Magister Lajciak

Agreed - the sales expectations of publishers are getting increasingly unrealistic (witness well over two million sales of Prince of Persia in about six weeks being called a 'slow starter' by Ubisoft - my eyes nearly popped out when I read that). Well, I guess the publishers have to have such exaggerated expectations given the enormous overhead they are creating through massive advertising campaigns and such.

Yep, that's pretty much what I think too. It's not that I am fundamentally opposed to MMO's (I am merely not interested in playing them, but those who like them - more power to them) - it's just that when these get produced, they seem to gobble-up the entire franchise and kill the possibility of further single-player installments - hence I am less than thrilled when this happens to one one of my favorite franchises (e.g. KOTOR, or indeed Warcraft).

Well, actually, it doesn't feel good for me even to say that the KOTOR franchise (in terms of single-player) is dead, because I like the franchise enormously, but I am not going to deny it. LucasArts and BioWare decided to kill it - that is hardly my fault. Because we almost certainly cannot change it, it is probably best to try to move on and not grieve the demise of one of the best CRPG franchises, although it might be difficult (I am still somewhat sad about it myself). Besides, if you were dead, you probably wouldn't care too much. After all, you say you would be reincarnated as a turnip. Remember when Blizzard took that RTS game and killed it by making it an MMO? That game used to be huge, and now it is totally dead! Crazy developers, they've got no idea how to run a company! I have no doubt whatsoever that TOR will be a very successful game commercially and in critical acclaim and as such will be very good for the company. In fact, I think that this is the most likely game on the horizon to displace WoW (which may be in decline by the time it comes out) as the market leader. I did specify that it would kill the franchise in terms of single player and indeed WoW did just that to the Warcraft franchise. Of course, since I have no interest at all in playing MMOs, killing the single-player part of the franchise is pretty much the same as killing the franchise altogether from my perspective as a player.

Interesting info and thanks for the clarification!

+1 +2

That is an extremely interesting find, funroc. Well, whatever the case, Obsidian has done a really good job on it, so ultimately it was probably for the best that this was transferred to Obsidian. Still, I too am surprised to hear that Liquid Entertainment worked on it at all.

Well, actually, it doesn't feel good for me even to say that the KOTOR franchise (in terms of single-player) is dead, because I like the franchise enormously, but I am not going to deny it. LucasArts and BioWare decided to kill it - that is hardly my fault. Because we almost certainly cannot change it, it is probably best to try to move on and not grieve the demise of one of the best CRPG franchises, although it might be difficult (I am still somewhat sad about it myself). Besides, if you were dead, you probably wouldn't care too much. After all, you say you would be reincarnated as a turnip.

Yep, thanks from me too. It was a good playtest - now I am looking forward to the final product!

I agree with Feargus to a reasonable extent. If single-player RPGs want to compete, they need to concentrate on the story and how the character can impact the world. Mask of the Betrayer did this brilliantly. For some reason, however, Obsidian decided that the Storm of Zehir will have a different emphasis - not that that's necessarily bad, but it is precisely the type of emphasis that puts the game into direct competition with MMORPGs. Hopefully, we will see more MotB-like games from Obsidian! Morgoth - forget KOTOR 3 - the franchise is dead. They decided to kill it with the MMO.

Yes, unfortunately, this franchise is probably dead.

The Playtest is now closed. The final version of the Pathfinder RPG will be coming out on 13 August 2009 during GenCon: http://paizo.com/paizo/messageboards/paizo...allyClosed1719e

Today is the final day to get your comments in before the end of the playtest: http://paizo.com/paizo/messageboards/paizo...design/comments

I find it ironic, given Steam is essentially a form of DRM. Yep. In fact, I far prefer SecuROM, when it does not have online activation and limited installs (when it does not have these two 'features' I don't actually mind SecuROM at all), to Steam, which always has online activation.

I am glad you are having fun with your first PnP experience! Tabletop roleplaying can be great fun with good players and a good DM/GM. In any case, the final cover of the Pathfinder RPG has been revealed: http://paizo.com/image/content/PathfinderR...mingSticker.jpg

I am running my own campaign(s), so I don't use the modules themselves.

WHat do you mean exactly? It is a game that is rated 7+ after all. I need to clarify this further perhaps; He mentioned that he and the developers of LBP have disagree about how they percieve people. The folks at LBP thinks that, according to him, that everyone is a precious artist, waiting for their creativity to bloom. Yatzee however, think that everyone is a "tosser". This is heavily extrapolated into the game-experience as well. Since they disagree on such a fundamental issue, he can't really rate it or review it properly. He even admits the level-design is really good, but he can't enjoy the game itself. It is simply not his 'type' of game. Oh come on, you are lambasting Yahtzee for giving a negative review to a game?!?! That's the whole point of his reviews - to make us laugh by dissing any and every game he reviews!

