new hope

Midnight · Post by **Midnight** » Fri Aug 29, 2008 7:24 am

http://www.gamesradar.com/f/how-you-can ... 4247901029

jam · Post by **jam** » Fri Aug 29, 2008 11:21 pm

Can't afford to keep the rig up to date to be able to play any recent game.

torleif · Post by **torleif** » Sat Aug 30, 2008 8:24 am

Gaming isn't dead, a lot of my friends play nothing but PC games. One of my old flatmates bought a PS3 (when they first came out) and hasn't touched it. The thing is that they get bored of modern games in a few days and resort to playing diablo/ AoE and war craft. If they can't find their key from the box they'll just download one from the net.

The problem is the actual content hitting the shelves, not the PC gaming industry dieing.

The article expects all games to be bought with a box. You're more likely to get a job with an indie game company that sells online than a high profile company. One of my friends works for Nabi, and you download Toribash for free, but have to pay for addons. That's enough to pay for about 10 employees

JP · Post by JP » Mon Sep 01, 2008 7:38 am

And the rampant piracy on PC games is killing PC gaming as developers can't make their money back, they make an awesome game and everyone loves it but like 75%+ of the players haven't actually bought the game, rather they've downloaded it.

That's why Crytek were thinking of moving away from PC gaming, pretty sad really.

rogerborg · Post by **rogerborg** » Mon Sep 01, 2008 11:53 am

Counter-view: as downloadable content becomes more popular (Steam FTW), sales of boxed games in the high street will reduce.

Since that's where retailers make their money (rather than on console sales), specialist games retailers won't be able to survive, and there will be no reason for general retailers to give over shelf space to selling consoles.

Fewer games sales == fewer consoles sold == fewer games sales == ...

Result: consoles die, long live the PC.

bitplane · Post by **bitplane** » Mon Sep 01, 2008 11:41 pm

JP wrote:And the rampant piracy on PC games is killing PC gaming as developers can't make their money back, they make an awesome game and everyone loves it but like 75%+ of the players haven't actually bought the game, rather they've downloaded it.

That's why Crytek were thinking of moving away from PC gaming, pretty sad really.

Don't tell me, "home taping is killing music"
Didn't believe it the first time

Halifax · Post by **Halifax** » Mon Sep 01, 2008 11:59 pm

Eh, it all works out in the end. Consoles and PCs can live together.

MasterGod · Post by **MasterGod** » Fri Sep 05, 2008 5:05 pm

I believe it's just a matter of time until some genius would find an easy way against piracy...

bitplane · Post by **bitplane** » Fri Sep 05, 2008 7:13 pm

MasterGod wrote:I believe it's just a matter of time until some genius would find an easy way against piracy...

It's called trusted computing, and it will kill all indie development and open source.

dlangdev · Post by **dlangdev** » Fri Sep 05, 2008 7:21 pm

Piracy, schmyracy...whatever.

Actually, I love the idea of these hoodydoodies stealing our software, tho.

Because, in a way, we designed this software to have this memetic technology that goes with piracy.

jam · Post by **jam** » Sat Sep 06, 2008 3:00 am

bitplane wrote: It's called trusted computing, and it will kill all indie development and open source.

If man can build it, man can also break it.

Halifax · Post by **Halifax** » Sat Sep 06, 2008 3:09 am

The thing is, I don't believe piracy is killing the industry. I believe these developers think that marketing the same old game, with new graphics, warrants someone to waste $60 on their game, and that's just dead wrong! EA, and Crytek, should have known that Crysis would get pirated.

The only reason Crytek is crying about it is because their CryEngine2 didn't subsidize as much of their loses as they expected it to. They thought they were going to put Epic Games out of the engine making business with this engine, but they should have known that it isn't in a developers greatest interest to switch to an engine that almost no developers know how to develop with.

Crytek just made poor choices. CryEngine2 is so revolutionary, but without the backup of developers that have severe experience with the engine, it will go nowhere.

</rant>

Of course I think that Crytek dug its own grave. But I am not wishing pirating on anyone, so don't take my statements as meaning that.

Frank Dodd · Post by **Frank Dodd** » Sat Sep 06, 2008 8:51 am

A game sector that has made piracy redundant is the multi-player online, free game paid subscription sector that seams to be doing very well indeed on the PC.

nmn · Post by **nmn** » Sat Sep 06, 2008 9:26 am

Frank Dodd wrote:A game sector that has made piracy redundant is the multi-player online, free game paid subscription sector that seams to be doing very well indeed on the PC.

I wanted to mention online play because it's an interesting way to make money other than selling the game itself. Subscription fees are annoying, but if you could just purchase once things would be very pleasant.

I suppose piracy is a big deal, but Trusted Computing is NOT the right way to approach it - Originally I thought maybe that was needed but now I think Instead of trying to prevent it, obsolete it.

By the way, Trusted Computing would not kill indie developers or Open Source. Trusted Computing just allows developers to safely encrypt their binaries so that they can not be accessed outside of execution - A pretty good idea. There are still ways to break it but they probably involve hardware hacks and things just get ugly from there.

rogerborg · Post by **rogerborg** » Sat Sep 06, 2008 11:11 am

I can't see Trusted Computing catching on in the short or even medium term.

First, no sane person is ever going voluntarily to lock their own content to any particular machine - what happens when the magic smoke escapes from the TCM?

Second, it provides no protection from cheating in games, unless the server only supports TC clients (good luck funding that service) - and even then, you do have to 'trust' that the server is actually doing so. Early adopters will find that it doesn't protect them from anyone else, it protects everyone else from them. It's the voluntary chemical castration of features.

Strict[1] Digital Restriction Management infected services are already struggling to persuade customers to commit [2]. Since TC adds nothing to the value proposition for the customer, service providers are going to have to offer pretty damn compelling reasons to pay full purchase price for effectively renting content.

The success of XP and Vista (which treat their purchasers as thieves) indicates that in the long term, TC is eventually going to insinuate itself, but I'm thinking 20 or 30 years, rather than the next 5.

[1] iTunes is not a strict DRM system, since it's always provided a method to rip the DRM off.

[2] Disclosure: I have made several Steam purchases, based on a balanced gamble that the download-anywhere convenience and increased reward for the developer (compared to a retail box) is worth it compared to the risk of Steam vanishing overnight.