Excuses on the High Seas

[Say Anything]

Funny you should drop a link to the World of Goo site and yet fail to read what they have to say about Piracy and why they consider DRM is a "waste of time and money"...

http://2dboy.com/2008/11/13/90/

Note that World of Goo is the second best seller at Amazon after WotLK.

Smart man. I suppose you don't know that World of Goo has an 82% piracy rate. [http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2008/11/15/world-of-goo-piracy-rate-82/]

wall of text

Where's your argument? You wanted to know why the World of Goo picture was posted in a pirate-related article, and I told you why. Your personal attacks and own opinions have nothing to do with any of what I was talking about.

Anyway, yeah, I didn't bother to check the link because I didn't assume you would be linking to an article that says it's been pirated 90% - partially my fault for insulting you (slap on the wrist etc.), but the fact they're still making a lot of money off of it has absolutely nothing to do with the piracy level. Why it was even a question to you is beyond me.

 

[Say Anything]

Red: Really? Do you base your decisions off of one review or something? Is it supposed to be a coincidence that every game I've bought within the last two years I've enjoyed? Is it a coincidence that before picking up the game I search around the web and see what it's like and how other people are feeling about it? I'm not saying you should go see the starred review at Popular Game Website, but if you look at what twenty other gamers who have two hands and two feet just like you, you should be able to develop a sense of how the game plays and what is good and bad about it. If someone tells you Game is the most innovative and enjoying game they've ever played and you go out and drop $60 on it, that's your fault. You should've read the other 19 reviews stating they killed the franchise, and realized "hey, this sounds like everything I hate in a game. I shouldn't go out and purchase this."

I never failed so far at my purchases. But this is NOT because of reviews but because I'm a smart person to especially knows game development. I can see behind the game from various sources and my gut feeling never cheated me so far ( so I smelled crap even if every ass around me hyped it ). But the average Joe out there is not a smart person, is not a game developer, is not a tech-savvy person. He has to find out somehow if he wants to buy it. Reviews nowadays are nearly all hyped and over-positive. Granted if a game really is utterly crap even hype-reviews can't sugar talk it anymore but the majority of over-hyped blockbuster titles which suck major balls don't. Or why do you think so many games end up on second-hand? For sure not because every person in the world is a moron. It's because people are stripped from their chance to make an educated choice and personally I call this a crime on the consumer ( from the perspective of Economic Ethics ).

And you do not believe this is the consumer's fault? If someone wants to read the most recent review on IGN and they say it's great and have advertisements for it all around the site, I think it's Average Joe's fault for taking the bait. If they look around on different boards (I.E. I love looking at ALL the reviews on GameFAQs, then check out Metacritic before making a purchase) then they might find something they're more interested in. Reviews are GREAT if you actually take the time to analyze them and don't jump the gun on the first article you read.

 

[Arbre]

Ah, that's refreshing. Many good points.

The rise in piracy over the last few years has obvious roots in the fact that technology has created a system where the only thing preventing someone from pirating software is his own conscience.

Don't forget terror [http://stonebytes.blogspot.com/2008/09/6-pirates-caught-cod-3-sales-rise-84.html].



____________________________________________________________________________________

 

[Odjin]

Red: Really? Do you base your decisions off of one review or something? Is it supposed to be a coincidence that every game I've bought within the last two years I've enjoyed? Is it a coincidence that before picking up the game I search around the web and see what it's like and how other people are feeling about it? I'm not saying you should go see the starred review at Popular Game Website, but if you look at what twenty other gamers who have two hands and two feet just like you, you should be able to develop a sense of how the game plays and what is good and bad about it. If someone tells you Game is the most innovative and enjoying game they've ever played and you go out and drop $60 on it, that's your fault. You should've read the other 19 reviews stating they killed the franchise, and realized "hey, this sounds like everything I hate in a game. I shouldn't go out and purchase this."

I never failed so far at my purchases. But this is NOT because of reviews but because I'm a smart person to especially knows game development. I can see behind the game from various sources and my gut feeling never cheated me so far ( so I smelled crap even if every ass around me hyped it ). But the average Joe out there is not a smart person, is not a game developer, is not a tech-savvy person. He has to find out somehow if he wants to buy it. Reviews nowadays are nearly all hyped and over-positive. Granted if a game really is utterly crap even hype-reviews can't sugar talk it anymore but the majority of over-hyped blockbuster titles which suck major balls don't. Or why do you think so many games end up on second-hand? For sure not because every person in the world is a moron. It's because people are stripped from their chance to make an educated choice and personally I call this a crime on the consumer ( from the perspective of Economic Ethics ).

