It’s going to be a confusing week next week for two reasons:
1) WAR Open beta
2) SPORE
About the WAR Open beta. I don’t want to participate due to the phenomena I like to call “The LOTRO Beta Effect”. It’s when Darren plays and tests out a game so much that every shred of will for playing it at launch is stripped away from him. Don’t want this to happen again. So…tonight and tomorrow are probably the last times I’ll play as I’m pretty much sold on playing the Bright Wizard of pain, death and general kick-ass awesomeness.
SPORE. I’ll be getting that. Long have I heard legends that this game was eventually going to make it into our hands and it looks like I was totally wrong that this will turn into vaporware. My reasons for thinking this was that, for a while at least, that there would be no game in this game. Much like The Sims…
….ahem….
SPORE is here soon and it looks like a lot of fun…in a galactic domination kind of way. Once again though, the DRM issue seems to come up with this thing:
SecuROM, bless it’s flawed little heart, represents one of the fallacies of modern thinking about information properties – that producing a security layer for software will in some way curb enough piracy to offset the negative attention it receives. On the consumer side, opinions are strongly negative. In the front office, apparently, the opinion is positive enough that they keep using the product. As a game designer, my job is not affected either positively or negatively, but I have to admit a strong negative reaction to the paper tiger SecuROM represents.
And a paper tiger it is! Spore, released on Monday in Australia, was reported cracked within a couple hours, and is now pretty well distributed on the torrent circuit. Note that the game hasn’t been officially released yet!
/golf clap
Bravo. Thanks for assuming I’m a criminal and doing nothing about pirating your game.
I’m tellin ya. If I see Brad Wardell at AGC, I’m going to shake his hand, buy him a beer and then beg him for a job. From the same link above, here’s what Brad said about the logic behind Sins of a Solar Empire (…awesome RTS….) NOT having any DRM at all:
“Now, I don’t like piracy at all. It really bugs me when I see my game up on some torrent site just on the principle of the matter. And piracy certainly does cost sales. But arguing that piracy is the primary factor in lower sales of well made games? I don’t think so. People who never buy software aren’t lost sales.”
“The reason why we don’t put CD copy protection on our games isn’t because we’re nice guys. We do it because the people who actually buy games don’t like to mess with it. Our customers make the rules, not the pirates. Pirates don’t count. We know our customers could pirate our games if they want but choose to support our efforts. So we return the favor – we make the games they want and deliver them how they want it. This is also known as operating like every other industry outside the PC game industry.”
“Blaming piracy is easy. But it hides other underlying causes. When Sins popped up as the #1 best selling game at retail a couple weeks ago, a game that has no copy protect whatsoever, that should tell you that piracy is not the primary issue.”
This is the reason why I buy anything remotely interesting that comes out of Stardock. I pre-ordered DemiGod from them because they treat me like a partner…and I support that atmosphere 100%.
Not much more to say on the MMO front. Business as usual it seems. Looks like everyone is just waiting for The Day.
…oh yeah….did I say how excited I am about AGC?
D out.
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September 4th, 2008 at 11:06 am
Good call on the open beta, I am skipping it (and the idiots that will be associated with it)
I dont need a weekend of general chat filled with “THIS GAME SUX WOW IZ BETTAR”
September 4th, 2008 at 12:52 pm
If you do manage to get a job with StarDock please put in a good word for me. I wonder how much it costs per game to include copy protection like SecureROM? I have always wondered why they even bother because it inevitably gets cracked and distributed. I have great respect for Stardock for their decision to place their fans first.
Sins is a great game and in an era of $60 games, it came out with a price of $40. It is a total steal.
As for your thoughts on the WAR beta … I totally agree. I have been in the beta for a while and I played it for about a week and decided that I was ruining all the fun of discovering the game at launch. I probably shouldn’t have requested to be in the beta. I just wanted a sneak peek and not to actually be a good tester. Still … I have the game pre-ordered so I am getting it no matter what. I don’t want to ruin the surprises early.
September 4th, 2008 at 1:25 pm
There are still a couple of archetypes I want to test out… tho’ I’m pretty well sold on playing a WP and a BO on release. I want to see how some of the DPS classes work, so I’ll know exactly WHY I’m chewing dirt.
