DRM... EA... The future

[El_Cid]

Originally posted by Maquiladora
WTF El Cid is child of Thor? When and why did this happen?

Long story I can't go into

Hey good to see you still have the ctp2 badge - I do occasionaly poke my head in that direction(and do still fire up Ctp from time-to-time), but well time is limited compared to those heady days of yore!

Anyway yeah i'm now El_Cid, still full of fire and brimstone(and thunder and lightening!) when needed - good damn stupid games industry and their DRM, making real customers think about becoming a pirate etc!!!

[Maquiladora]

Originally posted by El_Cid

Long story I can't go into

No worries, glad to see you back on 'Poly anyway

[Dinner]

I don't buy games with DRM. It's as simple as that.

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by Maquiladora
WTF El Cid is child of Thor? When and why did this happen?

Not sure - he did a big I'm leaving thread then came back as a less intelligent version of CoT three months later, without telling anyone. No one picked up on it, even me, because the personas were so different.

But he clearly felt it was time to revert recently as a couple of months ago he slipped in a reference to a CoT post that was made by him, and I put the rest together. And he does seem to be mellowing.

I don't really like people playing games with logins/personas, but good to have CoT back, if that is indeed the case.

Sorry for threadjacking all.

[El_Cid]

Originally posted by Oerdin
I don't buy games with DRM. It's as simple as that.

Do you know of a good place to find out which games have what? I find it difficult getting this info, and the game companies NEVER tell you what you are exactly installing on your system(this should not be allowed imho).

@ Dr.Spike we all know you can never leave - even if you think you can/are for good!

[EternalSpark]

Re: DRM... EA... The future

Good to see the people fighting it
Bad to see EA ignoring it

Cuz it's Nerd Rage. You can find people online really really mad at it, but you won't find anyone who even realizes its happening if you asked someone on the street. And in a few months, you'll be hard-pressed to find a group of people online that are still carrying the torch.

And EA's sales will still be great.

I don't mean to disparage anyone, but the whole DRM thing (and a lot of other things) will always be the domain of Known-Online-But-Everyone-Else-Doesnt-Know-Nor-Cares.

[El_Cid]

Re: Re: DRM... EA... The future

Originally posted by EternalSpark

Cuz it's Nerd Rage. You can find people online really really mad at it, but you won't find anyone who even realizes its happening if you asked someone on the street. And in a few months, you'll be hard-pressed to find a group of people online that are still carrying the torch.

And EA's sales will still be great.

I don't mean to disparage anyone, but the whole DRM thing (and a lot of other things) will always be the domain of Known-Online-But-Everyone-Else-Doesnt-Know-Nor-Cares.

True in terms of retail sales to 'joe public', the more casual gamer that doesn't ever get into finding online stuff about games, yeah 100% agree.

Still if those that are on-line and in the infomation war do decide to not buy games because of heavy handed DRM, then that could add up to a couple of hundred thousand lost sales? Not Huge(for the biggest hits) but big enough to matter.

Add to that that these guys are also your biggest fans(of the publisher) and will always be looking for your next game, months in advance. They are your most assured point of sale, for ever.

The guy in the retail store may have heard from a friend of a friend that this game is great, but he may also buy "another game" just because he liked the look of the game sleave?

So yes you are correct, but it's not as black and white as that. The vocal, informed, hard-core gamer may be the smaller percent of the overall sales you hope to achieve, but they are the most likely to buy your game in the first place. So imho they(us) are probably your best customer. A bird on hand is worth two in the bush - there i never thought i'd get to use that in a game forum

And it takes time to build momentum, how long did publishers stick with starforce before they stopped using it? The same will eventualy happen to SecuRom, and any of these hairbrained(to put it bluntly) DRM solutions. If the companies involved are happy to keep throwing $100,000's at them - with no real outcome other than pissing of REAL paying customers, then i'm happy they have so much money to waste. For how long we will have to wait and see.

Add to that it's much easier to p*ss someone of than make them happy. And some people can hold a grudge for a very long time. The publisher should just ask themselves is it worth it?

[LDiCesare]

Originally posted by El_Cid
The principle reason behind the acceleration in costs to produce AAA current games is this graphical overhead. And that leads into all sorts of other areas. For example with more development time spent on making your game look amazing(photo-realisitc), which publishers can insist upon, is less time spent on other area's of the game.

Indeed. On GameAIDev, you will even find out that some ai developpers consider most of their tasks consists in playing the right animation at the right time. Not really what one expects when one talks of ai to a strrategy gamer, but it tells a lot: AI becomes dedicated not to better gameplay but to better graphics too.

Originally posted by Seedle
However, in the future, 3D opens up exciting possibilities: truly spherical worlds, multiple planes of development on a single map, such as under-water or underground cities. And that's just off the top of my head.

Multiple planes needing 3D?
I seriously urge you to lookup Master Of Magic and Civilization II Test of Time.
These games had multiple planes and 2d iso. ToT actually shipped with a fantasy scenario where you had underwater, underworld and skies map in addition to the land map. Plus mods where your submarines sailed in the underwater map and missiles flew in the above land map...
Spherical worlds don't need 3d to be shown, though it helps, because all you can ever see is a disk, not the two halves of the sphere. And you'll want to zoom in in order to see anything, which means you won't see the sphere that much. Displaying the 3d is not the hard part in making a spherical world.

As for DRMs, I just passed by Spore in the shop last week because of it. I wonder whether I should go tell the vendor why I won't buy it.

