EPTThe whole MW2 dedicated servers thing, they can claim its to give us a better matchmaking system but its so they can shove DLC down our throats. ANYONE who played CSS cracked on servers for long periods of times know how shitty private servers are. No dedicated servers is why I'm boycotting MW2.
You Did It To Yourselves - Page 3
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genwar
Canada537 Posts
The whole MW2 dedicated servers thing, they can claim its to give us a better matchmaking system but its so they can shove DLC down our throats. ANYONE who played CSS cracked on servers for long periods of times know how shitty private servers are. No dedicated servers is why I'm boycotting MW2. | ||
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Chuiu
3470 Posts
On November 06 2009 03:22 DJEtterStyle wrote: I'm not a PC gamer. That's not to say I don't play games on my PC -- I do, and I enjoy the experience -- but the term "PC gamer" has recently become something so despicable that I don't want to be associated with it. As far as I'm concerned, PC gamers are the equivalent of the legions of indignant homeless in San Francisco, the ones who sneer at you when you only give them a dollar and then ask you for another when you encounter them again five minutes later. PC gamers as of late have projected this outrageous, unwarranted sense of entitlement, this belief that developers owe them something. I wish I could pinpoint the source of these feelings. Is it the deep-seated belief that they are the "hardcore," and because they take their hobby so much more seriously than the unwashed console masses, they deserve to be catered to? Is it a basic misunderstanding of how our society functions? Or are they all just insane? Stopping here and replying to just this. PC gamers aren't doing this, older gamers are. People who have been around and have seen the changes in the gaming industry from fun to profit. This pretentious 'entitlement' you say we have doesn't actually exist. We're just lashing out on an industry that is purposely holding back content from us so they can sell it to us again at a later date. If we don't lash back out and reject this and demand to be treated a certain way as consumers then its going to spiral out of control and companies will start nickle and diming us for every tiny little insignificant part of a game that they used to give to us as part of the game. If they are going to sell us a game, sell us the entire game. Don't sell us segment by segment over a few months. Now I don't consider myself a hardcore gamer but this pisses me off. I'm just content right now because there haven't been more than a couple games that I actually wanted the additional content from (I haven't and never have purchased any DLC and won't unless its obvious they actually put work into it and its worth the $10 or whatever for the expansions). | ||
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anotak
United States1537 Posts
I didn't do it to myself, the devs did it to themselves. I might buy starcraft 2 and whatever the next half life game is... outside of that I'm probably not touching PC games. for single player... well, it's utterly ridiculous that Doom 2 custom maps have MUCH HIGHER standards for gameplay and level design than companies like Gearbox for example. I can compare the pristine gameplay the doom 2 mod Whispers of Satan (released september 2009, originally announced in 2007) vs. Gearbox's Borderlands (oct 2009, originally announced in 2007)... and this doom 2 mod comes out massively ahead. That's STUPID... to say the least, that 2 independent mappers with no plans for money, using a 16 year-old engine manage to create BETTER gameplay than a developer (who probably have at least 100 people working on their game) who spent a lot of money on an unreal engine 3 license. In borderlands we see the copy-and-pasted static mesh asset lego block level design... If you took the levels from borderlands and remade them as doom maps and tried to release them in the doom community, you'd be laughed at, doomworld's reviewers would tear you a new one. for multiplayer, quake live and starcraft play much better than anything recently made and again, that's quite ridiculous and sad. how is it that developers come out with these new games and instead of learning lessons from these games and why they are so great, they just create subpar dumbed-down games so. starcraft, and doom mods. i'm fine with that. i'd be happier if new games were good, but i'm not unhappy with the situation. | ||
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Retsukage
United States1002 Posts
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DJEtterStyle
United States2766 Posts
On November 06 2009 05:33 Zyrre wrote: Your entire theory falls down on any game with a monthly fee. Honestly, I don't think that's the case. You can see it in this quote: This is the time to start showing developers that you are willing to spend money on products that cater to you. If you don't, and you're still hoping to game on your PC ten years from now... well, I hope you enjoy The Sims, World of Warcraft, and Farmville, because that's the direction the market is headed. .Right now, MMOs are the games that are making truly enormous sums of money on the PC. That is where developer efforts are going. I'm not a fan of MMOs, at least not the way current ones are structured, which is why I tried to highlight three more traditional games in my post. Because MMOs are such enormous money makers, there's an even greater need to prove to developers that PC gamers are willing to buy something else. The PC isn't going to die as a gaming platform, but games released on the PC are going to change drastically. You're going to see casual games and MMOs. I don't know about you, but I'd rather see more games like Call of Duty, Dragon Age, and Starcraft. | ||