And you do not believe this is the consumer's fault? If someone wants to read the most recent review on IGN and they say it's great and have advertisements for it all around the site, I think it's Average Joe's fault for taking the bait. If they look around on different boards (I.E. I love looking at ALL the reviews on GameFAQs, then check out Metacritic before making a purchase) then they might find something they're more interested in. Reviews are GREAT if you actually take the time to analyze them and don't jump the gun on the first article you read.

IGN = hype-shit... reviews are useless
GameFAQs = GameFAGs... reviews are as useless as IGN
Metacritic = total hype machinary. every shit gets high scores if you wave enough money under their noses.

Sorry but if you try to make a buy-decision on reviews you are in a hell. They are all so biased and hyping nowadays that forming an educated opinion is a futile attempt. So you say there are honest reviews? Do you REALLY belief this? Hell I've seen more comments as forum administrator and moderator where a negative review is torn apart by fanboys as being the reviews "incompetent pigs" who don't know what the fuck the are writing. Reviewing is a damn machinary... it's about making money and NOT about making an honest opinion about a game. I always did my reviews honestly. I always wrote what is good and what not on an objective basis and I never used scores just recommendations for whom it might be interesting and for whom note. Guess what I got pissed about all these shit reviews that I gave in in the end. It's not my fucking job to fix the errors of the industries... at least "this" kind of error ( others I do ). The entire reviewing system is borked beyond funny and is utterly useless. I've yet to see one hardcopy or online mag which has remotely "honest", "objective" and "representative" reviews.

 

[Say Anything]

Red: Really? Do you base your decisions off of one review or something? Is it supposed to be a coincidence that every game I've bought within the last two years I've enjoyed? Is it a coincidence that before picking up the game I search around the web and see what it's like and how other people are feeling about it? I'm not saying you should go see the starred review at Popular Game Website, but if you look at what twenty other gamers who have two hands and two feet just like you, you should be able to develop a sense of how the game plays and what is good and bad about it. If someone tells you Game is the most innovative and enjoying game they've ever played and you go out and drop $60 on it, that's your fault. You should've read the other 19 reviews stating they killed the franchise, and realized "hey, this sounds like everything I hate in a game. I shouldn't go out and purchase this."

I never failed so far at my purchases. But this is NOT because of reviews but because I'm a smart person to especially knows game development. I can see behind the game from various sources and my gut feeling never cheated me so far ( so I smelled crap even if every ass around me hyped it ). But the average Joe out there is not a smart person, is not a game developer, is not a tech-savvy person. He has to find out somehow if he wants to buy it. Reviews nowadays are nearly all hyped and over-positive. Granted if a game really is utterly crap even hype-reviews can't sugar talk it anymore but the majority of over-hyped blockbuster titles which suck major balls don't. Or why do you think so many games end up on second-hand? For sure not because every person in the world is a moron. It's because people are stripped from their chance to make an educated choice and personally I call this a crime on the consumer ( from the perspective of Economic Ethics ).

And you do not believe this is the consumer's fault? If someone wants to read the most recent review on IGN and they say it's great and have advertisements for it all around the site, I think it's Average Joe's fault for taking the bait. If they look around on different boards (I.E. I love looking at ALL the reviews on GameFAQs, then check out Metacritic before making a purchase) then they might find something they're more interested in. Reviews are GREAT if you actually take the time to analyze them and don't jump the gun on the first article you read.

IGN = hype-shit... reviews are useless
GameFAQs = GameFAGs... reviews are as useless as IGN
Metacritic = total hype machinary. every shit gets high scores if you wave enough money under their noses.

Sorry but if you try to make a buy-decision on reviews you are in a hell. They are all so biased and hyping nowadays that forming an educated opinion is a futile attempt. So you say there are honest reviews? Do you REALLY belief this? Hell I've seen more comments as forum administrator and moderator where a negative review is torn apart by fanboys as being the reviews "incompetent pigs" who don't know what the fuck the are writing. Reviewing is a damn machinary... it's about making money and NOT about making an honest opinion about a game. I always did my reviews honestly. I always wrote what is good and what not on an objective basis and I never used scores just recommendations for whom it might be interesting and for whom note. Guess what I got pissed about all these shit reviews that I gave in in the end. It's not my fucking job to fix the errors of the industries... at least "this" kind of error ( others I do ). The entire reviewing system is borked beyond funny and is utterly useless. I've yet to see one hardcopy or online mag which has remotely "honest", "objective" and "representative" reviews.

