From the statement it sounded like he is been praised doing the right things, which is discouraging. Then again, these statements are always in the positive tunes.
I hope this will prompt some change in EA, we all know they were going downhill very fast in the last few years. Just strings of bad decision, bad marketing and a history of infuriating their customers. Let's see how it goes.
I'm interested in how this actually went down. I always have a feeling that there is some back-story that isn't being told here. Sort of like when the Pope steps down. Same kind of deal, ya know?
@Papaz Yeah, the DRM is pretty obnoxious. It's funny because I would have purchased the game had it not been for the DRM. The torrents all have DRM-free cracks, too. So, their DRM made specifically to prevent pirating only leads me to do so!
This is a long time coming. Honestly, I'm surprised it has taken so long as it is. SW:TOR was Riccitiello's pet project and that bombed big time... I expected him to step down back then.
On March 19 2013 05:48 Xeteh wrote: This is a long time coming. Honestly, I'm surprised it has taken so long as it is. SW:TOR was Riccitiello's pet project and that bombed big time... I expected him to step down back then.
maybe he tried to fix it and bring back players.
I dont think much will change inside EA, even thou they change ceo
I think the problem was when I looked at their SWTOR page and see all the hate that the game has been getting because of the failed changes that people were wanting and how EA/Bio was handling the game wrong i think that's why many people were happy for this change(I don't know about the others but that's just my thought though)
The original OP wrote excitedly that it was huge news. This led people to attempt to be funny and shitpost parodying him. Not in my general, not on my watch. He has subsequently edited his OP.
On March 19 2013 06:04 KwarK wrote: The original OP wrote excitedly that it was huge news. This led people to attempt to be funny and shitpost parodying him. Not in my general, not on my watch. He has subsequently edited his OP.
On March 19 2013 06:02 Grovbolle wrote: Why do people buy EA games if they hate DRM? Speak with your wallet people, not that hard.
People like my 12 year old nephew buy EA games. The "mindless masses" buy EA games. You have to consider that people on TL are a bit more dedicated to gaming then the average player these days hence has a superior taste/criteria or whatever.
On topic i do doubt that this will change anything. EA likes money for their shareholders, current practices gets them lots of it so why would anything change. The fact that SW:ToR bombed hard wont change anything, the fact that Sim City was a clusterfuck wont change anything either. EA has been like this forever. And will be forever.
On March 19 2013 06:20 KaiserJohan wrote: What makes anyone think they will improve? As they are going downhill I wouldnt be suprised if they get more desperate
The thing is exactly that.
They are getting desperate. VERY desperate.
Just think of all the shit they've gone through since Dragon Age 2 (if you know it, at least). They haven't ONCE really reacted to it.
Now with the whole Sim City deal, they actually needed a scapegoat. And it became their CEO.
Thank goodness. The EA curse for small developers, DRM, rehashed crap in their games ...
EA has been doing everything wrong for a while. Bioware is one of their few shining stars, and only on the games where EA hasn't forced its influence (everything but TOR from them has been good, and EA forced TOR to do several things).
Origin is, imho, their biggest folly. Just put your games on Steam already.
EDIT: To add, I haven't bought an EA game except Mass Effect 1-3 in 10 years or so.
On March 19 2013 06:04 KwarK wrote: The original OP wrote excitedly that it was huge news. This led people to attempt to be funny and shitpost parodying him. Not in my general, not on my watch. He has subsequently edited his OP.
On March 19 2013 06:02 Grovbolle wrote: Why do people buy EA games if they hate DRM? Speak with your wallet people, not that hard.
People like my 12 year old nephew buy EA games. The "mindless masses" buy EA games. You have to consider that people on TL are a bit more dedicated to gaming then the average player these days hence has a superior taste/criteria or whatever.
On topic i do doubt that this will change anything. EA likes money for their shareholders, current practices gets them lots of it so why would anything change. The fact that SW:ToR bombed hard wont change anything, the fact that Sim City was a clusterfuck wont change anything either. EA has been like this forever. And will be forever.
I don't know if that's true. A lot of people, including gamers buy EA published games. And it's not about taste, no one likes DRM and shit like that but few are willing to take a stand on pure principle, especially if it's a game they like. If people actually take a stance it more often than not entails them just pirating the game, which isn't exactly helping the matter. It's an evil circle. If you take out the pirating argument, EA have nothing to justify their terrible business practices.
On March 19 2013 05:35 Taekwon wrote: That's the spirit! Now start doing better practices - like maybe no DRM?
Hmmmmmm?
Always on is not the same as DRM, and as long as people pirate video games, publishers will try to stop them.
I don't recall saying it was.
And I don't think that will or should be the case. This isn't directed at you because I don't think anyone supports DRM but I do disagree with the idea that publishers will continue this practice. Anyone who bought a piece of property should be entitled to play it at any time, anywhere. Piracy is a widespread issue that will never, ever be stop or be stopped - it's an issue that along with security, needs to be dealt on the company's end without affecting the average consumer. It's fascinating how forgetful some gaming companies are becoming of grade school level public-business relations.
On March 19 2013 05:35 Taekwon wrote: That's the spirit! Now start doing better practices - like maybe no DRM?
Hmmmmmm?
Always on is not the same as DRM, and as long as people pirate video games, publishers will try to stop them.
I don't recall saying it was.
And I don't think that will or should be the case. This isn't directed at you because I don't think anyone supports DRM but I do disagree with the idea that publishers will continue this practice. Anyone who bought a piece of property should be entitled to play it at any time, anywhere. Piracy is a widespread issue that will never, ever be stop or be stopped - it's an issue that along with security, needs to be dealt on the company's end without affecting the average consumer. It's fascinating how forgetful some gaming companies are becoming of grade school level public-business relations.
It depends on the DRM. If it's non-intrusive then I'm fine with it, but the problem is that if it's non-intrusive then it just doesn't work. If companies stop trying new and fairly intrusive DRM schemes it's pretty much saying "Yeah, here you go, pirate our stuff." DRM like UbiSoft's DRM (In it's later forms) and Blizzard's DRM is actually very effective. It (usually) works long enough to get through that launch rush and gets some of the more impatient would be pirates to actually purchase the game. UbiSoft's DRM was actually brilliant in the second batch of games it was part of, timers for door switches and such were stored server-side and things like that made pirating some Ubi games a bitch.
Of course there are some colossal failures in DRM as well. I'm not really advocating DRM, and especially not intrusive DRM, I'm just saying that as long as it even slightly slows pirates down it will continue getting put in games.
The problem with EA isn't DRM though, the problem with EA is their newer focus of "Everything has to be an online game!" - Which isn't the same as always-on DRM, it's more than that. They want all of their future releases to have an online component because according to them that's the future or that's what people want or some shit. I'm almost certain that idea is what fucked up the SimCity launch so bad when it got forced on SimCity. That and/or gross incompetence.
I don't even mind EA most of the time, but with their online ideas I really fear for the future of some of my favorite franchises, most notably Dragon Age. The DA guys look to be putting in some pretty impressive work on the next game in that series, and I just hope that EA doesn't turn that into a total circle jerk.
Meh, not surprised. Wall Street put him on the list of CEO's likely to be fired in 2013. Whether or not people hate EA, but he is one of the reasons why we got games like Mirror's Edge, Dead Space and Mass Effect. Still waiting for the removal of Capcom's and Square-Enix's. Oh, and rofl http://kotaku.com/5991198/the-best-john-riccitiello-jokes-twitter-has-to-offer
On March 19 2013 06:02 Grovbolle wrote: Why do people buy EA games if they hate DRM? Speak with your wallet people, not that hard.
People like my 12 year old nephew buy EA games. The "mindless masses" buy EA games. You have to consider that people on TL are a bit more dedicated to gaming then the average player these days hence has a superior taste/criteria or whatever.
On topic i do doubt that this will change anything. EA likes money for their shareholders, current practices gets them lots of it so why would anything change. The fact that SW:ToR bombed hard wont change anything, the fact that Sim City was a clusterfuck wont change anything either. EA has been like this forever. And will be forever.
The "mindless" masses are the people who think everyone else thinks the games suck ass. People who don't read reviews or just bandwagon on whatever internet sources say actually enjoy the game. It's pretty polarizing, but not everyone hates the games EA produces until someone tells them to.
On March 19 2013 06:02 Grovbolle wrote: Why do people buy EA games if they hate DRM? Speak with your wallet people, not that hard.
People like my 12 year old nephew buy EA games. The "mindless masses" buy EA games. You have to consider that people on TL are a bit more dedicated to gaming then the average player these days hence has a superior taste/criteria or whatever.
On topic i do doubt that this will change anything. EA likes money for their shareholders, current practices gets them lots of it so why would anything change. The fact that SW:ToR bombed hard wont change anything, the fact that Sim City was a clusterfuck wont change anything either. EA has been like this forever. And will be forever.
The "mindless" masses are the people who think everyone else thinks the games suck ass. People who don't read reviews or just bandwagon on whatever internet sources say actually enjoy the game. It's pretty polarizing, but not everyone hates the games EA produces until someone tells them to.
Last EA game i got was DA2, and that kinda sealed the deal for me. A complete murder of the series which i hope will be redeemed with DA3. DA2 is actually a really good example. Extremely low production time, extremely bad production value just to get it out while DA:O was still hot in everyones minds so it will sell more copies. I doubt, and hope that releasing DA2 or making it so rushed was not biowares decision.
And reviews are a load of bull. DA2 got like game of the year awards all around and shit by various magazines being praised as "even better then the original" while anyone who has half a brain would know that it wasn´t even close. Several aspects were indeed improved but the overall game just wasn´t close. Think the metacritic reviewers score was 90%ish from journalists and like 20%ish from normal gamers.
On March 19 2013 06:02 Grovbolle wrote: Why do people buy EA games if they hate DRM? Speak with your wallet people, not that hard.
People like my 12 year old nephew buy EA games. The "mindless masses" buy EA games. You have to consider that people on TL are a bit more dedicated to gaming then the average player these days hence has a superior taste/criteria or whatever.
On topic i do doubt that this will change anything. EA likes money for their shareholders, current practices gets them lots of it so why would anything change. The fact that SW:ToR bombed hard wont change anything, the fact that Sim City was a clusterfuck wont change anything either. EA has been like this forever. And will be forever.
The "mindless" masses are the people who think everyone else thinks the games suck ass. People who don't read reviews or just bandwagon on whatever internet sources say actually enjoy the game. It's pretty polarizing, but not everyone hates the games EA produces until someone tells them to.
Last EA game i got was DA2, and that kinda sealed the deal for me. A complete murder of the series which i hope will be redeemed with DA3. DA2 is actually a really good example. Extremely low production time, extremely bad production value just to get it out while DA:O was still hot in everyones minds so it will sell more copies. I doubt, and hope that releasing DA2 or making it so rushed was not biowares decision.
And reviews are a load of bull. DA2 got like game of the year awards all around and shit by various magazines being praised as "even better then the original" while anyone who has half a brain would know that it wasn´t even close. Several aspects were indeed improved but the overall game just wasn´t close. Think the metacritic reviewers score was 90%ish from journalists and like 20%ish from normal gamers.
DA2 was enjoyable, but DA:O was awsome. Say what ever you want about the combat system and all that (I didnt like it as much as the first ones combat system) but the biggest problem for me was the lack of polish on the game as a whole, I hope DA3 makes up for it but I think it will use DA2s system sadly
On March 19 2013 06:02 Grovbolle wrote: Why do people buy EA games if they hate DRM? Speak with your wallet people, not that hard.
People like my 12 year old nephew buy EA games. The "mindless masses" buy EA games. You have to consider that people on TL are a bit more dedicated to gaming then the average player these days hence has a superior taste/criteria or whatever.
On topic i do doubt that this will change anything. EA likes money for their shareholders, current practices gets them lots of it so why would anything change. The fact that SW:ToR bombed hard wont change anything, the fact that Sim City was a clusterfuck wont change anything either. EA has been like this forever. And will be forever.
The "mindless" masses are the people who think everyone else thinks the games suck ass. People who don't read reviews or just bandwagon on whatever internet sources say actually enjoy the game. It's pretty polarizing, but not everyone hates the games EA produces until someone tells them to.
Last EA game i got was DA2, and that kinda sealed the deal for me. A complete murder of the series which i hope will be redeemed with DA3. DA2 is actually a really good example. Extremely low production time, extremely bad production value just to get it out while DA:O was still hot in everyones minds so it will sell more copies. I doubt, and hope that releasing DA2 or making it so rushed was not biowares decision.
And reviews are a load of bull. DA2 got like game of the year awards all around and shit by various magazines being praised as "even better then the original" while anyone who has half a brain would know that it wasn´t even close. Several aspects were indeed improved but the overall game just wasn´t close. Think the metacritic reviewers score was 90%ish from journalists and like 20%ish from normal gamers.
DA2 was enjoyable, but DA:O was awsome. Say what ever you want about the combat system and all that (I didnt like it as much as the first ones combat system) but the biggest problem for me was the lack of polish on the game as a whole, I hope DA3 makes up for it but I think it will use DA2s system sadly
Yes. Reused zones, crappy textures, shitty voice acting, pretty bad story aswell tbh. A true EA product, rushed out to sell more copies while DA:O was still "hot".
On March 19 2013 06:02 Grovbolle wrote: Why do people buy EA games if they hate DRM? Speak with your wallet people, not that hard.
People like my 12 year old nephew buy EA games. The "mindless masses" buy EA games. You have to consider that people on TL are a bit more dedicated to gaming then the average player these days hence has a superior taste/criteria or whatever.
On topic i do doubt that this will change anything. EA likes money for their shareholders, current practices gets them lots of it so why would anything change. The fact that SW:ToR bombed hard wont change anything, the fact that Sim City was a clusterfuck wont change anything either. EA has been like this forever. And will be forever.
The "mindless" masses are the people who think everyone else thinks the games suck ass. People who don't read reviews or just bandwagon on whatever internet sources say actually enjoy the game. It's pretty polarizing, but not everyone hates the games EA produces until someone tells them to.
Last EA game i got was DA2, and that kinda sealed the deal for me. A complete murder of the series which i hope will be redeemed with DA3. DA2 is actually a really good example. Extremely low production time, extremely bad production value just to get it out while DA:O was still hot in everyones minds so it will sell more copies. I doubt, and hope that releasing DA2 or making it so rushed was not biowares decision.
And reviews are a load of bull. DA2 got like game of the year awards all around and shit by various magazines being praised as "even better then the original" while anyone who has half a brain would know that it wasn´t even close. Several aspects were indeed improved but the overall game just wasn´t close. Think the metacritic reviewers score was 90%ish from journalists and like 20%ish from normal gamers.
DA2 was enjoyable, but DA:O was awsome. Say what ever you want about the combat system and all that (I didnt like it as much as the first ones combat system) but the biggest problem for me was the lack of polish on the game as a whole, I hope DA3 makes up for it but I think it will use DA2s system sadly
DA2 was all action-oriented game play. There's not that much depth but it was pretty fun having an army of the enemy getting slaughtered by mass aoe. It's not a cerebral game but it was good for a play through. For some reason when I think of DAO I think of Baldur's gate lol.
A part of me wants to believe this portends a shift away from MMO and back towards decent singleplayer experiences, but another part of me thinks this is simply a case of swapping the deck chairs on the Titanic
Their games are ok but getting worse in quality imo. Also the upkeep on the servers for online + DRM attempts is so bad.. That's what makes it frustrating
chance that something may change in that company, but lets be real that will never happen ea is the crappiest publisher if u are looking for a good game.
that mess startet years ago with ea swallowing good companys and destroying them, just a few highlights i just remember:
dragon age 1 from bioware was a good game then they bowed for the mighty ea cock and dragon age 2 was utterly shit as redemption for that piece of junk every buyer of the greater dragon age 2 edition was getting mass effect 2 which sounded as a sorry but was nothing else than a try to get 30$ out of my pockets for the dlc's.
swtor damn i was hyped for that game, collectors edition blind buy maybe finally some real deal against wow but a few months later free 2 fail and still falling and now that sim city desaster that free game deal is a joke real u get some cheap games like bejewled and plants vs zombies or some dlc cash cow games to balance the numbers ....
after that years of failing, destroying good game companys and utterly lies never ever again buying a ea game on release goty edition or drm free torrent ...
lots of people think this might be big news, but most likely, it will not change the company at all. its a stock move, as EA was big before the 08 crash, when this guy was CEO. But if you look at the game quality from back then, EA was just producing sequels (basically), with almost NO new IP.
Surely its going to be just "business as usual", until EA eventually drops out of all games except for sports ones.
[–]Jedwards6228 369 points 2 hours ago John Riccitiello is the best EA release of the year. permalink load more comments (6 replies) [–]ReggieM83 1209 points 6 hours ago Pretend you're the next CEO, the board of directors gives you a three-year window to increase revenues substantially. What do you do? permalink [–]gsadamb 1803 points 6 hours ago New version of Madden every month! permalinkparent [–]Fooshbeard 1972 points 5 hours ago Lego Madden Xtreme: Star Wars vs Dinosaurs permalinkparent [–]xcerj61 297 points 5 hours ago What is this? 2005? Throw in some zombies permalinkparent [–]Eustis 253 points 5 hours ago What is this, 2010? Throw in some washed out colors. permalinkparent [–]TheMadHaberdasher 164 points 5 hours ago Who cares about blue, it's time for some ultraviolet filters... permalinkparent [–]Eustis 186 points 5 hours ago i weep for the day our games come with instagram filters permalinkparent [–]N4N4KI 66 points 3 hours ago SimCity already has them. http://www.ea.com/uk/news/simcity-image-filters-colours
[–]BakedGood 533 points 5 hours ago* Step 1) Negotiate absolutely absurd contract for myself. Massive salary, perks up the ass (I want my fucking groceries paid for out of the company accounts), stock options but still huge cash bonuses barely tied to performance, and a massive golden parachute. In addition, my first order of business will be to eviscerate the executive group and hire mostly yes-men loyal only to me. Step 2) Slash development budgets right off. Find all the highest paid guys you can and fire them immediately for people right out of college and hire them on a contingent basis with no benefits. Step 3) Slash testing budgets. Waste of time. That's what patches are for. Step 4) Increase marketing budgets. Gonna need more slicksters to sell our even stinkier shit. Step 5) Buy more studios. Especially ones with thriving indie brands that we can suck the life in addition to profit out of. Step 6) Focus on franchises and proven IP, nearly never approve anything experimental or original. Step 7) Reduce game life-cycle times. Shut down servers nearly as soon as the sequel comes out. Step 8) Start selling tiered server access for online games. "Gold" and "Platinum" Origin accounts that give you higher priority in game servers. Step 9) Reduce the number of game servers to encourage tiered access sales. Step 10) $$$$$$$$ permalinkparent [–]Trent_Alkaline 293 points 5 hours ago Hi, I work for EA HR. We'd like a copy of your CV please. No need for a cover letter, this post will suffice. permalinkparent
On March 19 2013 06:02 Grovbolle wrote: Why do people buy EA games if they hate DRM? Speak with your wallet people, not that hard.
People like my 12 year old nephew buy EA games. The "mindless masses" buy EA games. You have to consider that people on TL are a bit more dedicated to gaming then the average player these days hence has a superior taste/criteria or whatever.
On topic i do doubt that this will change anything. EA likes money for their shareholders, current practices gets them lots of it so why would anything change. The fact that SW:ToR bombed hard wont change anything, the fact that Sim City was a clusterfuck wont change anything either. EA has been like this forever. And will be forever.
what we have here is a gaming hipster the "mindless masses"... My apologies for enjoying EA games. Bitch on your own time, but don't insinuate I'm "mindless" because I enjoy BF3 or Need for Speed.
On March 19 2013 05:35 Taekwon wrote: That's the spirit! Now start doing better practices - like maybe no DRM?
Hmmmmmm?
Always on is not the same as DRM, and as long as people pirate video games, publishers will try to stop them.
I don't recall saying it was.
And I don't think that will or should be the case. This isn't directed at you because I don't think anyone supports DRM but I do disagree with the idea that publishers will continue this practice. Anyone who bought a piece of property should be entitled to play it at any time, anywhere. Piracy is a widespread issue that will never, ever be stop or be stopped - it's an issue that along with security, needs to be dealt on the company's end without affecting the average consumer. It's fascinating how forgetful some gaming companies are becoming of grade school level public-business relations.
It depends on the DRM. If it's non-intrusive then I'm fine with it, but the problem is that if it's non-intrusive then it just doesn't work. If companies stop trying new and fairly intrusive DRM schemes it's pretty much saying "Yeah, here you go, pirate our stuff." DRM like UbiSoft's DRM (In it's later forms) and Blizzard's DRM is actually very effective. It (usually) works long enough to get through that launch rush and gets some of the more impatient would be pirates to actually purchase the game. UbiSoft's DRM was actually brilliant in the second batch of games it was part of, timers for door switches and such were stored server-side and things like that made pirating some Ubi games a bitch.
Of course there are some colossal failures in DRM as well. I'm not really advocating DRM, and especially not intrusive DRM, I'm just saying that as long as it even slightly slows pirates down it will continue getting put in games.
The problem with EA isn't DRM though, the problem with EA is their newer focus of "Everything has to be an online game!" - Which isn't the same as always-on DRM, it's more than that. They want all of their future releases to have an online component because according to them that's the future or that's what people want or some shit. I'm almost certain that idea is what fucked up the SimCity launch so bad when it got forced on SimCity. That and/or gross incompetence.
I don't even mind EA most of the time, but with their online ideas I really fear for the future of some of my favorite franchises, most notably Dragon Age. The DA guys look to be putting in some pretty impressive work on the next game in that series, and I just hope that EA doesn't turn that into a total circle jerk.
I like to see it as a positive spin on DRM more than "ONLINE IS THE FUTURE!!!" They're trying to offer important content in an online context so the DRM aspect doesn't seem as intrusive. I'd rather see that approach than the tried "you can only install 3 times" crap.
On March 19 2013 05:35 Taekwon wrote: That's the spirit! Now start doing better practices - like maybe no DRM?
Hmmmmmm?
Always on is not the same as DRM, and as long as people pirate video games, publishers will try to stop them.
I don't recall saying it was.
And I don't think that will or should be the case. This isn't directed at you because I don't think anyone supports DRM but I do disagree with the idea that publishers will continue this practice. Anyone who bought a piece of property should be entitled to play it at any time, anywhere. Piracy is a widespread issue that will never, ever be stop or be stopped - it's an issue that along with security, needs to be dealt on the company's end without affecting the average consumer. It's fascinating how forgetful some gaming companies are becoming of grade school level public-business relations.
It depends on the DRM. If it's non-intrusive then I'm fine with it, but the problem is that if it's non-intrusive then it just doesn't work. If companies stop trying new and fairly intrusive DRM schemes it's pretty much saying "Yeah, here you go, pirate our stuff." DRM like UbiSoft's DRM (In it's later forms) and Blizzard's DRM is actually very effective. It (usually) works long enough to get through that launch rush and gets some of the more impatient would be pirates to actually purchase the game. UbiSoft's DRM was actually brilliant in the second batch of games it was part of, timers for door switches and such were stored server-side and things like that made pirating some Ubi games a bitch.
Of course there are some colossal failures in DRM as well. I'm not really advocating DRM, and especially not intrusive DRM, I'm just saying that as long as it even slightly slows pirates down it will continue getting put in games.
The problem with EA isn't DRM though, the problem with EA is their newer focus of "Everything has to be an online game!" - Which isn't the same as always-on DRM, it's more than that. They want all of their future releases to have an online component because according to them that's the future or that's what people want or some shit. I'm almost certain that idea is what fucked up the SimCity launch so bad when it got forced on SimCity. That and/or gross incompetence.
