Slowtrain

"and put some more boobs in!"

Publisher pressure probably means more boobs and explosions

Yep, I agree. Every developer has to know that their pc game will be pirated eventually and make plans accordingly. Still, it's unfortunate that pc gaming will have to once again contend with another high-profile piracy issue. I've heard numbers that suggest Crysis was pirated on far greater than a 1 to 1 ratio. As usual though with internet numbers, the credibility is always suspect.

I think that the piracy problem is over dramatized by the industry and we have begun to join in the hysteria a little bit. Crysis was an exclusive PC release and performed well enough to generate a sequel, I wouldn't say die until it release. If more copies of pc games are pirated than are sold, which was suggested to be the case in another thread, then I think it's a pretty big problem. There's always a level of loss in a business that is tolerable and products are priced accordingly. But when the loss levels are that far out of whack, a company can't simply adjust pricing to make up for the loss. Even if the pirated copy does not always correspond to a lost sale, it sometimes does, and that is still a lot of lost revenue. Especially for a game that takes multiple years and thousands of developer hours to complete. It's a major problem for pc gaming that I don't think CAN be overstated enough. Crysis sold what eventually, 1.5 million? It sounds good but is that really a lot? Crytek is a company that appears on the surface to be more comitted to the pc as a gaming platform than most, so having this happen is pretty unfortunate.

The technical term is "groundling". Can be modified with either "peasant" or "hoi polloi"

I always liked the Behemoths. Never understood why there were only 5 in the vanilla game. If Dragons are like Bethemoths, hopefully there will be more of them.

What is this "manual" thing of which you speak? Is it like the back of a cereal box?

Probably not, but you might be able to make them blow up by shooting the engine. Nonetheless, previous ES games pre-Todd Howard, do support the possobility dialogue with a variety of non-human creatures.

Daggerfall had Dragonish as a learnable language skill. AMong others. All language skills were dropped in Morrowind. One of the many bad decisions that has been made to the ES games post daggerfall. SO yes, many ES creatures have languages and intelligence.

You're probably right. They just seemed too detailed and glowy to me, but I tend to forget I'm not really current on what graphics are capable of these days.

I feel horrible for laughing at that. *flagellates self*

Awesome, Tig! I'll be following this one.

I think games nowadays are not games so much as they are "experiences". Computer games used to commonly have rules, systems, mechanics, failure was always a possibility. A lot of current game development has been to minimize the presentation of those aspects, especially failure, which I think has lead a much more narcicisstic aspect to current games. Some genres still maintain more of a focus on tradtional gameplay, but they are definitely the less commerically vaible of the IPs. So I think you're friend is right: games today are not really much lessened by the inclusion of highly narcicisstic and idealized sexual content. A lot of them are all ready there in all other areas.

To me those screenies look somewhat suspect. I wonder if they had a few silicone implants to make them a tad more impressive.

Yep, it did sound great. No question. It also looked great as well. Problem is that sounding great and looking great doesn't often translate to being great. Often it seems to be just the opposite in that its the games that don't sound so great or look so great that ended up becoming classics. I don't know if it's just a matter of expectations or what. I certainly don't want to tell gamers that they can't look forward to a game, but its just my opinion that if we, as gamers, spent less time buying into the hype we might force publishers to release better games rather than just talking about how much better their games are going to be, which they never are.

*shrug* I never forget its a game; I just expect games to work they way we are told they are going to. Mostly.

I wished I had saved copies of all those posts that declared Oblivion the would be the best rpg ever a year before release. Seriously, I want Skyrim to be the best rpg ever, but you have to take all this pr stuff with a grain of salt. EVERY game sounds awesome a year before release.

Games were a lot better when your characters were just square blobs of colored pixels.

You're probably totally correct. But when the ratio between sold vs pirated copies is so far in the red, there's really little choice but to try SOMETHING. It's really all about the numbers. If 10 copies are sold for every copy pirated, then you live with that since its probably an acceptable loss in a business situation. If 1 copy is sold for every three copies pirated, then you either do something about it or stop making the product. ANd this becomes ever more true if the problem platform isn't even generating the largest revenue stream. Seriously, at this point, why feed the internet free pc copies when you can not even make a PC version to begin with. Make everyone buy the console title and be done with it.

yeah, but pirates are going to crack the game anyway, so what's the point in alienating some of your otherwise guaranteed customers? the publisher loses either way. they should be thinking of other ways to sell their games, not applying something that already has been proven ineffective Yep, whether or not DRM actually works to prevent piracy is certainly a valid question, but in light of what are, imo, pretty outrageous piracy numbers, I can't condemn a publisher for trying things. I mean, seriously, what does a publisher really have to lose if FAR more people are pirating the game than buying it. Certainly every customer has the right to not buy the game if they feel the drm is too restrictive, and those lost sales are a risk the publisher has to take, but given the numbers it seems a reasonable risk.

Of course that's the reason. Doesn't mean DRM is effective in practice, or that consumers shouldn't oppose it. However, if far more people are pirating the pc version of the game than are buying it, which appears to be the case, than a publisher really doesn't have all that much to lose if they alienate some fans with inconvenience. While some legit customers might choose to forgo the purchase, that number really probably isn't very large and considering the vast size of the pirated copy base, the publisher stands to make back lost revenue plus a lot more just by lowering the number pf pirated copies by a relatively small percent. Really, it almost makes best sense to not even bother with a pc version at all, if pirated copies outnumber legit copies by 2 or 3 to 1.

If those numbers are accurate then its pretty obvious why publishers are a bit cheesed off. I'm not partiucuarly a fan of DRM, but it's hard to condemn publishers for trying something, anything, to lower those piracy number.

Are PC sales numbers even relevant anymore? I'm not saying yes or no. Just asking. As pc sales numbers shrink, the number of pirated copies siphons off an increasingly large percentage of the potential income (assuming number of pirated copies remains more or less consistent) I mean if you're selling a million pc copies then maybe 10000 sales lost to piracy is liveable. But if you're only selling 50,000 pc copies then 10000 lost sales is a pretty big chunk of the potential take.

I agree that some things in MW were difficult to find. I remember going up into the Ashlands during the main quest and having to find some tomb where i had to fight some skeletons or something, and I remember it took a while to find the dungeon and then it took me a while to find my way back to the Ashlander camp. But, in the end, I managed to do both, sans a quest compass, and I didn't find the problems involved were that insurmountable. And speaking specifically of the Caius Cosades issue, you get like three sets of directions, a silt strider, a map, and road signs. A magic compass seems pretty superfluous.