Titan Quest producer rants on PC market.

[Deleted member 7219]

I'd like to throw him into a room filled with Japanese game developers, and see what they make of him. They actually work their asses off and don't whine about it either.

 

[Sir_Brennus]

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. .

Read.My.Post.It.Didn't.Cost.'em.Shit.

 

[Naked Ninja]

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.

Oh come on, again. Please stop this now. How many times have you really wanted something you can't afford? I have had many of these instances. You save up for it. I've pirated plenty too in the past. The whole "but I wouldn't have bought it anyway!" story is bull. You're saying that from the point of view of a person who had the games, had played them and then got to decide after the fact if you thought it was worth paying for, in relation to other things you wanted but hadn't yet gotten hold of. Thats so not an accurate reflection of what decisions you would have made if you'd been forced to judge which to buy based on demos.

Still, there would be a certain "conversion rate" associated with both but it doesn't account for the effect that an audience 1150% bigger than your paying audience has on attracting customersforms.

Is there? I've never converted anyone via piracy, nor heard of a case, ever. Oh wait, you bought a copy in varsity. Good job. But apart from you, every single instance of piracy I or anyone I know of has committed is pure and simple theft, giving nothing back. Conversion rate my ass.

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.

You mean the shareware they used to establish themselves?

We all pirated Civilisation. We all bought Civilisation 2

Good thing they weren't relying on sales from Civ1 to feed their families while working on Civ 2 hey? My you must feel so proud.

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.

And what about the word of a thousand pirates who also provide you with a link to the free torrent of the game while singing it's praises? Come on now. This argument is moronic.

70% of 8% = 5.6%

What is that number? 8% of players? That is still 100% of sales. As in people who give you money. You know, in return for the years you worked making that product they are playing? Multiplying by 8% to get 5.6%, so as to make it seem like a small number, is rubbish. It is 70% of sales, ie almost doubling profit. That is the reality.

but it doesn't account for the effect that an audience 1150% bigger than your paying audience has on attracting customers

You mean seeding the torrents to make it easier to pirate don't you? Your logic is flawed.

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 don't give a shit about people who steal from me, why should I? You've got to be joking.

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"

Of course they wouldn't consider it a waste of money, they didn't spend any on it. I do not care about their opinions. I cannot feed myself from the happy thoughts of thousands of pirating assholes.

The problem is - we're part of Titan Quest's limited target demographic. We're supposed to enjoy it, but we don't.

And yet they broke even. For a game that size, a lot of someones must have bought it. Again, personal bias. You didn't like it, cool. Don't try and use that to justify the theft of the mans labor.

There's not enough context there to prove anything.

Actually, it proves a lot. It means you gain the most from simple protections, tightening it further results in decreasing returns.

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

Ah, because pirates only target companies that make games you don't like. VD has stated that if AoD doesn't make enough he is done. There are cracks for Spidweb games all over the place, his will be cracked in no time. What if piracy proves a tipping point? If a 20% difference in sales (never mind 70%) would have changed his mind? Would you care then? So bloody short sighted.

 

[Raapys]

Read.My.Post.It.Didn't.Cost.'em.Shit.

Perhaps in that case it didn't, but now you're reaching for scraps. You can see the point as easily as I can, commercial game development has gone to hell. Priorities have gone to hell. Costs have sky-rocketed these last years, and it's no one's fault but their own.

 

[gromit]

If you actually think more then 5% of the ones who pirate will ever buy (yes even the budget version) the game they just pirated then you're living in a fairy fantasy.

I think this number is already low, and will probably increase, especially with the rise of unknowns, "semidependents," and episodic content unless the demo vs. rental problem is solved. Like someone already said, if you find the right model of distribution, you can get paid for work which is given (nearly) freely to the audience, who will still come back and pay anyway. Just visited the beneficiaries of Charles Schultz, or, if you want to get really crafty, Jim Davis. So speaking of comics...

The "scanning boom" of a few years back brought a remarkable influx of customers to the comics market (both new and returning from "extended hiatus" after burning out on the crap collector's market of the 90's.) Although still anecdotal, this is much more applicable in the real world than most "Internet Facts." It's accepted to the point where one could all but look a dealer in the eye and tell him you need to order a collected paperback of a miniseries now that you've read it. (They know; they understand; they're just glad that enough ink-junkies buy every issue that the pile of unsold preorders - yeah, great industry - doesn't hit the ceiling when the whole thing turns south halfway through. They're just glad you're there.)

