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Pirates playing a game dev simulator complain about piracy

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Re: Pirates playing a game dev simulator complain about piracy

#341

Post by fennecfoxen »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #286
UnoriginalGuy wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You can tell if you're doing well at simcity, rollercoaster tycoon, and the sims. (I don't know anything about euro truck simulator.) Zerg rush is all about how many zerglings you kill and how much of the page is still alive. In minecraft it's all about what you feel like building and there's no objectively doing well or badly. It's hard to make a thriving sim city, it's trivial to make a giant sculpture in minecraft…

You can tell whether you're doing well at Minecraft if you're still alive, creepers haven't exploded in your face, and you're not starving. :D

That said, you can always play Creative mode and/or Peaceful difficulty if that's your style.

Re: Pirates playing a game dev simulator complain about piracy

#342

Post by DanBC »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #286
UnoriginalGuy wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You can tell if you're doing well at simcity, rollercoaster tycoon, and the sims. (I don't know anything about euro truck simulator.) Zerg rush is all about how many zerglings you kill and how much of the page is still alive. In minecraft it's all about what you feel like building and there's no objectively doing well or badly. It's hard to make a thriving sim city, it's trivial to make a giant sculpture in minecraft…

You know there's a whole thing in Minecraft now where you can kill a dragon which triggers an "end screen", right? And to get to that point there is traditional game grind stuff, of collecting stuff to get equipment to get to the place where you get the stuff to get the other stuff? And there are even achievements? And that the player has health and armour?

I don't care that you don't like a game, but you're wrong and should feel bad. :p

Re: Pirates playing a game dev simulator complain about piracy

#343

Post by chc »

onli wrote: post #271
EvilLook wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Of course I am. See my submissions.

I think he means a developer who is actually reliant on the financial outcomes of his work, like the OP. If you work for somebody else in exchange for a salary, yeah, of course you don't care about throwing good money after bad — it's not your money. (Obviously I don't know whether this is the case, but the difference seems significant to me.)

Re: Pirates playing a game dev simulator complain about piracy

#344

Post by chc »

GhotiFish wrote: post #314
aaronjb wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously guys, is it really a problem? Developers use the information to make the product better. They use crash reports to fix bugs without you having to report them and they can determine what operating system and screen resolution you're using so the next time you open up the app, it's been optimised so those ugly black borders have been taken care of. Granted, they could ask your permission to do this, as some a…

Also violations of EULA should be punished. Most people don't really know or understand what facebook is doing. That is why it's unethical to hide under privacy policies that state how non-private everything is under the guise of "your privacy is our highest concern". Personally I agree with you. Modern OS's actually police and inform users of just how overzealous these programs are, and give you an opportunity to re…

You're talking about something wildly unrelated to the OP's basic anonymized analytics. Yes, Facebook is very invasive. Is the OP's app anything like Facebook? No, it isn't.

Re: Pirates playing a game dev simulator complain about piracy

#345

Post by belorn »

eropple wrote: post #287
belorn wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Source for that 18% on XBLA? Through, you don't answer the question on why games designed for high conversion rate should fair worse than games that aren't. You also add a additional questions when putting distinction to the population in question. Are we saying here that pirates are more likely to convert to a pay-to-play model than non-pirates are to go from a freemium model to pay? Whats the basis of such statemen…

> Source for that 18% on XBLA? [1] says it was 18% in 2007. I very, very strongly doubt it's gone down . XBLA de-lists games with a Metacritic score below 65 (which is basically impossible) and a conversion rate below 6% (which is apparently really hard, huh?)[2]. Ken Lobb has referred to 20%-40% conversion rates for in-house games at MGS. And you once again are bound and determined to ignore the differences between…

Funny, a statician would laugh at this discussion. XBLA remove games with lower than 6% conversion rates, and we are supposed to be surprised that their average is higher than in other markets? If XBLA removed anything below 6%, it has the exact definition of selection bias by only allowing the top ranking freemium games a place in the store.

This will sound rude, but are you trying to fool others are have you just fooled yourself? Comparing a restricted store which only allow a few marked freemium games, with the PC game market in general is ridicules. The article is about the PC market and PC pirates. Not only is the PC market massive bigger than the total of 588 titles since 2004 that XBLA has, but XBLA has less freemium games per title than the PC market has. They also have a different demographic. A XBLA users is average ages 22, is a causal gamer, and has a middle class income. The average PC pirate age is lower, has less exposable income, and preference more hardcore game.

