The Games Industry thread.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Skanky Burns
How many pencil and paper games can you play from the comfort of your own home safely away from strange people?

You play them with strangers? I never do

[Standup]

What is the point of MMORPG's? The pencil and paper variety has far more social interactions and tend to be much more imaginative.

Well i live out of town cause house prices are so high, work 9-10 hours a day and spend another 3 commuting. It's just easier to slump in front of the PC rather than spend more time travelling to meet real people. It's also far harder to get people together what with jobs, children, partners etc.

Much prefer the pen and paper variety though (from what i remember when i had a life).

sighs...

[Urban Ranger]

Standup - find a better job

[snoopy369]

Originally posted by Skanky Burns
How many pencil and paper games can you play from the comfort of your own home safely away from strange people?

/me points to ED&D ...

erm, except it's not safe and there are a lot of strange people there

[DrSpike]

/me fireballs Snoopy.

[Rasbelin]

Picking up again on the topic some *cough* 2-3 months later.

Originally posted by child of Thor
I wonder about how good this downloading games thing will actually be - it is quite an expensive business with all the associated support costs etc, and Steam didn't exactly go down that well?

Actually the only real cost there is bandwidth. A gigabyte costs a few US cents, but multiply that with the number of downloads and page loads. I'm speaking about the bandwidth needed to upload from a server in a datacenter to the global Internet all those games. Other than that, it's really just a big save in money. No need to print a written manual, no need to replicate CD/DVD-ROMs, no need to produce an aluring package for the game, no need to distribute it physically, etc. Just a bucket load of bits and bytes to transfer from point A to point B. So as it can all be done fully automated and just requires some hardware and bandwidth, it's getting cheaper.

Now Steam maybe didn't succeed, but my speculation has been that they had the wrong approach and a bad business plan. Also I assume they didn't wait for the potential customers to have decent connections. Well, just look at Stardock now. People sure seem to download just fine GalCiv.

Support is now done via telephone and e-mail, as well as online forums and knowledgebases. And nothing would basically change. Just the medium, so I can't see any issue with rising support costs.

I'm quite sure that someone will come out stronger than for instance Yahoo! games and actually become the Walmart, eBay, Google, iTunes, AOL or whatever giant of online game download retailing. Perhaps something along FileFront and GaySpy (if you didn't get it, try GameSpy ).

Still with a few big publishers controlling most of the outlets i guess it is one of the main avenus for the middle size dev house.

I think if we could cut out the middlemen(seem to often be the publishers these days?), then games might get a whole lot cheaper to make too?

That's very unlikely to happen. Why charge less when people anyway pay the current prices? I foresee that what would happen is that rather than it getting cheaper, we see game development studios using these potential increased revenues used to strengthen their development team with more workers, rather than cut back. After all the game market isn't clearly going to diminish anytime soon, but instead we get to see loads of new players. Remember that there's still plenty of untapped markets in Asia, Africa, Europe and Latin America. And let's not forget female gamers.

So I think that at the end of the day we players are the ones who would benefit from increased competition and investments in developing these games. We already see a huge market developing in selling in-game items for games like WoW, not to mention all the gaming gear like gaming oriented keyboards (Z-Board, etc.), headsets, mice, precision mousepads, etc. Just name it. Overall we won't see a decline and as there's people that are ready to pay, we won't see prices decline.

I was getting abit off-topic from your point, but essentially just wanted to say that I wouldn't expect prices going down, except maybe in some developing markets.

[Rasbelin]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
What is the point of MMORPG's? The pencil and paper variety has far more social interactions and tend to be much more imaginative.

Oh, you mean the variant in which people try to jot down human genitalia?

Originally posted by Zero
No one likes to play Challenging MP games anymore...

*cut*

And if they cant have fun button mashing and trigger happly shooting things brainlessly in fighting/RTS/FPS genre, than they say the game is stupid and boring and blah blah blah...

This is just damn stupid borkheaded thinking. Even if you're trying to ridicule people who don't give a ratass about Civ. First of all people do like challenging multiplayer games and that's why there's a demand for such games in all genres. All the way from Civ III/IV to Counterstrike. Now CS might not be a very thought provoking game and require about as much wits as chess requires, but it does require skill and poses challenges even to those good players. I'm not playing it myself, but just giving you an example.

Now FPS and RTS both do require thinking, fast decisions and even somekind of a clue how not to act stupid. Of course there's those that play it just for a quick adrenaline shot, but those are usually teens and others who are impatient or just want a fast paced game. I like FPS, RTS and TBS alike, but honestly I can't say TBS is what demands most. It demands what it takes, just because of the simple fact you have more time on your hands, so of course you end up thinking more.

