pirate on the consoles, not to mention EVERYONE has a PC in the world, even countries that don't get some games or are too poor to buy them. However if you are from there and you already have the console bought, chances are you already have enough money to afford new games. You need to provide me with some statistics on how this piracy issue is spread out, because I have a feeling a lot of it comes from poorer countries as well. Newsflash: PCs are used for far more than just gaming so many many more people have them than they do consoles.
P.S. Actually no, I lurked a lot and if you noticed I signed up to enter the raffle for the HoN beta. You can see me praising LBP and the new mario bros game around the forums too since then.
