Titan Quest producer rants on PC market.

[Sir_Brennus]

Before the discussion goes out of hand, let's consider some FACTS

@Section8

A major success on the PC market for an AMERICAN game was achieved at 1M sold units - at least that was the situation in the days of Ion Storm. The production of games has gotten considerable more expansive since then. The price of a major movie has roughly doubled since 1999 and so have the costs for a major PC game - the reason is the global investment into the entertainment industrie. So, all in all, 2M sold units are a probably CORRECT figure.

@Brother None

Piracy is TEH EVILS! Both Iron Lore and THQ made quite an effort to make people BUY the fucking game. I bought it TWICE! One for only 23€ from Australia and one Collector's Edition with an Art Book and a FULL FLEDGED MARBLE KEYBOARD! That is something you don't get everywhere. They released a full german localisation more than 6 MONTHS after the game was released - they invested in the game AFTER its normal product cycle!

@Naked Ninja

Forget it - noone here listens to the voice of reason anymore.

@ whoever wrote that

DOOM had insane hardware specification - I actually bought a complete new rig to play it.

@ all

1. The reason why Blizz could establish those franchises is: It was about 10 fucking years ago. You can't make modern legends on the PC atm.

2. Witcher is NO exception. 600k sales are good for a game that was produced for A LOT LESS MONEY than it would've cost in the USA. Same goes for Two Worlds, btw. And IF Witcher cannot establish a new franchise because it's already PART OF AN EXSISTING FRANCHISE!

3. Everybody mourned Troika around here - why not Iron Lore?

4. Good single player games on PC will come more and more from middle and eastern Europe - maybe even the Phillipenes or India, because it reduces production costs in a massive way. Why does UBISOFT produce every second game in China? Because IT IS CHEAPER!

@Iron Lore guy

Sorry to lose another freelance team. I liked Sacred more, though.

 

[Hory]

3. Everybody mourned Troika around here - why not Iron Lore?

Are you serious? We mourned the loss of passionate, struggling artists. Judging by Titan Quest, Iron Lore aren't just business men primarily, but they're almost exclusively commercially-minded, with no regard or creative ambitions in the craft of game design.

 

[Sir_Brennus]

3. Everybody mourned Troika around here - why not Iron Lore?

Are you serious? We mourned the loss of passionate, struggling artists. Judging by Titan Quest, Iron Lore aren't just business men primarily, but they're almost exclusively commercially-minded, with no regard or creative interest for the craft of game design.

I can't believe that you really believe the BS you are spreading around here.

Maybe you didn't like the TQ games or Soulstorm - but why do you think those guys weren't passionate? They pumped out stuff without someone (THQ for that matter) paying them. And if you look closely - their games are as much art as Troika's games were. And they produced a lot less lackluster than Troika did with TOEE and VtMBL.

EDIT: Think about it a bit more... What defines a artist in game industry in your terms, as you obviously are the one and only to "judge" games on their artistic aspect?

 

[Naked Ninja]

Are you serious? We mourned the loss of passionate, struggling artists. Judging by Titan Quest, Iron Lore aren't just business men primarily, but they're almost exclusively commercially-minded, with no regard or creative interest for the craft of game design.

The headpain again....

You realise how shortsighted that mindset is? Hey, someone got mugged outside your house. Oh well, didn't like him anyway.

Focusing.on.the.wrong.thing. How long before it's someone you care for, with crime happening in your neighborhood like that?

Except, with gaming, you don't need to feel that uncertainty. It's happening all the time, to all developers. The guys you like? Them too.

 

[Raapys]

Uh, so you're comapring Troika with Iron Lore? O_O

 

[Brother None]

Uh, so you're comapring Troika with Iron Lore? O_O

The way they went down is similar, and symptomatic of the problem of publishers. In other words, the death of both companies served to show the exact same problem in the publishing model we have.

Comparing the companies is not apt, comparing the way they died is.

 

[Sir_Brennus]

Uh, so you're comapring Troika with Iron Lore? O_O

1. Both founded by industry veterans.

2. Both involved in the production of modern legends (Fallout / Diablo)

3. Both freelance producers.

4. Both squeezed in the sandwich of not getting paid anymore and not getting paid yet.

5. Both accused of sloppy coding.

6. Both getting fucked by their publishers.

7. Both tried to rescue themselves with games for well known franchises (D&D, VtM, WH40k)

No, I would never do such thing.... :shock:

 

[Raapys]

8. One of them made great games.

9. One of them didn't.


Why mourn the one who didn't?

