Looking for good games similar to Arcanum

I can understand not using the original disc in order to not damage it, but not opening the box = not touching/seeing/smelling the manual and the discs? Beyond my comprehension.

 

Why, in order to develop a intimate sensual bond with the game, of course. It's one of the greatest reasons why books are better than e-books and purchased games are better than downloaded ones, second only to the books/game boxes looking pretty on one's shelf.

 

Nope... MMO today has a client, and this client can be stolen. The communications to the server can be spied on, and the server software developed from those data.

What I described is not only for online games. It has no software installation on client side, other than maybe a glorified telnet client (and may even standardized).

Everything resides in the servers, your computer is just a combination of keyboard, mouse, joystick, speaker and monitor. I/O devices only.

The hosting has to provide tremendous amount of processing power, and the network of both company and users must support very huge amount of traffic.

Crazy talk? For now, yes. But that's a great solution to piracy problem. In that model, if you want to steal a game, you have to steal the source/binaries, or you have to hack into the servers.

Both acts are criminal offense by current laws anywhere in the world. If someone did steal it, you can be sure that the police is going to hunt them down.

That is unlike people running pirated software in their homes today - there's no laws against that, cops won't break down their doors and arrest them.

 

Okay. Read the bolded statement again. That was the biggest case of You Fail Economics Forever I've seen since Obama and McCain bailed out the junkiest companies in America.

Revenue, literally, equals sales times price. If you increase sales, you increase revenue. If you increase the number of copies that consumers give the company dollars to receive, even if there -are- two pirates per legitimate consumer, you have increased the amount of cash coming into the company. I don't know how I could be clearer about this. If you misspoke, then please clarify what you meant.

"It doesn't work" isn't an excuse to stop doing something and try a new approach? Each game only needs to have its protection cracked -once- and it's forever on the torrents. Said first crack usually comes before the game is ever released in stores. Thus, existing copy protection is, in effect, less useful than politely asking kids not to copy that floppy. (Less useful because, as I think we all know, it just encourages hackers to break it.)

It's about as effective in preventing hacking as complaining about the hackers is.

Why did Sierra insist that Arcanum had to come with multiplayer? Because all the cool kids were doing it. Just because executives across the industry attach to a fad doesn't mean it works or that they have a good view of the situation. Marketing is still a black art at best.

I'm not saying "everyone" is, and you're stretching a hyperbole to the point of a strawman.

Then explain how Tarn Adams makes a living developing Dwarf Fortress? He lives off of donations for its continued development. This is his day job.*

*No, I do not advocate this as a standard business model for most game companies. I'm merely pointing out that people are both more honest and more charitable than you give them credit for.

Well, there's been a grand total of one midweight company (multiple games with eight-figure revenues count as at least midweight in my book) I can think of that's attempting the no-DRM business model. It is succeeding. Now, that may or may not be generalizable to all companies, but it is evidence that it can work and can be done, and that others may be able to follow that example by making good games and getting a sterling rep in the gaming community.

Right. Most publishers' customer focus is a joke, which is ultimately a pretty shortsighted viewpoint since it leads to unnecessary bad press even for their good games. As I'm sure you already know, Mass Effect's and Spore's SecuROM -have- led to people who would otherwise buy them pirating them in outrage and because they didn't want to fuck with the SecuROM. (I came -this- close to -simply- downloading ME in protest and not giving them a dime.) Those individuals include both the kind of pirate you talk about who is just using the SecuROM as an excuse, and those who really would have loved to support the company but refuse to support the SecuROM.

Above, plus you admitted it already. There's both people who pirate and then buy, and people who are useless mooches who pirate but wouldn't buy the game if it weren't free. #1, obviously, is beneficial to the company; #2 is entirely irrelevant. Once more, do the math: if they don't pirate, they give the company no money, if they do pirate, they give the company no money. Yes, pirates cause losses of sales when they -would- buy the game if it wasn't pirateable. SecuROM, conversely, causes losses of sales when people pirate to get around it. Not having any copy protection, meanwhile, brings in sales when people get word that "hey, this company actually believes in the 'don't be evil' creed!" (And when dumbass copy protection companies give them free publicity by posting torrent links as part of a dumbassed Russian extortion racket, but I'll concede that that was an individual act of stupidity that worked in Stardock's favor.)
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Conclusions:

1. Copy protection does not prevent or deter pirates. It is not an effective solution unless, somehow, a company's encryption scheme is more powerful than the collective hacking ability of every techno-anarchist who wants to free the flow of data.
2. Copy protection leads users to pirate to -avoid- it, while not copy protecting encourages users to buy it in the spirit of solidarity.
3. Someone using a pirated game, in terms of income, -value neutral-. They do not provide income to the company nor take it away. They pay $0.00.
4. Games can be commercially successful without DRM.