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searcher
277 Posts
Also, you have included the obligatory paragraph (that appears in one form or another in all articles about casual vs hardcore) about how PC gamers suck because we are a minority. But forcing the interests of the minority onto the majority is not always a bad thing in these types of issues. What if the best mathematics students demanded that university entrance exams have harder maths questions, clearly against the interests of the majority? Most likely, it would improve mathematical proficiency amongst everyone. Similarly, if you accept that PC gamers have in general a better idea of what makes a good game and change games to satisfy their demands, against the will of console gamers, perhaps the console gamers will find that they enjoy the games in a new, more interesting way. For example, say in WoW Blizzard made it impossible to get good items without competing in some relatively skill-based combat like in the arenas. Clearly this would satisfy those who are serious about the game, while displeasing pretty much everyone else. But this majority, forced into competing for them items, might discover that there is a lot of depth and fun to arena combat that they never discovered before starting to take it seriously, and their enjoyment of the game increases. Not the best example, and a better case can be made for FPSes and RTSes, but you get my point. | ||
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LaughingTulkas
United States1107 Posts
On November 06 2009 05:35 ][-][eretic wrote: A company "owes" you their best effort any time they put out a game they expect you to pay for. This quote betrays extreme ignorance on the way that capitalism works. They don't owe any effort at all, it is all cost/benefit for them. If they pull out all the stops and spend tons of money, time, and effort on a product and can't recover all the costs, they lose money. If they absolutely take a dump in a box, then they will sell zero and also not recover the costs of the food needed to produce so much feces. The truth is somewhere in between. The company is going to spend as much time and effort as they think is needed to create a product that will sell enough copies for them to not only recoup their initial costs but also create a profit. This is how companies work. They do not "owe" us their best effort, and if we don't like it, we are not "expected' to still pay. Their goal is to gauge public opinion well enough to estimate how many will sell and act accordingly. Both sides are completely voluntary. You have the power to buy as you chose and they have the power to put as much time/effort/money in the game as they want. Capitalism in theory says that this arrangement will actually end up as a net benefit for both parties, even if both sides don't get ALL that they want. Whether this is true is something else, but that's how are system works now (in most things). | ||
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Meta
United States6225 Posts
Assume 11 million subscribers, average, over the course of the year. Also assume they pay, on average, $12.50 per month (the actual values range from $10-$15 depending on how many months you buy. $12.50 * 11 million subscribers * 12 subscriptions/year = $1,650,000,000 According to your figures, that single game is equivalent to about %10 of the entire video game market revenue, and about 40% more revenue than you attributed to the whole market. Anyway, aside from that, I don't plan on buying Modern Warfare or Left 4 Dead 2, not because i'm annoyed at the companies, but simply because I don't have the money. I'm not going to steal them either. Maybe when L4D2 is down to like $25 in a year it'll be worth it. I sink money on companies that I think are doing a great job, producing in-depth games that are captivating and extremely replayable. That's why I've already pre-ordered heroes of newerth. I think S2 is doing a great job and they need all the support they can get because they're a new company. That's what capitalists should do, like you said. What differentiates video games from most other products out there these days is the consumers spend sooooo much time using them. Over the course of that time the end up really, really liking the product. The a sequel gets released. Sequels aren't a part of any other industry aside from movies and books. Fans of the originals only want the best for the sequels, because the sequels effectively kill the originals. If they aren't up to par the consumer has lost his beloved original game forever. A perfect example is Super Smash Bros Melee -> Brawl. There is no such thing as Melee tournaments anymore, at least where I live. It's all about that shitty sequel. I would hate to