Do people buy games because they are good or because they love the developer? I hardly have time to play my games - competitive ones require time to be skilled at them, RPGs tend to be more engaging and immersing if played for longer stretches each gaming session, and co-op play with friends or strangers simply do not allow the flexibility in gaming time. As such, I do end up buying games to support the developers, especially those whose publishers have good business practices.
Recently, especially, with less time and even less money due to having a kid, I am getting even more religious and selective in my support for companies. I still am keen in gaming, even if it's for small stretches at a time. I still want to pay for good games to good companies (though 'good' is a pretty subjective word).
There's always this difference between publishers and developers. We often hear of EA or Activision, and generally put the blame on publishers yet buy games because they are made by certain developers. But is the truth really because of the publishers? Or is the blame just being pushed to them so they can still sell the games because of the developers, and yet still get to exploit their customers, having their cake and eating it? How can we tell the difference and who are we actually 'supporting'?
If you have limited amount of cash and time, would you buy popular games with questionable business practices, or not so popular games that are good but not great? Does business practices alone indicate a good company or does quality games dictate that? Or more likely, both?
Sunday, September 9, 2012
Free to Play, or Just a Demo?
I wonder how many people have actually heard of Age of Empires Online before they started out on Steam. The latest addition to the Age of Empires series takes a turn towards the MMO genre, adding quests, crafting, experience points and levels to the mix, and it is "free to play".
I tried the game initially when it just came out. But the lack of units at the start, plus the fact that you could never have access to major content until you paid for it turned me off. It didn't help that these content were expensive.
Recently however, The devs have started to listen to their players and have made major changes to the game. (Report from PC Gamer and official site; and a summary and review of the changes) Empire points can be earned and used to unlock content previously only accessible by paying. The leveling curve has also been adjusted, plus a few other changes. I have started trying it out again because of these and the game's actually pretty enjoyable.
Is it actually ok when free to play is just a demo? Personally, I feel it is alright, as long as it is stated upfront that there are content that you will never get for free. Of course, the devs might change their mind later like for AOE Online. But if you make your game an MMO, meaning you want many players involved in the game, making it a demo might turn some people off. Plus in a game like AOE Oline, a proper pvp ladder would require a substantial number of people. In the case of AOE Online, in order not to let paying players have an advantage, ranked ladder is only for paying players, so this further shrinks the player base.
The issue here is the price. Each faction here was $20 if I don't remember wrongly. Granted, the devs need to make money, but lower costs for important parts of the game should be a given. Paid content should be non-essentials, so people can skip those and people who want to support the company can pay for them. The most common thing would be vanity items to show off, or experience boosts.
That said, the case of Gas Powered Games showed how the free to play model could close the gap between consumer and push game development in the right direction. Gamers are hoping for great support for the games they play, and they actually care enough to give feedback instead of leaving to play another game. If devs can sieve out the real issues from the loads of complains, they can truly create a masterpiece even if the game didn't kick off well. But then again, if you've been to any forums for games, especially Blizzard's, you would know there is really a lot of crap to sieve through...
I tried the game initially when it just came out. But the lack of units at the start, plus the fact that you could never have access to major content until you paid for it turned me off. It didn't help that these content were expensive.
Recently however, The devs have started to listen to their players and have made major changes to the game. (Report from PC Gamer and official site; and a summary and review of the changes) Empire points can be earned and used to unlock content previously only accessible by paying. The leveling curve has also been adjusted, plus a few other changes. I have started trying it out again because of these and the game's actually pretty enjoyable.
Is it actually ok when free to play is just a demo? Personally, I feel it is alright, as long as it is stated upfront that there are content that you will never get for free. Of course, the devs might change their mind later like for AOE Online. But if you make your game an MMO, meaning you want many players involved in the game, making it a demo might turn some people off. Plus in a game like AOE Oline, a proper pvp ladder would require a substantial number of people. In the case of AOE Online, in order not to let paying players have an advantage, ranked ladder is only for paying players, so this further shrinks the player base.
The issue here is the price. Each faction here was $20 if I don't remember wrongly. Granted, the devs need to make money, but lower costs for important parts of the game should be a given. Paid content should be non-essentials, so people can skip those and people who want to support the company can pay for them. The most common thing would be vanity items to show off, or experience boosts.
That said, the case of Gas Powered Games showed how the free to play model could close the gap between consumer and push game development in the right direction. Gamers are hoping for great support for the games they play, and they actually care enough to give feedback instead of leaving to play another game. If devs can sieve out the real issues from the loads of complains, they can truly create a masterpiece even if the game didn't kick off well. But then again, if you've been to any forums for games, especially Blizzard's, you would know there is really a lot of crap to sieve through...
