Dhruin

I just want to understand these two things. So...Take2 and Rockstar are nice folks even though they have sold ~25M copies of the GTA franchise at pretty close to full price. Let's assume the average price was $40...that's something like $1 Billion at retail for developments that probably cost a total of under $60M - certainly under $100M. That's supply and demand, market price, all fine and dandy. They could have sold latter copies at $25 or whatever to benefit the consumer since they made such huge profits on the first couple but we don't expect them to (quite rightly). On the other hand, say...Brad Wardell from Stardock is a dirty, pondscum, greedy bastard because his 100,000-sellling original GalCiv sold 10,000 copies via DD at the same price as the recommended retail of $39. Right? I know you dislike the numbers he presented but where did he lie? ---- As an aside, someone asked how much more Troika got from ToEE from the DD versions. The answer would be (almost certainly) zippo. ToEE isn't Troika's IP and the developer doesn't usually make any royalties until the development costs and a further profit margin are "repaid" to the publisher. There's little chance ToEE made the breakeven, so they would have seen nothing extra.

I'm not sure that developers on the whole see publishers as "evil" (insert appropriate derogatory term), although I'm sure some do. It's more a question of the current system constraining the industry. From my perspective, where a publisher pays for a development, they are entitled to do pretty much whatever they want with it. But that doesn't mean it's a good thing to have a creative endeavour driven mostly by the distribution system.

No, it isn't surprising that developers champion DD -- but that doesn't mean that they don't have a valid point of view, either. It's obviously your decision how you choose to buy your products. And yes, people would go berzerk over EA doing...well, anything. Sometimes people get irrational - doesn't matter if it makes sense or not.

The thread has covered some distance and others have responded on most of the points. One last thing... If you try to base the value to you on the cost or profit for the supplier, then all sorts of silly things occur. The GTA series has sold something like 25M copies -- way, way more than required to turn a profit. Are they greedy bastards because they didn't sell the games for $10 (or whatever), given the volume they sold? Should HL2 cost $79 because the development cost them $40M, while other shooters that sold for $50 were developed for <$10M? I understand you obviously value the CD, but the cost of DD to the supplier is irrelevant.

I simply can't understand some of your points, I'm sorry. I assume there is a language barrier. Would I trust Troika? Yes. I have all three of their games and have enjoyed each of them to different extents. Vampire is my favourite game of recent years. I understand many, many people feel differently. But so what? This isn't Troika. This is an artist who used to work for Troika. I haven't a clue what PoR has to do with it - that wasn't made by Troika. Or do you just mean buggy games in general? If so, what does that have to do with DD? What do you mean by "they never get themselves a producer in their entire lifetime"? I think I understand what you are saying, although I utterly disagree. Your position is that since retailers make ~20%, the DD developer should always charge at least 20% less or else they are "stealing" the retailer's margin...is that your position? I understand that people feel the price for DD should be lower than retail. The simple fact is that Walmart and others make that impossible for many titles, so I guess you exercise your own choice and choose to buy retail for some titles if that bothers you. That simply can't change in the current market. Eventually DD will overtake retail and the balance will shift - we'll see what happens then. As far as the retailer cut, the whole point of the developer using DD is that they get such a small part of the current pie that they are looking for ways to go direct to market so they make more money. You will probably think that is stealing but have a look at the number of developers who close or get bought by a publisher because they have no other way of going forward. Ever complained there is little creativity or innovation in games? I have - and part of it is because the whole dev-publisher-retail relationship splits the income and changes the focus. Retailers don't care if a game is good, creative, innovative or anything else -- they just want to sell as many boxes as possible and don't care what is in it. If Barbie: My Little Horse was the only game that sold, that's all Walmart would keep and publishers would turn their attention to only making Barbie games. Now, put yourself in McCarthy's shoes. You don't want to make Barbie (or whatever) -- you have a passion to make a certain type of niche game. And you know it is a niche and retail won't be interested. But you believe there are 50,000 players who are fans of this sort of game and are crying out for this genre, so you take the risk of putting your savings into this idea. Should he just stay home and not bother because his idea doesn't suit Walmart? That extra money they make from DD makes it viable in the first place. It isn't stealing the retailer's margin - it's allowing games to be made that might not otherwise exist. Even for games that also have retail copies, the extra money might allow the developer to be more creative in the future. You don't have to be interested in supporting that but the stealing concept is way off-base.