see the same thing happen to starcraft, and most other people would agree. That's why they feel the need to voice their opinions. Also, I think of MMOs as the biggest gamble a company can make. It's either really good and catches on, and makes you an ass-load of money, or it's bad and ends up destroying your company financially. Look at Hellgate: London. That game is dead because it wasn't good enough to hook people away from the games they're already playing. The death of the game killed the company. It was a huge loss of revenue. A major factor in the creation of MMOs is that developers have to think: is this good enough to get MMO players to stop playing their current game? MMO players can only play one MMO at a time. And, since good MMOs have teams devoted to constantly updating them, a company looking to make a new one has a LOT of work ahead of them, for possibly no profit. They want to make it better than what's out there already, and that takes a lot of time, and if they fail they all essentially lose their jobs. Furthermore, I know it's completely ridiculous for some of you to grasp, but some companies care about other things than money. Blizzard, for example, has repeatedly voiced their opinion on the continuation of e-sports. They aren't going to release a game that's not worthy of keeping this community going. They also hold Blizzcon every year, for the fans, at a severe loss of revenue. This year's Blizzcon set the company back something on the order of 4 billion dollars. And why do they do this? They do it for us, the fans, and for the continuation of e-sports. So I can see why some of us (PC gamers) feel a false sense of entitlement towards the games that are coming out. Blizzard, in particular, has set up this illusion themselves. | ||
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StorkHwaiting
United States3465 Posts
I'm not sure what restaurants you frequent, but custom orders can and will be serviced at many better establishments. The customer can ask for anything they want and usually the chef will accommodate it as long as they have the ingredients in house and it's nothing ridiculous like a mashed potato castle. Still, I understand what you're saying and agree with it. The biggest problem in my opinion is the cost of developing games nowadays. The PC had a TON more games and a ton more great games back in the day, because there were a lot more games period! The cost of developing a DOS based game is nothing like the cost of a 3-d graphics etc etc PC game like today. And I don't get why it has to be that way. Sure great graphics are nice, but it doesn't have to be. I still play Star Control 2 and that game is still fantastic. This constant arms race between game developers to have the BEST GFX has only ruined the industry for themselves. They are the ones who put themselves in this position, constantly trying to one-up each other by increasing production costs to try to grab more market share. It's a stupid way of doing business and they should have moved in the direction of great game design rather than great graphics long ago. Then again, great game design only comes along once in a blue moon. You can always throw money at a problem and make things shinier -_-. | ||
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DefMatrixUltra
Canada1992 Posts
I had made a giant rambling post critiquing everything you said, but I'll just say this. I'm sick of the over-monetization of games and the side-affects it has. When something like L4D --> L4D 2 happens, it just makes me wanna throw up. When there is DRM so bad on some games that I literally check to make sure they don't have specific types before I even consider buying them, it's bad (blue screens, seriously?). When people are saying that pirates often get better games than the consumers, they are not exaggerating. I often 'crack' or otherwise detox the games that I BUY because of the nonsense included with them. When PC game developers shoot themselves in the foot by having ridiculous graphics requirements (no, not your lying minimum requirements) again and again and then cry about piracy/unfair reviews/whatever because their game didn't sell to every one of the 2mil people capable of playing the game, I just wanna kill someone. When a game comes out with pay-to-get DLC AT RELEASE (Dragon Age), again with the vomit (and yes, I bought this game, furthering the horrible cycle - it's my fault). Games like Wizardry VII, Master of Orion, Jagged Alliance 2, XCOM, a shitload of others - these blew my mind. These games were excellent, aesthetically pleasing, had good game mechanics, great replay value (100's of hours, yes hundreds). I remember these games and the circumstances under which I bought them and enjoyed them, and it makes me sad all the shit that PC gamers have to deal with these days (which console gamers will soon also have to deal with). Maybe it's not someone's fault, but that doesn't mean I have to be happy about it. I don't care if people want to buy AAA BLOCKBUSTER BIG [insert console] TITLE OF THE YEAR games that suck mechanically, have bad optimization, bad gameplay, and are 10 hours long - I feel no hatred or pity or anything towards these people. There are people like this in every sector of life. I don't care about them because I am not them. I just want good games at a good price without all the hassle. It seems like paying money for a game ought to be less hassle than downloading it off the internet and risking viruses and so on, but sometimes it isn't. | ||