You do understand what a guest review is, right? You know that there's people who review games because they liked or disliked them and not because they're getting some kind of reward for doing it? Hell, look at the entire User Review section on the Escapist forum. I write reviews as do hundreds of others and not because we're trying to increase hype for games or give a distorted view of a game, we have no reason to do that. GameFAQs has a very similar system and that's why it's a reliable source for reviews, and when I mentioned Metacritic (first off, you do realize that Metacritic doesn't give highscores for publishers who "wave money under their noses", right? It's a compilation of the reviews and scores of a bunch of different sites) I wasn't talking about the overall score, but about looking at all 20-50 sites that offer a review and information about the game. Whether you're saying there's not a single fair review that exists or that there's no 100% chance to be sure you'll enjoy the game remains a mystery to me, but if it's the former, then you have absolutely no idea, and if it's the latter, then unfortunately you'd be correct, but if you do your research as I suggest you would more than likely land a 99.9% success rate and thus making the argument a total load of nonsense.

 

[Ray Huling]

...if us consumers don't support those A titles (while falsely signalling to the industry what that support is by using so many unauthorised copies...the A titles can't last, as you point out.

even if piracy has a small effect (which I dispute, but alas have no statistics to back up) that effect is particulary magnified on titles which already have small margins.

This is one of the big problems: there are no good data on piracy, which means that we consumers can't signal anything to publishers through piracy. There's no information for publishers to interpret.

And the same holds true for arithmetic. You can't add or subtract a number with unknown relevance. Piracy could increase profits for all anybody knows.

It is clear, however, that piracy scares publishers, and I'm happy about that.

 

[Playbahnosh]

IGN = hype-shit... reviews are useless
GameFAQs = GameFAGs... reviews are as useless as IGN
Metacritic = total hype machinary. every shit gets high scores if you wave enough money under their noses.

Sorry but if you try to make a buy-decision on reviews you are in a hell. They are all so biased and hyping nowadays that forming an educated opinion is a futile attempt. So you say there are honest reviews? Do you REALLY belief this? Hell I've seen more comments as forum administrator and moderator where a negative review is torn apart by fanboys as being the reviews "incompetent pigs" who don't know what the fuck the are writing. Reviewing is a damn machinary... it's about making money and NOT about making an honest opinion about a game. I always did my reviews honestly. I always wrote what is good and what not on an objective basis and I never used scores just recommendations for whom it might be interesting and for whom note. Guess what I got pissed about all these shit reviews that I gave in in the end. It's not my fucking job to fix the errors of the industries... at least "this" kind of error ( others I do ). The entire reviewing system is borked beyond funny and is utterly useless. I've yet to see one hardcopy or online mag which has remotely "honest", "objective" and "representative" reviews.

You are an asshole, you know that? How can you pass judgment on something you know nothing about? Have you ever worked at a games magazine or website? I guess not.

I'm an official PC game reviewer for many years now, for a hungarian webzine. You simply can't imagine the amount bile, cursing and hate we are getting day-by-day from the fucktards like you. Hell, even I get the usual hate-mail and forum comments on how I'm a sellout, a corporate lapdog or a paid advertisement. If I send a game to Hell that sucks IMHO, fanboys come crashing in and condemn me to eternal damnation because I'm a fucking asshole for not giving 11/10 for their favorite game that is the best game in the fucking galaxy. If I give high praise to a game that I like, people like you come in guns blazing, that I'm a fucking publisher-worshiper, a sellout...etc. There is no good review. We get lashed either by haters or fanboys, no matter what we write.

But, you know what's funny? I'm doing this for FREE! Yes, I'm not getting a single unit of currency for writing my reviews, not a single USD, HUF or anything else. I'm writing these reviews because I want to, and not because they pay me to. The only "payment" I get is that I can keep some of the games I review, so I don't have to buy them on my own. Yea, some of the games I have to buy myself, so sometimes I pay to even review games, not vice versa. Let this be a lesson to all the haters out there. It's not the reviewers' fault if you are an ass.