 

[denizsi]

(6 months after SoW has been released)

Naked Ninja: MY GAME DIDNT SELL! THEM FILTHY PIRATES!

 

[Sir_Brennus]

8. One of them made great games.

9. One of them didn't.


Why mourn the one who didn't?

I don't know why you are so smug? The company that was called Troika did this:

1. Arcanum= orginal, but fundamentally flawed game with crappy combat, intransparent character system and a myriad of bugs THAT NEVER WERE IRONED OUT! As Vault Dweller used to say "Bugs COULD'VE been corrected - shitty design is forever."

2. TOEE = Nice, but lame engine. Cool ruleset and slow, but precise combat. No story. Laughable dialogue. Worst first 30 minutes of play EVAR!

3. VtMBL = More hardware demanding than everything Iron Lore produced. A fine take on the Deus Ex formular. Less atmospheric than Redemption. Full of bugs, broken combat, broken quests, broken dialogues. Twitch combat.

Don't you think we should judge Troika like this?

EDIT: I bought all those games, too. I am not responsible for any of this.

 

[Raapys]

I don't really care how *you* judge Troika, fact is most people here liked the games they made, while few( that I've noticed ) cared about the games Iron Lore made. That's all there is to it. Why mourn something we're not gonna miss? Hoping they'll get better with time?

 

[Sir_Brennus]

I don't really care how *you* judge Troika, fact is most people here liked the games they made, while few( that I've noticed ) cared about the games Iron Lore made. That's all there is to it. Why mourn something we're not gonna miss? Hoping they'll get better with time?

I don't care how +you+ judge them. I only see another nail on the coffin of PC gaming. If this is cool for you, then ... cool for you.

BTW: You dodged my comparison. No answer from you speaks for itself. *Sigh* where is Vault Dweller when you need to identify a shithead who is only able to discuss in circular logic.

 

[Naked Ninja]

I only see another nail on the coffin of PC gaming

QFT. Seriously, so short sighted it's not even funny. You guys do realise piracy is also harder on indies than mainstream right? Mainstream gets paid for their time BEFORE the game goes on sale. If they make no profits, the publisher swallows the loss, their employess move on, but they got paid for their time for X years already. No gain but no loss. Indie...well you spent all your savings and no return. Damn. Game over. The guys who make yet another mainstream shooter clone will swallow the loss more easily. Indies are like NPCs with 2 hit points. Fragile. But hey, you wanted the game, right? And it's free because it's on torrents, isn't it?

 

[Raapys]

Ahh, so that's where we disagree. You see the loss of Iron Lore( who were at the time they went bankrupt shifting their focus toward the console market too ) as a big loss for PC gaming, and I don't.

What exactly did you want me to say in regards to your comparison? My one and only point on this page was that Troika made good games and Iron Lore didn't; I was simply answering the previous question about why "we" were mourning Troika but not Iron Lore.

 

[vrok]

4. Good single player games on PC will come more and more from middle and eastern Europe - maybe even the Phillipenes or India, because it reduces production costs in a massive way. Why does UBISOFT produce every second game in China? Because IT IS CHEAPER!

So? It's being done to everything else, why not the gaming industry too? It's only a bad thing if you're a communist or a redneck! You're not a redneck are you?

 

[Section8]

Oh thats bull and you know it. Have you never pirated something before? You get a game you want for free and the motivation to pay for it is almost 0 afterwards. You tell your friends it's cool and generally they will ask you for a ripped copy. Gained through education my ass.

When I was at uni, I pirated a shitload of games. I had a mate who was a courier and we'd wind up with absolutely everything on the network within minutes of release. Did I still buy games during that period? Yes. As many as I could afford after beer and rent. Did I buy games I already had pirate copies of? Yes. I snagged a copy of Fallout 2 and played some ridiculous marathon sessions of it. I basically played it non-stop up until next payday, when I even delved into my beer fund to buy a legit copy.