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][-][eretic
Canada395 Posts
On November 06 2009 06:13 LaughingTulkas wrote: This quote betrays extreme ignorance on the way that capitalism works. They don't owe any effort at all, it is all cost/benefit for them. If they pull out all the stops and spend tons of money, time, and effort on a product and can't recover all the costs, they lose money. If they absolutely take a dump in a box, then they will sell zero and also not recover the costs of the food needed to produce so much feces. The truth is somewhere in between. The company is going to spend as much time and effort as they think is needed to create a product that will sell enough copies for them to not only recoup their initial costs but also create a profit. This is how companies work. They do not "owe" us their best effort, and if we don't like it, we are not "expected' to still pay. Their goal is to gauge public opinion well enough to estimate how many will sell and act accordingly. Both sides are completely voluntary. You have the power to buy as you chose and they have the power to put as much time/effort/money in the game as they want. Capitalism in theory says that this arrangement will actually end up as a net benefit for both parties, even if both sides don't get ALL that they want. Whether this is true is something else, but that's how are system works now (in most things). While this is true, I simply meant if they want me or people who will actually take the time to research new games and such before rushing out to buy them. Then they will indeed put forth a worthy effort or I will most likely be unwilling to shell out 60$ for something thats just "good enough". | ||
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Sadist
United States7229 Posts
If someone labels you as something big fucking deal. You cant control what they think anyway. | ||
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omgbnetsux
United States3749 Posts
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NonY
8748 Posts
Games are too scarce a product to allow capitalism to expediently provide the best products. If I don't buy SC2 because it's in three installments, there is no alternate choice that is similar enough to SC2 except in one installment. The producers of games cannot sufficiently determine what consumers want based on sales. Feedback is beneficial to the company and, eventually, to the consumers. Feedback full of normative language is as useful as feedback full of descriptive language but discouraging normative feedback is risking an overall decrease in the amount of feedback, which is bad for everyone. If I'm only to voice my opinion by buying or not buying products, my voice is only accurate when I buy a game that I 100% approve of and when I don't buy a game that I 0% approve of. But such games don't exist -- I will always only partially approve of a game. | ||
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omgbnetsux
United States3749 Posts
On November 06 2009 06:14 Meta wrote: Furthermore, I know it's completely ridiculous for some of you to grasp, but some companies care about other things than money. You must not work for a private company. | ||
TheYango
United States47024 Posts
On November 06 2009 05:01 sixghost wrote: Gamers didn't build up Blizzard and IW, you just bought their games. No one was doing those companies a favor by buying their games, you bought them because their games were great. If you want game companies to owe you something, go buy their stock, not their games. Actually, the point was in relation to mod makers and developers. Much of the lifespan and success from a lot of commercially successful games came out of the hard work of mod developers, and not as much from the out-of-the-box material shipped with the game. The reasonable complaint is that developers not including mod tools or allowing custom maps are shooting themselves in the foot--because they think they'll get more out of nickel-and-diming people than out of letting users make some of that content, and thus promoting their game overall. Concerning the OP, a lot of people have generally addressed the point I would like to make, but I want to address one point in particular: On November 06 2009 03:22 DJEtterStyle wrote: If you want the PC to survive as a "hardcore" gaming platform, you have to start rewarding the few developers who still produce content that interests you, even if its not your personal definition of perfect. It's time to settle for "good enough." This line is just wrong. The nature of the PC platform is such that no one ever has to settle for "good enough". This is because the PC benefits from two things consoles do not: 1) Total backwards-compatibility. I don't need to settle for RPGs worse than Might and Magic 1-5. Why? Because with a bit of tweaking, I can play Might and Magic 1-5. There's a lifetime's worth of gaming experience I haven't touched that's entirely available out there. Any new game that comes out has to expect to meet or exceed that bar if it wants my attention because if it doesn't, I can get better for much less. No PC gamer needs to settle for "good enough" because there's an effectively limitless archive of games that are "good enough". 