But, I know I simply can't write a review that is accepted by all. My first and foremost priority when reviewing a game is objectivity. If I set out to review a game, I don't even read news, ads or other reviews until I get the game and finished playing, so I won't get biased. I work on the review for days, making it entertaining, packing it full of information for the ones deciding to buy it and making it very thorough. But then again, I get the bile. It's inevitable.

It's not our fault, it's the polarization of the audience, and it's a national pasttime in Geekland to hate on game reviewers.

 

[Badabinski]

I've seen in-game ads brought up several times while reading this thread. My thoughts?
Good idea! Let's chuck some billboards up with Mountain Dew ads.
Developers can get massive amounts of money, consumers can pay less (or maybe even nothing, depending on the development costs of the game,) and pirating becomes a moot point.

No pop-up ads though, those would be gay.

 

[Anton P. Nym]

Guess what I got pissed about all these shit reviews that I gave in in the end. It's not my fucking job to fix the errors of the industries... at least "this" kind of error ( others I do ). The entire reviewing system is borked beyond funny and is utterly useless. I've yet to see one hardcopy or online mag which has remotely "honest", "objective" and "representative" reviews.

If you seriously can't tell which games are worth trying by reading a couple of reviews, go back to your high school English teacher and talk with him or her. That's exactly the sort of thing Literature class is supposed to teach you; how to look at text not just for the words-on-page bit but also the ideas behind it, to look at the biases of the writer, to see if there are any repeated patterns between different takes on the same idea. The ability to read a review and get useful information out of it is, to my view, part of basic literacy in today's society. (Especially on this Web of a Million "Nigerian Bankers".)

Also, it's bloody ungracious to call all game reviewers either idiots or paid shills on a web magazine that publishes game reviews.

-- Steve

 

[elricik]

I have a feeling that this whole piracy is issue is going to turn out like the war on drugs. Where gonna come up with some ideas that sound good on paper, but won't turn out so well. Were gonna throw millions of dollars at a solution that won't work. Then were gonna say "eh, we tried." Go home and play a pirated version of Half Life 2. How can we put a stop to something that happens all around the world, and half of the global population does it? Its impossible. Sometimes the pirated version of the game is better, Spore for example had a very high anti-piracy program, that didn't work, and only frustrated the people who legally bought the game. Meanwhile the pirates laughed and played the game hours before the people who legally bought the game even started. Ok maybe that's stretching it.

 

[FeverusDreams]

Shamus, I enjoyed your article and found it interesting. Based on my admittedly quick skim of the other pieces published in this issue, I think yours was the best.

I still disagree strongly with several of your conclusions, and even your overall tone. Why? I think you're pulling apart individual arguments, then demolishing them in a way you couldn't the whole person - the pirate him or herself. See, it turns out that most pirates will buy a game, given the right set of circumstances. In fact, unless they're totally broke or have some ideological opposition to the whole exchange of money for goods thing, it'll happen more than once.

There's a common saying that every good lie is built around a kernel of truth, and that plays true here. Piracy isn't really stealing; it's copyright infringement. Some guys do enjoy a vast world of media while they're flat broke, then go buy it when they've got the cash. Others really do use games as demos.

To be honest, these excuses can and do work for me in the moral realm (when I can judge their accuracy). They never will in the legal for a wide set of fairly obvious reasons.

How do you fight piracy, effectively? You honestly try to find out what actually does motivate pirates without accepting "BUT THEY-UH JUSTA WANNA STEALA MY GAMEZA! HALP" as a valid answer. After all, if nothing else matters, there's not really much that can be done in the first place, is there? If there's no way to beat free, maybe we can convince them to just be good people through our plaintive cries for decency and justice!

Well, Let's take Valve as an example; after all, with their customer base, digital download platform, and the amount of customer data they collect, they're the most knowledgeable, right? If anyone can lead our way out of this morass, Gabe Newell is the man.

What separates the geniuses at companies like Valve from everyone else isn't hippie flower love, it's their ability to take the two widely disparate personalities held by potential customers (pirate, reliable consumer) and merge them back together. For example, Valve realized that customers didn't hate the being forced to pay part of DRM, they hated companies which would intentionally screw up their games with ever-increasing levels of crap for no reason at all.