I don't even mind EA most of the time, but with their online ideas I really fear for the future of some of my favorite franchises, most notably Dragon Age. The DA guys look to be putting in some pretty impressive work on the next game in that series, and I just hope that EA doesn't turn that into a total circle jerk.
I like to see it as a positive spin on DRM more than "ONLINE IS THE FUTURE!!!" They're trying to offer important content in an online context so the DRM aspect doesn't seem as intrusive. I'd rather see that approach than the tried "you can only install 3 times" crap.
EA's always-online DRM fails on essentially 3 counts:
1) The game doesn't/didn't work. 2) No real added benefit. 3) Requires an entire bloated platform (Origins).
So really, positive "spin" is definitely the way to put it. EA pretends that's the online requirement is a good thing, but it has never been for any of their games.
What is going to happen to origin now? Will it actually become as strong as steam or will it be thrown away altogether? It has been around over two years and origin has not improved as much as steam within a year.
I think this might be a step in the right direction, but frankly i find that hard to believe... And i also wish people would stop buying their games, the last one i spent money on was bf3 and the way they are planning to release the next one not even 2 years after i think is just shitting all over my parade, like im not valued as a customer :/
If his business practice made the board happy (max profit) they will reelect someone with the same practices. On top of that, for something as big as EA its really not all because of the CEO.
Nothings going to change in my opinion. They'll continue with there DRM shit, why? Because they can and they will until they actually stop profiting from sales. (Just my opinion)
On March 19 2013 14:51 FlyingToilet wrote: I think this might be a step in the right direction, but frankly i find that hard to believe... And i also wish people would stop buying their games, the last one i spent money on was bf3 and the way they are planning to release the next one not even 2 years after i think is just shitting all over my parade, like im not valued as a customer :/
The game will have been out for 2 years by the time this is released. BF4 hasn't even been officially announced and when it is I bet it doesn't come out till 2014.
Unfortunately he usually jumps out the plane with a golden parachute :/
Other than the leadership transition, is this it? There are quite a few strong franchises that the company has more or less managed to screw up a bit. On the other hand, FIFA apparently used to be god-awful but it made some tremendous improvements. At the moment a lot of things are plateauing and/or mucking around in mediocrity though. Wonder whether we'll see anything come of it.
SC2 being the only exception, I NEVER buy from EA nor Activision. People should just do the same. Play LoL, some SC2, and JRPGs, and you'll avoid those 2 shitty companies.
I think people are taking this too lightly. If you compare the EA right now to the Apple before Steve Jobs taking the CEO sit, EA is still much brighter. A good CEO could turn the company direction 180 degree and EA right now is holding rights to too much good game titles to be left to dead. I sincerely looking forward for a new hope to drive this company upward.
On March 19 2013 15:56 Patate wrote: SC2 being the only exception, I NEVER buy from EA nor Activision. People should just do the same. Play LoL, some SC2, and JRPGs, and you'll avoid those 2 shitty companies.
Here's a crazy idea, maybe "People" don't all want to play moba/rts? The companies have grown to where they are now because there's obviously a market for what they're selling (CoD, etc.) and that's not going to change in the near future.
I'm completely dumbfounded with the "HUGE" joke. People spot 4 guys banned for it on the first page, and thus thinks its a good idea to continue the trend? (even Kiwikaki? Really?)
edit: I just realized I'm helping the thread derail by not staying on topic myself: This wont change a thing. We can always hope, but I don't think EA will ever return to the gaming company we once loved. Instead its going to further spiral down the road of bad costumer service, always online drm, unfinished games, 24/7 crutch time, and generally bad practices until one day is hopefully gone. Altough the last bit might take a while because people keep paying 60 bucks a year for the same Fifa game.
Vast majority of their games are garbage, not saying all are but a company that willingly shovels out garbage doesn't really care about their work. I doubt poor corporate environment is entirely attributed to this guy.
Nothing will change unless they start losing lots of money.
As long as there are noobs in the gaming market shitty companies like EA will exist.
Hopefully now they will push out the games that are actually decent and develop those like Kingdoms of Amalur (of which nobody here probably even knows). They need to remove the Origin platform because it simply makes them a clutter fest of junk. I wonder of Riccitiello will return in a few years and get another promotion.
So he quits again and Larry Probst is still there. Nothing at EA is gonna change. Still gonna make games and still gonna include stupid drm that will hurt sales. Maybe the shareholders will realize this and elect a new board already if they want their investment to go anywhere.
On March 19 2013 09:02 zoLo wrote: Meh, not surprised. Wall Street put him on the list of CEO's likely to be fired in 2013. Whether or not people hate EA, but he is one of the reasons why we got games like Mirror's Edge, Dead Space and Mass Effect. Still waiting for the removal of Capcom's and Square-Enix's. Oh, and rofl http://kotaku.com/5991198/the-best-john-riccitiello-jokes-twitter-has-to-offer
Wasn't bioware with microsoft when the first mass effect was launch ?
On March 19 2013 05:35 Taekwon wrote: That's the spirit! Now start doing better practices - like maybe no DRM?
Hmmmmmm?
Always on is not the same as DRM, and as long as people pirate video games, publishers will try to stop them.
I don't recall saying it was.
And I don't think that will or should be the case. This isn't directed at you because I don't think anyone supports DRM but I do disagree with the idea that publishers will continue this practice. Anyone who bought a piece of property should be entitled to play it at any time, anywhere. Piracy is a widespread issue that will never, ever be stop or be stopped - it's an issue that along with security, needs to be dealt on the company's end without affecting the average consumer. It's fascinating how forgetful some gaming companies are becoming of grade school level public-business relations.
When you're buying a game, you're not buying a piece of property (other than the actual DVD and the packaging). And I think SC2 and Diablo 3 have shown that always-on can be a great anti-piracy measure, even if you have to live with reddit shitstorms.
On March 19 2013 05:35 Taekwon wrote: That's the spirit! Now start doing better practices - like maybe no DRM?
Hmmmmmm?
Always on is not the same as DRM, and as long as people pirate video games, publishers will try to stop them.
I don't recall saying it was.
And I don't think that will or should be the case. This isn't directed at you because I don't think anyone supports DRM but I do disagree with the idea that publishers will continue this practice. Anyone who bought a piece of property should be entitled to play it at any time, anywhere. Piracy is a widespread issue that will never, ever be stop or be stopped - it's an issue that along with security, needs to be dealt on the company's end without affecting the average consumer. It's fascinating how forgetful some gaming companies are becoming of grade school level public-business relations.
When you're buying a game, you're not buying a piece of property (other than the actual DVD and the packaging). And I think SC2 and Diablo 3 have shown that always-on can be a great anti-piracy measure, even if you have to live with reddit shitstorms.
You earnestly think that purchasing a product doesn't entitle you to playing it whenever or wherever you want it? Wings and D3 are laughable in comparison to their predecessors - their perception far precedes just reddit.
If I buy a gameboy and pokemon red for 50 dollars, there should NOT be a stupid message popping up on the gameboy screen to say "Uh...you can't play", even if I'm on the fricking moon.
On March 19 2013 05:35 Taekwon wrote: That's the spirit! Now start doing better practices - like maybe no DRM?
Hmmmmmm?
Always on is not the same as DRM, and as long as people pirate video games, publishers will try to stop them.
I don't recall saying it was.
And I don't think that will or should be the case. This isn't directed at you because I don't think anyone supports DRM but I do disagree with the idea that publishers will continue this practice. Anyone who bought a piece of property should be entitled to play it at any time, anywhere. Piracy is a widespread issue that will never, ever be stop or be stopped - it's an issue that along with security, needs to be dealt on the company's end without affecting the average consumer. It's fascinating how forgetful some gaming companies are becoming of grade school level public-business relations.
When you're buying a game, you're not buying a piece of property (other than the actual DVD and the packaging). And I think SC2 and Diablo 3 have shown that always-on can be a great anti-piracy measure, even if you have to live with reddit shitstorms.
You earnestly think that purchasing a product doesn't entitle you to playing it whenever or wherever you want it? Wings and D3 are laughable in comparison to their predecessors - their perception far precedes just reddit.
If I buy a gameboy and pokemon red for 50 dollars, there should NOT be a stupid message popping up on the gameboy screen to say "Uh...you can't play", even if I'm on the fricking moon.
Look on the bright side. When we die, the our noob offsprings will think it's all perfectly reasonable.
On March 19 2013 05:35 Taekwon wrote: That's the spirit! Now start doing better practices - like maybe no DRM?
Hmmmmmm?
Always on is not the same as DRM, and as long as people pirate video games, publishers will try to stop them.
I don't recall saying it was.
And I don't think that will or should be the case. This isn't directed at you because I don't think anyone supports DRM but I do disagree with the idea that publishers will continue this practice. Anyone who bought a piece of property should be entitled to play it at any time, anywhere. Piracy is a widespread issue that will never, ever be stop or be stopped - it's an issue that along with security, needs to be dealt on the company's end without affecting the average consumer. It's fascinating how forgetful some gaming companies are becoming of grade school level public-business relations.
When you're buying a game, you're not buying a piece of property (other than the actual DVD and the packaging). And I think SC2 and Diablo 3 have shown that always-on can be a great anti-piracy measure, even if you have to live with reddit shitstorms.
You earnestly think that purchasing a product doesn't entitle you to playing it whenever or wherever you want it? Wings and D3 are laughable in comparison to their predecessors - their perception far precedes just reddit.
If a game says "REQUIRES ONLINE CONNECTION TO PLAY" on the box and I still buy it, than no, I am obviously not "entitled" to playing it whenever or wherever I want it. Wings of Liberty was a gigantic success, the only people who think its "laughable" are jaded Brood War veterans. Understandably so, but absolutely irrelevant compared to the masses who loved it.
On March 19 2013 05:35 Taekwon wrote: That's the spirit! Now start doing better practices - like maybe no DRM?
Hmmmmmm?
Always on is not the same as DRM, and as long as people pirate video games, publishers will try to stop them.
I don't recall saying it was.
And I don't think that will or should be the case. This isn't directed at you because I don't think anyone supports DRM but I do disagree with the idea that publishers will continue this practice. Anyone who bought a piece of property should be entitled to play it at any time, anywhere. Piracy is a widespread issue that will never, ever be stop or be stopped - it's an issue that along with security, needs to be dealt on the company's end without affecting the average consumer. It's fascinating how forgetful some gaming companies are becoming of grade school level public-business relations.
When you're buying a game, you're not buying a piece of property (other than the actual DVD and the packaging). And I think SC2 and Diablo 3 have shown that always-on can be a great anti-piracy measure, even if you have to live with reddit shitstorms.
You earnestly think that purchasing a product doesn't entitle you to playing it whenever or wherever you want it? Wings and D3 are laughable in comparison to their predecessors - their perception far precedes just reddit.
If a game says "REQUIRES ONLINE CONNECTION TO PLAY" on the box and I still buy it, than no, I am obviously not "entitled" to playing it whenever or wherever I want it. Wings of Liberty was a gigantic success, the only people who think its "laughable" are jaded Brood War veterans. Understandably so, but absolutely irrelevant compared to the masses who loved it.
He's talking about the fact you have to be online even to play single player, obviously hiding behind the "REQUIRES ONLINE CONNECTION TO PLAY" clause is total bull shit, especially since Brood War had that on its box yet you could still play offline.
On March 19 2013 05:35 Taekwon wrote: That's the spirit! Now start doing better practices - like maybe no DRM?
Hmmmmmm?
Always on is not the same as DRM, and as long as people pirate video games, publishers will try to stop them.
I don't recall saying it was.
And I don't think that will or should be the case. This isn't directed at you because I don't think anyone supports DRM but I do disagree with the idea that publishers will continue this practice. Anyone who bought a piece of property should be entitled to play it at any time, anywhere. Piracy is a widespread issue that will never, ever be stop or be stopped - it's an issue that along with security, needs to be dealt on the company's end without affecting the average consumer. It's fascinating how forgetful some gaming companies are becoming of grade school level public-business relations.
When you're buying a game, you're not buying a piece of property (other than the actual DVD and the packaging). And I think SC2 and Diablo 3 have shown that always-on can be a great anti-piracy measure, even if you have to live with reddit shitstorms.
You earnestly think that purchasing a product doesn't entitle you to playing it whenever or wherever you want it? Wings and D3 are laughable in comparison to their predecessors - their perception far precedes just reddit.
If a game says "REQUIRES ONLINE CONNECTION TO PLAY" on the box and I still buy it, than no, I am obviously not "entitled" to playing it whenever or wherever I want it. Wings of Liberty was a gigantic success, the only people who think its "laughable" are jaded Brood War veterans. Understandably so, but absolutely irrelevant compared to the masses who loved it.
He's talking about the fact you have to be online even to play single player, obviously hiding behind the "REQUIRES ONLINE CONNECTION TO PLAY" clause is total bull shit, especially since Brood War had that on its box yet you could still play offline.
you dont need to do that for starcraft 2 thou, you can play it vs ai and campaign without internet (you wont get any achievements, dosnt matter that much tbh)
On March 20 2013 02:58 vidium wrote: If blizz decide to close the servers you just spent 50 bucks for nothig, have fun playing vs ai, basically they just rent the game to us.
considering wc2 battle.net servers are still running. I arnt worried about that at all
On March 19 2013 05:35 Taekwon wrote: That's the spirit! Now start doing better practices - like maybe no DRM?
Hmmmmmm?
Always on is not the same as DRM, and as long as people pirate video games, publishers will try to stop them.
I don't recall saying it was.
And I don't think that will or should be the case. This isn't directed at you because I don't think anyone supports DRM but I do disagree with the idea that publishers will continue this practice. Anyone who bought a piece of property should be entitled to play it at any time, anywhere. Piracy is a widespread issue that will never, ever be stop or be stopped - it's an issue that along with security, needs to be dealt on the company's end without affecting the average consumer. It's fascinating how forgetful some gaming companies are becoming of grade school level public-business relations.
When you're buying a game, you're not buying a piece of property (other than the actual DVD and the packaging). And I think SC2 and Diablo 3 have shown that always-on can be a great anti-piracy measure, even if you have to live with reddit shitstorms.
You earnestly think that purchasing a product doesn't entitle you to playing it whenever or wherever you want it? Wings and D3 are laughable in comparison to their predecessors - their perception far precedes just reddit.
If a game says "REQUIRES ONLINE CONNECTION TO PLAY" on the box and I still buy it, than no, I am obviously not "entitled" to playing it whenever or wherever I want it. Wings of Liberty was a gigantic success, the only people who think its "laughable" are jaded Brood War veterans. Understandably so, but absolutely irrelevant compared to the masses who loved it.
He's talking about the fact you have to be online even to play single player, obviously hiding behind the "REQUIRES ONLINE CONNECTION TO PLAY" clause is total bull shit, especially since Brood War had that on its box yet you could still play offline.
Hiding? WTF? What else are they supposed to do to warn you?
[–]Jedwards6228 369 points 2 hours ago John Riccitiello is the best EA release of the year. permalink load more comments (6 replies) [–]ReggieM83 1209 points 6 hours ago Pretend you're the next CEO, the board of directors gives you a three-year window to increase revenues substantially. What do you do? permalink [–]gsadamb 1803 points 6 hours ago New version of Madden every month! permalinkparent [–]Fooshbeard 1972 points 5 hours ago Lego Madden Xtreme: Star Wars vs Dinosaurs permalinkparent [–]xcerj61 297 points 5 hours ago What is this? 2005? Throw in some zombies permalinkparent [–]Eustis 253 points 5 hours ago What is this, 2010? Throw in some washed out colors. permalinkparent [–]TheMadHaberdasher 164 points 5 hours ago Who cares about blue, it's time for some ultraviolet filters... permalinkparent [–]Eustis 186 points 5 hours ago i weep for the day our games come with instagram filters permalinkparent [–]N4N4KI 66 points 3 hours ago SimCity already has them. http://www.ea.com/uk/news/simcity-image-filters-colours
[–]BakedGood 533 points 5 hours ago* Step 1) Negotiate absolutely absurd contract for myself. Massive salary, perks up the ass (I want my fucking groceries paid for out of the company accounts), stock options but still huge cash bonuses barely tied to performance, and a massive golden parachute. In addition, my first order of business will be to eviscerate the executive group and hire mostly yes-men loyal only to me. Step 2) Slash development budgets right off. Find all the highest paid guys you can and fire them immediately for people right out of college and hire them on a contingent basis with no benefits. Step 3) Slash testing budgets. Waste of time. That's what patches are for. Step 4) Increase marketing budgets. Gonna need more slicksters to sell our even stinkier shit. Step 5) Buy more studios. Especially ones with thriving indie brands that we can suck the life in addition to profit out of. Step 6) Focus on franchises and proven IP, nearly never approve anything experimental or original. Step 7) Reduce game life-cycle times. Shut down servers nearly as soon as the sequel comes out. Step 8) Start selling tiered server access for online games. "Gold" and "Platinum" Origin accounts that give you higher priority in game servers. Step 9) Reduce the number of game servers to encourage tiered access sales. Step 10) $$$$$$$$ permalinkparent [–]Trent_Alkaline 293 points 5 hours ago Hi, I work for EA HR. We'd like a copy of your CV please. No need for a cover letter, this post will suffice. permalinkparent
Seems like SimCity (and PC games in general) are a pretty small part of EA's revenue, so I doubt this has anything to do with DRM. The only PC-related thing I see here is that EA got a ton of bad press from people not being able to play SimCity on release due to full servers.
To sum the articles up, EA is doing well in the mobile phone game market but is failing in the console market, and the PC market doesn't really seem to matter. Medal of Honor can't compete with Call of Duty and Halo, Dead Space 3 and Crysis 3 were failures, and NBA Live 13 was flat-out cancelled.
On March 19 2013 05:35 Taekwon wrote: That's the spirit! Now start doing better practices - like maybe no DRM?
Hmmmmmm?
Always on is not the same as DRM, and as long as people pirate video games, publishers will try to stop them.
I don't recall saying it was.
And I don't think that will or should be the case. This isn't directed at you because I don't think anyone supports DRM but I do disagree with the idea that publishers will continue this practice. Anyone who bought a piece of property should be entitled to play it at any time, anywhere. Piracy is a widespread issue that will never, ever be stop or be stopped - it's an issue that along with security, needs to be dealt on the company's end without affecting the average consumer. It's fascinating how forgetful some gaming companies are becoming of grade school level public-business relations.
When you're buying a game, you're not buying a piece of property (other than the actual DVD and the packaging). And I think SC2 and Diablo 3 have shown that always-on can be a great anti-piracy measure, even if you have to live with reddit shitstorms.
You earnestly think that purchasing a product doesn't entitle you to playing it whenever or wherever you want it? Wings and D3 are laughable in comparison to their predecessors - their perception far precedes just reddit.
If a game says "REQUIRES ONLINE CONNECTION TO PLAY" on the box and I still buy it, than no, I am obviously not "entitled" to playing it whenever or wherever I want it. Wings of Liberty was a gigantic success, the only people who think its "laughable" are jaded Brood War veterans. Understandably so, but absolutely irrelevant compared to the masses who loved it.
He's talking about the fact you have to be online even to play single player, obviously hiding behind the "REQUIRES ONLINE CONNECTION TO PLAY" clause is total bull shit, especially since Brood War had that on its box yet you could still play offline.
you dont need to do that for starcraft 2 thou, you can play it vs ai and campaign without internet (you wont get any achievements, dosnt matter that much tbh)
Incorrect, you must activate your account online by successfully logging in once, if you never do that you can never actually login to your account for offline play.
On March 19 2013 05:35 Taekwon wrote: That's the spirit! Now start doing better practices - like maybe no DRM?
Hmmmmmm?
Always on is not the same as DRM, and as long as people pirate video games, publishers will try to stop them.
I don't recall saying it was.
And I don't think that will or should be the case. This isn't directed at you because I don't think anyone supports DRM but I do disagree with the idea that publishers will continue this practice. Anyone who bought a piece of property should be entitled to play it at any time, anywhere. Piracy is a widespread issue that will never, ever be stop or be stopped - it's an issue that along with security, needs to be dealt on the company's end without affecting the average consumer. It's fascinating how forgetful some gaming companies are becoming of grade school level public-business relations.
When you're buying a game, you're not buying a piece of property (other than the actual DVD and the packaging). And I think SC2 and Diablo 3 have shown that always-on can be a great anti-piracy measure, even if you have to live with reddit shitstorms.
You earnestly think that purchasing a product doesn't entitle you to playing it whenever or wherever you want it? Wings and D3 are laughable in comparison to their predecessors - their perception far precedes just reddit.
If a game says "REQUIRES ONLINE CONNECTION TO PLAY" on the box and I still buy it, than no, I am obviously not "entitled" to playing it whenever or wherever I want it. Wings of Liberty was a gigantic success, the only people who think its "laughable" are jaded Brood War veterans. Understandably so, but absolutely irrelevant compared to the masses who loved it.
He's talking about the fact you have to be online even to play single player, obviously hiding behind the "REQUIRES ONLINE CONNECTION TO PLAY" clause is total bull shit, especially since Brood War had that on its box yet you could still play offline.
you dont need to do that for starcraft 2 thou, you can play it vs ai and campaign without internet (you wont get any achievements, dosnt matter that much tbh)
Incorrect, you must activate your account online by successfully logging in once, if you never do that you can never actually login to your account for offline play.
okay you need to connect to the internet once. not really the same as always online...
On March 20 2013 02:58 vidium wrote: If blizz decide to close the servers you just spent 50 bucks for nothig, have fun playing vs ai, basically they just rent the game to us.
considering wc2 battle.net servers are still running. I arnt worried about that at all
I think those WC2 battle.net servers are still up is because people at Blizzard still like to play their games sometimes, they believe in the products they create. They know what quality is, because it is what they want and not only to satisfy some market. This might be true or not, but it is how I experience it and that says enough on itself. Also, the load on the WC2 server shouldn't be so high, so a small one would suffice. So yeah, the costs aren't very high either. Heck, one of the employees might even be running it from his/her own basement. :p
But about the topic, I think that this CEO is being sacrificed to regain some "trust". They are probably hoping that other people will blame him for EA's lack of quality in PC games. But I am sure John is not sad, he is probably sitting on a huge bag of money.
On March 19 2013 06:04 KwarK wrote: The original OP wrote excitedly that it was huge news. This led people to attempt to be funny and shitpost parodying him. Not in my general, not on my watch. He has subsequently edited his OP.
congratz on 20k posts :D
Not the most exciting post for 20k
I would say it was perfect actually. On topic: Good riddance, DRM is just ridiculous.
On March 19 2013 05:35 Taekwon wrote: That's the spirit! Now start doing better practices - like maybe no DRM?
Hmmmmmm?
Always on is not the same as DRM, and as long as people pirate video games, publishers will try to stop them.
I don't recall saying it was.
And I don't think that will or should be the case. This isn't directed at you because I don't think anyone supports DRM but I do disagree with the idea that publishers will continue this practice. Anyone who bought a piece of property should be entitled to play it at any time, anywhere. Piracy is a widespread issue that will never, ever be stop or be stopped - it's an issue that along with security, needs to be dealt on the company's end without affecting the average consumer. It's fascinating how forgetful some gaming companies are becoming of grade school level public-business relations.
When you're buying a game, you're not buying a piece of property (other than the actual DVD and the packaging). And I think SC2 and Diablo 3 have shown that always-on can be a great anti-piracy measure, even if you have to live with reddit shitstorms.
You earnestly think that purchasing a product doesn't entitle you to playing it whenever or wherever you want it? Wings and D3 are laughable in comparison to their predecessors - their perception far precedes just reddit.