2) Zero barrier of entry into development. Ultimately, it doesn't matter that companies don't provide mod tools, because so long as there's a usable programming language for game design, and someone willing to do it, people will make their own games. So long as some indie game developer feels the way I do, there's somewhere to put my cash. In a sense this is "voting with my wallet", but there's absolutely zero reason I have to contribute to any large game developer. Spore didn't live up to the hype? Not a problem. I just loaded up Dwarf Fortress and went on my way. Fallout 3 not my cup of tea? Just fine, because Eschalon Book 1 is. Of course, these two things might also be why developers/publishers are averse to catering to the PC gaming crowd: the fact that they have so many other options makes it hard to create something they will consistently buy. Once someone has a console in their hands, their options are fairly limited, and so it isn't as hard to force something down their throat. | ||
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sixghost
United States2096 Posts
On November 06 2009 05:35 ][-][eretic wrote: A company "owes" you their best effort any time they put out a game they expect you to pay for. And your comment on companies don't care if you pay for their game or not is still stupid. Ok, I'm done with you. You have no idea what you are talking about. | ||
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dubRa
2165 Posts
I don't know how much are you into Call of Duty but in my view you don't understand this from a player perspective. CoD was originally a PC game with certain characteristics which made it a unique game in it's genre. In cod4 we could see a major shift towards the console market but they still cared for the PC platform. And now we can see an act from IW which is not really understandable. As if they would want to make the PC version of the game so much of a failure that the community don't request it anymore. In my view they want to quit the PC platform. They can't just leave the market all of a sudden because that would raise some much criticism that the console sales would suffer. To prove that they are destroying PC MW2 Multiplayer I need only to post some Q&A from IW: Since we can not kick people in ranked matches, how will we stop hackers who get past VAC? Mackey-IW: Our goal is to ban hackers from the game. *VAC: anti cheat system used in CSS - completely useless Ignoring IW.net, is the PC version a direct port of the console version? Mackey-IW: No, PC has custom stuff like mouse control, text chat in game, and graphics settings. *He forgot to point out that in PC you watch a screen instead of TV! What kinds of pings did you get during your IWNet testing and what do you say is an acceptable ping? Mackey-IW: I've been playing mainly with around 100ms ping and it was great. *Let's hope 100ms will be great for others also. I am mad because of their decisions. We made them what they are, they spend days of work to make IW.net and piss us off when they could let the game as it is. | ||
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hifriend
China7935 Posts
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MiniRoman
Canada3953 Posts
On November 06 2009 05:43 genwar wrote: As a guy who pirates pretty much everything when it comes to games, I actually started to pirate less when I could actually afford to buy the games. I still pirate games I know aren't worth full price or games I know where the pirate scene will fail horribly. I played on cracked CSS servers for a good few years and once I actually had a job/money I actually bought the game, along with many others. I still mostly do pirate single player games, those are the ones I don't believe are worth the full $50 price tag, exceptions being massive games like Dragons Age Origins where pirating would never be perfect(there's always a bound fuckup there). The whole MW2 dedicated servers thing, they can claim its to give us a better matchmaking system but its so they can shove DLC down our throats. ANYONE who played CSS cracked on servers for long periods of times know how shitty private servers are. No dedicated servers is why I'm boycotting MW2. I definitely feel the same about you. When I have the money I would rather purchase a game (or even movie if I'm in a store and see something I like for a decent price) than pirate but overall, if I'm broke and I want a game it'll be pirated. I've bought 2 PS3 games for 80 a pop and 2 for 50 so games are pretty cheap. When it comes to something to kill a few hours like I did with Fallout3/Oblivion for PC then I'm not gonna rape myself further, Prolly is bm but fuck, the world is expensive. also: capitalism is an oligarchy if anything. Rule by the rich, democracy is ruled by the poor. The poor are the worst off in capitalism~ We are definitely not in a true democracy where each man is equal. Even in a representative democracy where we elect party leaders, only the rich pretty much have the power needed to apply for a seat. Local canvasing can only get you so far, you need to be connected / have money to be in the media/recognized !_! | ||
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