Enter: The game-as-a-service model, where you get things like updates, fixes, and all sorts of nifty features which expand your game rather than restricting it.

Valve realized that you can, in fact, make more money by selling games for 50-75% less. They'd have dropped prices on just about everything they have if it weren't for being tied to brain-dead retailers who would be just as happy to see the entire industry die as long as digital download doesn't steal their market share.

Valve realized that, in a world of 90% piracy, releasing a game with an engine that runs like crap on everything but 5% of your customer base (see: Crysis) is going to fail utterly. Instead, you convert 10% of your pirates to your game buyers, and you just doubled your sales.

Did I mention that you can apply every point here to Stardock? In the end, this really isn't about changing pirates (customers who will take breaking the law over being fed recently excreted feces), so shredding the ethics of their rationale won't help developers a whit. If you want to sell games, you come to terms with the marketplace as it exists in the real world rather than the fictional creation in your law books, and you respond to it appropriately.

 

[Earthmonger]

- Stop making single-player games for PC unless they incorporate at least some type of social interface, even if the player never uses it. Yes, as much as it is debated, require an internet connection, even for multiplayer co-op games at LAN parties. Before anyone complains, "But I can't afford internet!", let me say, "Video games require electricity. I don't hear you complaining about that."

- Release games to the console market a full four months before a PC release. Nobody will dispute that piracy doesn't happen on consoles, but it is certainly to a lesser extent than it happens on PC. Grab as much revenue as you can from the console market before taking the bigger risks of the PC market.

- Remove DRM from PC games. This has proven to hurt the legitimate user as much as (if not more) it hurts pirates. Piracy is going to happen anyway; DRM slows it down by a day or two at most. Kill the idiotic trend of "limited installs'.

Just some ideas. Nobody will like them, I know.

 

[Odjin]

Red: Really? Do you base your decisions off of one review or something? Is it supposed to be a coincidence that every game I've bought within the last two years I've enjoyed? Is it a coincidence that before picking up the game I search around the web and see what it's like and how other people are feeling about it? I'm not saying you should go see the starred review at Popular Game Website, but if you look at what twenty other gamers who have two hands and two feet just like you, you should be able to develop a sense of how the game plays and what is good and bad about it. If someone tells you Game is the most innovative and enjoying game they've ever played and you go out and drop $60 on it, that's your fault. You should've read the other 19 reviews stating they killed the franchise, and realized "hey, this sounds like everything I hate in a game. I shouldn't go out and purchase this."

I never failed so far at my purchases. But this is NOT because of reviews but because I'm a smart person to especially knows game development. I can see behind the game from various sources and my gut feeling never cheated me so far ( so I smelled crap even if every ass around me hyped it ). But the average Joe out there is not a smart person, is not a game developer, is not a tech-savvy person. He has to find out somehow if he wants to buy it. Reviews nowadays are nearly all hyped and over-positive. Granted if a game really is utterly crap even hype-reviews can't sugar talk it anymore but the majority of over-hyped blockbuster titles which suck major balls don't. Or why do you think so many games end up on second-hand? For sure not because every person in the world is a moron. It's because people are stripped from their chance to make an educated choice and personally I call this a crime on the consumer ( from the perspective of Economic Ethics ).

And you do not believe this is the consumer's fault? If someone wants to read the most recent review on IGN and they say it's great and have advertisements for it all around the site, I think it's Average Joe's fault for taking the bait. If they look around on different boards (I.E. I love looking at ALL the reviews on GameFAQs, then check out Metacritic before making a purchase) then they might find something they're more interested in. Reviews are GREAT if you actually take the time to analyze them and don't jump the gun on the first article you read.

IGN = hype-shit... reviews are useless
GameFAQs = GameFAGs... reviews are as useless as IGN
Metacritic = total hype machinary. every shit gets high scores if you wave enough money under their noses.

Sorry but if you try to make a buy-decision on reviews you are in a hell. They are all so biased and hyping nowadays that forming an educated opinion is a futile attempt. So you say there are honest reviews? Do you REALLY belief this? Hell I've seen more comments as forum administrator and moderator where a negative review is torn apart by fanboys as being the reviews "incompetent pigs" who don't know what the fuck the are writing. Reviewing is a damn machinary... it's about making money and NOT about making an honest opinion about a game. I always did my reviews honestly. I always wrote what is good and what not on an objective basis and I never used scores just recommendations for whom it might be interesting and for whom note. Guess what I got pissed about all these shit reviews that I gave in in the end. It's not my fucking job to fix the errors of the industries... at least "this" kind of error ( others I do ). The entire reviewing system is borked beyond funny and is utterly useless. I've yet to see one hardcopy or online mag which has remotely "honest", "objective" and "representative" reviews.