If I buy a gameboy and pokemon red for 50 dollars, there should NOT be a stupid message popping up on the gameboy screen to say "Uh...you can't play", even if I'm on the fricking moon.
So what is your solution then? Games actually need to sell a LOT to earn back their investment. Game prices have been the same or even getting lower in the past 20 years, yet development costs have gone up by at least 10 times. With the rampant piracy and devaluation of games because of bundles and mobile/tablet platforms publishers and developers feel forced to do everything within their power to protect their games.
I agree, DRM does more harm than good, but the gamedev industry is a very tough and unstable industry. The animosity that game developers and publishers receive compared to how much effort they put in their games is mind boggling. It is like people have no clue how hard game developers work. It is quite incomparable to any other IT job I know, the crunches are brutal and you often have to relocate quite a bit and there are frequent lay offs after a game ships. How much cheers and praise piracy gets for essentially taking bread out of hard working peoples mouths is even more depressing.
Hopefully they stop ruining games, Fifa 13 is terrible compared to Fifa 12. Whoever thought putting a mechanic that operated at "random" which could completely change the outcome of a game is just retarded. Also momentum, aka scripting, is down right ridiculous.
I've been wanting to say those four letters so much lol but I'll reside the 'large' urge. This is actually good imo, the company has been taking a terrible direction for many years and it's just simply losing it's prose.
I, for one, am excited to see if it decides to take a different turn.
On March 19 2013 05:35 Taekwon wrote: That's the spirit! Now start doing better practices - like maybe no DRM?
Hmmmmmm?
Always on is not the same as DRM, and as long as people pirate video games, publishers will try to stop them.
I don't recall saying it was.
And I don't think that will or should be the case. This isn't directed at you because I don't think anyone supports DRM but I do disagree with the idea that publishers will continue this practice. Anyone who bought a piece of property should be entitled to play it at any time, anywhere. Piracy is a widespread issue that will never, ever be stop or be stopped - it's an issue that along with security, needs to be dealt on the company's end without affecting the average consumer. It's fascinating how forgetful some gaming companies are becoming of grade school level public-business relations.
When you're buying a game, you're not buying a piece of property (other than the actual DVD and the packaging). And I think SC2 and Diablo 3 have shown that always-on can be a great anti-piracy measure, even if you have to live with reddit shitstorms.
You earnestly think that purchasing a product doesn't entitle you to playing it whenever or wherever you want it? Wings and D3 are laughable in comparison to their predecessors - their perception far precedes just reddit.
If a game says "REQUIRES ONLINE CONNECTION TO PLAY" on the box and I still buy it, than no, I am obviously not "entitled" to playing it whenever or wherever I want it. Wings of Liberty was a gigantic success, the only people who think its "laughable" are jaded Brood War veterans. Understandably so, but absolutely irrelevant compared to the masses who loved it.
lmfao, yep the only people that care about always online are jaded BW veterans.
Let's support companies for making good products and not support companies for making bad products. It's actually so easy to increase the quality of the stuff we consume, but it never seems to work. I'd be happy to buy another EA product, the day they make a good one again.
On March 19 2013 05:35 Taekwon wrote: That's the spirit! Now start doing better practices - like maybe no DRM?
Hmmmmmm?
Always on is not the same as DRM, and as long as people pirate video games, publishers will try to stop them.
I don't recall saying it was.
And I don't think that will or should be the case. This isn't directed at you because I don't think anyone supports DRM but I do disagree with the idea that publishers will continue this practice. Anyone who bought a piece of property should be entitled to play it at any time, anywhere. Piracy is a widespread issue that will never, ever be stop or be stopped - it's an issue that along with security, needs to be dealt on the company's end without affecting the average consumer. It's fascinating how forgetful some gaming companies are becoming of grade school level public-business relations.
When you're buying a game, you're not buying a piece of property (other than the actual DVD and the packaging). And I think SC2 and Diablo 3 have shown that always-on can be a great anti-piracy measure, even if you have to live with reddit shitstorms.
You earnestly think that purchasing a product doesn't entitle you to playing it whenever or wherever you want it? Wings and D3 are laughable in comparison to their predecessors - their perception far precedes just reddit.
If I buy a gameboy and pokemon red for 50 dollars, there should NOT be a stupid message popping up on the gameboy screen to say "Uh...you can't play", even if I'm on the fricking moon.
So what is your solution then? Games actually need to sell a LOT to earn back their investment. Game prices have been the same or even getting lower in the past 20 years, yet development costs have gone up by at least 10 times. With the rampant piracy and devaluation of games because of bundles and mobile/tablet platforms publishers and developers feel forced to do everything within their power to protect their games.
I agree, DRM does more harm than good, but the gamedev industry is a very tough and unstable industry. The animosity that game developers and publishers receive compared to how much effort they put in their games is mind boggling. It is like people have no clue how hard game developers work. It is quite incomparable to any other IT job I know, the crunches are brutal and you often have to relocate quite a bit and there are frequent lay offs after a game ships. How much cheers and praise piracy gets for essentially taking bread out of hard working peoples mouths is even more depressing.
Games did sell a lot 10 years ago. EA and Blizzard entertainment didn't become as big as they are now by doing this shit they are doing to there costumers now. The gaming industry the last 10 years has change and not for the good. They are run by wall street CEO now that only care about the bottom line. Greed are controlling them now and I'm very happy that the gamers/costumers are finally starting to have enough. The gaming industry needs to return to what made them big and that means selling finished products with a certain standard. Not selling unfinished shit with future DLC to fix a broken game.
The constant lying, deceit and undercover marketing and combine that with inferior product no wonder EA is not doing well. And if the gaming industry doesn't change to what it once was they will fall and thats maybe a good thing. We already see very successfully Indie companies. Because they actually do what EA and blizzard entertainment did in the past. Respect there costumers and have integrity in what they create and sell
For me personally I didn't buy any EA games for a long time and I didn't even buy Hots because of what blizzard entertainment did to D3. There is a sickness in the industry today and its called greed! And hopefully us the consumers can purge it.
On March 19 2013 05:35 Taekwon wrote: That's the spirit! Now start doing better practices - like maybe no DRM?
Hmmmmmm?
Always on is not the same as DRM, and as long as people pirate video games, publishers will try to stop them.
I don't recall saying it was.
And I don't think that will or should be the case. This isn't directed at you because I don't think anyone supports DRM but I do disagree with the idea that publishers will continue this practice. Anyone who bought a piece of property should be entitled to play it at any time, anywhere. Piracy is a widespread issue that will never, ever be stop or be stopped - it's an issue that along with security, needs to be dealt on the company's end without affecting the average consumer. It's fascinating how forgetful some gaming companies are becoming of grade school level public-business relations.
When you're buying a game, you're not buying a piece of property (other than the actual DVD and the packaging). And I think SC2 and Diablo 3 have shown that always-on can be a great anti-piracy measure, even if you have to live with reddit shitstorms.
You earnestly think that purchasing a product doesn't entitle you to playing it whenever or wherever you want it? Wings and D3 are laughable in comparison to their predecessors - their perception far precedes just reddit.
If I buy a gameboy and pokemon red for 50 dollars, there should NOT be a stupid message popping up on the gameboy screen to say "Uh...you can't play", even if I'm on the fricking moon.
So what is your solution then? Games actually need to sell a LOT to earn back their investment. Game prices have been the same or even getting lower in the past 20 years, yet development costs have gone up by at least 10 times. With the rampant piracy and devaluation of games because of bundles and mobile/tablet platforms publishers and developers feel forced to do everything within their power to protect their games.
I agree, DRM does more harm than good, but the gamedev industry is a very tough and unstable industry. The animosity that game developers and publishers receive compared to how much effort they put in their games is mind boggling. It is like people have no clue how hard game developers work. It is quite incomparable to any other IT job I know, the crunches are brutal and you often have to relocate quite a bit and there are frequent lay offs after a game ships. How much cheers and praise piracy gets for essentially taking bread out of hard working peoples mouths is even more depressing.
If you only care about the bottom-line (Money), why would you get into the game industry? When you could save all that trouble and start a real estate agency or accounting company instead, and not have to struggle with small profit margins in an unstable industry. Its just insanity.
That's the problem with big game companies, they are unstable simply because they only care about the bottom-line. They only care about getting bigger and bigger, and then requiring more and more money to fill the needs of its ever increasing (and already absurd) size. This ends up becoming a huge bubble that the companies have to go into crisis mode when revenue stops increasing (which has to happen eventually).
Keep in mind that these kinds of greedy for-profit businesses work on the basis that they want more profit every year, to pay their shareholders/executives, that means less money proportionally goes into development each year as well. The problem is not piracy at all. In this industry companies are eventually going to hit a brick wall and stop making more money, and when that happens these companies that absurdly rely on positive forecasts every year are going to go into crisis mode. That's where the problem lies.
Note that Valve isn't having anything like the kind of problems that other big gaming companies have, its not to do with the business model, its that they basically don't have sponsors and shareholders to worry about, and act like a not-for-profit business. I'm pretty sure most if not all of the proceeds are directly invested straight back into Valve.
Even if piracy was as prevalent 20 years ago, game companies wouldn't need DRM because they didn't need to sell a million copies of a game just to break even, and didn't work on the same profit margins and greedy business models.
The fact that flat-lined revenue is a crisis for big game companies is their own damn fault, a game is a luxury not a necessity, we can't expect money to increasingly pour into game companies forever in an ever increasingly competitive market. If not for piracy, something else would have happened and these companies would have the same problem. A lot more revenue was generated from people playing cod, than first generation consoles, companies are making more money than ever before and are still complaining.
Its just dumb business logic to expect to run a business based on profit in the game industry, when there are much more viable markets to be conducting business in that way.
Hopefully this means changes to EA's obsession with making AAA games. This very situation is summed up nicely by experienced points at escapist, hope you are allowed to post links here.
On March 19 2013 05:35 Taekwon wrote: That's the spirit! Now start doing better practices - like maybe no DRM?
Hmmmmmm?
Always on is not the same as DRM, and as long as people pirate video games, publishers will try to stop them.
I don't recall saying it was.
And I don't think that will or should be the case. This isn't directed at you because I don't think anyone supports DRM but I do disagree with the idea that publishers will continue this practice. Anyone who bought a piece of property should be entitled to play it at any time, anywhere. Piracy is a widespread issue that will never, ever be stop or be stopped - it's an issue that along with security, needs to be dealt on the company's end without affecting the average consumer. It's fascinating how forgetful some gaming companies are becoming of grade school level public-business relations.
When you're buying a game, you're not buying a piece of property (other than the actual DVD and the packaging). And I think SC2 and Diablo 3 have shown that always-on can be a great anti-piracy measure, even if you have to live with reddit shitstorms.
You earnestly think that purchasing a product doesn't entitle you to playing it whenever or wherever you want it? Wings and D3 are laughable in comparison to their predecessors - their perception far precedes just reddit.
If I buy a gameboy and pokemon red for 50 dollars, there should NOT be a stupid message popping up on the gameboy screen to say "Uh...you can't play", even if I'm on the fricking moon.
So what is your solution then? Games actually need to sell a LOT to earn back their investment. Game prices have been the same or even getting lower in the past 20 years, yet development costs have gone up by at least 10 times. With the rampant piracy and devaluation of games because of bundles and mobile/tablet platforms publishers and developers feel forced to do everything within their power to protect their games.
I agree, DRM does more harm than good, but the gamedev industry is a very tough and unstable industry. The animosity that game developers and publishers receive compared to how much effort they put in their games is mind boggling. It is like people have no clue how hard game developers work. It is quite incomparable to any other IT job I know, the crunches are brutal and you often have to relocate quite a bit and there are frequent lay offs after a game ships. How much cheers and praise piracy gets for essentially taking bread out of hard working peoples mouths is even more depressing.
If you only care about the bottom-line (Money), why would you get into the game industry? When you could save all that trouble and start a real estate agency or accounting company instead, and not have to struggle with small profit margins in an unstable industry. Its just insanity.
That's the problem with big game companies, they are unstable simply because they only care about the bottom-line. They only care about getting bigger and bigger, and then requiring more and more money to fill the needs of its ever increasing (and already absurd) size. This ends up becoming a huge bubble that the companies have to go into crisis mode when revenue stops increasing (which has to happen eventually).
Keep in mind that these kinds of greedy for-profit businesses work on the basis that they want more profit every year, to pay their shareholders/executives, that means less money proportionally goes into development each year as well. The problem is not piracy at all. In this industry companies are eventually going to hit a brick wall and stop making more money, and when that happens these companies that absurdly rely on positive forecasts every year are going to go into crisis mode. That's where the problem lies.
Note that Valve isn't having anything like the kind of problems that other big gaming companies have, its not to do with the business model, its that they basically don't have sponsors and shareholders to worry about, and act like a not-for-profit business. I'm pretty sure most if not all of the proceeds are directly invested straight back into Valve.
Even if piracy was as prevalent 20 years ago, game companies wouldn't need DRM because they didn't need to sell a million copies of a game just to break even, and didn't work on the same profit margins and greedy business models.
The fact that flat-lined revenue is a crisis for big game companies is their own damn fault, a game is a luxury not a necessity, we can't expect money to increasingly pour into game companies forever in an ever increasingly competitive market. If not for piracy, something else would have happened and these companies would have the same problem. A lot more revenue was generated from people playing cod, than first generation consoles, companies are making more money than ever before and are still complaining.
Its just dumb business logic to expect to run a business based on profit in the game industry, when there are much more viable markets to be conducting business in that way.
So that is your solution, stop making games because it does not make sense to make games? I agree with you though, it is simply dumb to start a game development company these days. It requires a ton of skill, dedication, risk, investment and time and a company gets little in return. I have worked in many different IT sectors and game development is by far the least rewarding in terms of revenue, but for me it is the most rewarding considering how fun it is to actually make games.
Sure, there are a hand full of companies that do manage to stay on top for a while. Someone mentioned Valve and Valve just has everything going for them, even though it is just a matter of time they make one product that is not perfect and get shit on. Look at Blizzard, one game, D3 does not live up to expectations and they take a massive hit in reputation that will have a major influence on future sales, even though they have been producing top quality games for decades.
It is like digging for gold or oil, there are a couple of success stories and a whole lot of failures. Also, the person who thinks the game development industry is run by greed is flat out wrong. Companies just want to stay in business so they can keep making games and one failure means bankruptcy and that can lead to very protective/safe game development with little innovation.
Just to be clear, game developers don't want to integrate DRM solutions in their games, it is a major hassle. Does anyone think that DRM would be in if there would not be piracy? But if you build 10000 cars and put them in a holding area and 9000 get stolen, then at some point you are going to put a lock or a fence somewhere.
On March 19 2013 06:02 Grovbolle wrote: Why do people buy EA games if they hate DRM? Speak with your wallet people, not that hard.
People like my 12 year old nephew buy EA games. The "mindless masses" buy EA games. You have to consider that people on TL are a bit more dedicated to gaming then the average player these days hence has a superior taste/criteria or whatever.
On topic i do doubt that this will change anything. EA likes money for their shareholders, current practices gets them lots of it so why would anything change. The fact that SW:ToR bombed hard wont change anything, the fact that Sim City was a clusterfuck wont change anything either. EA has been like this forever. And will be forever.
The "mindless" masses are the people who think everyone else thinks the games suck ass. People who don't read reviews or just bandwagon on whatever internet sources say actually enjoy the game. It's pretty polarizing, but not everyone hates the games EA produces until someone tells them to.
Last EA game i got was DA2, and that kinda sealed the deal for me. A complete murder of the series which i hope will be redeemed with DA3. DA2 is actually a really good example. Extremely low production time, extremely bad production value just to get it out while DA:O was still hot in everyones minds so it will sell more copies. I doubt, and hope that releasing DA2 or making it so rushed was not biowares decision.
And reviews are a load of bull. DA2 got like game of the year awards all around and shit by various magazines being praised as "even better then the original" while anyone who has half a brain would know that it wasn´t even close. Several aspects were indeed improved but the overall game just wasn´t close. Think the metacritic reviewers score was 90%ish from journalists and like 20%ish from normal gamers.
man, I think I'm the only 'normal gamer' that likes DA2 because of sarcastic Hawke.
Not a very good reason to like the game as a whole, but still.
On March 19 2013 05:35 Taekwon wrote: That's the spirit! Now start doing better practices - like maybe no DRM?
Hmmmmmm?
Always on is not the same as DRM, and as long as people pirate video games, publishers will try to stop them.
I don't recall saying it was.
And I don't think that will or should be the case. This isn't directed at you because I don't think anyone supports DRM but I do disagree with the idea that publishers will continue this practice. Anyone who bought a piece of property should be entitled to play it at any time, anywhere. Piracy is a widespread issue that will never, ever be stop or be stopped - it's an issue that along with security, needs to be dealt on the company's end without affecting the average consumer. It's fascinating how forgetful some gaming companies are becoming of grade school level public-business relations.
When you're buying a game, you're not buying a piece of property (other than the actual DVD and the packaging). And I think SC2 and Diablo 3 have shown that always-on can be a great anti-piracy measure, even if you have to live with reddit shitstorms.
You earnestly think that purchasing a product doesn't entitle you to playing it whenever or wherever you want it? Wings and D3 are laughable in comparison to their predecessors - their perception far precedes just reddit.
If I buy a gameboy and pokemon red for 50 dollars, there should NOT be a stupid message popping up on the gameboy screen to say "Uh...you can't play", even if I'm on the fricking moon.
So what is your solution then? Games actually need to sell a LOT to earn back their investment. Game prices have been the same or even getting lower in the past 20 years, yet development costs have gone up by at least 10 times. With the rampant piracy and devaluation of games because of bundles and mobile/tablet platforms publishers and developers feel forced to do everything within their power to protect their games.
I agree, DRM does more harm than good, but the gamedev industry is a very tough and unstable industry. The animosity that game developers and publishers receive compared to how much effort they put in their games is mind boggling. It is like people have no clue how hard game developers work. It is quite incomparable to any other IT job I know, the crunches are brutal and you often have to relocate quite a bit and there are frequent lay offs after a game ships. How much cheers and praise piracy gets for essentially taking bread out of hard working peoples mouths is even more depressing.
If you only care about the bottom-line (Money), why would you get into the game industry? When you could save all that trouble and start a real estate agency or accounting company instead, and not have to struggle with small profit margins in an unstable industry. Its just insanity.
That's the problem with big game companies, they are unstable simply because they only care about the bottom-line. They only care about getting bigger and bigger, and then requiring more and more money to fill the needs of its ever increasing (and already absurd) size. This ends up becoming a huge bubble that the companies have to go into crisis mode when revenue stops increasing (which has to happen eventually).
Keep in mind that these kinds of greedy for-profit businesses work on the basis that they want more profit every year, to pay their shareholders/executives, that means less money proportionally goes into development each year as well. The problem is not piracy at all. In this industry companies are eventually going to hit a brick wall and stop making more money, and when that happens these companies that absurdly rely on positive forecasts every year are going to go into crisis mode. That's where the problem lies.
Note that Valve isn't having anything like the kind of problems that other big gaming companies have, its not to do with the business model, its that they basically don't have sponsors and shareholders to worry about, and act like a not-for-profit business. I'm pretty sure most if not all of the proceeds are directly invested straight back into Valve.
Even if piracy was as prevalent 20 years ago, game companies wouldn't need DRM because they didn't need to sell a million copies of a game just to break even, and didn't work on the same profit margins and greedy business models.
The fact that flat-lined revenue is a crisis for big game companies is their own damn fault, a game is a luxury not a necessity, we can't expect money to increasingly pour into game companies forever in an ever increasingly competitive market. If not for piracy, something else would have happened and these companies would have the same problem. A lot more revenue was generated from people playing cod, than first generation consoles, companies are making more money than ever before and are still complaining.
Its just dumb business logic to expect to run a business based on profit in the game industry, when there are much more viable markets to be conducting business in that way.
So that is your solution, stop making games because it does not make sense to make games? I agree with you though, it is simply dumb to start a game development company these days. It requires a ton of skill, dedication, risk, investment and time and a company gets little in return. I have worked in many different IT sectors and game development is by far the least rewarding in terms of revenue, but for me it is the most rewarding considering how fun it is to actually make games.
Sure, there are a hand full of companies that do manage to stay on top for a while. Someone mentioned Valve and Valve just has everything going for them, even though it is just a matter of time they make one product that is not perfect and get shit on. Look at Blizzard, one game, D3 does not live up to expectations and they take a massive hit in reputation that will have a major influence on future sales, even though they have been producing top quality games for decades.
It is like digging for gold or oil, there are a couple of success stories and a whole lot of failures. Also, the person who thinks the game development industry is run by greed is flat out wrong. Companies just want to stay in business so they can keep making games and one failure means bankruptcy and that can lead to very protective/safe game development with little innovation.
Just to be clear, game developers don't want to integrate DRM solutions in their games, it is a major hassle. Does anyone think that DRM would be in if there would not be piracy? But if you build 10000 cars and put them in a holding area and 9000 get stolen, then at some point you are going to put a lock or a fence somewhere.
Don't act like blizz's reputation started going downhill just because D3 didn't live up to expectations. It wasn't a terrible game but the reason the majority of people I met started hating on blizzard was because of their PR in relations to the game rather than the game itself. "Playing game wrong" "D2 wasn't that good you don't know what your talking about" not to mention the entire team bashing Brevik which essentially verbalized the views of a lot of the fans so it wasn't just a big fuck you to him.
The entire industry isn't run by greed that is true, plenty of great indie games I have played are on par with AAA titles in terms of fun and usually better with continued support, and therein lies the problem.
Most AAA gaming studios do not respect their consumers at all and view them as walking wallets, they sell their products based on addiction and releasing iterations that are little more than small patches as fully priced games. Not to mention cutting content and charging a premium for it. I don't think in any other industry this shit would fly for long. Thankfully blizzard doesn't engage in these practices so they do deserve a level of respect IMO.
I'm not naive enough to think that other industries wouldn't operate the same way if they could but they at least have the decency to pretend they are passionate about making us (the consumers) happy rather than gouging us for every penny we are worth.
Saying that though, there is a reason the large game companies are viewed with a great deal of cynicism and spite and most of it is warranted.
On March 19 2013 05:35 Taekwon wrote: That's the spirit! Now start doing better practices - like maybe no DRM?
Hmmmmmm?
Always on is not the same as DRM, and as long as people pirate video games, publishers will try to stop them.
I don't recall saying it was.
And I don't think that will or should be the case. This isn't directed at you because I don't think anyone supports DRM but I do disagree with the idea that publishers will continue this practice. Anyone who bought a piece of property should be entitled to play it at any time, anywhere. Piracy is a widespread issue that will never, ever be stop or be stopped - it's an issue that along with security, needs to be dealt on the company's end without affecting the average consumer. It's fascinating how forgetful some gaming companies are becoming of grade school level public-business relations.
When you're buying a game, you're not buying a piece of property (other than the actual DVD and the packaging). And I think SC2 and Diablo 3 have shown that always-on can be a great anti-piracy measure, even if you have to live with reddit shitstorms.
You earnestly think that purchasing a product doesn't entitle you to playing it whenever or wherever you want it? Wings and D3 are laughable in comparison to their predecessors - their perception far precedes just reddit.
If I buy a gameboy and pokemon red for 50 dollars, there should NOT be a stupid message popping up on the gameboy screen to say "Uh...you can't play", even if I'm on the fricking moon.
So what is your solution then? Games actually need to sell a LOT to earn back their investment. Game prices have been the same or even getting lower in the past 20 years, yet development costs have gone up by at least 10 times. With the rampant piracy and devaluation of games because of bundles and mobile/tablet platforms publishers and developers feel forced to do everything within their power to protect their games.