Marvel's official scans aren't catching on: flash embedded, lower res than the free ones, and a price point comparable to a paper copy, they made one even bigger mistake. They assumed people took scans because would just rather read things on computer, and not have themselves a nice hardcover of a spectacular work (this is the point where we begin to lose gamers to piracy, excluding us box and manual fetishists, and products with more "modern" incentives for registration.) What IS true is that most people would rather see good artists producing good work get paid, even if not by that train of thought, and that everyone at least understands the concept of voting with their dollar, even if they don't necessarily practice it.

Now, to get to the point, the people reading scans and then buying aren't checking every issue of Spiderman to make sure it's not shit, and then running down to the shop to plunk down three bucks with utter peace of mind - if they buy enough bad ones in a row, they might stop buying them just to see if they get better. In this way, the episodic model reduces the initial risk, both for the customer and the companies, relative to the impact of a 150-pager being an utter flop in every way.

However, the key word here is relative. Picture a mystery movie - the easiest genre to do this with - where everything's very mysterious and you really have no idea how any of the clues and threads could possibly lead to the solution. Then, just as things are getting tense in the last few scenes, it turns out they don't, and a ten-pixel extra from the middle of the movie jumps out from behind the door proclaiming his guilt. Now imagine me trying to sell you a DVD of this film that bounces back to the menu four scenes early. "C'mon, it's $15 instead of $20!" Multiply by two for comics; five or six for games.

Obviously episodic content is doing fairly well right now, at least in big-name tests, and if it helps them improve their cost-to-profit ratio, and people are willing to pay, more power to them. My worry, however, comes with things specific to the episodic model, rather than inheirited from the basic principle of distributing your cost. Especially with AAA gaming's emphasis on narrative, I think we'll start to see more let-downs, burn-out, and, eventually, more people pirating a plot-reliant series as it goes along, tentatively "waiting on the box."

I would really rather not pay $40 to play through Barcelona just because all of Lionheart is $80 - I'd rather read a review of a game that becomes awful and not spend a penny. Publishing comics, companies can usually "eat" a few bad issues, and the immediate empirical feedback of a periodic release cycle lets them get risky (ha!) and self-correct if it's not hopeless, but I've watched good books die halfway through anyway. In gaming we're talking about a lot more money per swing. This has the side-effect of potential "late-bloomers" never getting past the stem - Torment could've ended in the tomb!

There's obviously more factors in play here, and we're talking about three different types of media, but I only ever hear about the upsides of episodic content. Unsurprising, since the downsides only affect the developers, customers, and the works themselves, and leave the financiers and publishers sitting pretty.

 

[Hory]

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

Ah, because pirates only target companies that make games you don't like. VD has stated that if AoD doesn't make enough he is done. There are cracks for Spidweb games all over the place, his will be cracked in no time. What if piracy proves a tipping point? If a 20% difference in sales (never mind 70%) would have changed his mind? Would you care then? So bloody short sighted.

You're busting on people about "epic fail of logic", but can't help generalize others' affirmations like they apply to any context. What I said has nothing to do with AoD. Titan Quest sucked and got what it desrved. If AoD will be a good game and Iron Tower will still have financial problems, I won't consider that to be a justified nail in the coffin. That's all. Stop exaggerating.

 

[Naked Ninja]

Ugh but this is so not worth the time spent.

 

[Sir_Brennus]

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

Ah, because pirates only target companies that make games you don't like. VD has stated that if AoD doesn't make enough he is done. There are cracks for Spidweb games all over the place, his will be cracked in no time. What if piracy proves a tipping point? If a 20% difference in sales (never mind 70%) would have changed his mind? Would you care then? So bloody short sighted.

You're busting on people about "epic fail of logic", but can't help generalize others' affirmations like they apply to any context. What I said has nothing to do with AoD. Titan Quest sucked and got what it desrved. If AoD will be a good game and Iron Tower will still have financial problems, I won't consider that to be a justified nail in the coffin. That's all. Stop exaggerating.