[Seedle]

Originally posted by LDiCesare
Multiple planes needing 3D?
I seriously urge you to lookup Master Of Magic and Civilization II Test of Time.
These games had multiple planes and 2d iso. ToT actually shipped with a fantasy scenario where you had underwater, underworld and skies map in addition to the land map. Plus mods where your submarines sailed in the underwater map and missiles flew in the above land map...
Spherical worlds don't need 3d to be shown, though it helps, because all you can ever see is a disk, not the two halves of the sphere. And you'll want to zoom in in order to see anything, which means you won't see the sphere that much. Displaying the 3d is not the hard part in making a spherical world.

Very true, particularly the multiple plains. But also, as you said, it can't hurt. But did MoM and ToT have the different planes on the same screen, at the same time? With 3D, you could easily have a floating city over an existing ground-based city, and you wouldn't have to switch maps to see them. Still not unachievable in 2D, I know, but cleaner and more adaptable in full 3D, it seems to me.

[El_Cid]

3D has it's place for sure, but for me it generaly does not work well in a strat game - Civ4 is probably the only example of where i've found it worked well. And the reason it did was because they made it work like a 2D tile based system. This gives you the best control in a complex strat game.
Fighting with spinning 'view everything from anywhere' camera angles never = strategic gaming for me, quite the opposite.

On the DRM issue, one way to avoid it is to not buy the game when it first comes out, and has been a tatic i've used at times. Even with Spore EA have said they will release something to deactivate some parts of their DRM, and it appears many re-releases don't come with the expensive DRM they had on first release.

So be patient, better things come to he who waits

This is not so good for the publisher, but well they stopped giving a sh*t about me(and the damage they can cause to my pc) a while back right?

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by El_Cid
3D has it's place for sure, but for me it generaly does not work well in a strat game - Civ4 is probably the only example of where i've found it worked well. And the reason it did was because they made it work like a 2D tile based system. This gives you the best control in a complex strat game.
Fighting with spinning 'view everything from anywhere' camera angles never = strategic gaming for me, quite the opposite.

You haven't played Age of Sail Privateers Bounty, have you?

[El_Cid]

@ LotM,

No I haven't - is it good? I always liked the idea of Age of Sail(I love old sailing boats, used to sail them myself ), but in the end I'm not sure exactly what stopped me trying them out.

Ah yeah I decided to get into the original Pirates of the Caribbean (Bethesda/Akella) - a 3D game that to me is incredibly beautiful.

But its not a strat game, although with the Build Mod(that I helped work on) you can control a number of ships in your fleet, BUT the 3D thing does get in the way - a fixed overhead perspective would make this part much more tactical(and strategic).
But it does have old tall ship combat(vs sea+land), in a beautiful setting, with Pirates and some rpg stuff - a good mix(for me) that made me go with this instead of the Age of Sail series, which seemed much more narrow in the game experience from what I understood about it - ship vs ship combat only?

I'll go google Age of Sail Privateers Bounty to see what its about, but tell me, are you saying it does 3D with strat and does it well?

DRM STUFF:

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=19939

Latest info in the Spore DRM thing - lawsuit filed for damages in the region of $5 million. I don't know how likely this is to succeed, but still if the message gets across to the bosses at EA(and other publishers) then it is probably a good thing in the long run?

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by El_Cid
@ LotM,

No I haven't - is it good? I always liked the idea of Age of Sail(I love old sailing boats, used to sail them myself ), but in the end I'm not sure exactly what stopped me trying them out.

Ah yeah I decided to get into the original Pirates of the Caribbean (Bethesda/Akella) - a 3D game that to me is incredibly beautiful.

But its not a strat game, although with the Build Mod(that I helped work on) you can control a number of ships in your fleet, BUT the 3D thing does get in the way - a fixed overhead perspective would make this part much more tactical(and strategic).
But it does have old tall ship combat(vs sea+land), in a beautiful setting, with Pirates and some rpg stuff - a good mix(for me) that made me go with this instead of the Age of Sail series, which seemed much more narrow in the game experience from what I understood about it - ship vs ship combat only?

I'll go google Age of Sail Privateers Bounty to see what its about, but tell me, are you saying it does 3D with strat and does it well?

Yes its combat only you can also fire and be fired at by land forts, but thats a minor aspect - essentially its combat between ships and fleets of ships (theres a campaign mode where you get to buy ships after winning a combat or something, but I didnt bother with that). I consider that part part of the larger strategy genre. The 3d graphics are beautiful, the camera controls are not difficult (not as simple as Civ4, but not difficult) and they dont interfere with the gameplay. So to me it does 3d strat and does it well, but perhaps you consider it to tactical too qualify.

Oh and you CAN view it from overhead, 2d angle IIRC, but it just feels more intuitive to view it from further down, where you can see the action better. Im not really going all the way down to sea captains first person POV (you can get close to that) but somewhere in between. Where I position the camera depends on the size of the battle and whats going on.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by El_Cid


Do you know of a good place to find out which games have what? I find it difficult getting this info, and the game companies NEVER tell you what you are exactly installing on your system(this should not be allowed imho).

@ Dr.Spike we all know you can never leave - even if you think you can/are for good!

Unfortunately no. I just read reviews and listen to what people I know say.

[El_Cid]

Originally posted by Oerdin

Unfortunately no. I just read reviews and listen to what people I know say.

Yeah, same here and another reason why these days I never rush out to get a game on first release. It takes a little while for that kind of info to become common knowledge.