Of course, I don't for a second believe that's a typical experience. But there's a common ground here - motivation to pay for something doesn't mean shit if you can't pay for it. If I hadn't been able to pirate so many games so easily, I would have been forced to find other ways to amuse myself. I'm guessing I would have spent a lot more time at the library.

Many. There is a difference between a time and content limited taste to influence you to buy the game and a free and full copy sitting on your drive for as long as you feel like playing it. Dude, cut it out, you're smarter than this nonsense.

Of course there's a huge difference, and one relies on a gentle form of coercion, while the other requires a conscious moral decision. Still, there would be a certain "conversion rate" associated with both forms. It's just a question of whether the piracy conversion rate is greater than the figure for "people who would have bought the game if they couldn't pirate it".

Wow! They sure showed them! That's an abysmal conversion rate. All it takes is for those thousand pirates to recommend the game to two more ethical customers, either directly or indirectly and you've got double the conversion rate for letting rampant pirates market for you. Does that seem that far fetched to you?

Yes. Incredibly far-fetched. Each pirate will share it with a few friends, who will share it with their friends, etc etc...read the article. With that "abysmal conversion rate" they upped sales 70% and enabled them to grow their company further. This is pretty frikken clear. When thwarted in their desires, most pirates give up, but enough will then buy it legitimately to justify it.

"Sharing with friends" is establishing a presence in the market. I know floppy disks with Doom on them spread like wildfire through high school when we were all too young to be able to afford it. When we all had part-time jobs, at least a dozen of us bought Quake because it was the next big thing from "the Doom guys". We all pirated Civilisation. We all bought Civilisation 2. Hell, I grew up on a C64 and an Amiga 500, and probably had about 50 pirated games for every legit copy I bought/got as a present, etc. As a result, I grew up to be a guy who spends the lion's share of his income on games. Well, used to. I've found less and less worth spending my money on.

Of course that doesn't help in the short term, but I think it very likely the word-of-mouth from a thousand pirates results in far more than just a single sale in addition to the effects of establishing a presence in the market to be exploited at a later date.

That 70% you mentioned? It's very impressive, but doesn't really prove anything, other than applying stricter DRM to products with an existing market presence twisted the arm of a very small portion of players (70% of 8% = 5.6%)*. Yes, it's not to be scoffed at, since it's a huge increase in revenue - but it doesn't account for the effect that an audience 1150% bigger than your paying audience has on attracting customers.

I don't know about you, but I'd rather 100,000 people playing my game with 8,000 paying customers, vs only 13,600 people playing the game. I just think the former has so much more potential. If anything, the 92,000 pirates have even more cause to be positive because they can't possibly consider your game "a waste of money". :D

Argument dismissed for personal bias. I got it, you didn't like the game. It didn't do it for me either. But get a grip on this now, it's colouring your logic. I wouldnt buy the reflexive guys 2D shooter clone either, yet clamping piracy converted 1 in 1000 pirates, people who liked what I don't, a miniscule fraction. Yet enough to return 70% greater profits. This is incredibly telling.

The problem is - we're part of Titan Quest's limited target demographic. We're supposed to enjoy it, but we don't. That's a serious problem. The Reflexive games are cheaper and targeted at a wider audience, so they can live without a couple of RPG enthusiasts that wouldn't be interested anyway. And that 70% again?

Fix 1 – Existing Exploits & Keygens made obsolete – Sales up 70%, Downloads down 33%

Fix 2 – Existing Keygens made obsolete – Sales down slightly, Downloads flat

Fix 3 – Existing Cracks made obsolete – Sales flat, Downloads flat

Fix 4 – Keygens made game-specific – Sales up 13%, Downloads down 16% (note: fix made after the release of Ricochet Infinity)

There's not enough context there to prove anything. They did it once, and sales spiked 70%, downloads dropped significantly. They did it again twice for a net effect that is slightly negative. You'd have to consider the other factors at the point in time where "Fix 1" occured for those figures to mean anything. Also, there's no real explanation of the figures. I get the impression they're talking about the site as a whole and not just that single shooter. There's no mention of the period in which they made 70% more sales.

It sounds nice, but I wouldn't want to use any of it to form a concrete argument about anything.