How so? My currency conversion says you paid equivalent to USD$19.12. 0.88c difference? Big deal. On the other hand, SP paid >$22 via his UK store. Direct from Steam converts to ~11 GBP. Your assertion is weak at best in this case.

Just for you I checked the Steam store (from the get steam here link). Can't say I call 30,- for an expansion, $10 for original Half-Life, $30,- for Half-Life2 less expensive than in the stores. Quite the opposite... Not a single new game has a price listing there either; only older ones. And I mean $10 to play deathmatch ... <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Where did I say one sytem was better value than another? My point was simply that the prices vary - often they are the same or higher than retail - but sometimes not. For example, Darwinia is available on Steam for $19.99 or Cinema Marquee is releasing a retail version that EB Games currently has listed at $29.99. For this particular game, the entire point is moot. There probably won't be a retail version and the game certainly wouldn't even exist without a viable DD platform. In what sense?

These things are lost on me but I guess some people like them. As Gromnir notes, the Blizzard ones are usually pretty exceptional (and I guess there are others) but they rarely interest me. More in-game footage please.

The pricing often isn't $50 for DD - have a look at the games available. Where the game is also a retail product, the price is often mandated by the retailers -- they will refuse to stock a game if the developer is selling it directly at a discounted price. I understand that isn't a perfect situation but it isn't easy to fix. You certainly don't need to use Source to sell via Steam - again, have a look at the titles. McCarthy is saying you get free distribution on Steam if you use Source. Many others already use it - but they pay some percentage fee or whatever.

Evil? *g* OK, perhaps you see some potential but you are still happy with what retail is providing you, thus no interest in looking at other alternatives. Laid Back made it pretty clear that the game just wouldn't exist without a viable DD system. Retail release = no game. They are targeting a niche - and you aren't in it.

Then this game isn't for you, right? The whole point is this is a niche that won't support retail. You're happy with retail games, so you aren't part of the target audience in the first place -- you saying you won't buy it online is like me saying I won't buy Madden online -- utterly irrelevant because I was never going to buy it in any case.

@Hades - Still, you do buy things where you pay for the experience rather than anything tangible. It's your money and your choice. I just don't understand that inconsistency. Edit: Oops, too slow.

Nope, still not that interested. That's not to say it won't be successful or even market standard. Call me when they start working on improving the core gameplay rather than glitz. On performance, I don't pretend to be across the issues but this sort of thing seems to be fairly common as far as I can tell. Of the titles listed, only a couple are of vague interest to me -- not to say that many others aren't very excited. Sacred 2 is an interesting example...despite liking the original somewhat, I could write a lengthy diatribe on it's flaws and the lack of physics ain't one of them. I would posit that this will simply draw developer time to something peripheral rather than working on the core gameplay. Note that they sold a truckload of product - so plenty of people probably disagree with me.

You don't go to the movies or pay for cable? Anyway, either way, the market will change with or without you in the long run.

As far as I can tell from the interview, they are using personal savings for the prototype and then have promises (?) of other investment if that is successful (or something like that). What STEAM offers is a larger/easier marketplace than selling from your own website. But that's a long way from replacing a traditional publisher.

Assuming Valve doesn't front the development money, I doubt they would even have deadlines. It's just not their concern if they aren't paying out.