I agree, DRM does more harm than good, but the gamedev industry is a very tough and unstable industry. The animosity that game developers and publishers receive compared to how much effort they put in their games is mind boggling. It is like people have no clue how hard game developers work. It is quite incomparable to any other IT job I know, the crunches are brutal and you often have to relocate quite a bit and there are frequent lay offs after a game ships. How much cheers and praise piracy gets for essentially taking bread out of hard working peoples mouths is even more depressing.
If you only care about the bottom-line (Money), why would you get into the game industry? When you could save all that trouble and start a real estate agency or accounting company instead, and not have to struggle with small profit margins in an unstable industry. Its just insanity.
That's the problem with big game companies, they are unstable simply because they only care about the bottom-line. They only care about getting bigger and bigger, and then requiring more and more money to fill the needs of its ever increasing (and already absurd) size. This ends up becoming a huge bubble that the companies have to go into crisis mode when revenue stops increasing (which has to happen eventually).
Keep in mind that these kinds of greedy for-profit businesses work on the basis that they want more profit every year, to pay their shareholders/executives, that means less money proportionally goes into development each year as well. The problem is not piracy at all. In this industry companies are eventually going to hit a brick wall and stop making more money, and when that happens these companies that absurdly rely on positive forecasts every year are going to go into crisis mode. That's where the problem lies.
Note that Valve isn't having anything like the kind of problems that other big gaming companies have, its not to do with the business model, its that they basically don't have sponsors and shareholders to worry about, and act like a not-for-profit business. I'm pretty sure most if not all of the proceeds are directly invested straight back into Valve.
Even if piracy was as prevalent 20 years ago, game companies wouldn't need DRM because they didn't need to sell a million copies of a game just to break even, and didn't work on the same profit margins and greedy business models.
The fact that flat-lined revenue is a crisis for big game companies is their own damn fault, a game is a luxury not a necessity, we can't expect money to increasingly pour into game companies forever in an ever increasingly competitive market. If not for piracy, something else would have happened and these companies would have the same problem. A lot more revenue was generated from people playing cod, than first generation consoles, companies are making more money than ever before and are still complaining.
Its just dumb business logic to expect to run a business based on profit in the game industry, when there are much more viable markets to be conducting business in that way.
So that is your solution, stop making games because it does not make sense to make games? I agree with you though, it is simply dumb to start a game development company these days. It requires a ton of skill, dedication, risk, investment and time and a company gets little in return. I have worked in many different IT sectors and game development is by far the least rewarding in terms of revenue, but for me it is the most rewarding considering how fun it is to actually make games.
Sure, there are a hand full of companies that do manage to stay on top for a while. Someone mentioned Valve and Valve just has everything going for them, even though it is just a matter of time they make one product that is not perfect and get shit on. Look at Blizzard, one game, D3 does not live up to expectations and they take a massive hit in reputation that will have a major influence on future sales, even though they have been producing top quality games for decades.
It is like digging for gold or oil, there are a couple of success stories and a whole lot of failures. Also, the person who thinks the game development industry is run by greed is flat out wrong. Companies just want to stay in business so they can keep making games and one failure means bankruptcy and that can lead to very protective/safe game development with little innovation.
Just to be clear, game developers don't want to integrate DRM solutions in their games, it is a major hassle. Does anyone think that DRM would be in if there would not be piracy? But if you build 10000 cars and put them in a holding area and 9000 get stolen, then at some point you are going to put a lock or a fence somewhere.
Don't act like blizz's reputation started going downhill just because D3 didn't live up to expectations. It wasn't a terrible game but the reason the majority of people I met started hating on blizzard was because of their PR in relations to the game rather than the game itself. "Playing game wrong" "D2 wasn't that good you don't know what your talking about" not to mention the entire team bashing Brevik which essentially verbalized the views of a lot of the fans so it wasn't just a big fuck you to him.
The entire industry isn't run by greed that is true, plenty of great indie games I have played are on par with AAA titles in terms of fun and usually better with continued support, and therein lies the problem.
Most AAA gaming studios do not respect their consumers at all and view them as walking wallets, they sell their products based on addiction and releasing iterations that are little more than small patches as fully priced games. Not to mention cutting content and charging a premium for it. I don't think in any other industry this shit would fly for long. Thankfully blizzard doesn't engage in these practices so they do deserve a level of respect IMO.
I'm not naive enough to think that other industries wouldn't operate the same way if they could but they at least have the decency to pretend they are passionate about making us (the consumers) happy rather than gouging us for every penny we are worth.
Saying that though, there is a reason the large game companies are viewed with a great deal of cynicism and spite and most of it is warranted.
Well, like I said earlier, a AAA game needs to earn a lot to earn back its investment. Add-ons are another way to earn back the investment. It is really not that it is greed, having a staff of a 50-100 people working for 3 years costs a lot of money. It is just trying to keep your head above the water in a very competitive industry.
I agree, indies are taking a different approach. But most indies I know are either lucky or crazy in the risks they take. They often put everything on the line both financially and their social life to make that one game ( I am an indie game dev myself these days so I know what I am talking about ). But there aren't that many indies that can keep doing it for more than a couple of years and the ones that do make it often resort to the same methods AAA studios do, like making expansions, sequels, etc.
On March 19 2013 05:35 Taekwon wrote: That's the spirit! Now start doing better practices - like maybe no DRM?
Hmmmmmm?
Always on is not the same as DRM, and as long as people pirate video games, publishers will try to stop them.
I don't recall saying it was.
And I don't think that will or should be the case. This isn't directed at you because I don't think anyone supports DRM but I do disagree with the idea that publishers will continue this practice. Anyone who bought a piece of property should be entitled to play it at any time, anywhere. Piracy is a widespread issue that will never, ever be stop or be stopped - it's an issue that along with security, needs to be dealt on the company's end without affecting the average consumer. It's fascinating how forgetful some gaming companies are becoming of grade school level public-business relations.
When you're buying a game, you're not buying a piece of property (other than the actual DVD and the packaging). And I think SC2 and Diablo 3 have shown that always-on can be a great anti-piracy measure, even if you have to live with reddit shitstorms.
You earnestly think that purchasing a product doesn't entitle you to playing it whenever or wherever you want it? Wings and D3 are laughable in comparison to their predecessors - their perception far precedes just reddit.
If I buy a gameboy and pokemon red for 50 dollars, there should NOT be a stupid message popping up on the gameboy screen to say "Uh...you can't play", even if I'm on the fricking moon.
So what is your solution then? Games actually need to sell a LOT to earn back their investment. Game prices have been the same or even getting lower in the past 20 years, yet development costs have gone up by at least 10 times. With the rampant piracy and devaluation of games because of bundles and mobile/tablet platforms publishers and developers feel forced to do everything within their power to protect their games.
I agree, DRM does more harm than good, but the gamedev industry is a very tough and unstable industry. The animosity that game developers and publishers receive compared to how much effort they put in their games is mind boggling. It is like people have no clue how hard game developers work. It is quite incomparable to any other IT job I know, the crunches are brutal and you often have to relocate quite a bit and there are frequent lay offs after a game ships. How much cheers and praise piracy gets for essentially taking bread out of hard working peoples mouths is even more depressing.
If you only care about the bottom-line (Money), why would you get into the game industry? When you could save all that trouble and start a real estate agency or accounting company instead, and not have to struggle with small profit margins in an unstable industry. Its just insanity.
That's the problem with big game companies, they are unstable simply because they only care about the bottom-line. They only care about getting bigger and bigger, and then requiring more and more money to fill the needs of its ever increasing (and already absurd) size. This ends up becoming a huge bubble that the companies have to go into crisis mode when revenue stops increasing (which has to happen eventually).
Keep in mind that these kinds of greedy for-profit businesses work on the basis that they want more profit every year, to pay their shareholders/executives, that means less money proportionally goes into development each year as well. The problem is not piracy at all. In this industry companies are eventually going to hit a brick wall and stop making more money, and when that happens these companies that absurdly rely on positive forecasts every year are going to go into crisis mode. That's where the problem lies.
Note that Valve isn't having anything like the kind of problems that other big gaming companies have, its not to do with the business model, its that they basically don't have sponsors and shareholders to worry about, and act like a not-for-profit business. I'm pretty sure most if not all of the proceeds are directly invested straight back into Valve.
Even if piracy was as prevalent 20 years ago, game companies wouldn't need DRM because they didn't need to sell a million copies of a game just to break even, and didn't work on the same profit margins and greedy business models.
The fact that flat-lined revenue is a crisis for big game companies is their own damn fault, a game is a luxury not a necessity, we can't expect money to increasingly pour into game companies forever in an ever increasingly competitive market. If not for piracy, something else would have happened and these companies would have the same problem. A lot more revenue was generated from people playing cod, than first generation consoles, companies are making more money than ever before and are still complaining.
Its just dumb business logic to expect to run a business based on profit in the game industry, when there are much more viable markets to be conducting business in that way.
So that is your solution, stop making games because it does not make sense to make games? I agree with you though, it is simply dumb to start a game development company these days. It requires a ton of skill, dedication, risk, investment and time and a company gets little in return. I have worked in many different IT sectors and game development is by far the least rewarding in terms of revenue, but for me it is the most rewarding considering how fun it is to actually make games.
Sure, there are a hand full of companies that do manage to stay on top for a while. Someone mentioned Valve and Valve just has everything going for them, even though it is just a matter of time they make one product that is not perfect and get shit on. Look at Blizzard, one game, D3 does not live up to expectations and they take a massive hit in reputation that will have a major influence on future sales, even though they have been producing top quality games for decades.
It is like digging for gold or oil, there are a couple of success stories and a whole lot of failures. Also, the person who thinks the game development industry is run by greed is flat out wrong. Companies just want to stay in business so they can keep making games and one failure means bankruptcy and that can lead to very protective/safe game development with little innovation.
You're exaggerating the issues by a massive degree.
One failure only means bankruptcy when millions of dollars are spent on it. And for that matter, it has to be an absolutely spectacular failure to destroy a massive company.
Take a look at Gearbox. Duke Nukem Forever, complete flop...but it certainly didn't kill any hype for Borderlands 2. Aliens: Colonial Marines, a completely trash game that got brutalized by players and reviewers...no bankruptcy.
The only time a single game is going to destroy an entire company is when they overspend, devote almost everything they have into it, and fail to turn profit. Anything short of that means the CEO actually managed his resources properly.
Just to be clear, game developers don't want to integrate DRM solutions in their games, it is a major hassle. Does anyone think that DRM would be in if there would not be piracy? But if you build 10000 cars and put them in a holding area and 9000 get stolen, then at some point you are going to put a lock or a fence somewhere.
Car analogies are always so stupid...
If you build 10000 cars, find 20000 exact duplicates on the road the next day, but still sell 98% of your cars, would you keep every employee you have under complete security lockdown for the entirety of their employment? And when all of your employees quit, do you act as though it was the copycats that drove away your work force?
DRM is never about recovering losses. It's about pretending that potential sales are recoverable lost sales, and sacrificing reputation, customer rapport and real money and resources into the hopes that you gain enough of those potential sales to offset the differences.
On March 19 2013 05:35 Taekwon wrote: That's the spirit! Now start doing better practices - like maybe no DRM?
Hmmmmmm?
Always on is not the same as DRM, and as long as people pirate video games, publishers will try to stop them.
I don't recall saying it was.
And I don't think that will or should be the case. This isn't directed at you because I don't think anyone supports DRM but I do disagree with the idea that publishers will continue this practice. Anyone who bought a piece of property should be entitled to play it at any time, anywhere. Piracy is a widespread issue that will never, ever be stop or be stopped - it's an issue that along with security, needs to be dealt on the company's end without affecting the average consumer. It's fascinating how forgetful some gaming companies are becoming of grade school level public-business relations.
When you're buying a game, you're not buying a piece of property (other than the actual DVD and the packaging). And I think SC2 and Diablo 3 have shown that always-on can be a great anti-piracy measure, even if you have to live with reddit shitstorms.
You earnestly think that purchasing a product doesn't entitle you to playing it whenever or wherever you want it? Wings and D3 are laughable in comparison to their predecessors - their perception far precedes just reddit.
If I buy a gameboy and pokemon red for 50 dollars, there should NOT be a stupid message popping up on the gameboy screen to say "Uh...you can't play", even if I'm on the fricking moon.
So what is your solution then? Games actually need to sell a LOT to earn back their investment. Game prices have been the same or even getting lower in the past 20 years, yet development costs have gone up by at least 10 times. With the rampant piracy and devaluation of games because of bundles and mobile/tablet platforms publishers and developers feel forced to do everything within their power to protect their games.
I agree, DRM does more harm than good, but the gamedev industry is a very tough and unstable industry. The animosity that game developers and publishers receive compared to how much effort they put in their games is mind boggling. It is like people have no clue how hard game developers work. It is quite incomparable to any other IT job I know, the crunches are brutal and you often have to relocate quite a bit and there are frequent lay offs after a game ships. How much cheers and praise piracy gets for essentially taking bread out of hard working peoples mouths is even more depressing.
If you only care about the bottom-line (Money), why would you get into the game industry? When you could save all that trouble and start a real estate agency or accounting company instead, and not have to struggle with small profit margins in an unstable industry. Its just insanity.
That's the problem with big game companies, they are unstable simply because they only care about the bottom-line. They only care about getting bigger and bigger, and then requiring more and more money to fill the needs of its ever increasing (and already absurd) size. This ends up becoming a huge bubble that the companies have to go into crisis mode when revenue stops increasing (which has to happen eventually).
Keep in mind that these kinds of greedy for-profit businesses work on the basis that they want more profit every year, to pay their shareholders/executives, that means less money proportionally goes into development each year as well. The problem is not piracy at all. In this industry companies are eventually going to hit a brick wall and stop making more money, and when that happens these companies that absurdly rely on positive forecasts every year are going to go into crisis mode. That's where the problem lies.
Note that Valve isn't having anything like the kind of problems that other big gaming companies have, its not to do with the business model, its that they basically don't have sponsors and shareholders to worry about, and act like a not-for-profit business. I'm pretty sure most if not all of the proceeds are directly invested straight back into Valve.
Even if piracy was as prevalent 20 years ago, game companies wouldn't need DRM because they didn't need to sell a million copies of a game just to break even, and didn't work on the same profit margins and greedy business models.
The fact that flat-lined revenue is a crisis for big game companies is their own damn fault, a game is a luxury not a necessity, we can't expect money to increasingly pour into game companies forever in an ever increasingly competitive market. If not for piracy, something else would have happened and these companies would have the same problem. A lot more revenue was generated from people playing cod, than first generation consoles, companies are making more money than ever before and are still complaining.
Its just dumb business logic to expect to run a business based on profit in the game industry, when there are much more viable markets to be conducting business in that way.
So that is your solution, stop making games because it does not make sense to make games? I agree with you though, it is simply dumb to start a game development company these days. It requires a ton of skill, dedication, risk, investment and time and a company gets little in return. I have worked in many different IT sectors and game development is by far the least rewarding in terms of revenue, but for me it is the most rewarding considering how fun it is to actually make games.
Sure, there are a hand full of companies that do manage to stay on top for a while. Someone mentioned Valve and Valve just has everything going for them, even though it is just a matter of time they make one product that is not perfect and get shit on. Look at Blizzard, one game, D3 does not live up to expectations and they take a massive hit in reputation that will have a major influence on future sales, even though they have been producing top quality games for decades.
It is like digging for gold or oil, there are a couple of success stories and a whole lot of failures. Also, the person who thinks the game development industry is run by greed is flat out wrong. Companies just want to stay in business so they can keep making games and one failure means bankruptcy and that can lead to very protective/safe game development with little innovation.
You're exaggerating the issues by a massive degree.
One failure only means bankruptcy when millions of dollars are spent on it. And for that matter, it has to be an absolutely spectacular failure to destroy a massive company.
Take a look at Gearbox. Duke Nukem Forever, complete flop...but it certainly didn't kill any hype for Borderlands 2. Aliens: Colonial Marines, a completely trash game that got brutalized by players and reviewers...no bankruptcy.
The only time a single game is going to destroy an entire company is when they overspend, devote almost everything they have into it, and fail to turn profit. Anything short of that means the CEO actually managed his resources properly.
Just to be clear, game developers don't want to integrate DRM solutions in their games, it is a major hassle. Does anyone think that DRM would be in if there would not be piracy? But if you build 10000 cars and put them in a holding area and 9000 get stolen, then at some point you are going to put a lock or a fence somewhere.
Car analogies are always so stupid...
If you build 10000 cars, find 20000 exact duplicates on the road the next day, but still sell 98% of your cars, would you keep every employee you have under complete security lockdown for the entirety of their employment? And when all of your employees quit, do you act as though it was the copycats that drove away your work force?
DRM is never about recovering losses. It's about pretending that potential sales are recoverable lost sales, and sacrificing reputation, customer rapport and real money and resources into the hopes that you gain enough of those potential sales to offset the differences.
No, I am not exaggerating at all. You thinking I am exaggerating shows that you don't know how bad it really is. Maybe there are a couple of companies from the 90's that still had some money. Back then 1 success could cover about 4 failures. But the newer game development studios really can't survive a single failure. Hell, the money even isn't at the game development studios anymore, it is at the publishers. Game development studios get "hired" to build a game by a publisher, if it fails the game development studio is done. The money a game development studio gets for making a game covers only that game, nothing more.
Like I said, DRM is stupid, but people spend more time blaming DRM than they spend actively speaking out against piracy, and that is what annoys me. DRM is there because if you don't you will get a 90%+ piracy rate, and again that is no exaggeration. I am not saying this means a company misses out on 90% of its sales, but it does make a big difference.
Making expansions, sequels and DLC is fine. I have no problem with developers being there to make money and nothing else, its the way most businesses operate. It's the way Blizzard operates too but they at least realise that continued support of their games and releasing quality products makes customers like them and want to buy from them in the future.
However, the gaming industry in general seems to be a bit behind the trend when it comes to selling products. Most people do not want to buy products from a company that doesn't treat them with respect as consumers.
Releasing products half finished with misleading advertising, paid reviews etc makes people not want to buy products from you. The industry itself has a poisonous culture that thrives on exploiting its employees and gullible morons. Eventually people will get sick of this shit and stop working for and buying goods from companies that have this attitude.
I am aware making software is incredibly expensive. If you try and pull the same shit that most AAA gaming company pulls in any other sect of the IT software industry your company would crash and burn and you would be laughed out of the room.
The companies that make quality games and products still make the most money, people are learning and eventually companies like EA will go under or adapt.
I can almost guarantee you companies like Blizzard or Valve are fairing better than EA and I would say that is attributed to the fact they actually care about their public image.
On March 20 2013 18:38 zbedlam wrote: The companies that make quality games and products still make the most money, people are learning and eventually companies like EA will go under or adapt.
I disagree. I think EA is how it is now and not dying because of what it's done. It caters lots to the average Joe, the ignorant, and the casual gamers (and such people will never go away); they make cash cows and food for the masses. They are a McDonalds of the gaming industry. Their products are very successful despite many them being of poorer quality than others.
I'm not a fan of it, but it's the way things go, particularly in a capitalist world where money is the bottom line.
tl;dr: If you don't like a game or the company that develops or publishes it, then don't buy it. Simple as that.
I'll second the suggestion of protesting with your wallet. I'm a longtime Command & Conquer fan, having played all of the games (except Sole Survivor, since I didn't have an Internet connection then) up to Kane's Wrath. While Kane's Wrath was not a bad game per se, the fact that EA abandoned it so quickly in favor of Red Alert 3 was the straw that broke the camel's back.
I should've seen it coming, too, since the Kane's Wrath box actually says that it has a beta key for Red Alert 3 (the next game in the franchise, which was a year away). Sure enough, Kane's Wrath was abandoned after only a few patches, leaving it an unfinished, unbalanced mess. To add insult to injury, the ending of Kane's Wrath was a blatant advertisement for C&C 4.
I didn't stop buying EA games, but I did avoid doing so. The last EA game I bought was Dragon Age and its expansion on Steam, and only because it was on sale for a huge discount, and because it was made by Bioware. Despite its critical and popular acclaim, Dragon Age Origins actually has a ton of bugs and balance issues beneath the surface; on par for an EA game. Most of the Archery powers don't work as advertised, and mages are OP as hell. Still fun to play, though.
On March 20 2013 17:34 DoNotDisturb wrote: Last EA game i got was DA2, and that kinda sealed the deal for me. A complete murder of the series which i hope will be redeemed with DA3. DA2 is actually a really good example. Extremely low production time, extremely bad production value just to get it out while DA:O was still hot in everyones minds so it will sell more copies. I doubt, and hope that releasing DA2 or making it so rushed was not biowares decision.
And reviews are a load of bull. DA2 got like game of the year awards all around and shit by various magazines being praised as "even better then the original" while anyone who has half a brain would know that it wasn´t even close. Several aspects were indeed improved but the overall game just wasn´t close. Think the metacritic reviewers score was 90%ish from journalists and like 20%ish from normal gamers.
I never played it because I didn't like the original. I'm kinda curious what I'd think of it, but I'd guess I'd say it's about the same.
I felt the original Dragon Age was more or less mediocre 'garbage' just like some/many EA-developed games (I don't mean it's a bad game, even calling it mediocre is perhaps a bit harsh, but it just isn't anything special, which is huge when there's lots of great games out there and only a limited amount of time to play); The developers (seemed to focus far too much on voiceovers and graphics; that's pretty much all the game had going for it. The game had like 1/10th the dialogue and coolness, and other quality stuff (items, spells? non/less-linear events, AI, difficulty, etc.) as an older game like Baldur's Gate 2. I can only assume this is due to the fact that adding more story or more items or more spells or more dialogue would mean that they'd have to spend EVEN MORE on graphics and voiceovers. The problem with making a game with too much good graphics or things like voiceovers is that you get really limited in adding quality gameplay content. Dragon Age is a game where it just seems to scream this, and I'll remember this problem in future games to come for a long time.
On March 20 2013 19:22 Eternal Dalek wrote: tl;dr: If you don't like a game or the company that develops or publishes it, then don't buy it. Simple as that..
I'm not sure if you thought about this when you said it, but that's true when people can pirate games to try them out. Otherwise, people won't know if they dislike a game without being able to play it (although boycotting a company would still work). With online-only games, even the try-before-you-buy option is removed though.
On March 20 2013 18:38 zbedlam wrote: The companies that make quality games and products still make the most money, people are learning and eventually companies like EA will go under or adapt.
I disagree. I think EA is how it is now and not dying because of what it's done. It caters lots to the average Joe, the ignorant, and the casual gamers (and such people will never go away); they make cash cows and food for the masses. They are a McDonalds of the gaming industry. Their products are very successful despite many them being of poorer quality than others.
I'm not a fan of it, but it's the way things go, particularly in a capitalist world where money is the bottom line.
Definitely debatable.
But remember when McDonalds starting getting a bad name they went on a huge marketing spree touting how much they have improved etc etc?
It may take awhile but eventually even the ignorant masses will learn.
On March 19 2013 05:35 Taekwon wrote: That's the spirit! Now start doing better practices - like maybe no DRM?
Hmmmmmm?
Always on is not the same as DRM, and as long as people pirate video games, publishers will try to stop them.
I don't recall saying it was.
And I don't think that will or should be the case. This isn't directed at you because I don't think anyone supports DRM but I do disagree with the idea that publishers will continue this practice. Anyone who bought a piece of property should be entitled to play it at any time, anywhere. Piracy is a widespread issue that will never, ever be stop or be stopped - it's an issue that along with security, needs to be dealt on the company's end without affecting the average consumer. It's fascinating how forgetful some gaming companies are becoming of grade school level public-business relations.