I don't think we discuss on the same level here, but get that:

When TQ "sucked" then

VtMBL "sucked", too.

You are not the HiveMind. Brother None isn't also, but he is part of the Codex community AND he liked Titan Quest for what it was. Hell, there are even codexers who tend to complain on the suckiness of TOEE and Arcanum and VtMBL. See the point?

You can't speak for the Codex. So your logic goes down the drain.

EDIT: How do you know that VD will deliver? Where is your crystal ball? Are you mental?

 

[Jaime Lannister]

- Fixed crashes involving the Alt-Tab function

Guys it was totally the pirates fault that TQ failed

 

[Sir_Brennus]

- Fixed crashes involving the Alt-Tab function

Guys it was totally the pirates fault that TQ failed

Yes, the Witcher does that on my rig, too. :D

 

[Stupor Mundi]

It's like if I kill a kitten everytime I read about a drug arrest in the local paper, and then go on a crusade saying that drug use is bad because it kills kittens.

I've been grappling with this for about an hour now.

You need more variables.

Your metaphorical argument doesn't quite fit the circumstance.

What you were attempting to argue: The developer performs some action (unspecified by you, as there aren't enough variables in your argument) each time he reads an inflammatory post on the TQ forums, and he subsequently crusades against piracy, as it leads to inflammatory comments, which damage sales (while these comments are actually correlated with the anti-piracy software, though unbeknown to the complainers).


A proper mockery of this TQ developer's initial argument: Each time Richard Dawkins orates, one Christian without an admission ticket, yet still present at the aforementioned oration, ceases to believe in God, therefore atheism is the cause of Christianity's decline.

 

[Hory]

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 don't give a shit about people who steal from me, why should I? You've got to be joking.

And maybe people don't give a shit about paying an egotist. I'm more worried about the nails in the coffin of human generosity than the coffin of PC gaming. Is there anything wrong with tens of thousands of people enjoying your work, rather than not playing it at all, or does your game serve strictly a commercial purpose?

You can't speak for the Codex. So your logic goes down the drain.

I never claimed to speak for the Codex, and if you concluded this, your attempt at logic fails.

EDIT: How do you know that VD will deliver? Where is your crystal ball? Are you mental?

That's why I said "If AoD will be a good game". LAFF0, stop looking for things to accuse me of.

 

[kain611]

"Let's dig a little deeper there. So, if 90% of your audience is stealing your game, even if you got a little bit more, say 10% of that audience to change their ways and pony up, what's the difference in income? Just about double. That's right, double. That's easily the difference between commercial failure and success. That's definitely the difference between doing okay and founding a lasting franchise. Even if you cut that down to 1% - 1 out of every hundred people who are pirating the game - who would actually buy the game, that's still a 10% increase in revenue. Again, that's big enough to make the difference between breaking even and making a profit. "

L0LIGAGZ. Galactic Civilizations 2 and Sins of a Solar Empire both made best seller lists despite being niche games with no copy protection.

EXACTLY!!!!

 

[Naked Ninja]

And maybe people don't give a shit about paying an egotist. I'm more worried about the nails in the coffin of human generosity than the coffin of PC gaming.

The mind-boggling audacity, stealing the produce of another human being, something that would cost you a few nights out, then claiming to be concerned about human generosity?!?!? What are you going to give me oh generous one?

Is there anything wrong with tens of thousands of people enjoying your work, rather than not playing it at all, or does your game serve strictly a commercial purpose?

Nice attempt to twist things, and by nice I mean clumsy. A professional artist may be an artist for the sheer love of art, but why does that mean he isn't entitled to earn money from it? Why isn't he allowed to be angry when someone steals his paintings, clones off a few thousand copies and gives them to anyone who wants them? Oh, because you didn't appreciate the picture? Pure. Fail.

 

[Jaime Lannister]

Yes, the Witcher does that on my rig, too. :D

Nice strawman. That was one of the many pointless crash reasons of Titan Quest you can find on the last page.

 

[Sir_Brennus]

@Hory

I tried it one last time:

Don't take your fucking defintion what a "good" game is like as an absolute, because I and many others would agree that Troika has produced one or more "bad" games, because they didn't exactly deliver what they promised.