 

I didn't say that, read more carefully. I said "no direct effect." Someone playing illegally does not contribute to the company's revenue stream. What matters is the number of players who -do- buy...

which means that a lack of people willing to shell out currency for Troika games killed the company.

Personally, I'd think Troika's failure was for several reasons, among them poor marketing (compare the marketing for Arcanum to the marketing for Fallout 3, and that was -with- Bethesda deliberately jettisoning the old Fallout fanbase and kicking NMA in the pants), and V:tM Bloodlines. Great game, but they were too ambitious, had to rush to hit the deadline, launched a beta and called it 1.0, and, you know, the game had to duel for sales with Half-Life 2, which drew off a lot of the mainstream sales.

Pirates can't kill a game, lack of legit buyers kill a game. But if you're looking to the death of Troika, don't look at Arcanum.

 

Piracy didn't exactly kill Arcanum or Troika, but it contributed a lot.

Basically, Sierra was sitting on the already finished game for 6 months. Obviously, since there was no legal way to obtain the game, everyone remotely interested in it pirated it. And naturally, most people had become already bored with the game when it was released and as the result never bought it.

 

Ah yes, the world of corporate stupidity. I have to admit, that's one of the blatantly more retarded acts I've seen in a while.

ARM and server validation are a pain in the arse, but if the alternative is all the gaming studios going slowly broke (which it is) then I'm all for them. I'd rather have copy protection than no games at all.

 

I just thought I'd chime in and say that I'm an unethical pirate. I would purchase many more games if the internet and torrents weren't available to me. With the overwhelming amount of content at my fingertips that I can access at virtually no cost, I have no impetus to purchase these things anymore. Since I've had high speed internet (about 5 years) I've bought 3 DVDs and 2 PC games (they're both MMOs). Prior to this, I bought many MANY more products. I still have about 30 PC games and 50 DVDs purchased legitimately.

I can honestly say that piracy has changed my consumer habits. I can't be the only one. That said, I don't really know what can be done about it. I believe that anti-piracy software isn't designed to be permanent... it can't be. If hype is large enough and the game remains uncracked for long enough after release that it drives [pirate-who-would-buy] to buy the game, then I'd deem it successful.

The best analogy I can give are movies that "must be seen in the theater" to those which are just rentals, where people just wait for them to come to dvd. Some games, pirate/consumers can't wait for a crack and just go out and buy. Some games, they decide they can wait to try out... for free. With no protection, the large, uber-hyped game sales would suffer, I'd say.

 

I have a special policy for pirating something - I prefer to buy new games and movies, but if something's really old (Atelier Marie)/hard to find (Non-Pokemon DS games)/impossible to find (Phantasy Star Online Plus), then I'll pirate it without a single qualm. If they wanted me to buy it, they'd have made it possible for me to buy it.

 

Hm. I stand educated, Drog.

Xiao, that's not called piracy. The politically-correct term is "abandonware!" ^_^

(Or in certain cases, just "emulation.")

 

http://worthplaying.com/article/2009/10 ... als/69239/

 

A bunch of people said last page that it's bullshit that people would be more likely to buy a product if it was cheaper (which would be possible by spending less money developing it). While I appreciate the noble thought process here, the law of supply and demand clearly states that if something costs less, more people are willing to buy it. It's not like the consumer market is made up only of pirates and purchases. Not everybody in the world who plays video games has played Arcanum.

I personally don't think that pirating did kill Arcanum, either. How many games have actually gone under because of pirating? Is it close to the amount of cable networks that have gone under from people stealing cable? Arcanum did poorly financially because the market had moved on. People played out isometric RPGs during the 1990s. This is why Fallout 3 was a 3D shooter instead of a homage to our beloved classic: 3D shooters sell better.

This is a trend we've seen in movies and television for years. Firefly was a great show, but it went under because the market for sci-fi adventure series' was dried up. It would probably do well if it were to come out now, after the recent Star Trek movie.

Why do you think the space between blockbuster horror comedies is about 5 years in length? If you try to over-extend a genre/theme, or try to re-introduce it too soon, it doesn't matter how great your product is. People won't buy it because the masses have a very short attention span. This 'Vampire Diaries' show that's popped up on all the channels is a Twilight cash-in. The creators weren't going for art there. And yet, they're making a decent killing. Even HBO, the masters of television drama created a show this year called 'True Blood'.

Arcanum arrived just too late for its market share. Not to mention that Troika had major problems with bugs in every game they released, which drove people away. I'd say they did pretty decently to have gross nearly $9 million off the project.


