I always try to get my PC games from Steam unless it's significantly cheaper to do otherwise. Although I do admit that I've bought some games from eBay recently and been very satisfied.
Originally Posted by E-Jungle Even though it's considered wrong i still like to download games before i buy them. I don't mind shelling out for them but i want to know it's worth the money.
Yes, well I like to steal my sofa for a day from the shop before I decide I want to keep it, AND THEN pay for it...
I buy games that are worth the money. If games get downloaded on this end, they are either good and will be bought or they are crap and will be deleted, those wouldn't be bought in the first place any way so no money is lost on anyone's part.
Dude! Andune stop justifying your piracy... If you need to justify it then you know deep inside that it's wrong. On the other hand, I DO understand your point. I from Costa Rica, and we are always the last ones getting the goodness... That means that when you finally see a game (new titles of course) on the shelves, resellers have already added up to $50 to the price tag! Or, let’s say I order it online, then it usually takes 2-3 weeks for the game to get here, not counting the shipping time frame inside the US. To all that, you may also add that now the game’s price tag has increased up to $25 - $50 (shipping)
It doesn’t take a genius to realize that a pirate copy of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. ($10) was a much better choice than either waiting for it or over pay for it (specially since I didn’t like the game at all… way to slow for a FPS but that’s just me)
I did buy Quake4, BF2142, and more recently CoD4, & Crysis. An original copy of the game IS required for online gaming. Not the same for Bioshock, which I consider a masterpiece that I didn’t buy since it has no multiplayer, therefore, no re-playability. I’m the kind of guy who plays single player campaigns just once
As for the n00b thingy, I used to be a n00b in BF2142… People messed with me, kicked me form squads, or just made my gaming very uncomfortable. But after a few weeks the my only n00bish thing was my rank… I developed a passion for knifing n00b bullies, dick-heads, username abusers, cheaters, POD SURFERS (if you are one then I probably already have you in my dogtag collection :D ), etc… So, what’s my point? We are all gonna be n00bs – or newbies – some time (I’m still a CoD4 n00b so please be gentle… lol) the thing is to prove every body wrong in the battlefield. It’s a learning curve, and depending on the game it can be tough (specially BF2142 that you start the game with nothing…) but as soon as you kill (or knife ;D) your first Brigadier General, you then realize that they aren’t as tough as they were all bluffing about.
I hate it when ppl shun noobs, we were all there, plus they're fun to kill so why get rid of the livestock? Secondly, if game Devs want my money they're gonna have to charge $25-30 for a game no more! I'd be happy to buy direct for that price. Secondly, if they sold games at that price a lot more people would buy them maybe they should consider that video game piracy has increased dramatically with the huge increase in price, imbeciles!
Sorry this isn't the forum view so I can't put this with my last one
Quote:
Originally Posted by Robotrix
Quote:
Originally Posted by E-Jungle Even though it's considered wrong i still like to download games before i buy them. I don't mind shelling out for them but i want to know it's worth the money.
Yes, well I like to steal my sofa for a day from the shop before I decide I want to keep it, AND THEN pay for it...
Actually this is a try before you buy tactic, it improves sales significantly and quite a few furniture brands do so along with several other product groups including speakers, TV's, whatever.
âFour: Don't believe the hypeâ
Youâve just hit the spot! Great article by the way
The best example of this has got to be Crysis. Sure itâs beautiful, sure the nano suit adds some incredible gameplay features, however at the end (literally) is just another FPS. What amazes me the most is the fact that I bought a new rig just for this game!!! Not the rig I wanted, but the one I could afford (say Core2 Duo, 8800 GTS, 2 Gigs of RAM, X-Fi XtremeGamer + Vista) At the end, Iâm left with a high-end rig (not a bad thing at all) specifically tailored for what was going to be âthe best FPS everâ, but on which I only play BF1242. As you read early, Iâm still getting used to CoD4âs fast-paced muliplayer.