When you're buying a game, you're not buying a piece of property (other than the actual DVD and the packaging). And I think SC2 and Diablo 3 have shown that always-on can be a great anti-piracy measure, even if you have to live with reddit shitstorms.
You earnestly think that purchasing a product doesn't entitle you to playing it whenever or wherever you want it? Wings and D3 are laughable in comparison to their predecessors - their perception far precedes just reddit.
If I buy a gameboy and pokemon red for 50 dollars, there should NOT be a stupid message popping up on the gameboy screen to say "Uh...you can't play", even if I'm on the fricking moon.
So what is your solution then? Games actually need to sell a LOT to earn back their investment. Game prices have been the same or even getting lower in the past 20 years, yet development costs have gone up by at least 10 times. With the rampant piracy and devaluation of games because of bundles and mobile/tablet platforms publishers and developers feel forced to do everything within their power to protect their games.
I agree, DRM does more harm than good, but the gamedev industry is a very tough and unstable industry. The animosity that game developers and publishers receive compared to how much effort they put in their games is mind boggling. It is like people have no clue how hard game developers work. It is quite incomparable to any other IT job I know, the crunches are brutal and you often have to relocate quite a bit and there are frequent lay offs after a game ships. How much cheers and praise piracy gets for essentially taking bread out of hard working peoples mouths is even more depressing.
If you only care about the bottom-line (Money), why would you get into the game industry? When you could save all that trouble and start a real estate agency or accounting company instead, and not have to struggle with small profit margins in an unstable industry. Its just insanity.
That's the problem with big game companies, they are unstable simply because they only care about the bottom-line. They only care about getting bigger and bigger, and then requiring more and more money to fill the needs of its ever increasing (and already absurd) size. This ends up becoming a huge bubble that the companies have to go into crisis mode when revenue stops increasing (which has to happen eventually).
Keep in mind that these kinds of greedy for-profit businesses work on the basis that they want more profit every year, to pay their shareholders/executives, that means less money proportionally goes into development each year as well. The problem is not piracy at all. In this industry companies are eventually going to hit a brick wall and stop making more money, and when that happens these companies that absurdly rely on positive forecasts every year are going to go into crisis mode. That's where the problem lies.
Note that Valve isn't having anything like the kind of problems that other big gaming companies have, its not to do with the business model, its that they basically don't have sponsors and shareholders to worry about, and act like a not-for-profit business. I'm pretty sure most if not all of the proceeds are directly invested straight back into Valve.
Even if piracy was as prevalent 20 years ago, game companies wouldn't need DRM because they didn't need to sell a million copies of a game just to break even, and didn't work on the same profit margins and greedy business models.
The fact that flat-lined revenue is a crisis for big game companies is their own damn fault, a game is a luxury not a necessity, we can't expect money to increasingly pour into game companies forever in an ever increasingly competitive market. If not for piracy, something else would have happened and these companies would have the same problem. A lot more revenue was generated from people playing cod, than first generation consoles, companies are making more money than ever before and are still complaining.
Its just dumb business logic to expect to run a business based on profit in the game industry, when there are much more viable markets to be conducting business in that way.
So that is your solution, stop making games because it does not make sense to make games? I agree with you though, it is simply dumb to start a game development company these days. It requires a ton of skill, dedication, risk, investment and time and a company gets little in return. I have worked in many different IT sectors and game development is by far the least rewarding in terms of revenue, but for me it is the most rewarding considering how fun it is to actually make games.
Sure, there are a hand full of companies that do manage to stay on top for a while. Someone mentioned Valve and Valve just has everything going for them, even though it is just a matter of time they make one product that is not perfect and get shit on. Look at Blizzard, one game, D3 does not live up to expectations and they take a massive hit in reputation that will have a major influence on future sales, even though they have been producing top quality games for decades.
It is like digging for gold or oil, there are a couple of success stories and a whole lot of failures. Also, the person who thinks the game development industry is run by greed is flat out wrong. Companies just want to stay in business so they can keep making games and one failure means bankruptcy and that can lead to very protective/safe game development with little innovation.
You're exaggerating the issues by a massive degree.
One failure only means bankruptcy when millions of dollars are spent on it. And for that matter, it has to be an absolutely spectacular failure to destroy a massive company.
Take a look at Gearbox. Duke Nukem Forever, complete flop...but it certainly didn't kill any hype for Borderlands 2. Aliens: Colonial Marines, a completely trash game that got brutalized by players and reviewers...no bankruptcy.
The only time a single game is going to destroy an entire company is when they overspend, devote almost everything they have into it, and fail to turn profit. Anything short of that means the CEO actually managed his resources properly.
Just to be clear, game developers don't want to integrate DRM solutions in their games, it is a major hassle. Does anyone think that DRM would be in if there would not be piracy? But if you build 10000 cars and put them in a holding area and 9000 get stolen, then at some point you are going to put a lock or a fence somewhere.
Car analogies are always so stupid...
If you build 10000 cars, find 20000 exact duplicates on the road the next day, but still sell 98% of your cars, would you keep every employee you have under complete security lockdown for the entirety of their employment? And when all of your employees quit, do you act as though it was the copycats that drove away your work force?
DRM is never about recovering losses. It's about pretending that potential sales are recoverable lost sales, and sacrificing reputation, customer rapport and real money and resources into the hopes that you gain enough of those potential sales to offset the differences.
No, I am not exaggerating at all. You thinking I am exaggerating shows that you don't know how bad it really is. Maybe there are a couple of companies from the 90's that still had some money. Back then 1 success could cover about 4 failures. But the newer game development studios really can't survive a single failure. Hell, the money even isn't at the game development studios anymore, it is at the publishers. Game development studios get "hired" to build a game by a publisher, if it fails the game development studio is done. The money a game development studio gets for making a game covers only that game, nothing more.
Like I said, DRM is stupid, but people spend more time blaming DRM than they spend actively speaking out against piracy, and that is what annoys me. DRM is there because if you don't you will get a 90%+ piracy rate, and again that is no exaggeration. I am not saying this means a company misses out on 90% of its sales, but it does make a big difference.
If that was the case then why did Valve experience a record 50% growth (2012) in a supposed bad period of the games industry. Not to mention that TF2 and Dota2 are free games, even on release TF2 was a fraction of the price of other retail games without micro-transactions.
Valve is growing faster now than EA did when EA didn't even have to compete with pirates.
It makes no sense for EA to be worried about losing money to piracy when overall revenue in the market is increasing.
If a games company is going to go bankrupt over one failed game (not to mention EA has several franchises to buffer its losses) then it is its own damn fault. DRM is just a stupid excuse for the fact that they waste so much money and blame it on piracy.
On March 19 2013 06:09 blackone wrote: [quote] Always on is not the same as DRM, and as long as people pirate video games, publishers will try to stop them.
I don't recall saying it was.
And I don't think that will or should be the case. This isn't directed at you because I don't think anyone supports DRM but I do disagree with the idea that publishers will continue this practice. Anyone who bought a piece of property should be entitled to play it at any time, anywhere. Piracy is a widespread issue that will never, ever be stop or be stopped - it's an issue that along with security, needs to be dealt on the company's end without affecting the average consumer. It's fascinating how forgetful some gaming companies are becoming of grade school level public-business relations.
When you're buying a game, you're not buying a piece of property (other than the actual DVD and the packaging). And I think SC2 and Diablo 3 have shown that always-on can be a great anti-piracy measure, even if you have to live with reddit shitstorms.
You earnestly think that purchasing a product doesn't entitle you to playing it whenever or wherever you want it? Wings and D3 are laughable in comparison to their predecessors - their perception far precedes just reddit.
If I buy a gameboy and pokemon red for 50 dollars, there should NOT be a stupid message popping up on the gameboy screen to say "Uh...you can't play", even if I'm on the fricking moon.
So what is your solution then? Games actually need to sell a LOT to earn back their investment. Game prices have been the same or even getting lower in the past 20 years, yet development costs have gone up by at least 10 times. With the rampant piracy and devaluation of games because of bundles and mobile/tablet platforms publishers and developers feel forced to do everything within their power to protect their games.
I agree, DRM does more harm than good, but the gamedev industry is a very tough and unstable industry. The animosity that game developers and publishers receive compared to how much effort they put in their games is mind boggling. It is like people have no clue how hard game developers work. It is quite incomparable to any other IT job I know, the crunches are brutal and you often have to relocate quite a bit and there are frequent lay offs after a game ships. How much cheers and praise piracy gets for essentially taking bread out of hard working peoples mouths is even more depressing.
If you only care about the bottom-line (Money), why would you get into the game industry? When you could save all that trouble and start a real estate agency or accounting company instead, and not have to struggle with small profit margins in an unstable industry. Its just insanity.
That's the problem with big game companies, they are unstable simply because they only care about the bottom-line. They only care about getting bigger and bigger, and then requiring more and more money to fill the needs of its ever increasing (and already absurd) size. This ends up becoming a huge bubble that the companies have to go into crisis mode when revenue stops increasing (which has to happen eventually).
Keep in mind that these kinds of greedy for-profit businesses work on the basis that they want more profit every year, to pay their shareholders/executives, that means less money proportionally goes into development each year as well. The problem is not piracy at all. In this industry companies are eventually going to hit a brick wall and stop making more money, and when that happens these companies that absurdly rely on positive forecasts every year are going to go into crisis mode. That's where the problem lies.
Note that Valve isn't having anything like the kind of problems that other big gaming companies have, its not to do with the business model, its that they basically don't have sponsors and shareholders to worry about, and act like a not-for-profit business. I'm pretty sure most if not all of the proceeds are directly invested straight back into Valve.
Even if piracy was as prevalent 20 years ago, game companies wouldn't need DRM because they didn't need to sell a million copies of a game just to break even, and didn't work on the same profit margins and greedy business models.
The fact that flat-lined revenue is a crisis for big game companies is their own damn fault, a game is a luxury not a necessity, we can't expect money to increasingly pour into game companies forever in an ever increasingly competitive market. If not for piracy, something else would have happened and these companies would have the same problem. A lot more revenue was generated from people playing cod, than first generation consoles, companies are making more money than ever before and are still complaining.
Its just dumb business logic to expect to run a business based on profit in the game industry, when there are much more viable markets to be conducting business in that way.
So that is your solution, stop making games because it does not make sense to make games? I agree with you though, it is simply dumb to start a game development company these days. It requires a ton of skill, dedication, risk, investment and time and a company gets little in return. I have worked in many different IT sectors and game development is by far the least rewarding in terms of revenue, but for me it is the most rewarding considering how fun it is to actually make games.
Sure, there are a hand full of companies that do manage to stay on top for a while. Someone mentioned Valve and Valve just has everything going for them, even though it is just a matter of time they make one product that is not perfect and get shit on. Look at Blizzard, one game, D3 does not live up to expectations and they take a massive hit in reputation that will have a major influence on future sales, even though they have been producing top quality games for decades.
It is like digging for gold or oil, there are a couple of success stories and a whole lot of failures. Also, the person who thinks the game development industry is run by greed is flat out wrong. Companies just want to stay in business so they can keep making games and one failure means bankruptcy and that can lead to very protective/safe game development with little innovation.
You're exaggerating the issues by a massive degree.
One failure only means bankruptcy when millions of dollars are spent on it. And for that matter, it has to be an absolutely spectacular failure to destroy a massive company.
Take a look at Gearbox. Duke Nukem Forever, complete flop...but it certainly didn't kill any hype for Borderlands 2. Aliens: Colonial Marines, a completely trash game that got brutalized by players and reviewers...no bankruptcy.
The only time a single game is going to destroy an entire company is when they overspend, devote almost everything they have into it, and fail to turn profit. Anything short of that means the CEO actually managed his resources properly.
Just to be clear, game developers don't want to integrate DRM solutions in their games, it is a major hassle. Does anyone think that DRM would be in if there would not be piracy? But if you build 10000 cars and put them in a holding area and 9000 get stolen, then at some point you are going to put a lock or a fence somewhere.
Car analogies are always so stupid...
If you build 10000 cars, find 20000 exact duplicates on the road the next day, but still sell 98% of your cars, would you keep every employee you have under complete security lockdown for the entirety of their employment? And when all of your employees quit, do you act as though it was the copycats that drove away your work force?
DRM is never about recovering losses. It's about pretending that potential sales are recoverable lost sales, and sacrificing reputation, customer rapport and real money and resources into the hopes that you gain enough of those potential sales to offset the differences.
No, I am not exaggerating at all. You thinking I am exaggerating shows that you don't know how bad it really is. Maybe there are a couple of companies from the 90's that still had some money. Back then 1 success could cover about 4 failures. But the newer game development studios really can't survive a single failure. Hell, the money even isn't at the game development studios anymore, it is at the publishers. Game development studios get "hired" to build a game by a publisher, if it fails the game development studio is done. The money a game development studio gets for making a game covers only that game, nothing more.
Like I said, DRM is stupid, but people spend more time blaming DRM than they spend actively speaking out against piracy, and that is what annoys me. DRM is there because if you don't you will get a 90%+ piracy rate, and again that is no exaggeration. I am not saying this means a company misses out on 90% of its sales, but it does make a big difference.
If that was the case then why did Valve experience a record 50% growth (2012) in a supposed bad period of the games industry. Not to mention that TF2 and Dota2 are free games, even on release TF2 was a fraction of the price of other retail games without micro-transactions.
Valve is growing faster now than EA did when EA didn't even have to compete with pirates.
It makes no sense for EA to be worried about losing money to piracy when overall revenue in the market is increasing.
If a games company is going to go bankrupt over one failed game (not to mention EA has several franchises to buffer its losses) then it is its own damn fault. DRM is just a stupid excuse for the fact that they waste so much money and blame it on piracy.
It's easier for a small company to grow than it is for a large company, especially when that small company has a niche and is part of a fast growing market (digital distribution).
Valve release 1 or so games a year. They could potentially double their revenue by releasing 2 games. 50% more games.
If EA release 50 games a year, releasing an extra 1 or 2 games does next to nothing to increase revenues, that's 2 or 4% more games.
Not hard to grow when you are small, and stupid to compare large company and small company growth rates. Add in Valve being a digital publisher, and not being particularly active in the console market, where DD is less of a growth area currently, and you have even more differences.
Valve probably make more money taking a cut of everyone elses sales than they do from their own games. EA also has publishing agreements with some developers (including Valve) where they publish retail copies of games, but the margins are much smaller, and that area of business is declining.
On March 19 2013 06:09 blackone wrote: [quote] Always on is not the same as DRM, and as long as people pirate video games, publishers will try to stop them.
I don't recall saying it was.
And I don't think that will or should be the case. This isn't directed at you because I don't think anyone supports DRM but I do disagree with the idea that publishers will continue this practice. Anyone who bought a piece of property should be entitled to play it at any time, anywhere. Piracy is a widespread issue that will never, ever be stop or be stopped - it's an issue that along with security, needs to be dealt on the company's end without affecting the average consumer. It's fascinating how forgetful some gaming companies are becoming of grade school level public-business relations.
When you're buying a game, you're not buying a piece of property (other than the actual DVD and the packaging). And I think SC2 and Diablo 3 have shown that always-on can be a great anti-piracy measure, even if you have to live with reddit shitstorms.
You earnestly think that purchasing a product doesn't entitle you to playing it whenever or wherever you want it? Wings and D3 are laughable in comparison to their predecessors - their perception far precedes just reddit.
If I buy a gameboy and pokemon red for 50 dollars, there should NOT be a stupid message popping up on the gameboy screen to say "Uh...you can't play", even if I'm on the fricking moon.
So what is your solution then? Games actually need to sell a LOT to earn back their investment. Game prices have been the same or even getting lower in the past 20 years, yet development costs have gone up by at least 10 times. With the rampant piracy and devaluation of games because of bundles and mobile/tablet platforms publishers and developers feel forced to do everything within their power to protect their games.
I agree, DRM does more harm than good, but the gamedev industry is a very tough and unstable industry. The animosity that game developers and publishers receive compared to how much effort they put in their games is mind boggling. It is like people have no clue how hard game developers work. It is quite incomparable to any other IT job I know, the crunches are brutal and you often have to relocate quite a bit and there are frequent lay offs after a game ships. How much cheers and praise piracy gets for essentially taking bread out of hard working peoples mouths is even more depressing.
If you only care about the bottom-line (Money), why would you get into the game industry? When you could save all that trouble and start a real estate agency or accounting company instead, and not have to struggle with small profit margins in an unstable industry. Its just insanity.
That's the problem with big game companies, they are unstable simply because they only care about the bottom-line. They only care about getting bigger and bigger, and then requiring more and more money to fill the needs of its ever increasing (and already absurd) size. This ends up becoming a huge bubble that the companies have to go into crisis mode when revenue stops increasing (which has to happen eventually).
Keep in mind that these kinds of greedy for-profit businesses work on the basis that they want more profit every year, to pay their shareholders/executives, that means less money proportionally goes into development each year as well. The problem is not piracy at all. In this industry companies are eventually going to hit a brick wall and stop making more money, and when that happens these companies that absurdly rely on positive forecasts every year are going to go into crisis mode. That's where the problem lies.
Note that Valve isn't having anything like the kind of problems that other big gaming companies have, its not to do with the business model, its that they basically don't have sponsors and shareholders to worry about, and act like a not-for-profit business. I'm pretty sure most if not all of the proceeds are directly invested straight back into Valve.
Even if piracy was as prevalent 20 years ago, game companies wouldn't need DRM because they didn't need to sell a million copies of a game just to break even, and didn't work on the same profit margins and greedy business models.
The fact that flat-lined revenue is a crisis for big game companies is their own damn fault, a game is a luxury not a necessity, we can't expect money to increasingly pour into game companies forever in an ever increasingly competitive market. If not for piracy, something else would have happened and these companies would have the same problem. A lot more revenue was generated from people playing cod, than first generation consoles, companies are making more money than ever before and are still complaining.
Its just dumb business logic to expect to run a business based on profit in the game industry, when there are much more viable markets to be conducting business in that way.
So that is your solution, stop making games because it does not make sense to make games? I agree with you though, it is simply dumb to start a game development company these days. It requires a ton of skill, dedication, risk, investment and time and a company gets little in return. I have worked in many different IT sectors and game development is by far the least rewarding in terms of revenue, but for me it is the most rewarding considering how fun it is to actually make games.
Sure, there are a hand full of companies that do manage to stay on top for a while. Someone mentioned Valve and Valve just has everything going for them, even though it is just a matter of time they make one product that is not perfect and get shit on. Look at Blizzard, one game, D3 does not live up to expectations and they take a massive hit in reputation that will have a major influence on future sales, even though they have been producing top quality games for decades.
It is like digging for gold or oil, there are a couple of success stories and a whole lot of failures. Also, the person who thinks the game development industry is run by greed is flat out wrong. Companies just want to stay in business so they can keep making games and one failure means bankruptcy and that can lead to very protective/safe game development with little innovation.
You're exaggerating the issues by a massive degree.
One failure only means bankruptcy when millions of dollars are spent on it. And for that matter, it has to be an absolutely spectacular failure to destroy a massive company.
Take a look at Gearbox. Duke Nukem Forever, complete flop...but it certainly didn't kill any hype for Borderlands 2. Aliens: Colonial Marines, a completely trash game that got brutalized by players and reviewers...no bankruptcy.
The only time a single game is going to destroy an entire company is when they overspend, devote almost everything they have into it, and fail to turn profit. Anything short of that means the CEO actually managed his resources properly.
Just to be clear, game developers don't want to integrate DRM solutions in their games, it is a major hassle. Does anyone think that DRM would be in if there would not be piracy? But if you build 10000 cars and put them in a holding area and 9000 get stolen, then at some point you are going to put a lock or a fence somewhere.
Car analogies are always so stupid...
If you build 10000 cars, find 20000 exact duplicates on the road the next day, but still sell 98% of your cars, would you keep every employee you have under complete security lockdown for the entirety of their employment? And when all of your employees quit, do you act as though it was the copycats that drove away your work force?
DRM is never about recovering losses. It's about pretending that potential sales are recoverable lost sales, and sacrificing reputation, customer rapport and real money and resources into the hopes that you gain enough of those potential sales to offset the differences.
No, I am not exaggerating at all. You thinking I am exaggerating shows that you don't know how bad it really is. Maybe there are a couple of companies from the 90's that still had some money. Back then 1 success could cover about 4 failures. But the newer game development studios really can't survive a single failure. Hell, the money even isn't at the game development studios anymore, it is at the publishers. Game development studios get "hired" to build a game by a publisher, if it fails the game development studio is done. The money a game development studio gets for making a game covers only that game, nothing more.
Like I said, DRM is stupid, but people spend more time blaming DRM than they spend actively speaking out against piracy, and that is what annoys me. DRM is there because if you don't you will get a 90%+ piracy rate, and again that is no exaggeration. I am not saying this means a company misses out on 90% of its sales, but it does make a big difference.
If that was the case then why did Valve experience a record 50% growth (2012) in a supposed bad period of the games industry. Not to mention that TF2 and Dota2 are free games, even on release TF2 was a fraction of the price of other retail games without micro-transactions.
Valve is growing faster now than EA did when EA didn't even have to compete with pirates.
It makes no sense for EA to be worried about losing money to piracy when overall revenue in the market is increasing.
If a games company is going to go bankrupt over one failed game (not to mention EA has several franchises to buffer its losses) then it is its own damn fault. DRM is just a stupid excuse for the fact that they waste so much money and blame it on piracy.
There is a transition from retail to digital. It is more of a shift than an increase, Valve is riding that wave. Also, Valve is more of a store owner these days than a game developer. They take about 30% of all sales on the Steam store. On the steam store a LOT of games are sold, but they are often also sold at bargain prices or in bundles which is bad news in the long run of the game development industry, but it is good for Valve in the short term.
On March 19 2013 06:02 Grovbolle wrote: Why do people buy EA games if they hate DRM? Speak with your wallet people, not that hard.
People like my 12 year old nephew buy EA games. The "mindless masses" buy EA games. You have to consider that people on TL are a bit more dedicated to gaming then the average player these days hence has a superior taste/criteria or whatever.
On topic i do doubt that this will change anything. EA likes money for their shareholders, current practices gets them lots of it so why would anything change. The fact that SW:ToR bombed hard wont change anything, the fact that Sim City was a clusterfuck wont change anything either. EA has been like this forever. And will be forever.
The "mindless" masses are the people who think everyone else thinks the games suck ass. People who don't read reviews or just bandwagon on whatever internet sources say actually enjoy the game. It's pretty polarizing, but not everyone hates the games EA produces until someone tells them to.
Last EA game i got was DA2, and that kinda sealed the deal for me. A complete murder of the series which i hope will be redeemed with DA3. DA2 is actually a really good example. Extremely low production time, extremely bad production value just to get it out while DA:O was still hot in everyones minds so it will sell more copies. I doubt, and hope that releasing DA2 or making it so rushed was not biowares decision.
And reviews are a load of bull. DA2 got like game of the year awards all around and shit by various magazines being praised as "even better then the original" while anyone who has half a brain would know that it wasn´t even close. Several aspects were indeed improved but the overall game just wasn´t close. Think the metacritic reviewers score was 90%ish from journalists and like 20%ish from normal gamers.
man, I think I'm the only 'normal gamer' that likes DA2 because of sarcastic Hawke.
Not a very good reason to like the game as a whole, but still.
Yeah i definitly had a lot of fun running around the same areas over, and over, and over, and over.... even when they were suppossed to be different places.