Wednesday, September 5, 2012
PC = Pirate Cove but a Win For Gamers?
Ubisoft's CEO Yves Guillemot stated that the percentage of people pirating on the PC is 93 to 95%,(Guillemot: As many PC players pay for F2P as boxed product) the same as the number of people who do not pay when playing a free-to-play game. I'm not sure where they get their stats from, but with their always-online-DRM, I'm not surprised if people do end up pirating their games just so they can play it without issues, and even those who bought the games might end up pirating or cracking them, so the number of pirates gets inflated. Perhaps they realized this themselves, because an article surfaced today with they stating their DRM have been scrapped since June 2011 and replaced with a one-time online activation (Ubisoft Scrapping Always-On DRM For PC Games). Are they eating their words and crawling back to PC gamers?
Is this a win for gamers? Without the online DRM, I just might start buying their games again. But if publishers continue to blame poor PC sales on piracy instead of acknowledging that they have been bringing really poor and unplayable ports over to PCs, they are just going to turn away the PC crowd. For too many times have great games on consoles been poorly ported over to the PC, so much so that PC gamers may just start to thinking that developers have no interest in the PC market, and if that is so, there will be less and less people willing to pay for PC games. Perhaps things aren't that grim, but I would hate to see things go into that vicious cycle...
Is this a win for gamers? Without the online DRM, I just might start buying their games again. But if publishers continue to blame poor PC sales on piracy instead of acknowledging that they have been bringing really poor and unplayable ports over to PCs, they are just going to turn away the PC crowd. For too many times have great games on consoles been poorly ported over to the PC, so much so that PC gamers may just start to thinking that developers have no interest in the PC market, and if that is so, there will be less and less people willing to pay for PC games. Perhaps things aren't that grim, but I would hate to see things go into that vicious cycle...
Saturday, September 1, 2012
Gotham City Imposters now free to play!
Gotham City Imposters, a first person shooter where you get to play as an imposter Batman or Joker, is now free to play on Steam!
http://store.steampowered.com/app/206210/
Tuesday, August 28, 2012
eSportsmanship and 'clever' fanboys
The top two teams of League of Legends competing in Major League Gaming were disqualified after both teams were found to have colluded and agreed to share the price money (links below). After news of this came out, people started bashing on MLG claiming they banned the teams because they played an unorthodox match by going All Random, All Middle.
Though I'm not into DotA style games, I'd guess that it would be pretty exciting and quite a hype to see teams going random, and then going to play a style that's not generally seen, especially in a genre that can normally take a long time for a match to play out. Even so, it puzzles me that people would actually assume this is why the teams were disqualified after MLG has official statements posted about the decision and some even say that the money belongs to the teams, so they can share it if they want to. (I don't want to use such strong words, but do games really make people stupid?) The hate here for MLG is clear, and it's so strong that gamers would rather be blind to what has happened so that they can find an excuse to hate on them even more.
Is it ok then to agree to share the money? I'm sure it won't be an issue if one team wins, feels sorry for the other team and decides to share part of the winnings with them AFTER the competition is over; the money would be theirs, and the outcome of the match would not be affected. However, knowing that you'll get the same amount of money whether you win or lose, will you put in as much effort as you would have? I understand there's some scoring system going on here that would still make winning an incentive, but what if one team does not need the points? I don't know, but I just feel that if this is allowed, why don't all the teams that join the games just walk away with the same amount of money whether they win or lose? And if that's the case, do you think you'll get to enjoy a competitive game? I think it would be ideal to be the weakest team then, because you would earn money in the shortest time possible. Go in, lose, travel to next competition and repeat...
http://www.majorleaguegaming.com/news/an-important-message-regarding-mlg-summer-championship-league-of-legends/
https://twitter.com/MrMLGAdam/status/239878409382133760
http://asia.gamespot.com/news/top-two-league-of-legends-teams-disqualified-in-mlg-summer-championship-6393270
Though I'm not into DotA style games, I'd guess that it would be pretty exciting and quite a hype to see teams going random, and then going to play a style that's not generally seen, especially in a genre that can normally take a long time for a match to play out. Even so, it puzzles me that people would actually assume this is why the teams were disqualified after MLG has official statements posted about the decision and some even say that the money belongs to the teams, so they can share it if they want to. (I don't want to use such strong words, but do games really make people stupid?) The hate here for MLG is clear, and it's so strong that gamers would rather be blind to what has happened so that they can find an excuse to hate on them even more.
