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Topic: Stardock (or a dev from Stardock) speaks on piracy and casual/hardcore gamers. (Read 4117 times)
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Ratman_tf
Terracotta Army
Posts: 3818
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 "What I'm saying is you should make friends with a few catasses, they smell funny but they're very helpful." -Calantus makes the best of a smelly situation. |
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Jain Zar
Terracotta Army
Posts: 1362
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Decent post!
It makes all sorts of sense, which means as soon as it gets noticed at Kotaku/Escapist/Gamasutra/ect every big name developer is probably gonna poo poo it.
No copy protection?
Not making games for hardcore gamers?
Not making games that don't require a Falcon Northwest megasystem to run at 60FPS at medium high settings?
Yet Stardock is apparently doing well. (Hmm.. I could almost say they are the Atlus of PC gaming. Niche titles, low press, hard to find, yet they seem to do well for themselves.)
The state of PC gaming is why I went Mac anyhow. Hardly anything to play anyhow, and what there is tends to be overdone genres I am completely sick of.
(That being FPS, RTS, and MMORPG.)
I've always hated Windows and the market pretty much sent me elsewhere.
And if I really want to play indies games Boot Camp or a cheapie clearance machine at Staples will pretty much cover anything made in 06 or earlier. (And the iMac I currently have will cover almost anything but Crysis and other games I wouldn't want because FPS is a genre nearly as tired and overdone as SHMUPS were in the 16 bit console era.. no.. WORSE.)
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schild
Administrator
Posts: 60350
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Stardock's crap to awesome ratio is horrible compared to Atlus.
Horrible.
I don't buy Stardock games on principle. When they get that good, they'll become the Atlus of gaming.
Too bad the Fate guys left.
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Ratman_tf
Terracotta Army
Posts: 3818
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Stardock's crap to awesome ratio is horrible compared to Atlus.
Horrible.
I don't buy Stardock games on principle. When they get that good, they'll become the Atlus of gaming.
Too bad the Fate guys left.
QQ nooblet. If some of these devs would unclench their sphincters about having Teh Hurdkor graph-pics and stopped dicking us around with annoying copy protection, maybe they'd actually make some sales and stop being .com-ish bang or bust operations. Or maybe they just don't like money?  |
"What I'm saying is you should make friends with a few catasses, they smell funny but they're very helpful." -Calantus makes the best of a smelly situation. |
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HaemishM
Staff Emeritus
Posts: 42666
the Confederate flag underneath the stone in my class ring
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Or maybe they just don't like money? They want the money AND the fame. DUH. The PC gaming industry has been fucking itself in the ass for a long time, with idiotic copy protection that does nothing to stop piracy, insane system requirements that only the elite few can match, and shitty shit shit shit QA processes that make games more than plug and play. There are many reasons WoW and the Sims are huge successes, but one big one was low system requirements. |
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cmlancas
Terracotta Army
Posts: 2511
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I'm not sure I read that right, but was your response to a post that disagreed with yours, "QQ nooblet?"  |
f13 Street Cred of the week:
I can't promise anything other than trauma and tragedy. -- schild
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Ratman_tf
Terracotta Army
Posts: 3818
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I'm not sure I read that right, but was your response to a post that disagreed with yours, "QQ nooblet?" It's early. My sense of humor may be off. |
"What I'm saying is you should make friends with a few catasses, they smell funny but they're very helpful." -Calantus makes the best of a smelly situation. |
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Stormwaltz
Terracotta Army
Posts: 2918
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Not making games that don't require a Falcon Northwest megasystem to run at 60FPS at medium high settings? One big but underrated point in WoW's success. You can play it on your mom's computer. |
Nothing in this post represents the views of my current or previous employers.
"Isn't that just like an elf? Brings a spell to a gun fight."
"Sci-Fi writers don't invent the future, they market it."
- Henry Cobb
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Ratman_tf
Terracotta Army
Posts: 3818
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Not making games that don't require a Falcon Northwest megasystem to run at 60FPS at medium high settings? One big but underrated point in WoW's success. You can play it on your mom's computer. I'm looking at how GalCiv II sold 300,000 copies. That beats the fucking snot out of games like Crysis and Unreal Tournament 3. And I bet those games cost a ton more to make. It's one thing to say devs are clueless, it's another to watch them jump off a cliff in flames. |
"What I'm saying is you should make friends with a few catasses, they smell funny but they're very helpful." -Calantus makes the best of a smelly situation. |
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schild
Administrator
Posts: 60350
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Hm? Crysis already broke a mil. Who knows what UT3 did on the PC, pretty sure it fared quite well on the PS3 though.