And I don't think that will or should be the case. This isn't directed at you because I don't think anyone supports DRM but I do disagree with the idea that publishers will continue this practice. Anyone who bought a piece of property should be entitled to play it at any time, anywhere. Piracy is a widespread issue that will never, ever be stop or be stopped - it's an issue that along with security, needs to be dealt on the company's end without affecting the average consumer. It's fascinating how forgetful some gaming companies are becoming of grade school level public-business relations.
When you're buying a game, you're not buying a piece of property (other than the actual DVD and the packaging). And I think SC2 and Diablo 3 have shown that always-on can be a great anti-piracy measure, even if you have to live with reddit shitstorms.
You earnestly think that purchasing a product doesn't entitle you to playing it whenever or wherever you want it? Wings and D3 are laughable in comparison to their predecessors - their perception far precedes just reddit.
If I buy a gameboy and pokemon red for 50 dollars, there should NOT be a stupid message popping up on the gameboy screen to say "Uh...you can't play", even if I'm on the fricking moon.
So what is your solution then? Games actually need to sell a LOT to earn back their investment. Game prices have been the same or even getting lower in the past 20 years, yet development costs have gone up by at least 10 times. With the rampant piracy and devaluation of games because of bundles and mobile/tablet platforms publishers and developers feel forced to do everything within their power to protect their games.
I agree, DRM does more harm than good, but the gamedev industry is a very tough and unstable industry. The animosity that game developers and publishers receive compared to how much effort they put in their games is mind boggling. It is like people have no clue how hard game developers work. It is quite incomparable to any other IT job I know, the crunches are brutal and you often have to relocate quite a bit and there are frequent lay offs after a game ships. How much cheers and praise piracy gets for essentially taking bread out of hard working peoples mouths is even more depressing.
If you only care about the bottom-line (Money), why would you get into the game industry? When you could save all that trouble and start a real estate agency or accounting company instead, and not have to struggle with small profit margins in an unstable industry. Its just insanity.
That's the problem with big game companies, they are unstable simply because they only care about the bottom-line. They only care about getting bigger and bigger, and then requiring more and more money to fill the needs of its ever increasing (and already absurd) size. This ends up becoming a huge bubble that the companies have to go into crisis mode when revenue stops increasing (which has to happen eventually).
Keep in mind that these kinds of greedy for-profit businesses work on the basis that they want more profit every year, to pay their shareholders/executives, that means less money proportionally goes into development each year as well. The problem is not piracy at all. In this industry companies are eventually going to hit a brick wall and stop making more money, and when that happens these companies that absurdly rely on positive forecasts every year are going to go into crisis mode. That's where the problem lies.
Note that Valve isn't having anything like the kind of problems that other big gaming companies have, its not to do with the business model, its that they basically don't have sponsors and shareholders to worry about, and act like a not-for-profit business. I'm pretty sure most if not all of the proceeds are directly invested straight back into Valve.
Even if piracy was as prevalent 20 years ago, game companies wouldn't need DRM because they didn't need to sell a million copies of a game just to break even, and didn't work on the same profit margins and greedy business models.
The fact that flat-lined revenue is a crisis for big game companies is their own damn fault, a game is a luxury not a necessity, we can't expect money to increasingly pour into game companies forever in an ever increasingly competitive market. If not for piracy, something else would have happened and these companies would have the same problem. A lot more revenue was generated from people playing cod, than first generation consoles, companies are making more money than ever before and are still complaining.
Its just dumb business logic to expect to run a business based on profit in the game industry, when there are much more viable markets to be conducting business in that way.
So that is your solution, stop making games because it does not make sense to make games? I agree with you though, it is simply dumb to start a game development company these days. It requires a ton of skill, dedication, risk, investment and time and a company gets little in return. I have worked in many different IT sectors and game development is by far the least rewarding in terms of revenue, but for me it is the most rewarding considering how fun it is to actually make games.
Sure, there are a hand full of companies that do manage to stay on top for a while. Someone mentioned Valve and Valve just has everything going for them, even though it is just a matter of time they make one product that is not perfect and get shit on. Look at Blizzard, one game, D3 does not live up to expectations and they take a massive hit in reputation that will have a major influence on future sales, even though they have been producing top quality games for decades.
It is like digging for gold or oil, there are a couple of success stories and a whole lot of failures. Also, the person who thinks the game development industry is run by greed is flat out wrong. Companies just want to stay in business so they can keep making games and one failure means bankruptcy and that can lead to very protective/safe game development with little innovation.
You're exaggerating the issues by a massive degree.
One failure only means bankruptcy when millions of dollars are spent on it. And for that matter, it has to be an absolutely spectacular failure to destroy a massive company.
Take a look at Gearbox. Duke Nukem Forever, complete flop...but it certainly didn't kill any hype for Borderlands 2. Aliens: Colonial Marines, a completely trash game that got brutalized by players and reviewers...no bankruptcy.
The only time a single game is going to destroy an entire company is when they overspend, devote almost everything they have into it, and fail to turn profit. Anything short of that means the CEO actually managed his resources properly.
Just to be clear, game developers don't want to integrate DRM solutions in their games, it is a major hassle. Does anyone think that DRM would be in if there would not be piracy? But if you build 10000 cars and put them in a holding area and 9000 get stolen, then at some point you are going to put a lock or a fence somewhere.
Car analogies are always so stupid...
If you build 10000 cars, find 20000 exact duplicates on the road the next day, but still sell 98% of your cars, would you keep every employee you have under complete security lockdown for the entirety of their employment? And when all of your employees quit, do you act as though it was the copycats that drove away your work force?
DRM is never about recovering losses. It's about pretending that potential sales are recoverable lost sales, and sacrificing reputation, customer rapport and real money and resources into the hopes that you gain enough of those potential sales to offset the differences.
No, I am not exaggerating at all. You thinking I am exaggerating shows that you don't know how bad it really is. Maybe there are a couple of companies from the 90's that still had some money. Back then 1 success could cover about 4 failures. But the newer game development studios really can't survive a single failure. Hell, the money even isn't at the game development studios anymore, it is at the publishers. Game development studios get "hired" to build a game by a publisher, if it fails the game development studio is done. The money a game development studio gets for making a game covers only that game, nothing more.
Like I said, DRM is stupid, but people spend more time blaming DRM than they spend actively speaking out against piracy, and that is what annoys me. DRM is there because if you don't you will get a 90%+ piracy rate, and again that is no exaggeration. I am not saying this means a company misses out on 90% of its sales, but it does make a big difference.
If that was the case then why did Valve experience a record 50% growth (2012) in a supposed bad period of the games industry. Not to mention that TF2 and Dota2 are free games, even on release TF2 was a fraction of the price of other retail games without micro-transactions.
Valve is growing faster now than EA did when EA didn't even have to compete with pirates.
It makes no sense for EA to be worried about losing money to piracy when overall revenue in the market is increasing.
If a games company is going to go bankrupt over one failed game (not to mention EA has several franchises to buffer its losses) then it is its own damn fault. DRM is just a stupid excuse for the fact that they waste so much money and blame it on piracy.
There is a transition from retail to digital. It is more of a shift than an increase, Valve is riding that wave. Also, Valve is more of a store owner these days than a game developer. They take about 30% of all sales on the Steam store. On the steam store a LOT of games are sold, but they are often also sold at bargain prices or in bundles which is bad news in the long run of the game development industry, but it is good for Valve in the short term.
A game company receiving 70% of a sale on a game that was discounted by steam is more than they would have received in the first place, so it is not necessarily bad. There are a bunch of games that I purchased on steam that I would not have if they weren't discounted, so again not necessarily bad. Also a cheaper end product isn't even bad. I would gladly sell a game I developed for 10 cents if everyone in the world bought it. Trust me I would
And I don't think that will or should be the case. This isn't directed at you because I don't think anyone supports DRM but I do disagree with the idea that publishers will continue this practice. Anyone who bought a piece of property should be entitled to play it at any time, anywhere. Piracy is a widespread issue that will never, ever be stop or be stopped - it's an issue that along with security, needs to be dealt on the company's end without affecting the average consumer. It's fascinating how forgetful some gaming companies are becoming of grade school level public-business relations.
When you're buying a game, you're not buying a piece of property (other than the actual DVD and the packaging). And I think SC2 and Diablo 3 have shown that always-on can be a great anti-piracy measure, even if you have to live with reddit shitstorms.
You earnestly think that purchasing a product doesn't entitle you to playing it whenever or wherever you want it? Wings and D3 are laughable in comparison to their predecessors - their perception far precedes just reddit.
If I buy a gameboy and pokemon red for 50 dollars, there should NOT be a stupid message popping up on the gameboy screen to say "Uh...you can't play", even if I'm on the fricking moon.
So what is your solution then? Games actually need to sell a LOT to earn back their investment. Game prices have been the same or even getting lower in the past 20 years, yet development costs have gone up by at least 10 times. With the rampant piracy and devaluation of games because of bundles and mobile/tablet platforms publishers and developers feel forced to do everything within their power to protect their games.
I agree, DRM does more harm than good, but the gamedev industry is a very tough and unstable industry. The animosity that game developers and publishers receive compared to how much effort they put in their games is mind boggling. It is like people have no clue how hard game developers work. It is quite incomparable to any other IT job I know, the crunches are brutal and you often have to relocate quite a bit and there are frequent lay offs after a game ships. How much cheers and praise piracy gets for essentially taking bread out of hard working peoples mouths is even more depressing.
If you only care about the bottom-line (Money), why would you get into the game industry? When you could save all that trouble and start a real estate agency or accounting company instead, and not have to struggle with small profit margins in an unstable industry. Its just insanity.
That's the problem with big game companies, they are unstable simply because they only care about the bottom-line. They only care about getting bigger and bigger, and then requiring more and more money to fill the needs of its ever increasing (and already absurd) size. This ends up becoming a huge bubble that the companies have to go into crisis mode when revenue stops increasing (which has to happen eventually).
Keep in mind that these kinds of greedy for-profit businesses work on the basis that they want more profit every year, to pay their shareholders/executives, that means less money proportionally goes into development each year as well. The problem is not piracy at all. In this industry companies are eventually going to hit a brick wall and stop making more money, and when that happens these companies that absurdly rely on positive forecasts every year are going to go into crisis mode. That's where the problem lies.
Note that Valve isn't having anything like the kind of problems that other big gaming companies have, its not to do with the business model, its that they basically don't have sponsors and shareholders to worry about, and act like a not-for-profit business. I'm pretty sure most if not all of the proceeds are directly invested straight back into Valve.
Even if piracy was as prevalent 20 years ago, game companies wouldn't need DRM because they didn't need to sell a million copies of a game just to break even, and didn't work on the same profit margins and greedy business models.
The fact that flat-lined revenue is a crisis for big game companies is their own damn fault, a game is a luxury not a necessity, we can't expect money to increasingly pour into game companies forever in an ever increasingly competitive market. If not for piracy, something else would have happened and these companies would have the same problem. A lot more revenue was generated from people playing cod, than first generation consoles, companies are making more money than ever before and are still complaining.
Its just dumb business logic to expect to run a business based on profit in the game industry, when there are much more viable markets to be conducting business in that way.
So that is your solution, stop making games because it does not make sense to make games? I agree with you though, it is simply dumb to start a game development company these days. It requires a ton of skill, dedication, risk, investment and time and a company gets little in return. I have worked in many different IT sectors and game development is by far the least rewarding in terms of revenue, but for me it is the most rewarding considering how fun it is to actually make games.
Sure, there are a hand full of companies that do manage to stay on top for a while. Someone mentioned Valve and Valve just has everything going for them, even though it is just a matter of time they make one product that is not perfect and get shit on. Look at Blizzard, one game, D3 does not live up to expectations and they take a massive hit in reputation that will have a major influence on future sales, even though they have been producing top quality games for decades.
It is like digging for gold or oil, there are a couple of success stories and a whole lot of failures. Also, the person who thinks the game development industry is run by greed is flat out wrong. Companies just want to stay in business so they can keep making games and one failure means bankruptcy and that can lead to very protective/safe game development with little innovation.
You're exaggerating the issues by a massive degree.
One failure only means bankruptcy when millions of dollars are spent on it. And for that matter, it has to be an absolutely spectacular failure to destroy a massive company.
Take a look at Gearbox. Duke Nukem Forever, complete flop...but it certainly didn't kill any hype for Borderlands 2. Aliens: Colonial Marines, a completely trash game that got brutalized by players and reviewers...no bankruptcy.
The only time a single game is going to destroy an entire company is when they overspend, devote almost everything they have into it, and fail to turn profit. Anything short of that means the CEO actually managed his resources properly.
Just to be clear, game developers don't want to integrate DRM solutions in their games, it is a major hassle. Does anyone think that DRM would be in if there would not be piracy? But if you build 10000 cars and put them in a holding area and 9000 get stolen, then at some point you are going to put a lock or a fence somewhere.
Car analogies are always so stupid...
If you build 10000 cars, find 20000 exact duplicates on the road the next day, but still sell 98% of your cars, would you keep every employee you have under complete security lockdown for the entirety of their employment? And when all of your employees quit, do you act as though it was the copycats that drove away your work force?
DRM is never about recovering losses. It's about pretending that potential sales are recoverable lost sales, and sacrificing reputation, customer rapport and real money and resources into the hopes that you gain enough of those potential sales to offset the differences.
No, I am not exaggerating at all. You thinking I am exaggerating shows that you don't know how bad it really is. Maybe there are a couple of companies from the 90's that still had some money. Back then 1 success could cover about 4 failures. But the newer game development studios really can't survive a single failure. Hell, the money even isn't at the game development studios anymore, it is at the publishers. Game development studios get "hired" to build a game by a publisher, if it fails the game development studio is done. The money a game development studio gets for making a game covers only that game, nothing more.
Like I said, DRM is stupid, but people spend more time blaming DRM than they spend actively speaking out against piracy, and that is what annoys me. DRM is there because if you don't you will get a 90%+ piracy rate, and again that is no exaggeration. I am not saying this means a company misses out on 90% of its sales, but it does make a big difference.
If that was the case then why did Valve experience a record 50% growth (2012) in a supposed bad period of the games industry. Not to mention that TF2 and Dota2 are free games, even on release TF2 was a fraction of the price of other retail games without micro-transactions.
Valve is growing faster now than EA did when EA didn't even have to compete with pirates.
It makes no sense for EA to be worried about losing money to piracy when overall revenue in the market is increasing.
If a games company is going to go bankrupt over one failed game (not to mention EA has several franchises to buffer its losses) then it is its own damn fault. DRM is just a stupid excuse for the fact that they waste so much money and blame it on piracy.
It's easier for a small company to grow than it is for a large company, especially when that small company has a niche and is part of a fast growing market (digital distribution).
Valve release 1 or so games a year. They could potentially double their revenue by releasing 2 games. 50% more games.
If EA release 50 games a year, releasing an extra 1 or 2 games does next to nothing to increase revenues, that's 2 or 4% more games.
Not hard to grow when you are small, and stupid to compare large company and small company growth rates. Add in Valve being a digital publisher, and not being particularly active in the console market, where DD is less of a growth area currently, and you have even more differences.
Valve probably make more money taking a cut of everyone elses sales than they do from their own games. EA also has publishing agreements with some developers (including Valve) where they publish retail copies of games, but the margins are much smaller, and that area of business is declining.
What in the world makes you think Valve is a small company? They don't release many games, their income comes from Steam. Valve had the biggest income in the gaming industry in a year they didn't release a single game. They're not increasing by 50% because they make 2 games where they used to make one. They're doing it through steam, marketing and costumer service alone.
On March 19 2013 22:02 blackone wrote: [quote] When you're buying a game, you're not buying a piece of property (other than the actual DVD and the packaging). And I think SC2 and Diablo 3 have shown that always-on can be a great anti-piracy measure, even if you have to live with reddit shitstorms.
You earnestly think that purchasing a product doesn't entitle you to playing it whenever or wherever you want it? Wings and D3 are laughable in comparison to their predecessors - their perception far precedes just reddit.
If I buy a gameboy and pokemon red for 50 dollars, there should NOT be a stupid message popping up on the gameboy screen to say "Uh...you can't play", even if I'm on the fricking moon.
So what is your solution then? Games actually need to sell a LOT to earn back their investment. Game prices have been the same or even getting lower in the past 20 years, yet development costs have gone up by at least 10 times. With the rampant piracy and devaluation of games because of bundles and mobile/tablet platforms publishers and developers feel forced to do everything within their power to protect their games.
I agree, DRM does more harm than good, but the gamedev industry is a very tough and unstable industry. The animosity that game developers and publishers receive compared to how much effort they put in their games is mind boggling. It is like people have no clue how hard game developers work. It is quite incomparable to any other IT job I know, the crunches are brutal and you often have to relocate quite a bit and there are frequent lay offs after a game ships. How much cheers and praise piracy gets for essentially taking bread out of hard working peoples mouths is even more depressing.
If you only care about the bottom-line (Money), why would you get into the game industry? When you could save all that trouble and start a real estate agency or accounting company instead, and not have to struggle with small profit margins in an unstable industry. Its just insanity.
That's the problem with big game companies, they are unstable simply because they only care about the bottom-line. They only care about getting bigger and bigger, and then requiring more and more money to fill the needs of its ever increasing (and already absurd) size. This ends up becoming a huge bubble that the companies have to go into crisis mode when revenue stops increasing (which has to happen eventually).
Keep in mind that these kinds of greedy for-profit businesses work on the basis that they want more profit every year, to pay their shareholders/executives, that means less money proportionally goes into development each year as well. The problem is not piracy at all. In this industry companies are eventually going to hit a brick wall and stop making more money, and when that happens these companies that absurdly rely on positive forecasts every year are going to go into crisis mode. That's where the problem lies.
Note that Valve isn't having anything like the kind of problems that other big gaming companies have, its not to do with the business model, its that they basically don't have sponsors and shareholders to worry about, and act like a not-for-profit business. I'm pretty sure most if not all of the proceeds are directly invested straight back into Valve.
Even if piracy was as prevalent 20 years ago, game companies wouldn't need DRM because they didn't need to sell a million copies of a game just to break even, and didn't work on the same profit margins and greedy business models.
The fact that flat-lined revenue is a crisis for big game companies is their own damn fault, a game is a luxury not a necessity, we can't expect money to increasingly pour into game companies forever in an ever increasingly competitive market. If not for piracy, something else would have happened and these companies would have the same problem. A lot more revenue was generated from people playing cod, than first generation consoles, companies are making more money than ever before and are still complaining.
Its just dumb business logic to expect to run a business based on profit in the game industry, when there are much more viable markets to be conducting business in that way.
So that is your solution, stop making games because it does not make sense to make games? I agree with you though, it is simply dumb to start a game development company these days. It requires a ton of skill, dedication, risk, investment and time and a company gets little in return. I have worked in many different IT sectors and game development is by far the least rewarding in terms of revenue, but for me it is the most rewarding considering how fun it is to actually make games.
Sure, there are a hand full of companies that do manage to stay on top for a while. Someone mentioned Valve and Valve just has everything going for them, even though it is just a matter of time they make one product that is not perfect and get shit on. Look at Blizzard, one game, D3 does not live up to expectations and they take a massive hit in reputation that will have a major influence on future sales, even though they have been producing top quality games for decades.
It is like digging for gold or oil, there are a couple of success stories and a whole lot of failures. Also, the person who thinks the game development industry is run by greed is flat out wrong. Companies just want to stay in business so they can keep making games and one failure means bankruptcy and that can lead to very protective/safe game development with little innovation.
You're exaggerating the issues by a massive degree.
One failure only means bankruptcy when millions of dollars are spent on it. And for that matter, it has to be an absolutely spectacular failure to destroy a massive company.
Take a look at Gearbox. Duke Nukem Forever, complete flop...but it certainly didn't kill any hype for Borderlands 2. Aliens: Colonial Marines, a completely trash game that got brutalized by players and reviewers...no bankruptcy.
The only time a single game is going to destroy an entire company is when they overspend, devote almost everything they have into it, and fail to turn profit. Anything short of that means the CEO actually managed his resources properly.
Just to be clear, game developers don't want to integrate DRM solutions in their games, it is a major hassle. Does anyone think that DRM would be in if there would not be piracy? But if you build 10000 cars and put them in a holding area and 9000 get stolen, then at some point you are going to put a lock or a fence somewhere.
Car analogies are always so stupid...
If you build 10000 cars, find 20000 exact duplicates on the road the next day, but still sell 98% of your cars, would you keep every employee you have under complete security lockdown for the entirety of their employment? And when all of your employees quit, do you act as though it was the copycats that drove away your work force?
DRM is never about recovering losses. It's about pretending that potential sales are recoverable lost sales, and sacrificing reputation, customer rapport and real money and resources into the hopes that you gain enough of those potential sales to offset the differences.
No, I am not exaggerating at all. You thinking I am exaggerating shows that you don't know how bad it really is. Maybe there are a couple of companies from the 90's that still had some money. Back then 1 success could cover about 4 failures. But the newer game development studios really can't survive a single failure. Hell, the money even isn't at the game development studios anymore, it is at the publishers. Game development studios get "hired" to build a game by a publisher, if it fails the game development studio is done. The money a game development studio gets for making a game covers only that game, nothing more.
Like I said, DRM is stupid, but people spend more time blaming DRM than they spend actively speaking out against piracy, and that is what annoys me. DRM is there because if you don't you will get a 90%+ piracy rate, and again that is no exaggeration. I am not saying this means a company misses out on 90% of its sales, but it does make a big difference.
If that was the case then why did Valve experience a record 50% growth (2012) in a supposed bad period of the games industry. Not to mention that TF2 and Dota2 are free games, even on release TF2 was a fraction of the price of other retail games without micro-transactions.
Valve is growing faster now than EA did when EA didn't even have to compete with pirates.
It makes no sense for EA to be worried about losing money to piracy when overall revenue in the market is increasing.
If a games company is going to go bankrupt over one failed game (not to mention EA has several franchises to buffer its losses) then it is its own damn fault. DRM is just a stupid excuse for the fact that they waste so much money and blame it on piracy.
It's easier for a small company to grow than it is for a large company, especially when that small company has a niche and is part of a fast growing market (digital distribution).
Valve release 1 or so games a year. They could potentially double their revenue by releasing 2 games. 50% more games.
If EA release 50 games a year, releasing an extra 1 or 2 games does next to nothing to increase revenues, that's 2 or 4% more games.
Not hard to grow when you are small, and stupid to compare large company and small company growth rates. Add in Valve being a digital publisher, and not being particularly active in the console market, where DD is less of a growth area currently, and you have even more differences.
Valve probably make more money taking a cut of everyone elses sales than they do from their own games. EA also has publishing agreements with some developers (including Valve) where they publish retail copies of games, but the margins are much smaller, and that area of business is declining.
What in the world makes you think Valve is a small company? They don't release many games, their income comes from Steam. Valve had the biggest income in the gaming industry in a year they didn't release a single game. They're not increasing by 50% because they make 2 games where they used to make one. They're doing it through steam, marketing and costumer service alone.
According to Wiki Valve has only 400 employees. The US Small Business Administration (Valve is incorporated in the US) defines a small business as any company with less than 500 employees. So Valve is a small (and very very successful...) business. By contrast, EA has more than 9000....
On March 19 2013 22:02 blackone wrote: [quote] When you're buying a game, you're not buying a piece of property (other than the actual DVD and the packaging). And I think SC2 and Diablo 3 have shown that always-on can be a great anti-piracy measure, even if you have to live with reddit shitstorms.
You earnestly think that purchasing a product doesn't entitle you to playing it whenever or wherever you want it? Wings and D3 are laughable in comparison to their predecessors - their perception far precedes just reddit.
If I buy a gameboy and pokemon red for 50 dollars, there should NOT be a stupid message popping up on the gameboy screen to say "Uh...you can't play", even if I'm on the fricking moon.