See the difference between for example Oblivion and TQ? Oblivion failed massively on the scale of what the designers wanted to do and what they promised - That is a "bad" game.

TQ was intended to be a good looking ACRPG with a working game balance and pH4T L00t. Titan Quest wasn't a bad game. Considering what it *wanted* to achieve - it delievered.

 

[Hory]

Pay for Titan Quest or to see 15 movies?
Pay for Titan Quest or to visit another country with low-cost flight?
Pay for Titan Quest or for 50 beers?
Pay for Titan Quest or buy 5 cool belts?
Pay for Titan Quest or buy dual-jewel FO1 & FO2 for 5 friends?
The list can go on.

 

[Jaime Lannister]

And maybe people don't give a shit about paying an egotist. I'm more worried about the nails in the coffin of human generosity than the coffin of PC gaming.

The mind-boggling audacity, stealing the produce of another human being, something that would cost you a few nights out, then claiming to be concerned about human generosity?!?!? What are you going to give me oh generous one?

I pirate most of my games, but if a game looks really good I'll buy it to get the box and manual. (and support devs, of course)

I think Titan Quest's problem is that while it wasn't bad, it wasn't exceptionally good, so most people spent their game budget on other games and pirated Titan Quest because they didn't think it was worth the money.

 

[Sir_Brennus]

Yes, the Witcher does that on my rig, too. :D

Nice strawman. That was one of the many pointless crash reasons of Titan Quest you can find on the last page.

Enlighten me, oh mighty Kingslayer:

What is a "crash-reason" that HAS a "point"?

Example, please?

 

[Sir_Brennus]

Pay for Titan Quest or to see 15 movies?
Pay for Titan Quest or to visit another country with low-cost flight?
Pay for Titan Quest or for 50 beers?
Pay for Titan Quest or buy 5 cool belts?
Pay for Titan Quest or buy dual-jewel FO1 & FO2 for 5 friends?
The list can go on.

You get all that for 23€? Which planet are you from?

Also: Argument doding count: 2

 

[Naked Ninja]

I'm curious Hory, how many of those things that cost the same as Titan Quest can you do for free, by stealing the product or service? Oh but I weep for the generosity of man, that I have to pay for movies or beer. The people have spoken. Give us your beer for free all you breweries!!!

I think Titan Quest's problem is that while it wasn't bad, it wasn't exceptionally good

Like I said, I found it mediocre at best. Still, my tastes aren't everyone's, two of my friends have played it to death, they're a couple and the chick likes ancient settings, so it appealed to her. The point is my and your opinions aren't some universal constant, and many people pirate games they would otherwise buy if they can. Free is incredibly seductive. Anyone who believes otherwise is naive.

 

[Jaime Lannister]

Enlighten me, oh mighty Kingslayer:

What is a "crash-reason" that HAS a "point"?

Example, please?

When the game crashes because the developer wants it to:

"One of the copy-protection routines was keyed off the quest system, for example. You could start the game just fine, but when the quest triggered, it would do a security check, and dump you out if you had a pirated copy"

When the game crashes because you didn't RTFM. (STALKER on Vista)

 

[Raapys]

You pay 23€ for a game? *_* Over here they cost over 60€.

 

[Hory]

Don't take your fucking defintion what a "good" game is like as an absolute, because I and many others would agree that Troika has produced one or more "bad" games, because they didn't exactly deliver what they promised.

Maybe my definition isn't the absolute, but it definitely is better in that it isn't based on random subjective factors such as "what was promised or not". Judge the work on its own merit rather than the ethical character of its makers.

See the difference between for example Oblivion and TQ? Oblivion failed massively on the scale of what the designers wanted to do and what they promised - That is a "bad" game.

Yeah, all of a sudden you decide what "bad" is or isn't.

TQ was intended to be a good looking ACRPG with a working game balance and pH4T L00t. Titan Quest wasn't a bad game. Considering what it *wanted* to achieve - it delievered.

If it wanted to achieve a bad result, is the game good?

 

[Sir_Brennus]

If it wanted to achieve a bad result, is the game good?

Who gives you the right to call a result "bad"?

Sorry, as you don't accept judging things by something remotely objective (or better intersubjective) we cannot discuss this any further, because we don't speak the same language.