There is no shareable trait between the PC pirate, and the XBLA market. Trying to present the PC market as if its somehow would be the limited selection of XBLA titles is just false. Presenting a small selection bias as representable for the game industry is just...

Re: Pirates playing a game dev simulator complain about piracy

#346

Post by DanBC »

claudius wrote: post #183
stefs wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

game quality is increasing, you're just getting older. same thing happens to me; i just can't play like i used to anymore. when you're younger it's easier to lose yourself in the game, no matter how bad (and actually boring) it is.

But I’m still able to lose myself in, say, Patrician II or Pharao or FreeCiv. Maybe I don’t like modern graphics? :P

There are probably some indie games that come near to what you like.

Prison Architect (http://www.introversion.co.uk/prisonarchitect/) with a video Lets Play here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXiJHJ2_Hwg)

Towns (http://www.townsgame.com/) with a Lets Play here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AD5tbKITBT4)

and probably a bunch of others.

But then again, it's okay to not like games apart from the few you play. I love Total Annihilation, and haven't tried the various later 'versions'.

Re: Pirates playing a game dev simulator complain about piracy

#347

Post by mjn »

raverbashing wrote: post #285
jvrossb wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The relationship gets even more complex because, along with going Galt, simply moving can be a viable option. If moving to Bruxelles from Paris is really easy, the impact of higher taxes in France vs Belgium may be felt very differently than if a) it were more difficult to move or b) there are no places to move to with lower taxes.

Exactly There's a point where packing and leaving is easier. And the richest the people, the easier this is. Governments have to realize that, at a certain point, they are in competition with other countries. Multinational companies and rich people come to mind. The rich can pay their way through most of the immigration burdens that prohibit the average joe from moving (yes, even to the US)

One thing that's interesting is that this realization can itself push multiple ways. Denmark has for the most part concluded that the country is, in effect, a little company in competition with the rest of the world. But it's not only (or even primarily) competing for rich people. Rich people in themselves are just some finite wealth. More importantly, Denmark is competing for market share in various markets, such as services and high-end manufacturing. In some of those markets, just like in tech, a higher-cost, upmarket strategy may be superior to a lower-cost, compete-on-price strategy. So it may be worth goign with higher taxes and a highly educated workforce. I wrote a bit about that elsewhere on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5548497

Re: Pirates playing a game dev simulator complain about piracy

#348

Post by dllthomas »

fennecfoxen wrote: post #339
dllthomas wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes the money can move instead of the people.

Sometimes even if the money doesn't move away directly, some entirely unrelated money ends up somewhere else building factories, and then somewhere-else starts competing with you and taking away large slices of your business.

Sure, but that has less to do with tax rates.

Re: Pirates playing a game dev simulator complain about piracy

#349

Post by mjn »

stfu wrote: post #311
lolcraft wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frankly, it's clear you have very much a microeconomics-based of the macroeconomy, all accounting identities and no feedback. To begin with, there has been made the case that progressive taxation does, mostly, not mean a significant negative behavioral response in production. That is, taxes can in practice be increased a lot until the rich start fantasizing about going Galt. [D&S] estimate the optimal tax rate, for m…

Since you are already turning this into a partisan politics meme spouting bash fest, I just wanted to point out that Obama paid last year a 18.4 percent tax rate [1]. [1] http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/13/us-obama-taxes-idU...

Seems like yet another data point in favor of the viewpoint that taxes on the rich in the U.S. are far too low. That goes for Obama, too!

Re: Pirates playing a game dev simulator complain about piracy

#350

Post by zappbrannigan »

foona wrote: post #251
talmir wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? You are going to ask this here? You can get a proper copy of the game from the developers themselves for eight dollars.

After the stunt they pulled? They should consider themselves lucky if nobody sues them for the fraud they perpetrated by misrepresenting their product, the time they caused the public to waste debugging the issue, and the emotional harm of being prevented from enjoying the game. Not that I really care, since the game is not on NFOHump nor RlsLog, which generally means the game sucks so much that nobody bothered relea…

Are you a fucking idiot? What fraud did they perpetrate?
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