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Pirates playing a game dev simulator complain about piracy

greenheartgames.com

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Re: Pirates playing a game dev simulator complain about piracy

#151

Post by willvarfar »

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #58
tpetrina wrote: post #2

This is just pure gold. When I was younger, I always pirated stuff because I didn't have the money nor the means. But today, my Steam collection is worth over a 1000 dollars and I buy more games I could play. It hurts me when people my age (27) don't consider buying stuff they like. I mean, you are paying the creators of the stuff you like so that they can create more of it. No one wants to work for free, why should…

> When I was younger, I always pirated stuff because I didn't have the money nor the means. But today... That's a familiar story, and a win all-round. It is said to be a main reason why Microsoft was very relaxed about pirated copies of Windows - young people who run a pirated copy of windows grow up to be workers who know windows and the business buys a seat (as they say).

That's a very long-term game; most games are made by short-term studios who don't survive long enough to reap what they sowed?

Re: Pirates playing a game dev simulator complain about piracy

#152

Post by EvilLook »

shpiel wrote: post #133
onli wrote: post #14

The irony is great. But I fear it is possible that wasn't such a good idea. Given the graphs, there were 4k people interested in the game. Over 90% of them now have the impression that the game is unplayable long-term because of the message-box. Maybe many of them get the hint, but those who don't might generate bad pr and prevent others from buying it. But well, maybe that article combined with answers to the compla…

You are actually arguing that the developers should have made an effort to have their game appeal to those who take a copy of it without permission?

The poster you are responding to is clearly not a programmer.

Re: Pirates playing a game dev simulator complain about piracy

#153

Post by versk »

jeltz wrote: post #132
versk wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"when in reality there maybe 1% of pirates that would have otherwise bought the game" Your number is ridiculous, and no-one assumes every pirated game is a lost sale either. Do you have any evidence to support this number?

1% is not totally unreasonable. See belorns post about conversion rates in freemium games for an explanation.

Comparing freemium game conversion to Triple AAA piracy is ludicrous, and the argument that a freemium game should convert more because its designed to convert people is the most textbook definition of a specious argument I've ever seen.

Successful Free-to-Play games like League of legends are suspected to convert greater than 10 percent of players to paying customers. Of the millions of players who pirated Bioshock infinite, I seriously doubt that only 1 percent could have afforded to pay for it and had a desire to play it.

Re: Pirates playing a game dev simulator complain about piracy

#154

Post by vy8vWJlco »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #128
vy8vWJlco wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the same time, popular copies - paid or otherwise - become more well known and potentially much more profitable. One may not be voting with money, but one is voting with time (and "time is money") by accepting it, using it, and sharing/promoting it to others. Microsoft used this strategy in China (Gates said something like: if they're going to steal it, we want them to steal ours...). They have done less well rece…

If you are a game developer, the fact that several hundred thousand hours have been spent playing your game isn't helpful to eating or financing your next game if you have no way to monetize those hours. There are of course business models that are aided by copying (such as those based on open source software). The difficulty is how the video games industry can adapt to this. The route they seem to be increasingly ta…

A college degree is also not guaranteed to lead to a job immediately either, particularly if there are alternative sources of the expertise. (There is no equivalent to copyright, in that sense, guaranteeing a student the right to be the sole provider of their expertise because they paid to receive it...)

Every sale is still a negotiation. I've said in the past that I think the economics of copies boils down to begging, but that seems a much harder sell when I say it first, so I like to argue a bit first... :)

FWIW, I think people are also decrying the service-model appearing in games (similar to the Kindle model, where Amazon can delete your books) - recall the recent Microsoftie who was fired after some bad PR - so it looks to me like people are moving towards the same limiting equilibrium, with or without copyright: easy copying, and paying only when they feel an obligation. IMHO, we can get there the hard way (increasingly jack-booted copyright) or the easy way (accepting human nature and negotiating differently in light of it).

(Note: I have edited the first paragraph a few times trying to be clearer, for lack of a perfect analogy.)