Is it ok then to agree to share the money? I'm sure it won't be an issue if one team wins, feels sorry for the other team and decides to share part of the winnings with them AFTER the competition is over; the money would be theirs, and the outcome of the match would not be affected. However, knowing that you'll get the same amount of money whether you win or lose, will you put in as much effort as you would have? I understand there's some scoring system going on here that would still make winning an incentive, but what if one team does not need the points? I don't know, but I just feel that if this is allowed, why don't all the teams that join the games just walk away with the same amount of money whether they win or lose? And if that's the case, do you think you'll get to enjoy a competitive game? I think it would be ideal to be the weakest team then, because you would earn money in the shortest time possible. Go in, lose, travel to next competition and repeat...
http://www.majorleaguegaming.com/news/an-important-message-regarding-mlg-summer-championship-league-of-legends/
https://twitter.com/MrMLGAdam/status/239878409382133760
http://asia.gamespot.com/news/top-two-league-of-legends-teams-disqualified-in-mlg-summer-championship-6393270
Saturday, August 25, 2012
Kickstarter - Planetary Annihilation
Planetary Annihilation looks to be a very interesting project, though the graphics seem to be lacking now, the game has premise. The way it handles inter-planetary battles seems like a combination of the Turn-based Strategy Genre with Real-time Strategy. Textures look like they need some work, but the interface looks slick and if they can pull off Supreme Commander-type large-scale battles, this could turn out to be a pretty cool RTS.
Considering the company already has a game out (Monday Night Combat) and the devs have experience with RTS games, this looks to be worthy of a support.
Considering the company already has a game out (Monday Night Combat) and the devs have experience with RTS games, this looks to be worthy of a support.
Wednesday, August 22, 2012
Kick it, start it.
www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2012/08/21/when-kickstarting-fails/
This particular article reminded me of this post that I have been meaning to write.
Games have moved into Kickstarter territory. For independent developers, Kickstarter gives them a chance at creating and publishing their games without having to submit to the whims of publishers like EA or Activision, and yet still be able to get the funds for game development.
It does come with it's flaws of course. Kickstarter isn't exactly built for advertising games development. For starters, other projects tend to take precedence on the main page; and even when you go into the games sub-category, it doesn't differentiate well between computer games, mobile phones, board and card games and so on. There's also a noticeable lack of differentiation into genres, making hard to look for the kind of games you might be interested in inside the haystack.
Funding in itself is a risk. There's no guarantee you'll get the product eventually. Like the article I posted stated, sometimes it's not because of the person who started the project, but many other things can and will affect the success though the project in question wasn't a game development and that In facts shows how much uncertainty there is as game development is a much more complicated process.
There are projects though, where the games are pretty much in the alpha stage and where the makers actually have something to show people who are willing to help out. The money basically is for the final stages of the project and a form of support to let the developers know that people are willing to buy their game and that encouragement can sometimes be worth more than monetary support.
All in all, it is a good platform for the development of games and also a good way for gamers to show support for indie devs. Kickstarter needs to work on the games section though, and indie devs should try to make sure the influence of big name publishers doesn't contaminate their projects (EA is eyeing crowd funded games). Devs need to have more to show before setting up their project on Kickstarter and supporters need to remember their donations will not necessarily give a return. As long as these risks are taken into account, crowd-funded games have a potential to compete in the gaming market.
Edit: Kickstarter actually allows you to seperate board and card games from video games, but that's about it.
This particular article reminded me of this post that I have been meaning to write.
Games have moved into Kickstarter territory. For independent developers, Kickstarter gives them a chance at creating and publishing their games without having to submit to the whims of publishers like EA or Activision, and yet still be able to get the funds for game development.
It does come with it's flaws of course. Kickstarter isn't exactly built for advertising games development. For starters, other projects tend to take precedence on the main page; and even when you go into the games sub-category, it doesn't differentiate well between computer games, mobile phones, board and card games and so on. There's also a noticeable lack of differentiation into genres, making hard to look for the kind of games you might be interested in inside the haystack.
Funding in itself is a risk. There's no guarantee you'll get the product eventually. Like the article I posted stated, sometimes it's not because of the person who started the project, but many other things can and will affect the success though the project in question wasn't a game development and that In facts shows how much uncertainty there is as game development is a much more complicated process.
There are projects though, where the games are pretty much in the alpha stage and where the makers actually have something to show people who are willing to help out. The money basically is for the final stages of the project and a form of support to let the developers know that people are willing to buy their game and that encouragement can sometimes be worth more than monetary support.
All in all, it is a good platform for the development of games and also a good way for gamers to show support for indie devs. Kickstarter needs to work on the games section though, and indie devs should try to make sure the influence of big name publishers doesn't contaminate their projects (EA is eyeing crowd funded games). Devs need to have more to show before setting up their project on Kickstarter and supporters need to remember their donations will not necessarily give a return. As long as these risks are taken into account, crowd-funded games have a potential to compete in the gaming market.
Edit: Kickstarter actually allows you to seperate board and card games from video games, but that's about it.
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