I also don't feel the need to have something physical, but I do feel the need not to be dependent on external servers that may go down in the future. That would work if the service did not require an online check when you are installing the game. Unfortunately, as far as I understand it, download services these days require just that, so digital distribution is anathema for me. I understand that other people might not be so concerned with that, but I am and hence I am just not going to use digital distribution unless this issue is fully sorted out.

Yeah, my consciousness sometimes streams in strange ways. Lol, that may be the case!

Yep, that was my mistake - I simply subtracted the console sales from the 2.2 million to reach the more than 1.7 million sales number. But I didn't notice that the 2.2 million refers to worldwide sales, while the 483 thousand refers to console sales in the U.S. - that makes the picture much murkier. It means we simply have no clue what is happening with respect to the structure of sales. Even so, I would argue that 2.2 million worldwide sales is not a bad number in such a short space of time, particularly when in comparison with FarCry 2 (which is being praised by Ubisoft in the same article) that achieved 2.9 million worldwide sales, but over a longer period (it was released earlier).

You may be right. It seems so. But the PC logged more than 1.7 million sales, which is very impressive in one month for the PC platform. It is not record breaking (Ubisoft is no Blizzard), but very impressive nonetheless. I doubt even games like Fallout 3 sold that many copies on the PC even as of today (I have no data - just an assumption on my part that the majority of the 3+ million Fallout 3 sales were for consoles). The fact that console sales did pretty poorly at 483 thousand is another matter. NPD is reporting only console sales in this case and only in the U.S.. The 1.5 million number is total sales worldwide. Good point actually. I doubt we will find the data though.

Prince of Persia sold about 2.2 million copies since December (http://360.kombo.com/article.php?artid=15677) and the vast majority of those sales seem to be for the PC, since only about 483 thousand were console sales (http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=21937). Yet for some reason Ubisoft still calls Prince of Persia a 'slow starter' despite these excellent sales figures. This could mean one of two things. Either Ubisoft is referring only to the console sales as a slow-starter, since the PC sales are actually excellent, or Ubisoft does not want to give ammunition to DRM critics and wants to portray its experiment of a DRM-free game as a failure so that it can continue to use draconian DRM and say "hey, we tried" to the critics. So why would it want to use draconian DRM? Perhaps to prevent second-hand sales rather than to prevent piracy... I will reiterate that I don't actually mind DRM (not even SecuROM). I only mind draconian DRM or DDRM, which requires online activation or install limits and thus artificially decreases the longevity of games.

lol. Stabbed through the heart. Yeah, a lot of pc gamers do not wait calmly AT ALL for a patch. WHich I understand. But a lot seem to tolerate this idea that when you buy the game it will be a bug-ridden mess and that the patches will fix it. But a lot of gamers don't tolerate it. It does cause an outrage among gamers when a game is released buggy. It cannot cause apriori outrage, unlike DDRM, because no developer/publisher will admit that they are about to release a buggy game - see them do that and then see the outcry that would ensue! My chief issue with DDRM is the impact on the longevity of games. That's why I am so vehemently opposed to online activation and limited installs, but don't really mind other forms of DRM that don't decrease game-longevity. I agree that bugs are a problem too, but there is a major difference, that being that excessive bugs are the result of insufficient resources (time an money devoted to playtesting), whereas draconian DRM is introduced into the game deliberately. The bugs equivalent would be if bugs were inserted into the game on purpose (and the developer/publisher would even pay extra to introduce the bugs), rather than merely not being caught due to insufficient resource intensive Q&A/playtesting/debugging.

He completely ignored the online activation issue with the possibility (eventual likelihood I would say) that the servers will be shut down. Besides, if online activation-type DDRM is there to prevent 0th day piracy (and I agree that that is part of the reason), than online activation can be patched out a week or two after it's cracked - but this does not happen. This leads many to the conclusion that DDRM has an ulterior motive - to prevent second hand sales, rather than to fight piracy.

If anybody else wants to present some rational reasons why certain aspects of DRM, such as online activation affecting game longevity, or something else is problematic for software users and gamers, you can pass on your ideas through the form at the bottom of this page directly to the Federal Trade Commission: https://secure.commentworks.com/ftc-DRMtechnologies/ I encourage you to do so, since this really is a great opportunity for our concerns to be heard and possibly addressed. On this note I would like to give kudos to those companies, such as Obsidian/Atari and most recently also Ubisoft (Prince of Persia, Tribes of the East - both DRM free), for not resorting to online activation and limited installs.

Yes, this is siomething I have been following. It is possible to submit suggestions and comments by e-mail to the FTC on this matter and I have done so, arguing why online activation is a particularly bad idea.