So what is your solution then? Games actually need to sell a LOT to earn back their investment. Game prices have been the same or even getting lower in the past 20 years, yet development costs have gone up by at least 10 times. With the rampant piracy and devaluation of games because of bundles and mobile/tablet platforms publishers and developers feel forced to do everything within their power to protect their games.
I agree, DRM does more harm than good, but the gamedev industry is a very tough and unstable industry. The animosity that game developers and publishers receive compared to how much effort they put in their games is mind boggling. It is like people have no clue how hard game developers work. It is quite incomparable to any other IT job I know, the crunches are brutal and you often have to relocate quite a bit and there are frequent lay offs after a game ships. How much cheers and praise piracy gets for essentially taking bread out of hard working peoples mouths is even more depressing.
If you only care about the bottom-line (Money), why would you get into the game industry? When you could save all that trouble and start a real estate agency or accounting company instead, and not have to struggle with small profit margins in an unstable industry. Its just insanity.
That's the problem with big game companies, they are unstable simply because they only care about the bottom-line. They only care about getting bigger and bigger, and then requiring more and more money to fill the needs of its ever increasing (and already absurd) size. This ends up becoming a huge bubble that the companies have to go into crisis mode when revenue stops increasing (which has to happen eventually).
Keep in mind that these kinds of greedy for-profit businesses work on the basis that they want more profit every year, to pay their shareholders/executives, that means less money proportionally goes into development each year as well. The problem is not piracy at all. In this industry companies are eventually going to hit a brick wall and stop making more money, and when that happens these companies that absurdly rely on positive forecasts every year are going to go into crisis mode. That's where the problem lies.
Note that Valve isn't having anything like the kind of problems that other big gaming companies have, its not to do with the business model, its that they basically don't have sponsors and shareholders to worry about, and act like a not-for-profit business. I'm pretty sure most if not all of the proceeds are directly invested straight back into Valve.
Even if piracy was as prevalent 20 years ago, game companies wouldn't need DRM because they didn't need to sell a million copies of a game just to break even, and didn't work on the same profit margins and greedy business models.
The fact that flat-lined revenue is a crisis for big game companies is their own damn fault, a game is a luxury not a necessity, we can't expect money to increasingly pour into game companies forever in an ever increasingly competitive market. If not for piracy, something else would have happened and these companies would have the same problem. A lot more revenue was generated from people playing cod, than first generation consoles, companies are making more money than ever before and are still complaining.
Its just dumb business logic to expect to run a business based on profit in the game industry, when there are much more viable markets to be conducting business in that way.
So that is your solution, stop making games because it does not make sense to make games? I agree with you though, it is simply dumb to start a game development company these days. It requires a ton of skill, dedication, risk, investment and time and a company gets little in return. I have worked in many different IT sectors and game development is by far the least rewarding in terms of revenue, but for me it is the most rewarding considering how fun it is to actually make games.
Sure, there are a hand full of companies that do manage to stay on top for a while. Someone mentioned Valve and Valve just has everything going for them, even though it is just a matter of time they make one product that is not perfect and get shit on. Look at Blizzard, one game, D3 does not live up to expectations and they take a massive hit in reputation that will have a major influence on future sales, even though they have been producing top quality games for decades.
It is like digging for gold or oil, there are a couple of success stories and a whole lot of failures. Also, the person who thinks the game development industry is run by greed is flat out wrong. Companies just want to stay in business so they can keep making games and one failure means bankruptcy and that can lead to very protective/safe game development with little innovation.
You're exaggerating the issues by a massive degree.
One failure only means bankruptcy when millions of dollars are spent on it. And for that matter, it has to be an absolutely spectacular failure to destroy a massive company.
Take a look at Gearbox. Duke Nukem Forever, complete flop...but it certainly didn't kill any hype for Borderlands 2. Aliens: Colonial Marines, a completely trash game that got brutalized by players and reviewers...no bankruptcy.
The only time a single game is going to destroy an entire company is when they overspend, devote almost everything they have into it, and fail to turn profit. Anything short of that means the CEO actually managed his resources properly.
Just to be clear, game developers don't want to integrate DRM solutions in their games, it is a major hassle. Does anyone think that DRM would be in if there would not be piracy? But if you build 10000 cars and put them in a holding area and 9000 get stolen, then at some point you are going to put a lock or a fence somewhere.
Car analogies are always so stupid...
If you build 10000 cars, find 20000 exact duplicates on the road the next day, but still sell 98% of your cars, would you keep every employee you have under complete security lockdown for the entirety of their employment? And when all of your employees quit, do you act as though it was the copycats that drove away your work force?
DRM is never about recovering losses. It's about pretending that potential sales are recoverable lost sales, and sacrificing reputation, customer rapport and real money and resources into the hopes that you gain enough of those potential sales to offset the differences.
No, I am not exaggerating at all. You thinking I am exaggerating shows that you don't know how bad it really is. Maybe there are a couple of companies from the 90's that still had some money. Back then 1 success could cover about 4 failures. But the newer game development studios really can't survive a single failure. Hell, the money even isn't at the game development studios anymore, it is at the publishers. Game development studios get "hired" to build a game by a publisher, if it fails the game development studio is done. The money a game development studio gets for making a game covers only that game, nothing more.
Like I said, DRM is stupid, but people spend more time blaming DRM than they spend actively speaking out against piracy, and that is what annoys me. DRM is there because if you don't you will get a 90%+ piracy rate, and again that is no exaggeration. I am not saying this means a company misses out on 90% of its sales, but it does make a big difference.
If that was the case then why did Valve experience a record 50% growth (2012) in a supposed bad period of the games industry. Not to mention that TF2 and Dota2 are free games, even on release TF2 was a fraction of the price of other retail games without micro-transactions.
Valve is growing faster now than EA did when EA didn't even have to compete with pirates.
It makes no sense for EA to be worried about losing money to piracy when overall revenue in the market is increasing.
If a games company is going to go bankrupt over one failed game (not to mention EA has several franchises to buffer its losses) then it is its own damn fault. DRM is just a stupid excuse for the fact that they waste so much money and blame it on piracy.
There is a transition from retail to digital. It is more of a shift than an increase, Valve is riding that wave. Also, Valve is more of a store owner these days than a game developer. They take about 30% of all sales on the Steam store. On the steam store a LOT of games are sold, but they are often also sold at bargain prices or in bundles which is bad news in the long run of the game development industry, but it is good for Valve in the short term.
A game company receiving 70% of a sale on a game that was discounted by steam is more than they would have received in the first place, so it is not necessarily bad. There are a bunch of games that I purchased on steam that I would not have if they weren't discounted, so again not necessarily bad. Also a cheaper end product isn't even bad. I would gladly sell a game I developed for 10 cents if everyone in the world bought it. Trust me I would
Yeah, maybe you are right. It depends on if the balance shifts away from people buying a game at full price to only buying it in the bargain bin. For the bigger titles the bargain bin alone will likely not be enough to cover expenses, but for smaller companies and indies Valve and Steam are a gift from heaven at this point in time. I am not sure if it will last.
And I don't think that will or should be the case. This isn't directed at you because I don't think anyone supports DRM but I do disagree with the idea that publishers will continue this practice. Anyone who bought a piece of property should be entitled to play it at any time, anywhere. Piracy is a widespread issue that will never, ever be stop or be stopped - it's an issue that along with security, needs to be dealt on the company's end without affecting the average consumer. It's fascinating how forgetful some gaming companies are becoming of grade school level public-business relations.
When you're buying a game, you're not buying a piece of property (other than the actual DVD and the packaging). And I think SC2 and Diablo 3 have shown that always-on can be a great anti-piracy measure, even if you have to live with reddit shitstorms.
You earnestly think that purchasing a product doesn't entitle you to playing it whenever or wherever you want it? Wings and D3 are laughable in comparison to their predecessors - their perception far precedes just reddit.
If I buy a gameboy and pokemon red for 50 dollars, there should NOT be a stupid message popping up on the gameboy screen to say "Uh...you can't play", even if I'm on the fricking moon.
So what is your solution then? Games actually need to sell a LOT to earn back their investment. Game prices have been the same or even getting lower in the past 20 years, yet development costs have gone up by at least 10 times. With the rampant piracy and devaluation of games because of bundles and mobile/tablet platforms publishers and developers feel forced to do everything within their power to protect their games.
I agree, DRM does more harm than good, but the gamedev industry is a very tough and unstable industry. The animosity that game developers and publishers receive compared to how much effort they put in their games is mind boggling. It is like people have no clue how hard game developers work. It is quite incomparable to any other IT job I know, the crunches are brutal and you often have to relocate quite a bit and there are frequent lay offs after a game ships. How much cheers and praise piracy gets for essentially taking bread out of hard working peoples mouths is even more depressing.
If you only care about the bottom-line (Money), why would you get into the game industry? When you could save all that trouble and start a real estate agency or accounting company instead, and not have to struggle with small profit margins in an unstable industry. Its just insanity.
That's the problem with big game companies, they are unstable simply because they only care about the bottom-line. They only care about getting bigger and bigger, and then requiring more and more money to fill the needs of its ever increasing (and already absurd) size. This ends up becoming a huge bubble that the companies have to go into crisis mode when revenue stops increasing (which has to happen eventually).
Keep in mind that these kinds of greedy for-profit businesses work on the basis that they want more profit every year, to pay their shareholders/executives, that means less money proportionally goes into development each year as well. The problem is not piracy at all. In this industry companies are eventually going to hit a brick wall and stop making more money, and when that happens these companies that absurdly rely on positive forecasts every year are going to go into crisis mode. That's where the problem lies.
Note that Valve isn't having anything like the kind of problems that other big gaming companies have, its not to do with the business model, its that they basically don't have sponsors and shareholders to worry about, and act like a not-for-profit business. I'm pretty sure most if not all of the proceeds are directly invested straight back into Valve.
Even if piracy was as prevalent 20 years ago, game companies wouldn't need DRM because they didn't need to sell a million copies of a game just to break even, and didn't work on the same profit margins and greedy business models.
The fact that flat-lined revenue is a crisis for big game companies is their own damn fault, a game is a luxury not a necessity, we can't expect money to increasingly pour into game companies forever in an ever increasingly competitive market. If not for piracy, something else would have happened and these companies would have the same problem. A lot more revenue was generated from people playing cod, than first generation consoles, companies are making more money than ever before and are still complaining.
Its just dumb business logic to expect to run a business based on profit in the game industry, when there are much more viable markets to be conducting business in that way.
So that is your solution, stop making games because it does not make sense to make games? I agree with you though, it is simply dumb to start a game development company these days. It requires a ton of skill, dedication, risk, investment and time and a company gets little in return. I have worked in many different IT sectors and game development is by far the least rewarding in terms of revenue, but for me it is the most rewarding considering how fun it is to actually make games.
Sure, there are a hand full of companies that do manage to stay on top for a while. Someone mentioned Valve and Valve just has everything going for them, even though it is just a matter of time they make one product that is not perfect and get shit on. Look at Blizzard, one game, D3 does not live up to expectations and they take a massive hit in reputation that will have a major influence on future sales, even though they have been producing top quality games for decades.
It is like digging for gold or oil, there are a couple of success stories and a whole lot of failures. Also, the person who thinks the game development industry is run by greed is flat out wrong. Companies just want to stay in business so they can keep making games and one failure means bankruptcy and that can lead to very protective/safe game development with little innovation.
You're exaggerating the issues by a massive degree.
One failure only means bankruptcy when millions of dollars are spent on it. And for that matter, it has to be an absolutely spectacular failure to destroy a massive company.
Take a look at Gearbox. Duke Nukem Forever, complete flop...but it certainly didn't kill any hype for Borderlands 2. Aliens: Colonial Marines, a completely trash game that got brutalized by players and reviewers...no bankruptcy.
The only time a single game is going to destroy an entire company is when they overspend, devote almost everything they have into it, and fail to turn profit. Anything short of that means the CEO actually managed his resources properly.
Just to be clear, game developers don't want to integrate DRM solutions in their games, it is a major hassle. Does anyone think that DRM would be in if there would not be piracy? But if you build 10000 cars and put them in a holding area and 9000 get stolen, then at some point you are going to put a lock or a fence somewhere.
Car analogies are always so stupid...
If you build 10000 cars, find 20000 exact duplicates on the road the next day, but still sell 98% of your cars, would you keep every employee you have under complete security lockdown for the entirety of their employment? And when all of your employees quit, do you act as though it was the copycats that drove away your work force?
DRM is never about recovering losses. It's about pretending that potential sales are recoverable lost sales, and sacrificing reputation, customer rapport and real money and resources into the hopes that you gain enough of those potential sales to offset the differences.
No, I am not exaggerating at all. You thinking I am exaggerating shows that you don't know how bad it really is. Maybe there are a couple of companies from the 90's that still had some money. Back then 1 success could cover about 4 failures. But the newer game development studios really can't survive a single failure. Hell, the money even isn't at the game development studios anymore, it is at the publishers. Game development studios get "hired" to build a game by a publisher, if it fails the game development studio is done. The money a game development studio gets for making a game covers only that game, nothing more.
Like I said, DRM is stupid, but people spend more time blaming DRM than they spend actively speaking out against piracy, and that is what annoys me. DRM is there because if you don't you will get a 90%+ piracy rate, and again that is no exaggeration. I am not saying this means a company misses out on 90% of its sales, but it does make a big difference.
If that was the case then why did Valve experience a record 50% growth (2012) in a supposed bad period of the games industry. Not to mention that TF2 and Dota2 are free games, even on release TF2 was a fraction of the price of other retail games without micro-transactions.
Valve is growing faster now than EA did when EA didn't even have to compete with pirates.
It makes no sense for EA to be worried about losing money to piracy when overall revenue in the market is increasing.
If a games company is going to go bankrupt over one failed game (not to mention EA has several franchises to buffer its losses) then it is its own damn fault. DRM is just a stupid excuse for the fact that they waste so much money and blame it on piracy.
It's easier for a small company to grow than it is for a large company, especially when that small company has a niche and is part of a fast growing market (digital distribution).
Valve release 1 or so games a year. They could potentially double their revenue by releasing 2 games. 50% more games.
If EA release 50 games a year, releasing an extra 1 or 2 games does next to nothing to increase revenues, that's 2 or 4% more games.
Not hard to grow when you are small, and stupid to compare large company and small company growth rates. Add in Valve being a digital publisher, and not being particularly active in the console market, where DD is less of a growth area currently, and you have even more differences.
Valve probably make more money taking a cut of everyone elses sales than they do from their own games. EA also has publishing agreements with some developers (including Valve) where they publish retail copies of games, but the margins are much smaller, and that area of business is declining.
So EA is not a digital publisher? That's a first.
You make it seem as if Valve is cheating somehow because they make money off Steam. Why doesn't EA do the same thing if its so profitable and would mean you only needed to make 2 games a year?
oh wait they did, with Origin, and it fucking sucks.
A game company doesn't need over 9000 employees and punch out a hundred games a year to be successful, or put their entire company on the line every time they want to release a big game. It is simply unsustainable and extremely wasteful.
There's an engineering joke about the follies of trying to solve problems with manpower. It takes many forms, but the general idea is "If one chef can make a cake in an hour, then twelve chefs should be able to finish the cake in five minutes!" The big publishers keep complaining about the rising cost of game development. But why are costs going up? We've been stuck in the same graphics generation since 2005 or so. Since we're not chasing new graphics, games should be getting cheaper.
Valve only needs to make 2 games a year because, they keep their company small and their business practices are sustainable. Its the reason they can sell games at a 1/3rd of the price of most retail games, if EA had Steam, they would still sell it at full price, I am certain of that.
On March 20 2013 20:37 Lonyo wrote: It's easier for a small company to grow than it is for a large company, especially when that small company has a niche and is part of a fast growing market (digital distribution)
Bullshit. How many indie game developers even make it off the ground, I'd say less than 0.1 percent. 9 out of 10 small businesses fail, and in the games industry, its even higher by a substantial number.
Its actually much harder for Valve to grow than EA, so if anything, Valve should have sunk, and EA should have grown.
Like I said before, Steam isn't cheating. Its called good business. There's no rule that says if you are a game developer, you are only allowed to make games. Besides EA used to be the biggest "abuser" of digital publishing, only they did it in the stupidest and most arcane way possible, its called buying out. Then they created Origin, and we all know how that went.
On March 19 2013 22:02 blackone wrote: [quote] When you're buying a game, you're not buying a piece of property (other than the actual DVD and the packaging). And I think SC2 and Diablo 3 have shown that always-on can be a great anti-piracy measure, even if you have to live with reddit shitstorms.
You earnestly think that purchasing a product doesn't entitle you to playing it whenever or wherever you want it? Wings and D3 are laughable in comparison to their predecessors - their perception far precedes just reddit.
If I buy a gameboy and pokemon red for 50 dollars, there should NOT be a stupid message popping up on the gameboy screen to say "Uh...you can't play", even if I'm on the fricking moon.
So what is your solution then? Games actually need to sell a LOT to earn back their investment. Game prices have been the same or even getting lower in the past 20 years, yet development costs have gone up by at least 10 times. With the rampant piracy and devaluation of games because of bundles and mobile/tablet platforms publishers and developers feel forced to do everything within their power to protect their games.
I agree, DRM does more harm than good, but the gamedev industry is a very tough and unstable industry. The animosity that game developers and publishers receive compared to how much effort they put in their games is mind boggling. It is like people have no clue how hard game developers work. It is quite incomparable to any other IT job I know, the crunches are brutal and you often have to relocate quite a bit and there are frequent lay offs after a game ships. How much cheers and praise piracy gets for essentially taking bread out of hard working peoples mouths is even more depressing.
If you only care about the bottom-line (Money), why would you get into the game industry? When you could save all that trouble and start a real estate agency or accounting company instead, and not have to struggle with small profit margins in an unstable industry. Its just insanity.
That's the problem with big game companies, they are unstable simply because they only care about the bottom-line. They only care about getting bigger and bigger, and then requiring more and more money to fill the needs of its ever increasing (and already absurd) size. This ends up becoming a huge bubble that the companies have to go into crisis mode when revenue stops increasing (which has to happen eventually).
Keep in mind that these kinds of greedy for-profit businesses work on the basis that they want more profit every year, to pay their shareholders/executives, that means less money proportionally goes into development each year as well. The problem is not piracy at all. In this industry companies are eventually going to hit a brick wall and stop making more money, and when that happens these companies that absurdly rely on positive forecasts every year are going to go into crisis mode. That's where the problem lies.
Note that Valve isn't having anything like the kind of problems that other big gaming companies have, its not to do with the business model, its that they basically don't have sponsors and shareholders to worry about, and act like a not-for-profit business. I'm pretty sure most if not all of the proceeds are directly invested straight back into Valve.
Even if piracy was as prevalent 20 years ago, game companies wouldn't need DRM because they didn't need to sell a million copies of a game just to break even, and didn't work on the same profit margins and greedy business models.
The fact that flat-lined revenue is a crisis for big game companies is their own damn fault, a game is a luxury not a necessity, we can't expect money to increasingly pour into game companies forever in an ever increasingly competitive market. If not for piracy, something else would have happened and these companies would have the same problem. A lot more revenue was generated from people playing cod, than first generation consoles, companies are making more money than ever before and are still complaining.
Its just dumb business logic to expect to run a business based on profit in the game industry, when there are much more viable markets to be conducting business in that way.
So that is your solution, stop making games because it does not make sense to make games? I agree with you though, it is simply dumb to start a game development company these days. It requires a ton of skill, dedication, risk, investment and time and a company gets little in return. I have worked in many different IT sectors and game development is by far the least rewarding in terms of revenue, but for me it is the most rewarding considering how fun it is to actually make games.
Sure, there are a hand full of companies that do manage to stay on top for a while. Someone mentioned Valve and Valve just has everything going for them, even though it is just a matter of time they make one product that is not perfect and get shit on. Look at Blizzard, one game, D3 does not live up to expectations and they take a massive hit in reputation that will have a major influence on future sales, even though they have been producing top quality games for decades.
It is like digging for gold or oil, there are a couple of success stories and a whole lot of failures. Also, the person who thinks the game development industry is run by greed is flat out wrong. Companies just want to stay in business so they can keep making games and one failure means bankruptcy and that can lead to very protective/safe game development with little innovation.
You're exaggerating the issues by a massive degree.
One failure only means bankruptcy when millions of dollars are spent on it. And for that matter, it has to be an absolutely spectacular failure to destroy a massive company.
Take a look at Gearbox. Duke Nukem Forever, complete flop...but it certainly didn't kill any hype for Borderlands 2. Aliens: Colonial Marines, a completely trash game that got brutalized by players and reviewers...no bankruptcy.
The only time a single game is going to destroy an entire company is when they overspend, devote almost everything they have into it, and fail to turn profit. Anything short of that means the CEO actually managed his resources properly.
Just to be clear, game developers don't want to integrate DRM solutions in their games, it is a major hassle. Does anyone think that DRM would be in if there would not be piracy? But if you build 10000 cars and put them in a holding area and 9000 get stolen, then at some point you are going to put a lock or a fence somewhere.
Car analogies are always so stupid...
If you build 10000 cars, find 20000 exact duplicates on the road the next day, but still sell 98% of your cars, would you keep every employee you have under complete security lockdown for the entirety of their employment? And when all of your employees quit, do you act as though it was the copycats that drove away your work force?
DRM is never about recovering losses. It's about pretending that potential sales are recoverable lost sales, and sacrificing reputation, customer rapport and real money and resources into the hopes that you gain enough of those potential sales to offset the differences.
No, I am not exaggerating at all. You thinking I am exaggerating shows that you don't know how bad it really is. Maybe there are a couple of companies from the 90's that still had some money. Back then 1 success could cover about 4 failures. But the newer game development studios really can't survive a single failure. Hell, the money even isn't at the game development studios anymore, it is at the publishers. Game development studios get "hired" to build a game by a publisher, if it fails the game development studio is done. The money a game development studio gets for making a game covers only that game, nothing more.
Like I said, DRM is stupid, but people spend more time blaming DRM than they spend actively speaking out against piracy, and that is what annoys me. DRM is there because if you don't you will get a 90%+ piracy rate, and again that is no exaggeration. I am not saying this means a company misses out on 90% of its sales, but it does make a big difference.
If that was the case then why did Valve experience a record 50% growth (2012) in a supposed bad period of the games industry. Not to mention that TF2 and Dota2 are free games, even on release TF2 was a fraction of the price of other retail games without micro-transactions.
Valve is growing faster now than EA did when EA didn't even have to compete with pirates.
It makes no sense for EA to be worried about losing money to piracy when overall revenue in the market is increasing.
If a games company is going to go bankrupt over one failed game (not to mention EA has several franchises to buffer its losses) then it is its own damn fault. DRM is just a stupid excuse for the fact that they waste so much money and blame it on piracy.
It's easier for a small company to grow than it is for a large company, especially when that small company has a niche and is part of a fast growing market (digital distribution).
Valve release 1 or so games a year. They could potentially double their revenue by releasing 2 games. 50% more games.
If EA release 50 games a year, releasing an extra 1 or 2 games does next to nothing to increase revenues, that's 2 or 4% more games.
Not hard to grow when you are small, and stupid to compare large company and small company growth rates. Add in Valve being a digital publisher, and not being particularly active in the console market, where DD is less of a growth area currently, and you have even more differences.
Valve probably make more money taking a cut of everyone elses sales than they do from their own games. EA also has publishing agreements with some developers (including Valve) where they publish retail copies of games, but the margins are much smaller, and that area of business is declining.