Bottom line is, sometimes you CAN believe the hype - take a look at Bioshock or CoD4. Amazing overly hyped games that actually DELIVERD. Or sometimes, you just choose to believe it in order to justify a $2000 rig⦠(thatâs right! thatâs the least youâll have to invest in order to play Crysis at playable framerates with the eye candy set on High)
Like the sig says buy old over clock and spend some damn money on the actual game!!!
I agree on the buying straight from developer's point, find them can sometimes be difficult but you can generally find the best games that way. Live For Speed (www.lfs.net) for instance I incourage anyone who is into racing sims to give this a go. Plus my favorite crazy critter and sincere police dog Sam & Max (www.telltalegames.com).
I think the problem is that pirating has become so mainstream that everyone thinks it is ok, I agree that demos need to be more available for the bigger games, but the smaller developers usually have several alpha, beta, pre-release demos for there games, in fact most of them rely on the community feedback throughout the development of the games.
It is a lot like open source development the community makes the product what it is. Put nothing or crap in, get nothing or crap out!
i'm always downloading a lot of games. The reason for this is the steep prices. I know it's stealing, i know it's wrong and hurting the industry, but there is just no way i can spend €50 on every game i want to play. The difference is too steep. On one hand we have the hassle of going to the store, waiting waiting and waiting untill the game i want is finally released in my country while everyone else i know has already finished it, filling up my house with boxes and getting CD's damaged, not to mention dishing out the cash. On the other hand we have click - wait 2 hours - click - click - click - play.
THAT is why i download. It's not right, i'm not defending it, i'm merely explaining it. I'm not going to hide behind the demo-excuse either. There's always demos, reviews and almost all games stores let you play it in the store for hours and hours if you really want.
Therefor i encourage one point hugely: buying direct!
The inflated prices because of retailing, advertising and publishing a game doesn't add a penny to it's value for me, yet over half of what i pay goes to people that do these things. Next time i'm getting into some new games i'll have a look around to see if i can buy direct before i download.
Another note: instead of fighting the torrent community, why dont game developers use the vast networking and distribution capabilities? Put a distribution on torrent, and make keys available, payment through paypal. Sure, it wont be watertight, but none of todays games are. Cutting on distribution, publishing and marketing costs this way, i'd MUCH more happily pay what's left of the price. If devs started doing this, they'd see me buy a lot more games.
[EDIT]
sorry if i'm making this thread a bit single issue :D
I really do agree a lot on the n00b-point you make too. I've always been a big helper of complete and utter n00bs, even if they were idiots. We need idiots to shoot at in games, so the better they like it, the more fun i'll be having aswell. We agree too much on that point to have an interesting discussion though.
[\EDIT]
Here are a few more points that would really help:
Stop assuming all the jerks are 12 years old. Older players need to start taking responsibility for their own bad behaviour online.
Stop using the word noob. Even if it's said in jest, the fact is that it's a word with an extremely derogatory connotation. Someone who's new to the game is a newbie.
Quote:
Originally Posted by CardJoe Care to give me an example of that supposed point? Between demos and reviews there's no need to pirate.
I see it as copying a game to be quite honest, cause your not stealing a brand new game, your playing a ripped version, which has all come from ONE disc.
And if people want to cut down piracy, how about lower prices, you lower prices, a lot more people will think "hmm actually I'd rather go out and buy that, it's a decent price" instead of "Well, I don't have £35, and I might not like it, so I'll just download it".
I don't believe games are horribly over-priced, however I do believe that they are over-priced. I assume some games spends millions on dev and support, and expect to make money for that. I haven't actually downloaded or used a copied game in over 2 years now. My main reason before hand was not having enough money to play the game, however now that I have a decent job I don't have problems paying for a game I enjoy. As well, the more and more I want to look into game design, the more I find myself not wanting to download, since even if something is priced at $40-50 in a store, downloading it is stealing it. It's the same thing with Movies or anything really. It's like walking out of a Safeway because groceries are too expensive only to walk into a Wal-Mart and steal the stuff.