You do understand what a guest review is, right? You know that there's people who review games because they liked or disliked them and not because they're getting some kind of reward for doing it? Hell, look at the entire User Review section on the Escapist forum. I write reviews as do hundreds of others and not because we're trying to increase hype for games or give a distorted view of a game, we have no reason to do that. GameFAQs has a very similar system and that's why it's a reliable source for reviews, and when I mentioned Metacritic (first off, you do realize that Metacritic doesn't give highscores for publishers who "wave money under their noses", right? It's a compilation of the reviews and scores of a bunch of different sites) I wasn't talking about the overall score, but about looking at all 20-50 sites that offer a review and information about the game. Whether you're saying there's not a single fair review that exists or that there's no 100% chance to be sure you'll enjoy the game remains a mystery to me, but if it's the former, then you have absolutely no idea, and if it's the latter, then unfortunately you'd be correct, but if you do your research as I suggest you would more than likely land a 99.9% success rate and thus making the argument a total load of nonsense.

Guest reviews are in general as useless as payed reviews because people review a game for either (1) showing it's the best thing since sliced bread or (2) that it's the worst thing since Dragonfarm. In either case the review is highly biased and is not objective and therefore unsuited for forming an educated opinion.

Now what goes for MC you are right that they collect scores... but from whom? Exactly from those where publishers wave their money under their noses. So to use math if A is based on bought scores then A IS bought scores. So my claim still stands

Believe me I checked out tons of reviews about games in my past and the result is the same: utterly useless. They contradict each other, they are all totally biased and they ALL MISS THE IMPORTANT POINTS! What is important on a game is gameplay. It doesn't interest if the graphics are superb or anything like that. What's important is how does the game play, where are the problems, are the problems SERIOUS or MARGINAL. All these things are important since graphics and alike I can check out using screenshots. But what you can NOT check out using screenshots ( and sadely reviews ) is if the gameplay is solid and if the game is any fun after all. And this is a major problem of reviews but mostly because they are written by people who are more or less biased. So the only thing that can tell you exactly how the game is and if it is good or bad is a demo.

 

[Odjin]

IGN = hype-shit... reviews are useless
GameFAQs = GameFAGs... reviews are as useless as IGN
Metacritic = total hype machinary. every shit gets high scores if you wave enough money under their noses.

Sorry but if you try to make a buy-decision on reviews you are in a hell. They are all so biased and hyping nowadays that forming an educated opinion is a futile attempt. So you say there are honest reviews? Do you REALLY belief this? Hell I've seen more comments as forum administrator and moderator where a negative review is torn apart by fanboys as being the reviews "incompetent pigs" who don't know what the fuck the are writing. Reviewing is a damn machinary... it's about making money and NOT about making an honest opinion about a game. I always did my reviews honestly. I always wrote what is good and what not on an objective basis and I never used scores just recommendations for whom it might be interesting and for whom note. Guess what I got pissed about all these shit reviews that I gave in in the end. It's not my fucking job to fix the errors of the industries... at least "this" kind of error ( others I do ). The entire reviewing system is borked beyond funny and is utterly useless. I've yet to see one hardcopy or online mag which has remotely "honest", "objective" and "representative" reviews.

You are an asshole, you know that? How can you pass judgment on something you know nothing about? Have you ever worked at a games magazine or website? I guess not.

I'm an official PC game reviewer for many years now, for a hungarian webzine. You simply can't imagine the amount bile, cursing and hate we are getting day-by-day from the fucktards like you. Hell, even I get the usual hate-mail and forum comments on how I'm a sellout, a corporate lapdog or a paid advertisement. If I send a game to Hell that sucks IMHO, fanboys come crashing in and condemn me to eternal damnation because I'm a fucking asshole for not giving 11/10 for their favorite game that is the best game in the fucking galaxy. If I give high praise to a game that I like, people like you come in guns blazing, that I'm a fucking publisher-worshiper, a sellout...etc. There is no good review. We get lashed either by haters or fanboys, no matter what we write.