Well, he does specify they will retain the IP. With traditional publishers, it all depends on the deal you negotiate, although they will often demand to own the IP. Given that Valve isn't putting up the development cash, it's not really surprising you don't have to hand over the IP. I didn't get much of an idea of the game itself, but best of luck to them. A good game is always welcome.

Yeah, well, back to the actual topic. Close to zero interest, not to mention a few stories on the 'net of serious slowdowns.

They never said they would but they did make comments that strongly suggested it. We probably won't ever know if those hints were misconstrued, they changed their minds - or whatever. Just for the fun of it, I'll suggest the sales on Xbox discouraged them and Volourn can come along and say R00fles! and we can go from there. Over to Volourn...

I can't remember the last time I agreed with you but you have some points here. A short game can certainly still create "buzz" (obviously) but the longer a game is around generating positive discussion, the better. RPGs are also a bit of a special case - if the character develops to an "epic" level too quickly, it feels trite. Having said that, who knows if he just meant the critical path or most of the content? And Fallout is pretty short - but pretty sweet. I'd be surprised if they had that depth of choice...but if they do, I'd be happy with 20 hours.

I agree. But if the other elements are good enough, it's the overall balance of the package that counts for me. Good character creation is definitely a good start, for sure.

Yes, I'd much rather it had character creation and it's hard to judge how good the development system will be because it's...different.

We simply see it differently. I acknowledge that Oblivion's "public" timeline is considerably shorter, although I'm not sure why that makes much of a difference to the material that gets released over that period. I disagree that there was more "substance" available for Oblivion, unless you simply count a higher profile or more previews because of the level of anticipation. Every Oblivion preview came from one of three sources including the original E3 demonstration and the roadtrip in 2005 - the first person to publish gameplay impressions from independent play (as opposed to Bethsoft demos) was Desslock in late 2005 for PC Gamer. I don't want to waste your time on such a trivial matter but feel free to have a look through Oblivion's E3 footage - there simply isn't much real dialogue shown. Other demos were mocked up for the display - the woman and the dog on fire just isn't a real experience for an actual Oblivion player. The Witcher's E3 demo played through two gameplay segments multiple times, showing two or three different approaches for those segments. That's more substance to me than mocked up RAI displays.

Urgh. I was hoping to have some sort of conversation before accusations of fanboyism came up. Fair enough. I'd like to see more of that too but isn't exactly unusual. I must have missed all the official screens Bethsoft put out for Oblivion with reasonable shots of dialogue. I don't see any here, although the PC screens do show a single screen with three topics, if that counts as showing "dialogue". Much as I hate that UI's often aren't shown, I'm pretty sure you know the UI is often one of the last things nailed down and those pesky marketing folks tend to prefer action shots. There is certainly more than that if you look. You can download video footage of the demo from E3 or Leipzig last year where you will see different examples of multiple approaches - including the interface and a little dialogue. There are also other videos and plenty of previews with different examples. I don't necessarily disagree with any of that except the "sparse". I think they have released quite a bit - more than many other games and certainly as much as had been released for Oblivion by the original anticipated release. I'd definitely like to see more dialogue and I'm curious about how other things they have released info on actually turn out in the gameplay. Just to be clear, I only use Oblivion as the most recent and obvious example - not to bash it. Yeah...I'm not a dev but I'm confident there are as many (more?) single-player projects that exceed 3 years than those that run under it. I also suspect completely rewriting NWN's renderer and using the engine in a game that has no resemblance to D&D or the combat in NWN sounds like quite a lot more work than re-using the Infinity Engine. The 2007 release (if met) would mean heading for 4 years, not 5.

I'm not debating STALKER - I just think that's an unfair comparison for The Witcher at this point. I accept nothing is proven of them - not the quality, not their ability to deliver; no argument. But a self-financed company that has been around for a decade taking a perfectly common period of development time...what's the problem? It may turn out to be crap but this attitude seems at odds with the oft-seen complaint that games are rushed and released before they are ready. You'll see the same thing over at BioWare's Dragon Age forums.