Professional game designers whining...

[Floid]

Carrying on my recent tradition of vaguely keeping track of what the real world's up to...

Some sort of bizarre conference transcript here, via, uh... yeah, BoingBoing.

Whatever exactly it is, I'm sure a fair number of you wouldn't want to miss it.  Especially the assembly language wizards in Sweden.

[Cymric]

I found the advertisement about a wooden laptop---in other words, a computer where the complete outer casing is made of beautifully and lovingly polished, lacquered wood---more interesting ;-).

But the industry people are right. Game production costs are going through the roof and two or three bad reviews in a popular magazine or online blog can ruin that investment completely.

[Floid]

Cymric wrote:

But the industry people are right. Game production costs are going through the roof and two or three bad reviews in a popular magazine or online blog can ruin that investment completely.

Yeah.  I figured this would've got more responses for the muddled but interesting opinion on Cell and its ilk... and the general "OMG, we need a new platform, we need a new distribution model, we're sick of computers!" vibe even whoever these presumably 'real' and well-to-do people are flinging about.

[Plaz]

I found this part interesting....

I never minded piracy. Anyone who minds about piracy is full of s#$%. Anyone who pirates your game wasn’t going to buy it anyway!

...from the guys writting the games.


I think this is some what true and I've said similar for 15 years. To assume everyone who pirates your ware, was going to be a legitimate buyer is naive.
I think a large percentage would say "I'm not paying $89 for it, I can't get it though pirate channels, so I just don't have it."
Their concerns about ditribution are valid. If the only distributors in the game are wal-mart and microsoft, then all your
programming jobs are going to india eventually I bet.

Plaz

[Rogue]

I found this part interesting....

    I never minded piracy. Anyone who minds about piracy is full of s#$%. Anyone who pirates your game wasn’t going to buy it anyway!

...from the guys writting the games.

Over-simplified if you ask me. The same goes for the other direction (every pirate is a potential buyer). The truth is somewhere inbetween.

There is always a barrier where you consider buying a game or not. The proof is "Gold" or "GOTY" editions that are sold for around €10 to €30 where you suddenly consider a game that you didn't buy before.

Some people are just not ready to pay €50 for a game and therefore pirate it if they get the chance. They might buy it when the price goes down. For example, I considered buying "Medal of Honor" when it came out but the price was simply too high for my taste. When they re-released it with all addons for the same price even I bought it.

Lately I almost exclusively buy GOTY or Gold editions.

[Cymric]

Rogue wrote:
There is always a barrier where you consider buying a game or not. The proof is "Gold" or "GOTY" editions that are sold for around €10 to €30 where you suddenly consider a game that you didn't buy before.

Thank God I'm apparently not the only one on 'computer savings time', as Scott Kurtz called it in an episode of PvP Online. The majority of my collection consists of games which are long past their prime, but are still very fun and playable. I have had oodles of fun playing Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time on my PC, and at a prices of 10 euro, I really cannot complain. The only snag is that I dislike PDF manuals, but you can't have everything :-).

Besides, the games I bought at full retail price continue to be fun to play: I have Diablo II in my collection, bought it when it came out, and I still haven't finished it, thanks to a few nasty hard disk crashes in between. But I don't mind the replaying, although the First Act is beginning to lose its shine :-).

But this is an Amiga website, so excuse this minor sidestepping of mine.