And even if your message was a troll, I think it was quite pointless. De facto we people aren't all the same, so can't blame the others, as they can blame me about as much at least. Just switch server or try a different game, if you're into getting bored by midgets.

[Rasbelin]

Originally posted by child of Thor

So whats the last game anyone can remember being a severe challange?

Civ II against VJ or Fracas with the #eventis gang. Other than that, Forgotten Hope is online many times quite a challenge for me. Especially Bombing the Reich is a map I quite a lot hate. Railroad Tycoon II was also a challenge later on in the game.

Yeah, maybe I'm not a genious player beyond reasonable capabilities.

[Skanky Burns]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
You play them with strangers? I never do

A D&D player that is not strange?

[snoopy369]

Originally posted by Skanky Burns


A D&D player that is not strange?

Of COURSE not ...

Ras, I totally agree with you.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Skanky Burns
A D&D player that is not strange?

Strange people != strangers.

[child of Thor]

Originally posted by Rasbelin
Picking up again on the topic some *cough* 2-3 months later.


Actually the only real cost there is bandwidth. A gigabyte costs a few US cents, but multiply that with the number of downloads and page loads. I'm speaking about the bandwidth needed to upload from a server in a datacenter to the global Internet all those games. Other than that, it's really just a big save in money. No need to print a written manual, no need to replicate CD/DVD-ROMs, no need to produce an aluring package for the game, no need to distribute it physically, etc. Just a bucket load of bits and bytes to transfer from point A to point B. So as it can all be done fully automated and just requires some hardware and bandwidth, it's getting cheaper.

Now Steam maybe didn't succeed, but my speculation has been that they had the wrong approach and a bad business plan. Also I assume they didn't wait for the potential customers to have decent connections. Well, just look at Stardock now. People sure seem to download just fine GalCiv.

Support is now done via telephone and e-mail, as well as online forums and knowledgebases. And nothing would basically change. Just the medium, so I can't see any issue with rising support costs.

This is the way forward i believe, but doesn't it just make piracy easier to do? I think Piracy has had its part to play in the current state of PC gaming vs console gaming, and needs to be addressed before the mid-size developer will feel completely comfortable with using this method as the main-stream way of getting their software to their customers(the other option is to approach a publisher - which can be a bit like selling your soul ).

I also think part of the problem(which may be just a matter of time and getting used to it)with electronic delivery may be that it feels 'cheap' - like downloading from a warez site.
With a physical game box/manual etc you feel like you actualy have bought something real. Maybe thats an 'old-school' physcological tick, but i feel much more attached to my games that have a real box+paper things with them?

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by child of Thor


This is the way forward i believe, but doesn't it just make piracy easier to do? I think Piracy has had its part to play in the current state of PC gaming vs console gaming, and needs to be addressed before the mid-size developer will feel completely comfortable with using this method as the main-stream way of getting their software to their customers(the other option is to approach a publisher - which can be a bit like selling your soul ).

Not really though, as piracy is rampant in either case, and if anything the Stardock stuff for instance is hardest to pirate. Not that I tried, naturally.

[snoopy369]

Originally posted by child of Thor
I also think part of the problem(which may be just a matter of time and getting used to it)with electronic delivery may be that it feels 'cheap' - like downloading from a warez site.
With a physical game box/manual etc you feel like you actualy have bought something real. Maybe thats an 'old-school' physcological tick, but i feel much more attached to my games that have a real box+paper things with them?

You counter that by having a professional looking site - and professional retailers, to some extent (like Amazon). Plenty of people buy utilities (ie Symantec Norton AV) online; games at the moment just don't (generally) have the truly professional-looking sites that make you think you're buying a professional game. Amazon's proven that people will happily buy things online, and iTunes has proven that people will happily download things instead of getting the package.

Oh, and you have to offer it at a decent discount at least at first. That's where I differ from Ras - if you charge $49 for that computer game that you could just as easily get in a store, people will buy from the store since they're going there anyway. Perhaps once games become prevalently offered on-line, they can be the same price - but at least a $5 discount needs to be offered to buy them on-line, and probably more.

Good thing that means the developper/publisher still get MORE money than otherwise ... since they don't have to pay the retail markup

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by DrSpike
Not really though, as piracy is rampant in either case, and if anything the Stardock stuff for instance is hardest to pirate. Not that I tried, naturally.

From Brad Wardell said, Stardock games have no copy protection at all. However if you pay for the games you get extra value.

Wardell's blog entry