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Ratman_tf
Terracotta Army
Posts: 3818
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Hm? Crysis already broke a mil. Who knows what UT3 did on the PC, pretty sure it fared quite well on the PS3 though.
Did it? I looked up the numbers and got something like 80K. *Edit* Looked it up and foundit. Awesome! Now they can quit bitching about piracy! lulz |
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« Last Edit: March 11, 2008, 11:25:10 AM by Ratman_tf »
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"What I'm saying is you should make friends with a few catasses, they smell funny but they're very helpful." -Calantus makes the best of a smelly situation. |
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schild
Administrator
Posts: 60350
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Hm? Crysis already broke a mil. Who knows what UT3 did on the PC, pretty sure it fared quite well on the PS3 though.
Did it? I looked up the numbers and got something like 80K. Looked up which? Crysis did poorly in America, did awesome everywhere else. PS3 UT3 sales were better than the PC version - and NPD doesn't include Walmart (or Target afaik). |
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Ratman_tf
Terracotta Army
Posts: 3818
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Hm? Crysis already broke a mil. Who knows what UT3 did on the PC, pretty sure it fared quite well on the PS3 though.
Did it? I looked up the numbers and got something like 80K. Looked up which? Crysis did poorly in America, did awesome everywhere else. PS3 UT3 sales were better than the PC version - and NPD doesn't include Walmart (or Target afaik). Crysis sales. I had to add "1 million" for teh google search. Just putting in "Crysis sales" brings up the 80k number. |
"What I'm saying is you should make friends with a few catasses, they smell funny but they're very helpful." -Calantus makes the best of a smelly situation. |
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UnSub
Contributor
Posts: 8064
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The Stardock guy is right about making games just for the top end of the PC market not being a viable strategy for all games. However, the success Stardock can be seen is more a case of making games cheaply for a smaller part of the overall market (which is a completely sensible strategy) than being successful because they didn't take anti-piracy measures. Also, as he says, Sins / GalCiv weren't mainstream games on the covers of magazines, so even the pirates who grab every hyped game probably ignored it. Stardock Central does look like a form of anti-piracy to me - if you want the latest patches, you've got to pay for the game - but I could be misunderstanding it. I do appreciate the "if only the devs made good games, we wouldn't have to pirate them!" comment that Ratman made though.  |
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Xanthippe
Terracotta Army
Posts: 4779
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Nice post (and a nice contrast to the whiny bitch from Iron Lore).
I remember a game some years ago (10?) called Entrepreneur, made by Stardock. Neat little game, a lot of fun, priced right, no cd needed to play it.
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Azazel
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So what did UT PC and Crisis sell, anyway?
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schild
Administrator
Posts: 60350
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Crysis is only PC.
UT3 PC sold about 100k afaik - total - so far.
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Margalis
Terracotta Army
Posts: 12335
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That was a great post.
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vampirehipi23: I would enjoy a book written by a monkey and turned into a movie rather than this.
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schild
Administrator
Posts: 60350
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Crysis sales had already been posted for PC. Over a million. As such, I couldn't provide an alternative answer.
I answered for UT3.
I'm not seeing the problem here.
Unless he actually wanted Unreal Tournament (1) numbers. In which case, what, 4-5M?
I don't see what you were/are trying to say.
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Azazel
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Yeah, I know Crysis is only on PC, which is why I only specified PC for UT. I thought there may have been firmer numbers than "over a million" but there you go. And yeah, the UT thing was fine.
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schild
Administrator
Posts: 60350
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UT3 has shipped over a million just for PC. Was big in Europe. PR just came out.
It's going platinum on the PS3 as well - which means it sold.... I don't know what the cutoff is, but Stranglehold SOLD a million and is now going platform, so I imagine UT3 is the same.
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Rishathra
Terracotta Army
Posts: 1059
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However, the success Stardock can be seen is more a case of making games cheaply for a smaller part of the overall market (which is a completely sensible strategy) than being successful because they didn't take anti-piracy measures. I think his point was more that having no copy protection wont make an otherwise successful game unsuccessful. |
"...you'll still be here trying to act cool while actually being a bored and frustrated office worker with a vibrating anger-valve puffing out internet hostility." - Falconeer
"That looks like English but I have no idea what you just said." - Trippy
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