But, you know what's funny? I'm doing this for FREE! Yes, I'm not getting a single unit of currency for writing my reviews, not a single USD, HUF or anything else. I'm writing these reviews because I want to, and not because they pay me to. The only "payment" I get is that I can keep some of the games I review, so I don't have to buy them on my own. Yea, some of the games I have to buy myself, so sometimes I pay to even review games, not vice versa. Let this be a lesson to all the haters out there. It's not the reviewers' fault if you are an ass.

But, I know I simply can't write a review that is accepted by all. My first and foremost priority when reviewing a game is objectivity. If I set out to review a game, I don't even read news, ads or other reviews until I get the game and finished playing, so I won't get biased. I work on the review for days, making it entertaining, packing it full of information for the ones deciding to buy it and making it very thorough. But then again, I get the bile. It's inevitable.

It's not our fault, it's the polarization of the audience, and it's a national pasttime in Geekland to hate on game reviewers.

Reading before ranting is a bliss, don't you know? I mentioned in one of my earlier posts the problem of people giving a fair negative review about a game and getting trashed for it. I know this problem very well. Hell I took tons of stabs myself because I dared to give out a funded negative view on a game fanboys hyped up like hell. That's not the problem. It's good to see people standing up against the hype machinery but please be honest: how many reviewers really ARE of this kind? Looks like you are but the majority is not.

 

[Odjin]

Shamus, I enjoyed your article and found it interesting. Based on my admittedly quick skim of the other pieces published in this issue, I think yours was the best.

I still disagree strongly with several of your conclusions, and even your overall tone. Why? I think you're pulling apart individual arguments, then demolishing them in a way you couldn't the whole person - the pirate him or herself. See, it turns out that most pirates will buy a game, given the right set of circumstances. In fact, unless they're totally broke or have some ideological opposition to the whole exchange of money for goods thing, it'll happen more than once.

There's a common saying that every good lie is built around a kernel of truth, and that plays true here. Piracy isn't really stealing; it's copyright infringement. Some guys do enjoy a vast world of media while they're flat broke, then go buy it when they've got the cash. Others really do use games as demos.

To be honest, these excuses can and do work for me in the moral realm (when I can judge their accuracy). They never will in the legal for a wide set of fairly obvious reasons.

How do you fight piracy, effectively? You honestly try to find out what actually does motivate pirates without accepting "BUT THEY-UH JUSTA WANNA STEALA MY GAMEZA! HALP" as a valid answer. After all, if nothing else matters, there's not really much that can be done in the first place, is there? If there's no way to beat free, maybe we can convince them to just be good people through our plaintive cries for decency and justice!

Well, Let's take Valve as an example; after all, with their customer base, digital download platform, and the amount of customer data they collect, they're the most knowledgeable, right? If anyone can lead our way out of this morass, Gabe Newell is the man.

What separates the geniuses at companies like Valve from everyone else isn't hippie flower love, it's their ability to take the two widely disparate personalities held by potential customers (pirate, reliable consumer) and merge them back together. For example, Valve realized that customers didn't hate the being forced to pay part of DRM, they hated companies which would intentionally screw up their games with ever-increasing levels of crap for no reason at all.

Enter: The game-as-a-service model, where you get things like updates, fixes, and all sorts of nifty features which expand your game rather than restricting it.

Valve realized that you can, in fact, make more money by selling games for 50-75% less. They'd have dropped prices on just about everything they have if it weren't for being tied to brain-dead retailers who would be just as happy to see the entire industry die as long as digital download doesn't steal their market share.

Valve realized that, in a world of 90% piracy, releasing a game with an engine that runs like crap on everything but 5% of your customer base (see: Crysis) is going to fail utterly. Instead, you convert 10% of your pirates to your game buyers, and you just doubled your sales.

Did I mention that you can apply every point here to Stardock? In the end, this really isn't about changing pirates (customers who will take breaking the law over being fed recently excreted feces), so shredding the ethics of their rationale won't help developers a whit. If you want to sell games, you come to terms with the marketplace as it exists in the real world rather than the fictional creation in your law books, and you respond to it appropriately.