/end Rant
However, back on topic... 2,6, and 7 really hit home for me. I don't mind joking around with friends online but it really puts me off when someone new to a game is scolded and belittled by someone for asking a question, or people are overly annoying just to get attention or a rise out of others. People that are annoying just because they can be annoying piss me off to no end. Also I've found that helping new people really can benefit you in the long run. Most of the time people asking questions and a lot of them are the ones you want to help. I know in SWG I found one of my now good friends running around trying to sell and give away his weapons so he could gain experience from it. He asked tons and tons of questions about the game and eventually became one of the First Jedi in our guild. I guess what it comes down to is that many new players will adapt to how others act in games in order to 'survive' and if everyone is an ass, if you want to play the game, you have to get thick skin and a sharp tongue or you'll be an outcast. Where ass if people are helpful and offer guidance, they're more then likely to do the same.
And for Hype games... I despise games that try to ride the wave of hype that have no substance (Game to Movies and Movie to Games) both of these tend to suck horribly since they're just slapped together for some extra cash. I would love to see more games based off a movie world (I.E. Star Wars Episode 3, you don't play through as Anakin/Obi instead you play as different Jedi's which show more storyline in a different direction which enhance your overall Episode 3 experience while still having appearances from your Star Wars fav's and still being in the Familiar environment. (*Glares at SWG*) As well, game to Movies don't really need to change much to be entertaining, however perhaps if they shot the movie from a different aspect it would give them more credibility. (Also if they weren't directed by Uwe Boll...)
I agree with the whole article, but the two points which really grab my attention are piracy and purchasing direct. I'd never even thought about the difference between buying direct and buying from a store, but I think I'll try to pay attention to that in the future.
As for piracy, I'd love to see some anti-piracy measures which don't actually make piracy more desirable. If your copy-protection scheme is noticeable or irritating to your legal customers, you have failed. You have failed because removing those measures in the process of pirating will actually make the game less annoying and more desirable. Guild Wars is brilliant, and Steam is quite good about this as well. You pay them, you might enter a license key once, and your game isn't tied to a computer, it's tied to an account. From that point on you can legally play that game on any computer in the world. There are probably significant copy-protection measures in place in both systems, but the important thing is that they're totally invisible unless you're actually trying to pirate the game!
Poor anti-piracy measures promote piracy. Help stop piracy by not trying so hard to stop piracy.
I find people who call others "Noobs" to be fairly pathetic TBH, i generally mention this to the noob basher as i just can't understand someone being insulted at not being good at an online game, just no reason.
But i do agree that sometimes that annoying lil' idiot constantly spamming about such and such cheating or he killed me no fair does make the blood boil and sometimes it's just nice to vent.
Anonymity just seams to turn some people into douche bags strange eh?
I can see why people have pirate copies of expensive software etc. Sibelius, Adobe CS3, Visual Studio and why people pirate games. The fact is, piracy probably will never go away. They'll always be someone selling a 'dodgy' copy of that game, or someone who will get you that software you want.
n00b can be used in a friendly context as well, i.e. when someone's made a silly mistake and it's among friends, but, during my brief stint on Runescape, got fairly fed up of people calling me n00b as I was walking around.
I hate to say it but you have no idea how much Guild Wars has saved me in money spent on games - even with two accounts and some of the add-ons. Every time I see a new game I tell myself I'm going to finish the next campaign - sadly I've only got to finish the expansion now (I can't be arsed to get all 40+ titles (though I once saw a guy with over 30 - I didn't know whether to cheer or tell him to get a life outside the game)).
One: Don't act like a jerk online.
Reasonable and realistic but that goes beyond gamers dose it not?