* Yeah, I know that's a bit arbitrary, since the 92% applies to a single game, while the 70% seems to apply to all game sales from the website.

 

[Section8]

A major success on the PC market for an AMERICAN game was achieved at 1M sold units - at least that was the situation in the days of Ion Storm. The production of games has gotten considerable more expansive since then. The price of a major movie has roughly doubled since 1999 and so have the costs for a major PC game - the reason is the global investment into the entertainment industrie. So, all in all, 2M sold units are a probably CORRECT figure.

If Wikipedia is to be believed, then PC game developers are fucking idiots, because that's a very elusive goal. So what do you do? Try to magic your way into the hearts of 2 million paying gamers, or reduce production costs? Incidentally, I can't see any external reason why game development is more costly. Outsourcing is more viable, tools are cheaper and more accessible, the competitive nature of the industry means you can pay idealistic kids a pittance, etc. The only reason games are more expensive to develop, is because developers willingly push technology toward more intensive content.

Funnily enough, the most ridiculous success story in recent years - didn't.

As for why Troika are grieved and Iron Lore aren't - it has nothing to to with the little guys involved. Any developer has passionate staff that toil for ridiculous hours and it's always sad when they inevitably end up without a job. However, in the big scheme of things, it's better that that talent isn't being wasted on something like Titan Quest. You guys see a nail in the coffin. I see a bunch of free agents who can hopefully find a better home and put their talents toward something of value.

 

[The Feral Kid]

8. One of them made great games.

Tell us one so we can gather and have a laugh.

Anyway have to disagree with some of the points mad by Sir_Brennus. With all the criticism Troika deserve because its not always the "evil" publishers' fault, they themselves fucked up too- only a retarded fanboy can't see that- at least they were trying to bring some innovation and variation to the genre. As well as some good design ideas that weren't implemented right. And they were trying for true rpgs not action crapfests. These Titan Quest guys were just going with the flow of about 90% of the games out there. Just reproduce action rpg cliches to keep the old fanbase, with an update to the graphics so we can lure noobs. I mean the companies that make such games don't even bother to change the names of their games anymore. From Dungeon Diege you now get Space Siege and so on and so forth. I'm sure they had decided to keep the "Siege" part far before any decision about the actual game was made just for marketing reasons. I hope the same happens to all of them.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

I will say this, there are times when copy protection has actually kept me from buying games. I don't pirate them, but I sure as hell won't buy a game with copy protection that's questionable. I really dug The Sims 2, but EA's new copy protection has turned me away from buying any of the more recent expansion packs which would have been sure fire sales for them.

In fact, most of the time, the games I buy these days are download versions of the game from places like Direct2Drive or Stardock's little service. BTW, I detested Sins of a Solar Empire.

I really don't want to have to go on the internet after I install a game and find the utility that removes the copy protection afterwards. I really don't like the idea of copy protection schemes that are always running long after the game is gone or don't allow me to use virtual drives(which come in handy for things like VMWare). I want all of what I do functional all the time. It's silly to expect me to take the hit for buying your software to insure someone else might buy it as well.

 

[Hory]

Focusing.on.the.wrong.thing. How long before it's someone you care for, with crime happening in your neighborhood like that?

I was focusing on the difference between Troika and Iron Lore, because this focused question was posed. You're the one focusing on the wrong thing - arguing with my reply.

(April 2015 - 6 months after SoW has been released)

Fixed.

I only see another nail on the coffin of PC gaming.

I see a justified nail. Game cloning factories are of no help to PC gaming.

 

[Volrath]

From the TQ patch note:

- Fixed crash caused by teleporting in multiplayer after players used Rally skill
- Fixed a multiplayer lobby crash
- Fixed a memory leak
- Fixed system modal dialogs showing up behind the Editor window
- Fixed a 'Fatal Error' message appearing when the game is booting up after the update process on a system with a Mobility(tm) Radeon® 9200
- Fixed crashes and graphical corruptions related to low video memory on PCs
- Fixed crash when loading a custom map in-game that contains a sheep herder
- Implemented logging system to track crashes in Titan Quest(tm). Upon a crash, Titan Quest(tm) will create a log file named "Exceptions.txt" in the My Games\Titan Quest directory.
- Fixed bug in quest system where quests updating on certain conditions could cause the game to crash and corrupt quest data
- Fixed crash issues involving teleporting
- Fixed pathing crashes involved with entering and leaving underground areas
- Fixed crashes involving the Alt-Tab function
- Fixed crash issue which could occur when standing at the same coordinates as an item and attempting to pick it up
- Fixed the 'Fatal Error' message appearing when trying to boot up Titan Quest(tm) with Virtual Memory turned off
- Implemented a minidump file into the crash logging system
- Fixed a crash bug where projectiles would travel outside the rendered gameplay space
- Fixed a crash bug where the physics engine could attempt to access objects after they had been removed from the world
- Fixed a crash bug where the game could possibly attempt to update the location of a character that had already died
- Fixed a crash bug affecting defective monster patrol points
- Fixed a crash bug involving target leading with projectiles

lol irony

 

[obediah]

There is no overlap in the computer game market where gamers get what they want and developers succeed financially.

Gamers are best served when innovation and budget-be-damned desire for perfection are rampant enough to keep a steady stream of potential gems coming across the plate. But that mindset ALWAYS puts a developer out of business. A consumer shouldn't care - a developer pops up give 1-2 home runs, and breaks up. Their team mingles with other teams and maybe you get another team that puts out a great game.

Developers are best served by a dependable minimum revenue stream. Trying to wow gamers is comparable to spending your budget on lottery tickets. And most developers (even ones with a few hits under their belt) are stretched thin and one bomb or major delay away from closing their doors (or being bailed out by EA).

 

[Sir_Brennus]

If Wikipedia is to be believed, then PC game developers are fucking idiots, because that's a very elusive goal. So what do you do? Try to magic your way into the hearts of 2 million paying gamers, or reduce production costs? Incidentally, I can't see any external reason why game development is more costly. Outsourcing is more viable, tools are cheaper and more accessible, the competitive nature of the industry means you can pay idealistic kids a pittance, etc. The only reason games are more expensive to develop, is because developers willingly push technology toward more intensive content.

Funny side remark: You quoting Wiki gives me a smile, because you once accused me of lowering my credibility for doing so

If you have some understanding for (or like me a degree in) economics you must acknowledge the fact the sheer amount of floating investment money on this planet has lead to an rediculous increase in production cost for entertainment products, especially movies, music and games.

Is the push for leading edge technology the reason for that? Partially it is - but TO A LESSER DEGREE for PC games. You ask why? Look at the production of Crysis: Most of the grafix tech was delivered directly from NVIDIA!

NVIDIA invested 5500 manhours into the game. 2000 by devtech engineers who helped at Crytek + 2500 at Nvidia itself + 500 hours of driver optimisation + 500 tests and Q&A. (quote from Bernhard Gleissner, CEO Nvidia Europe)

On top of that Nvidia spent according to fuzilla 4 to 5 million $ on Crysis marketing and add ANOTHER 4 million $ for the presence of their logo in the game.

So, on the PC Intel, AMD and Nvidia are willing to contribute for the rising costs in development of bleeding edge tech. That equals that out.

What else does cost so much more? Everything else! Desingers, Testers, support, Coders, Studios, etc. With millions and millions of hedge fund money (think of Bono's Elevation Partners) available the prices rise according to the risen demand. Simple price theory.

If you want someone to blame for the enormous amount of money a game HAS to make to be profitable - take global capitalism.

 

[The Feral Kid]

And something else. There's big difference between going to piracy cause you cannot afford prices or out of laziness/easy access to games through fast downloads, and between doing it as a form of protest for all the crap and repetition/lack of innovation that's been coming to the pc in recent years. Consoles are a major reason for that because most of these games are cross-platform.

 

[Raapys]

Like Section8 says, it's the developers that choose to put more and more money into the development. Look at games like Crysis or Age of Empires. One game( Crysis ) had a single dedicated developer that was doing nothing but programming the breaking of trees when shot upon. The other( AoE3 ) had a programmer working on the water effects for an entire year. I mean, are they stupid or what?

Anyone played Space Empires 4/5 or Dominions 2/3? Both of those have a single programmer each. That's how much a single programmer can do( with some outside help for the art-work ), while these other developers are assigning their programmers to make the coolest water or tree effects.