Re: Pirates playing a game dev simulator complain about piracy

#155

Post by fetbaffe »

vidarh wrote: post #135
mjn wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a common approach to using gameplay for rhetorical purposes; the fact that you can code causal processes as you want is one of the main ways you can get videogames to push a point. As a more overt example, in the game Bacteria Salad [1], created after one of the E.coli scares, profits trade off directly against food safety: bigger farms are more profitable but also spread contamination more quickly. This may o…

Sim City is another good example of this. Even as a child when I first played the original, I remember reacting to the tax model in the game and how it affects net migration, as it was nothing like what I knew from Norway (and indeed, it bears little resemblance to how things works in most of Europe). A newspaper in Norway recently had to social economists play the most recent Sim City game to review the economic mod…

But Norway is the last communist state, so it should not surprise anyone of that comparison.

Re: Pirates playing a game dev simulator complain about piracy

#156

Post by kenkam »

stefs wrote: post #138
kenkam wrote: post #21

Slightly unrelated to the original point of the article: has anyone heard of Kairosoft and Game Dev Story [0]? It's ironic the OP wrote an article about irony. Having said that, it looks like they have elements not seen in GDS, but the premise is similar enough. [0]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_Dev_Story

he's been accused of copying kairosoft's game a couple of times already, you can read his response here (he's ppakl): http://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/1cn8yi/game_dev_tycoo... yes, they've been inspired by it but "their version" does have different and more complex gameplay mechanics. a lot of people like greenhearts take on the subject more. i've played neither, but i guess i'll give game dev tycoon a try - af…

Ah, I was thinking I can't be the only one thinking that. Thanks for pointing it out to me. I can understand his side of the story. ghg definitely did not "Zyngify" GDS.

In any case I'm gonna buy a copy of GDT to see what it's like!

Re: Pirates playing a game dev simulator complain about piracy

#157

Post by PhantomLobe »

UnoriginalGuy wrote: post #98
Dylan16807 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"sandbox game" really stretches the meaning of the term game. I'm not saying that minecraft is bad, I'm saying that what it has is not "gameplay".

So SimCity, Rollercoaster Tycoon, Euro Truck Simulator, The Sims, etc aren't games either? Since they too are sandbox games that let the player direct the experience. Frankly I would love to know what your definition of the term "gameplay" is because it seems unique. To me any interactive medium contains gameplay mechanics, even point-and-click adventure games do, hell even some BluRay menus could be described as hav…

In those games: make your city/company/whatever thrive as means to have fun.

Goal in minecraft: have fun, no means provided.

Re: Pirates playing a game dev simulator complain about piracy

#158

Post by jiggy2011 »

vy8vWJlco wrote: post #154
jiggy2011 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are a game developer, the fact that several hundred thousand hours have been spent playing your game isn't helpful to eating or financing your next game if you have no way to monetize those hours. There are of course business models that are aided by copying (such as those based on open source software). The difficulty is how the video games industry can adapt to this. The route they seem to be increasingly ta…

A college degree is also not guaranteed to lead to a job immediately either, particularly if there are alternative sources of the expertise. (There is no equivalent to copyright, in that sense, guaranteeing a student the right to be the sole provider of their expertise because they paid to receive it...) Every sale is still a negotiation. I've said in the past that I think the economics of copies boils down to beggin…

Getting a college degree will likely get you a job if there is demand in the area in which you did your degree.

Imagine the situation where you get your CS degree but find that few people are willing to pay for programmers or software and the people who are willing to pay will still not pay very much yet the demand for software is still very high. Such a situation doesn't make sense in a rational market.

Problem with piracy is that it isn't a "negotiation", a negotiation would imply that there are 2 sides attempting to reach a compromise. With piracy you can simply hit up TPB and download whatever you like without the consent of the author.

Re: Pirates playing a game dev simulator complain about piracy

#160

Post by wcchandler »

chao- wrote: post #24

I don't even play games much these days, but I am about to buy a copy of this because the comedy alone was worth eight dollars (and because it runs on Linux!). Maybe it's just funnier to me because I know a few guys who work at an indie game studio. Edit: Not just lauding them on HN, "about to buy" has become "have just bought".

I'm in a similar boat. I'm thinking of buying the game only to download the pirated version. It sounds quite fun... almost as if the difficulty level is on "God mode."
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