That’s my story, and I’m sticking with it…
September 4th, 2008 at 1:31 pm
On the WAR OB, haven’t had a chance to explore yet, so I’m interested in a) seeing whether I really want to play the game and b) if so, what class, etc.
Encouraged by what I’m reading since the PW.
September 4th, 2008 at 1:48 pm
Wait StarDock is making DoTA… I mean Demigod? Ah sweetness, I was really looking forward to that game, and now I have yet another reason. It better be DoTA 2.0 though, and not some ‘reinvent the wheel’ crap.
As for OB, I would like to say I won’t play it, but lately I’ve been staring at that icon on my desktop, and I just know I’ll load it up to play when the servers are up. I’ll prolly play something I have no interest in playing at launch, like the dwarves, and actually go nice and slow and read/explore everything.
September 4th, 2008 at 2:19 pm
well I could not play the galactic battlegrounds ( not sure ont he exactname) due the idiotic SecureROM DRM bullshit, guess there one more I won’t play to add to my list anything these guys touch is instant crap( oh ya and 14 help desk tickets with secureROM that took 5 weeks to close out)
damn….thanks for the heads up
September 4th, 2008 at 3:16 pm
There’s exactly one reason that I accept for DRM. Digital distribution. I have no problem with Steam or Direct2Drive having DRM on their games.
SecuROM and it’s ilk are big mark against any piece of software I’d consider buying, and since I am someone that buys software and doesn’t pirate them, I’m at least one example of where draconian copy protection is (possibly) detracting from sales. (But honestly if your game is really good, I’ll be buying it anyway. I’ll complain about it though! Maybe even use harsh language!)
I loudly approve of StarDock’s stance on dealing with piracy by targeting a market that buys games instead of pirating them. Makes sense to me.
September 4th, 2008 at 3:20 pm
as for war open beta i will be there purely as i have order classes to play since i was way to preoccupied with chaos last time around
September 4th, 2008 at 3:41 pm
I’ve a number of classes I want to check out in OB. There’s enough of a difference in classes that each one feels completely different, even if they are similar. For example, I’ve tried both the Sorcerer and Bright Wizard, there was a much different feel to the both of them, even though they are pretty darn similar at the lower levels. I haven’t made a final decision on what I’m playing yet, that’s what I’m using the OB for.
Stardock rocks, I think that about sums it all up.
I’d forgotten about the DRM on Spore, it almost makes me want to turn away from it. Almost. I’ve been waiting for it for too long to do so. :p
September 5th, 2008 at 5:11 am
SecuROM blew up my machine back in the day when I installed Freedom Force vs The Third Reich.
You want it secure? Fine, put it on Steam. I’ve got many games from there.
I may be in the minority, but I am passing on Spore solely because of SecuROM
September 5th, 2008 at 9:39 am
War and Spore!! is there anything else in life.. haha But ya i’m not participating in War beta so that i can actually have some fun when the game comes out.
September 5th, 2008 at 8:20 pm
Darren lies.
I saw him and helped him get guilded today. The bastard.
/spit
September 7th, 2008 at 4:23 am
I’m not at all a fan of companies that automatically assume that their customers are criminals.
I’m not a criminal… HOWEVER, I will fully admit, in the past, I’ve downloaded games that I couldn’t find a proper demo for, in order to see if I’d like it. I dunno about most people, but 50 bucks is quite a bit of money… that’s a LOT of coffee, energy drinks, or some other vice that some folks might have spent on something that’s great fun, but still takes a chunk out of your wallet. I don’t mind paying it at all… but only if the product is worth buying, and I think everyone is fully aware… not all of them are worth it. Every time I have downloaded a game in this manner, I have made it a point to uninstall it if I didn’t like it, or buy, and install a retail copy if I did.
In the case of Demos, if there was a demo, or a beta that I could aquire, I would do that instead… it’s my weird logic of ‘try before you buy’, and it would probably get me in trouble… but I still end up buying the product in the end… so calling me a criminal, and making it tougher for me to try your product is a self defeating policy. If your game is good… I will buy it… if it sucks, I won’t bother. Seems pretty simple to me, but Software companies would rather place the blame on consumers than take responsibility for crappy software…