Gryzemuis on 1/10/2008 at 02:07

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Cliffy B is a clueless moron.
He has no talent, and just was lucky to be at the right time at the right place.
He has no humor. And I think he must be pretty dumb too.
I used to be a UT CTF player. But I've lost all faith in Epic. And I will never buy a game made by Epic again.


But if Cliffy says he (and his company) are pissed off by illegal copies of their new games, I can understand him. And if he says "we're not gonna bother anymore", then that's his right. And I understand him.

If I made a game, I'd want people to pay for it. And if people have no money, then tough luck. Go get a job. Entertaiment is not one of the first needs in life. You won't die if you can't play. If it's my game, *I* get to say who can play the game (namely the people paying for it). Yes, I agree that every illegal copy is not lost sales. But that's irrelevant. If you didn't pay for my game, keep your filthy paws off it.

25 Years ago, I would have been screaming with joy if the record industry would have gone broke. I would still cheer. I wouldn't lose a night's sleep if Hollywood movie companies would go belly-up. They're useless. They provide very little benefit for artists and their audiences. In this age of easy digital distribution, record companies are not needed anymore. And movie companies lose a lot of their use too. They finance stuff. For distribution or marketing they aren't really needed anymore.

But the fact of the matter is: if you can't make people pay for the efforts made by artists, then you got a big problem. There is absolutely zero ethic justification for downloading and/or using illegal games, music, movies, etc. There are no real technical solutions for this problem. I have no real solution for the problem myself. I wouldn't know what game, music and movie companies should do. This is a huge problem for creativity.

Well, maybe I can come up with one potential solution. Paid game subscriptions, like MMOs. For this to work, you need a few conditions:
1) game technology must be client-server.
2) the game must allow people to invest time into a character. so they become attached to a character, and won't give away their subscriptions easily to others.
3) the game must allow people to "improve" their character. so they keep playing. and they see a value in their subscription
4) the game must have incentives to keep playing. this might mean new content needs to be added. or the game enhances social ties between players, so they feel social obligation to keep playing.

These are factors why people pay for a game subscription. In a regular FPS, because characters don't improve, it is easier to walk away from the game. Because you can easily walk away from a character, the "community" will take longer to develop.

I'm digressing.
CliffyB has a point.
High-tech games are played more by tech-savvy gamers. And those gamers are better at downloading illegal software. If my game would be pirated, I'd be pissed off too. And it's a developers right to decide for customers he picks himself. I assume Epic can afford to ignore a potential part of the market.

Taffer36 on 1/10/2008 at 02:46

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There's no doubting that piracy hurts sales. Even awesome developers who make tons of money, like Infinity Ward, have stated this. However, a game can still definitely recoup its losses on the PC. You can blame piracy for not selling as well as you had hoped, but you can't blame it for poor sales.



Do me a favor. Go online and play the game first with the controller, then with mouse/keyboard. Even though I prefer controllers in general as I think it's much more comfortable to use them, if you are moderately skilled at the game then there's absolutely no contest which is better. I've heard some reviewers also say that the game didn't control as well, but I thought they did a pretty good job with porting the controls.



You might not like Gears and I can respect that, but seriously, a joke? I was not aware that punchlines made ridiculous amounts of money, won game of the year awards, and are still played regularly (in the top ten for Xbox Live).

Oh by the way I forgot another embarassing detail on the PC port. The game didn't even have text chatting built in to it. In order to talk, you had to bring up the console and type, "say hey guys." And any sort of menus or scoreboard or things like that obscure any conversation. That's just fucking lazy.

GRRRR on 1/10/2008 at 03:01

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CliffYYYBEEEE? He was that guy making cool levels for UT wasnt he?

CaptSyn on 1/10/2008 at 03:18

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This Cliff guy is a real out of touch moron. Apparently he doesn't realize that console games are pirated every bit as much as PC games, if not more. There's not a console on the market that hasn't been cracked, either with a modchip or custom software. That includes the 360 and PS3.

What does he care if some n00b with an off the shelf Walmart computer can't play his games?

From a purely business standpoint, as long as those n00bs buy his crappy games, that's all he should ultimately care about. Code your crap games to run on the most common hardware and problem solved.

As for the game in question, who really cares? GoW sucks ass anyway. So do 3rd person shooters for that matter.

I was pissed when I built my current rig only to find out the onboard graphics were essentially useless. Even though my onboard is comparable to a low to mid range pci-e vidcard, it's useless because games are intentionally coded to not run on it.

Oblivion is a good example. When that one came out, I was using a Radeon 9600 AGP card on a P4 rig and Oblivion ran great as long as I turned off grass and turned down a couple things. Fine by me, I don't need eye candy to enjoy a game.

My onboard video, Intel GMA3100, exceeds the capabilities of that Radeon 9600 in every way, yet Oblivion will not run on it. Almost nothing will.

It's not because the onboard is weak. It's simply because games are no longer written for the most common hardware. I blame the game companies entirely.

So I dropped $30 and got an 8400GS, just so I could play the occassional game.

Anyone remember the days of TNT2 onboard graphics? How sweet was that. Every game on the market ran beautifully on it. I miss those days.

june gloom on 1/10/2008 at 03:32

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And so nobody pirates console games because it's too hard?