What in the world makes you think Valve is a small company? They don't release many games, their income comes from Steam. Valve had the biggest income in the gaming industry in a year they didn't release a single game. They're not increasing by 50% because they make 2 games where they used to make one. They're doing it through steam, marketing and costumer service alone.
Just because a game company doesn't release a game doesn't mean they didn't make money of it.
In late 2011, TF2 moved to micro-transactions, and a linux port was created in 2012. As you know, micro-transactions are ongoing and not restricted to its release only.
Dota 2 was "released" in 2012, many bought beta keys, and it is making a ton of money off micro-transactions. It had more than a million members by June 2012. Hundreds of thousands of people are buying in game items.
Where as Madden 2012, only expects to make sales in 2012, people are still buying Valves older games, like Portal and HalfLife, because they are good games that stand the test of time.
doubt that it really changes much but this was at least 2-3 years in the making considering the bullshit ea customers have to put up with for everything
On March 19 2013 05:35 Taekwon wrote: That's the spirit! Now start doing better practices - like maybe no DRM?
Hmmmmmm?
Always on is not the same as DRM, and as long as people pirate video games, publishers will try to stop them.
I don't recall saying it was.
And I don't think that will or should be the case. This isn't directed at you because I don't think anyone supports DRM but I do disagree with the idea that publishers will continue this practice. Anyone who bought a piece of property should be entitled to play it at any time, anywhere. Piracy is a widespread issue that will never, ever be stop or be stopped - it's an issue that along with security, needs to be dealt on the company's end without affecting the average consumer. It's fascinating how forgetful some gaming companies are becoming of grade school level public-business relations.
When you're buying a game, you're not buying a piece of property (other than the actual DVD and the packaging). And I think SC2 and Diablo 3 have shown that always-on can be a great anti-piracy measure, even if you have to live with reddit shitstorms.
You earnestly think that purchasing a product doesn't entitle you to playing it whenever or wherever you want it? Wings and D3 are laughable in comparison to their predecessors - their perception far precedes just reddit.
If I buy a gameboy and pokemon red for 50 dollars, there should NOT be a stupid message popping up on the gameboy screen to say "Uh...you can't play", even if I'm on the fricking moon.
So what is your solution then? Games actually need to sell a LOT to earn back their investment. Game prices have been the same or even getting lower in the past 20 years, yet development costs have gone up by at least 10 times. With the rampant piracy and devaluation of games because of bundles and mobile/tablet platforms publishers and developers feel forced to do everything within their power to protect their games.
I agree, DRM does more harm than good, but the gamedev industry is a very tough and unstable industry. The animosity that game developers and publishers receive compared to how much effort they put in their games is mind boggling. It is like people have no clue how hard game developers work. It is quite incomparable to any other IT job I know, the crunches are brutal and you often have to relocate quite a bit and there are frequent lay offs after a game ships. How much cheers and praise piracy gets for essentially taking bread out of hard working peoples mouths is even more depressing.
If you only care about the bottom-line (Money), why would you get into the game industry? When you could save all that trouble and start a real estate agency or accounting company instead, and not have to struggle with small profit margins in an unstable industry. Its just insanity.
That's the problem with big game companies, they are unstable simply because they only care about the bottom-line. They only care about getting bigger and bigger, and then requiring more and more money to fill the needs of its ever increasing (and already absurd) size. This ends up becoming a huge bubble that the companies have to go into crisis mode when revenue stops increasing (which has to happen eventually).
Keep in mind that these kinds of greedy for-profit businesses work on the basis that they want more profit every year, to pay their shareholders/executives, that means less money proportionally goes into development each year as well. The problem is not piracy at all. In this industry companies are eventually going to hit a brick wall and stop making more money, and when that happens these companies that absurdly rely on positive forecasts every year are going to go into crisis mode. That's where the problem lies.
Note that Valve isn't having anything like the kind of problems that other big gaming companies have, its not to do with the business model, its that they basically don't have sponsors and shareholders to worry about, and act like a not-for-profit business. I'm pretty sure most if not all of the proceeds are directly invested straight back into Valve.
Even if piracy was as prevalent 20 years ago, game companies wouldn't need DRM because they didn't need to sell a million copies of a game just to break even, and didn't work on the same profit margins and greedy business models.
The fact that flat-lined revenue is a crisis for big game companies is their own damn fault, a game is a luxury not a necessity, we can't expect money to increasingly pour into game companies forever in an ever increasingly competitive market. If not for piracy, something else would have happened and these companies would have the same problem. A lot more revenue was generated from people playing cod, than first generation consoles, companies are making more money than ever before and are still complaining.
Its just dumb business logic to expect to run a business based on profit in the game industry, when there are much more viable markets to be conducting business in that way.
So that is your solution, stop making games because it does not make sense to make games? I agree with you though, it is simply dumb to start a game development company these days. It requires a ton of skill, dedication, risk, investment and time and a company gets little in return. I have worked in many different IT sectors and game development is by far the least rewarding in terms of revenue, but for me it is the most rewarding considering how fun it is to actually make games.
Sure, there are a hand full of companies that do manage to stay on top for a while. Someone mentioned Valve and Valve just has everything going for them, even though it is just a matter of time they make one product that is not perfect and get shit on. Look at Blizzard, one game, D3 does not live up to expectations and they take a massive hit in reputation that will have a major influence on future sales, even though they have been producing top quality games for decades.
It is like digging for gold or oil, there are a couple of success stories and a whole lot of failures. Also, the person who thinks the game development industry is run by greed is flat out wrong. Companies just want to stay in business so they can keep making games and one failure means bankruptcy and that can lead to very protective/safe game development with little innovation.
Just to be clear, game developers don't want to integrate DRM solutions in their games, it is a major hassle. Does anyone think that DRM would be in if there would not be piracy? But if you build 10000 cars and put them in a holding area and 9000 get stolen, then at some point you are going to put a lock or a fence somewhere.
Face it, the gaming industry is one of the worst in terms of business practices. They competed based on features that are either very expensive to do, superfluous or both. Cutting-edge graphics, voice acting, realistic background physics, all that jazz that come with modern AAA games are very expensive. There were plenty of good games in the 80s, 90s and early 2000s that did not have those and the gameplay did not suffer one bit. The industry competed based on them and made them standard in the eyes of gamers. It's similar to how the airline industry competed based solely on prices. The PC industry also competed solely based on prices.
Some industries are just messed up because of the way they competed for their customers' money. It's important to manage customers expectations, to manage the value proposition you are giving your customers. It's nobody's fault but the game industry's that their value proposition is too much on the expensive, cutting-edge graphics side of things.
I just hope EA gets better. I'm going to be blatantly optimistic and hopeful here and say that I think that not only is this a step in the right direction, but I think the legion of pissed off gamers uniting to bash EA has finally created palpable results. I don't think Riccitiello is the only culpable person here, but I do think that dropping stocks and people not wanting to work with EA has finally brought enough woe to them to make them change. Here's hoping that they become a respectable market competitor and not what they have been for a long time now.
You earnestly think that purchasing a product doesn't entitle you to playing it whenever or wherever you want it? Wings and D3 are laughable in comparison to their predecessors - their perception far precedes just reddit.
If I buy a gameboy and pokemon red for 50 dollars, there should NOT be a stupid message popping up on the gameboy screen to say "Uh...you can't play", even if I'm on the fricking moon.
So what is your solution then? Games actually need to sell a LOT to earn back their investment. Game prices have been the same or even getting lower in the past 20 years, yet development costs have gone up by at least 10 times. With the rampant piracy and devaluation of games because of bundles and mobile/tablet platforms publishers and developers feel forced to do everything within their power to protect their games.
I agree, DRM does more harm than good, but the gamedev industry is a very tough and unstable industry. The animosity that game developers and publishers receive compared to how much effort they put in their games is mind boggling. It is like people have no clue how hard game developers work. It is quite incomparable to any other IT job I know, the crunches are brutal and you often have to relocate quite a bit and there are frequent lay offs after a game ships. How much cheers and praise piracy gets for essentially taking bread out of hard working peoples mouths is even more depressing.
If you only care about the bottom-line (Money), why would you get into the game industry? When you could save all that trouble and start a real estate agency or accounting company instead, and not have to struggle with small profit margins in an unstable industry. Its just insanity.
That's the problem with big game companies, they are unstable simply because they only care about the bottom-line. They only care about getting bigger and bigger, and then requiring more and more money to fill the needs of its ever increasing (and already absurd) size. This ends up becoming a huge bubble that the companies have to go into crisis mode when revenue stops increasing (which has to happen eventually).
Keep in mind that these kinds of greedy for-profit businesses work on the basis that they want more profit every year, to pay their shareholders/executives, that means less money proportionally goes into development each year as well. The problem is not piracy at all. In this industry companies are eventually going to hit a brick wall and stop making more money, and when that happens these companies that absurdly rely on positive forecasts every year are going to go into crisis mode. That's where the problem lies.
Note that Valve isn't having anything like the kind of problems that other big gaming companies have, its not to do with the business model, its that they basically don't have sponsors and shareholders to worry about, and act like a not-for-profit business. I'm pretty sure most if not all of the proceeds are directly invested straight back into Valve.
Even if piracy was as prevalent 20 years ago, game companies wouldn't need DRM because they didn't need to sell a million copies of a game just to break even, and didn't work on the same profit margins and greedy business models.
The fact that flat-lined revenue is a crisis for big game companies is their own damn fault, a game is a luxury not a necessity, we can't expect money to increasingly pour into game companies forever in an ever increasingly competitive market. If not for piracy, something else would have happened and these companies would have the same problem. A lot more revenue was generated from people playing cod, than first generation consoles, companies are making more money than ever before and are still complaining.
Its just dumb business logic to expect to run a business based on profit in the game industry, when there are much more viable markets to be conducting business in that way.
So that is your solution, stop making games because it does not make sense to make games? I agree with you though, it is simply dumb to start a game development company these days. It requires a ton of skill, dedication, risk, investment and time and a company gets little in return. I have worked in many different IT sectors and game development is by far the least rewarding in terms of revenue, but for me it is the most rewarding considering how fun it is to actually make games.
Sure, there are a hand full of companies that do manage to stay on top for a while. Someone mentioned Valve and Valve just has everything going for them, even though it is just a matter of time they make one product that is not perfect and get shit on. Look at Blizzard, one game, D3 does not live up to expectations and they take a massive hit in reputation that will have a major influence on future sales, even though they have been producing top quality games for decades.
It is like digging for gold or oil, there are a couple of success stories and a whole lot of failures. Also, the person who thinks the game development industry is run by greed is flat out wrong. Companies just want to stay in business so they can keep making games and one failure means bankruptcy and that can lead to very protective/safe game development with little innovation.
You're exaggerating the issues by a massive degree.
One failure only means bankruptcy when millions of dollars are spent on it. And for that matter, it has to be an absolutely spectacular failure to destroy a massive company.
Take a look at Gearbox. Duke Nukem Forever, complete flop...but it certainly didn't kill any hype for Borderlands 2. Aliens: Colonial Marines, a completely trash game that got brutalized by players and reviewers...no bankruptcy.
The only time a single game is going to destroy an entire company is when they overspend, devote almost everything they have into it, and fail to turn profit. Anything short of that means the CEO actually managed his resources properly.
Just to be clear, game developers don't want to integrate DRM solutions in their games, it is a major hassle. Does anyone think that DRM would be in if there would not be piracy? But if you build 10000 cars and put them in a holding area and 9000 get stolen, then at some point you are going to put a lock or a fence somewhere.
Car analogies are always so stupid...
If you build 10000 cars, find 20000 exact duplicates on the road the next day, but still sell 98% of your cars, would you keep every employee you have under complete security lockdown for the entirety of their employment? And when all of your employees quit, do you act as though it was the copycats that drove away your work force?
DRM is never about recovering losses. It's about pretending that potential sales are recoverable lost sales, and sacrificing reputation, customer rapport and real money and resources into the hopes that you gain enough of those potential sales to offset the differences.
No, I am not exaggerating at all. You thinking I am exaggerating shows that you don't know how bad it really is. Maybe there are a couple of companies from the 90's that still had some money. Back then 1 success could cover about 4 failures. But the newer game development studios really can't survive a single failure. Hell, the money even isn't at the game development studios anymore, it is at the publishers. Game development studios get "hired" to build a game by a publisher, if it fails the game development studio is done. The money a game development studio gets for making a game covers only that game, nothing more.
Like I said, DRM is stupid, but people spend more time blaming DRM than they spend actively speaking out against piracy, and that is what annoys me. DRM is there because if you don't you will get a 90%+ piracy rate, and again that is no exaggeration. I am not saying this means a company misses out on 90% of its sales, but it does make a big difference.
If that was the case then why did Valve experience a record 50% growth (2012) in a supposed bad period of the games industry. Not to mention that TF2 and Dota2 are free games, even on release TF2 was a fraction of the price of other retail games without micro-transactions.
Valve is growing faster now than EA did when EA didn't even have to compete with pirates.
It makes no sense for EA to be worried about losing money to piracy when overall revenue in the market is increasing.
If a games company is going to go bankrupt over one failed game (not to mention EA has several franchises to buffer its losses) then it is its own damn fault. DRM is just a stupid excuse for the fact that they waste so much money and blame it on piracy.
There is a transition from retail to digital. It is more of a shift than an increase, Valve is riding that wave. Also, Valve is more of a store owner these days than a game developer. They take about 30% of all sales on the Steam store. On the steam store a LOT of games are sold, but they are often also sold at bargain prices or in bundles which is bad news in the long run of the game development industry, but it is good for Valve in the short term.
A game company receiving 70% of a sale on a game that was discounted by steam is more than they would have received in the first place, so it is not necessarily bad. There are a bunch of games that I purchased on steam that I would not have if they weren't discounted, so again not necessarily bad. Also a cheaper end product isn't even bad. I would gladly sell a game I developed for 10 cents if everyone in the world bought it. Trust me I would
Yeah, maybe you are right. It depends on if the balance shifts away from people buying a game at full price to only buying it in the bargain bin. For the bigger titles the bargain bin alone will likely not be enough to cover expenses, but for smaller companies and indies Valve and Steam are a gift from heaven at this point in time. I am not sure if it will last.
There have been numerous reports from game companies saying that their total revenue increases by 200%+ when their games go on sale for 50% or more off from Steam.
"Bargain bin" implies that the optimal price for big games is actually $60, but there's a lot of evidence saying that such a high price point drives off a large part of the market. It's simple Supply and Demand, you have to set a price point that maximizes profits.
So what is your solution then? Games actually need to sell a LOT to earn back their investment. Game prices have been the same or even getting lower in the past 20 years, yet development costs have gone up by at least 10 times. With the rampant piracy and devaluation of games because of bundles and mobile/tablet platforms publishers and developers feel forced to do everything within their power to protect their games.
I agree, DRM does more harm than good, but the gamedev industry is a very tough and unstable industry. The animosity that game developers and publishers receive compared to how much effort they put in their games is mind boggling. It is like people have no clue how hard game developers work. It is quite incomparable to any other IT job I know, the crunches are brutal and you often have to relocate quite a bit and there are frequent lay offs after a game ships. How much cheers and praise piracy gets for essentially taking bread out of hard working peoples mouths is even more depressing.
If you only care about the bottom-line (Money), why would you get into the game industry? When you could save all that trouble and start a real estate agency or accounting company instead, and not have to struggle with small profit margins in an unstable industry. Its just insanity.
That's the problem with big game companies, they are unstable simply because they only care about the bottom-line. They only care about getting bigger and bigger, and then requiring more and more money to fill the needs of its ever increasing (and already absurd) size. This ends up becoming a huge bubble that the companies have to go into crisis mode when revenue stops increasing (which has to happen eventually).
Keep in mind that these kinds of greedy for-profit businesses work on the basis that they want more profit every year, to pay their shareholders/executives, that means less money proportionally goes into development each year as well. The problem is not piracy at all. In this industry companies are eventually going to hit a brick wall and stop making more money, and when that happens these companies that absurdly rely on positive forecasts every year are going to go into crisis mode. That's where the problem lies.
Note that Valve isn't having anything like the kind of problems that other big gaming companies have, its not to do with the business model, its that they basically don't have sponsors and shareholders to worry about, and act like a not-for-profit business. I'm pretty sure most if not all of the proceeds are directly invested straight back into Valve.
Even if piracy was as prevalent 20 years ago, game companies wouldn't need DRM because they didn't need to sell a million copies of a game just to break even, and didn't work on the same profit margins and greedy business models.
The fact that flat-lined revenue is a crisis for big game companies is their own damn fault, a game is a luxury not a necessity, we can't expect money to increasingly pour into game companies forever in an ever increasingly competitive market. If not for piracy, something else would have happened and these companies would have the same problem. A lot more revenue was generated from people playing cod, than first generation consoles, companies are making more money than ever before and are still complaining.
Its just dumb business logic to expect to run a business based on profit in the game industry, when there are much more viable markets to be conducting business in that way.
So that is your solution, stop making games because it does not make sense to make games? I agree with you though, it is simply dumb to start a game development company these days. It requires a ton of skill, dedication, risk, investment and time and a company gets little in return. I have worked in many different IT sectors and game development is by far the least rewarding in terms of revenue, but for me it is the most rewarding considering how fun it is to actually make games.
Sure, there are a hand full of companies that do manage to stay on top for a while. Someone mentioned Valve and Valve just has everything going for them, even though it is just a matter of time they make one product that is not perfect and get shit on. Look at Blizzard, one game, D3 does not live up to expectations and they take a massive hit in reputation that will have a major influence on future sales, even though they have been producing top quality games for decades.
It is like digging for gold or oil, there are a couple of success stories and a whole lot of failures. Also, the person who thinks the game development industry is run by greed is flat out wrong. Companies just want to stay in business so they can keep making games and one failure means bankruptcy and that can lead to very protective/safe game development with little innovation.
You're exaggerating the issues by a massive degree.
One failure only means bankruptcy when millions of dollars are spent on it. And for that matter, it has to be an absolutely spectacular failure to destroy a massive company.
Take a look at Gearbox. Duke Nukem Forever, complete flop...but it certainly didn't kill any hype for Borderlands 2. Aliens: Colonial Marines, a completely trash game that got brutalized by players and reviewers...no bankruptcy.
The only time a single game is going to destroy an entire company is when they overspend, devote almost everything they have into it, and fail to turn profit. Anything short of that means the CEO actually managed his resources properly.
Just to be clear, game developers don't want to integrate DRM solutions in their games, it is a major hassle. Does anyone think that DRM would be in if there would not be piracy? But if you build 10000 cars and put them in a holding area and 9000 get stolen, then at some point you are going to put a lock or a fence somewhere.
Car analogies are always so stupid...
If you build 10000 cars, find 20000 exact duplicates on the road the next day, but still sell 98% of your cars, would you keep every employee you have under complete security lockdown for the entirety of their employment? And when all of your employees quit, do you act as though it was the copycats that drove away your work force?
DRM is never about recovering losses. It's about pretending that potential sales are recoverable lost sales, and sacrificing reputation, customer rapport and real money and resources into the hopes that you gain enough of those potential sales to offset the differences.
No, I am not exaggerating at all. You thinking I am exaggerating shows that you don't know how bad it really is. Maybe there are a couple of companies from the 90's that still had some money. Back then 1 success could cover about 4 failures. But the newer game development studios really can't survive a single failure. Hell, the money even isn't at the game development studios anymore, it is at the publishers. Game development studios get "hired" to build a game by a publisher, if it fails the game development studio is done. The money a game development studio gets for making a game covers only that game, nothing more.
Like I said, DRM is stupid, but people spend more time blaming DRM than they spend actively speaking out against piracy, and that is what annoys me. DRM is there because if you don't you will get a 90%+ piracy rate, and again that is no exaggeration. I am not saying this means a company misses out on 90% of its sales, but it does make a big difference.
If that was the case then why did Valve experience a record 50% growth (2012) in a supposed bad period of the games industry. Not to mention that TF2 and Dota2 are free games, even on release TF2 was a fraction of the price of other retail games without micro-transactions.
Valve is growing faster now than EA did when EA didn't even have to compete with pirates.
It makes no sense for EA to be worried about losing money to piracy when overall revenue in the market is increasing.
If a games company is going to go bankrupt over one failed game (not to mention EA has several franchises to buffer its losses) then it is its own damn fault. DRM is just a stupid excuse for the fact that they waste so much money and blame it on piracy.
There is a transition from retail to digital. It is more of a shift than an increase, Valve is riding that wave. Also, Valve is more of a store owner these days than a game developer. They take about 30% of all sales on the Steam store. On the steam store a LOT of games are sold, but they are often also sold at bargain prices or in bundles which is bad news in the long run of the game development industry, but it is good for Valve in the short term.
A game company receiving 70% of a sale on a game that was discounted by steam is more than they would have received in the first place, so it is not necessarily bad. There are a bunch of games that I purchased on steam that I would not have if they weren't discounted, so again not necessarily bad. Also a cheaper end product isn't even bad. I would gladly sell a game I developed for 10 cents if everyone in the world bought it. Trust me I would
Yeah, maybe you are right. It depends on if the balance shifts away from people buying a game at full price to only buying it in the bargain bin. For the bigger titles the bargain bin alone will likely not be enough to cover expenses, but for smaller companies and indies Valve and Steam are a gift from heaven at this point in time. I am not sure if it will last.
There have been numerous reports from game companies saying that their total revenue increases by 200%+ when their games go on sale for 50% or more off from Steam.
"Bargain bin" implies that the optimal price for big games is actually $60, but there's a lot of evidence saying that such a high price point drives off a large part of the market. It's simple Supply and Demand, you have to set a price point that maximizes profits.
good points. in regards to the 60 dollaars i think the industries been used to it for so long that now that there's a market shift towards cheaper games the companies are all getting hit by it cause their entire budgets are still based around the way it was a couple years ago
EA is getting really close to achiave something marvelous, they have the NEXT BIG THING in esport called FIFA. Also they should lower their price, ppl cant afford buy EA game every 2 months
This video is a great argument why EA will never change - granted it was created in a different context, but it clearly spells out the effects of institutional momentum. Simply put, EA can't change, no matter who is the figurehead.
This video is a great argument why EA will never change - granted it was created in a different context, but it clearly spells out the effects of institutional momentum. Simply put, EA can't change, no matter who is the figurehead.
If you subscribe to theory of trickle down attitude or tone, was it?, then changing the top honcho should make the most impact.
This video is a great argument why EA will never change - granted it was created in a different context, but it clearly spells out the effects of institutional momentum. Simply put, EA can't change, no matter who is the figurehead.
If you subscribe to theory of trickle down attitude or tone, was it?, then changing the top honcho should make the most impact.
Yeah, except big publicly-traded companies choose experienced business execs, not inspired gamers, to run large companies... This is not going to change EA.
This video is a great argument why EA will never change - granted it was created in a different context, but it clearly spells out the effects of institutional momentum. Simply put, EA can't change, no matter who is the figurehead.
If you subscribe to theory of trickle down attitude or tone, was it?, then changing the top honcho should make the most impact.
The point is the culture at the top of EA is necessarily going to be the same due to their whole institution's top goal being that institution's survival in its current form.
That trickle down part is more to do with the BioWare side and how they can't escape EA's influence.
EPT
the "mindless masses"... My apologies for enjoying EA games. Bitch on your own time, but don't insinuate I'm "mindless" because I enjoy BF3 or Need for Speed.
lol but I'll reside the 'large' urge. This is actually good imo, the company has been taking a terrible direction for many years and it's just simply losing it's prose. 
). But there aren't that many indies that can keep doing it for more than a couple of years and the ones that do make it often resort to the same methods AAA studios do, like making expansions, sequels, etc.![[image loading]](http://v.cdn.cad-comic.com/comics/cad-20130320-c775d.png)