Didn't you realize that Steam is DRM? It's in fact a very intrusive DRM ( locking down your games ). And Steam does not unite. Many people ( me including ) do all they can to not get in touch with this DRM monstrosity if possible ( I even go out to pay games in stores for some upcosts just to avoid having it on steam ). While the idea behind steam is good it is questionable in the implementation. One reason why alternatives are developed ( with moderate success so far though ).

 

[Say Anything]

Guest reviews are in general as useless as payed reviews because people review a game for either (1) showing it's the best thing since sliced bread or (2) that it's the worst thing since Dragonfarm. In either case the review is highly biased and is not objective and therefore unsuited for forming an educated opinion.

I'm done arguing, your way of one-sided thinking is such bullshit. You have no idea how a review works, you just like living in your own little world where everyone in the game industry is out to get you.

 

[Valiance]

First of all. My english sucks, so deal with it please.

You are forgetting something really important to me, or better said, to us who live in third world countrys like Argentina.
Here the videogames market barelly exists, we dont have the same chances to get a high end pc at a reasonable price or a new generation console (im not asking for anything free, but im tired to see the prices in EU o US 3 times cheaper than here - read below for some facts). If i want to buy The Orange Box (with the box literally) for example, i have to contact someone to import it for me and he will sell it to me for at least twice as the real price.

So services like steam are getting more popular over this part of the world. Like NCsoft who made a deal with a another local company and that allowed us to buy GW at the same price than anyone in the world. Blizzard made available the expansions at the same days that US (a little more expensive buy we didnt care, it was a good deal) and they charges the monthly subscription in out local currency!!! (about 10 US dollars).

In other hand companies like EA, they market reach brazil for example, but they dont care about extending that market to the rest of Latin America (mexico is NOT latin america dont compare their video games market to the rest of us please).
Nintendo don't give a s*** about Latin America, i bought a DS for like 250 dollars with an a R4 (another 50 dollars) because any game cost me 4 times more expensive!!!

In the beggining i was not able to buy WAR because i was from Argentina (im like a terrorist or something like that?), sometimes that make us feel like we are not good or rich enough to play those games, even is we have the money.
So piracy is a common thing, because a videogame company knows that they wont be winning to much money over this lands as they do in US or EU.

The piracy will stop here when the prices get to a reasonable amount. I want to buy the game, but if they dont make it a little easy to me to get it, ill find another way to play it. Thanks to power of the Internet.

Some Facts on local prices based on US dollars:

Range of the common gamer salary = 400 to 1000 US dollars
Playstation 3 = 900 - 1100 US Dollars.
X box 360 = 700 - 900 US Dollars
Wii = 750 - 800 Dollars.

PS3 Games = 100 - 150 US dollars.
PC Games = 70 - 150 US dollars.

Dont tell me that this is all fault of ouy goverment import taxes or politics, because if the company is interested they can overcome that (see the past example like blizzard or ncsoft, even valve with steam).

So in conclusion, consoles like PS2 (i have mine with the mod chip) DS, PSP who let us play game without spending a ridiculous amount of money are famous around here.
I dont download pc games anymore, because im mostly a fan of MMOs and it feels REALLY good to pay for a good game like wow, lotro, EVE like anyone else.

The prices are the problem!!! not the piracy itself.

And thats why piracy exist here, is not an excuse its a REALLYTY.

Again sorry for my lame english and a long reply, im trying to express my self at the same level that i do in spanish.

Thanks for reading this!

Very well written. I don't know why you think your English is bad.

You have many valid points. I do not think that you or any other countries should be forced to pay 2-3 times EU or US prices for video games.

I believe that if prices were standard in every country, people would pirate less.

 

[Skrapt]

Didn't you realize that Steam is DRM? It's in fact a very intrusive DRM ( locking down your games ). And Steam does not unite. Many people ( me including ) do all they can to not get in touch with this DRM monstrosity if possible ( I even go out to pay games in stores for some upcosts just to avoid having it on steam ). While the idea behind steam is good it is questionable in the implementation. One reason why alternatives are developed ( with moderate success so far though ).

I'd say that Steam does a pretty good job of being DRM, considering personally I've gone through 4-5 computers in the last few years and been able to re-download all my games every time without any re-inputting CD keys or anything except simply logging in. And considering for several of those games I purchased the CD and have lost almost all of them I'm glad to be able to re-download them all again without any hassle. And if such a system is able to keep the developers happy by being suitably protected and the consumers happy by having easy access to their games online and offline then it's a good system.