Two: Confront bad behaviour online
The trouble is confrontation can get you banded no matter the intention, I might be part A hole but I am a nice my exp for online is confrontation leads to trouble more often then not, if you are polite and subtle you might can defend and distract from the flaming or word fighting but still....
Three: Buy the games
this dose not work for me on 2 levels I buy used at heavy discount becuse I no longer buy into the hype of shallow poorly made modern gaming, after a few broken PC ports and crapfests on the console I will check out any game first before I buy unless I can get it for under 20, but my point is mediocre 40$+ un returnable games suck and are hurting the industry more than the small proration of the consumers that buck the herd don black paint and wear tinfoil hats.
Four: Don't believe the hype
Oh god yes....Bioshock was frist billed as a FPS RPG and by the time launch rolled around it was a consoletard shooter with training wheels....it almost makes deus ex 2 lok good....
Five: Seek out niche games
How about seek out B and beyond games, even tho they have a ton of issues I enjoyed Infernal and Alpha prime,Infernal has some great bad dialog and decent game mechanics it could polish but its surprisingly fun,Alpha prime has a ton of issues and is truly built like a AAA title(bland level design wonky weapons,ect,ect) I even got the stream infected version...i found it had steam after I bought it >< oh well thats what non steam versions are for, still tho ti has issues and bugs, all in all get away from AAA over hpyed titles and try the B range of unknown sadly it dose not get worse than the rushed over hyped AAA titles...
Six: Don't defend the indefensible
And don't defend anti consumer practices by the game industry.
Seven: Embrace newcomers
I don't mind newcomers its the Gdamn casual focus of the industry thats rushing products and not finishing or polishing them or pulls a Bioshock and waters stuff down so much its like it has training wheels, its clear casuals need there own level of difficulty and us "real" gamers need our games back not these short sighted crapfefests.
Eight: Try to buy direct
Ya? when you are given a choice between a physical copy of your mediocre title that you can crack and make sure it works out of the box 10 years from now or pay 10+% more to download something thats needs the net to "work", sorry until they offer full offline modes with digi distro I can live without the bloat/spy/mal ware known as steam, even D2D has gone online activation, IMO digidistro should be half price of retail boxed items simply because you are getting less product with more quirks.
pendragon
I believe it will work as well drop game prices 20-30$ you will almost double new game sales, at this point and time I fight hard for my consumer rights because games cost to damn much,if they would lower the price I would be less inclined to buy used and rail agnist bad games.
server admin who abuse their power. Battlefield is notorious for this. "jets and choppers are for clan members only." "we can tk you with impunity, tk us and you get booted, if you tk out of retaliation, you will get banned." and ofcourse my favorite, the hurt epeen admin. this rambo dude kicks all of our asses, so we kick him so we can get back to wtfpwnage.
trolling... people who simply want to get their rocks off to pissing in someone else's oatmeal. purposefully doing things to inhibit the playing of other people. backstabbing team members to give an edge to the other team so that your team has no chance of winning.
exploiting... "cartillery" and "crate drop arti" and, IMO, using crates to repair commander assets in BF2, abusing the way the game is coded to circumvent the way the dev's wanted the game to be played. the one exception is humor or as with BF42, xpack jumping. engine and programming limits can be a hinderance. In reality it is not impossible or unheard of to climb up a building to get the advantage of higher ground, you cant "climb" in most games, unless there is a ladder. xpack jumping allowed you to get past that. its still alot of fun in BF2 if FF is off. but other than that, abusing poor coding to get an upper hand is just sleasy.