To go back to where the conversation has gone:

I've pirated plenty of new things that have come out, and still spent $500-600 on computer entertainment a year. To me, the best copy protection is a solid multiplayer (Warcraft III, which I have spent around $150 on in the past 6 years, accumulated from misplacing the damn CD-keys I needed to get online), or a game so well marketed and actually entertaining that I really want to spend money on it (Civilization IV, Jagged Alliance 2, even X-Com, which is available to me on Abandonia).

Many of my purchases (Mass Effect for example, and the expansions for Civ 4) were acquired after the prices had dropped. I have expenses, I can't spend $50 on a clone of something else I already have. Worst of all, why am I even paying this much for games in the first place? Why do I pay $60 for Halo 3, and $20 for my own copy of Watchmen? Halo 3 not only grossed more, it had a smaller budget than Watchmen. Am I really expected to believe that games are priced at an adequate level? Not with today's market base, they aren't.

It was okay paying $40 for a game six or seven years ago, because I used to get a 300 page manual and a map and a whole bunch more cool stuff. Now they charge me $80 for a jewelcase containing a CD for Prototype. Why is this?

 

I believe the discussion was about copyright protection on games, not their price.

It's 3-D because Bethesda acquired the rights and used the same 3-D shooter engine they already had developed, and because they wanted console ports. The Diablo games are isometric and still wildly popular. The way the player interacts with the game does not necessarily impact the story or character development, just the way combat works. To call one system more modern than another is just silly. They're pretty much the same age.

I'd say Arcanum did poorly because it requires a lot of its player. In-depth understanding of game mechanics in a system that allows, all too easily, for shitty player characters.

I don't ever remember getting a 300 page manual. Maps were usually a crapshoot for me, too. As far as prices go, I agree that the price of games may be a bit much, but think about the dollars spent for entertainment time. With a movie, you're limited to about 2 hours and it never changes. Games are considered "short" if they're 12-14 hours long AND they can be replayed in multiple ways.

 

I lost most of the books on my shelf after my house burned down, but I had an extensive amount of game manuals that were the size of novels, most of which were from the nineties. Even Everquest's manual was 200 pages long.

Diablo I came out in 1996. Diablo II came out in 2000. Diablo III is going to be isometric because Blizzard knows that the value of the Diablo legacy is strong. Take note that Diablo III (along with the multitude of Diablo-clones, in most cases) allow you to zoom in and circle all around and all that jazz. It doesn't change the gameplay or the enjoyment of the game, but it gives an appearance of something new and innovative, in turn making consumers want to buy.

Bethesda is a large, professional company. If they thought they could pull in a better net profit margin by making their own isometric Fallout 3 from scratch, they would have done so, whether they had an engine already or not.

Movies pack their DVDs with hours and hours of bonus features, and still charge me less for the experience. Making a video game and making a movie takes a similar level of effort (movies probably more, since the best ones typically have better scripts than the best games). The reason the prices of games are so high is because of things like a failed copy protection.

Copy protection doesn't work. Stardock has it right: Wasting your time trying to fight piracy is like trying to prevent your hair from turning grey. The more you try, the worse the final result becomes.

 

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

 

I figured somebody would try to debase that idea, but I was hoping they'd at least try to back up their claim as to why the collaboration of actors, screenwriters, camera crew, lighting crew, sound techies, computer animators, stuntmen, mechanics, producers, and film editors don't have to work as hard as a video game company? How many times has a video game called for the construction of a scale model of something that needs to be destroyed for the viewer?

I was being generous to say they require similar effort.

 

I believe the two go hand in hand.

Video Games have a higher and higher production cost, but they aren't yet in the territory of movies by a long shot. I dislike the idea of $40+ for a video game. I think that, in all reality, $20-30 is where it should be priced. Why? If you sell 1 million games. Fairly easy, these days, I believe, you've grossed $20-30m, and probably easily made 5-10m, if not more. The issue is all the greed in the industry. I think that, at the end of the day, this is a heavy source of pirating: dislike of the greed. I personally believe that a majority of pirates would quit doing so if they slashed their prices. Hell, if a cd went down to $5-10, I'd start buying music again.* I refuse to help fund the purchase of a third island for the owner of Virgin Records. He can fuck himself, along with the RIAA, and the rest of the recording industry executives.


unrelated note: look at Blizzard for a moment. They're easily the world's most profitable video game company, and yet they've released what? 10 games in their entire history, spanning at least 13 years? They understand the gaming community better than the other companies. They realize that people will pay and pay and pay for winning quality, and they tapped into that, and are making an absolute fucking killing.


*a well paid musician only makes $1-2 per cd, for the record. Britney peaked at I think $2.75, or something.

 

DarkFool, can I just say a big fat FUCK YOU! $40 for a game is fucking NOTHING! $40 is a good price for a used game in good condition here, dammit. New games average between $60 for DS or PSP right up to $120 or even more for PS3 and X-Box. So fuck your bitching and be grateful you don't live in Australia, dammit.