Good Old Games Interview
Good Old Games Interview
Interview - posted by VentilatorOfDoom on Mon 27 September 2010, 15:21:55
Tags: CD ProjektBig Download interviewed CD Projekt's co-founder Marcin Iwinski, topics are the GoG closure hoax and their future endeavours.
First we can't escape the fact that on Sunday, it looked like GOG.com was shutting down its operations. You guys have since apologized for the marketing stunt but you must have known that this kind of thing could be distressing to your loyal customers. Looking back do you think you should have promoted the re-launch differently?
Indeed after the "closure" on Sunday there were a lot of comments with the whole range of reactions - from votes of support and concern to explicit lyrics. We were looking at this carefully and we have decided to adjust our plan, coming up with additional statement on Monday clearly communicating, that all our users will be able to re-download all of their games DRM-free from Thursday onwards and then on Tuesday we decided to release a teaser video, which had a few shots of the new site and Baldur's Gate in it. Finally, the monk's outfits came up as a last minute idea to ask for real redemption for our sins - i.e. the sudden "closure" and lack of access to the site for 3 days.
Again, we have clearly admitted during our conference, that we think the industry is dead serious these days and we - being the old-school gamers we did plan a game with our audience. Yes, we wanted to make something really special for our 2nd anniversary and at the same time popularize good old games a bit more.
We are continuously looking through our forums and the web and yes, we still have a few surprises up our sleeves for our dear users. Obviously, we will be working hard now to regain the trust of the users, who did not feel good about our stunt, as we do value them and both the happy and unhappy ones are a vital part of our good old games community. I would like to encourage our faithful users to keep an eye on their mailboxes - there will be some surprises coming their way real soon.
Looking at the past week and analyzing the reactions and comments about GOG.com all across the web, I have to say that we have clearly underestimated one thing. We realized that a lot of users were thinking of GOG.com as any other digital distribution platform, where a constant Internet connection is needed to access and play the games you bought. While with GOG.com, you download the games and then you enjoy them without the necessity to connect to the Internet. The option of unlimited numbers of re-downloads of the games you bought is just a backup plan for our users - not a necessity.
More and more titles are becoming Internet-dependent and thus force users to have a working connection simply to... play the titles they bought. Not everybody has access to the Internet anywhere, anytime – not mentioning that your ISP can sometimes go down as well, which is a concern for gamers. The industry needs to address that.
I was busy the last few days, so I'm not up to date. Is GoG evil? Do we hate it now, or what?
Spotted at: GB
First we can't escape the fact that on Sunday, it looked like GOG.com was shutting down its operations. You guys have since apologized for the marketing stunt but you must have known that this kind of thing could be distressing to your loyal customers. Looking back do you think you should have promoted the re-launch differently?
Indeed after the "closure" on Sunday there were a lot of comments with the whole range of reactions - from votes of support and concern to explicit lyrics. We were looking at this carefully and we have decided to adjust our plan, coming up with additional statement on Monday clearly communicating, that all our users will be able to re-download all of their games DRM-free from Thursday onwards and then on Tuesday we decided to release a teaser video, which had a few shots of the new site and Baldur's Gate in it. Finally, the monk's outfits came up as a last minute idea to ask for real redemption for our sins - i.e. the sudden "closure" and lack of access to the site for 3 days.
Again, we have clearly admitted during our conference, that we think the industry is dead serious these days and we - being the old-school gamers we did plan a game with our audience. Yes, we wanted to make something really special for our 2nd anniversary and at the same time popularize good old games a bit more.
We are continuously looking through our forums and the web and yes, we still have a few surprises up our sleeves for our dear users. Obviously, we will be working hard now to regain the trust of the users, who did not feel good about our stunt, as we do value them and both the happy and unhappy ones are a vital part of our good old games community. I would like to encourage our faithful users to keep an eye on their mailboxes - there will be some surprises coming their way real soon.
Looking at the past week and analyzing the reactions and comments about GOG.com all across the web, I have to say that we have clearly underestimated one thing. We realized that a lot of users were thinking of GOG.com as any other digital distribution platform, where a constant Internet connection is needed to access and play the games you bought. While with GOG.com, you download the games and then you enjoy them without the necessity to connect to the Internet. The option of unlimited numbers of re-downloads of the games you bought is just a backup plan for our users - not a necessity.
More and more titles are becoming Internet-dependent and thus force users to have a working connection simply to... play the titles they bought. Not everybody has access to the Internet anywhere, anytime – not mentioning that your ISP can sometimes go down as well, which is a concern for gamers. The industry needs to address that.
Spotted at: GB