FotM'ing. people that make a science out of getting the upper hand in MMOs and such are such a pain in the ass. the bandwagoning dirt bags that copy and paste someone else's work so that they can "wtfpwn" are worse than hemroids covered in acid.
the purchasing of video game currency "gold, platinum, rubies, whatever" or assistance as in PLs and what have you... the guys that profit off this are scumbags that have no care for the Mplayer aspect other than making cash. when you pay for this crap you give them incentive to keep doing it, making it harder for the honest gamers. the coop server for DAoC, Gaheris, was pretty much ruined by a couple of guys who dominated realm point gathering, and im sick of chinese farmers overcamping something or camp blocking or camp stealing or even kill stealing. they are a bane to videogame economies, and as with drugs, the more people willing to buy from them, the more they are going to do it, and even more will try to become "dealers"
multiboxing and "botting", Team Wizzy from DAoC and all the little fanboiz he inspired, the 5 man lock teams on WoW, the sniper in BF2 that has a medic hiding around the corner to revive himself if he gets killed, this kind of crap is blatantly unfair, and the companies allow it for $$$$$$$. keep the playing field level, please.
hacks/cheats in MMOs.... go play doom and iddqd idkfa if you dont want to play fair, 3rd party programs are not cool, and they dont make you special, just pathetic.
thats all i can think of... as for piracy.... well, you dont buy a car simply because you see the name and emblem and maybe the hood and headlights. You get in it, you drive it, you get to know what your expecting, you know what kind of warranty you get. Videogames? hah! Hell, even movies and music. I hate paying for something that I do not enjoy. Would you pay for a kick in the nuts? I sure as hell wouldnt. I will no longer purchase mortal kombat games, because the last THREE that i bought were ****ing garbage. They got great reviews, and no demos were available, atleast not without subscribing to a magazine to learn the same **** i can get for free on the internet. If Tekken 6 or GT5 are junk, ill never buy them again, no matter how great the game is hailed to be. Demos are great, but not always available. And many pc games have piss poor support. With that said, I dont pirate videogames. I have pirated music and movies, and if I LIKED what I heard/saw, I either watched the movies again in the theater, or i bought them on DVD, as for music, ill buy the album, if it has more than 1 song I like, otherwise ill buy the single, if that isnt available, ill delete your song from my HD. unless ive bought an album more than once or paid album price for 1 song before. which leads me to my next point.
Can you make the mediums in which you get your product to us anymore fragile? Ive purchased Metallica Black 3 times, i think I have the right to pirate it when my disc gets too scratched or if some thief takes it. 99% of the music Ive pirated is music I have purchased before or isnt available to me unless I fly to japan or europe and buy the damned albums then fly home. CDs and DvDs break way too easily. The paper booklets that have our CD keys for video games are even easier to lose or ruin. If i lose my BF2 cd keys, I have to rebuy the ****ing game, that is weak. I paid for it, I deserve to play it when I want.
Make the mediums more durable, have a registration database so I can retrieve my CD keys or get new ones if I lose or damage my medium, FOR FREE and in a timely manner. Stop charging outrageous prices for mediocre products. Why is it that games that suck or dont last long rarely offer demos, yet games that have lasting value give you free trials? WoW and DAoC each give you atleast 10 days to try their game. Most other companies full games dont have replay value of even 5 days, after that Im left wishing i rented the game. cant rent PC games tho, no sir, and blockbuster doesnt carry every game, only the popular ones. back in the N64, PS1, SNES, Sega genisis, NES days... I never bought a game withou renting it first. I got to preview it myself. Computers and programming has come a loooooooooooooooooong way. Servers are everywhere. Put your product up for free and put a decay timer on it. Until I register my Microsoft word, I can only use it a total of 20 times or 2 weeks, whichever comes first, afterwards it will NOT allow me to run the program.... GENIUS! If you have faith in your product, that the masses will enjoy it, give us a "test drive" of it. Those of us who are decent human beings will buy it. As it stands right now, Im worse than the "pirates" youve gotten mad at, Im xenophobic about new games. Ive been burnt by too many crap games to buy many games anymore. the last game I bought for my PS3 was Armored Core 4. I loved armored core 1 and 2 was ok, after they started releasing xpacks for 2, it started sucking. I stopped buying it. AC4 came out and boasted that it went back to the way the game used to be, well they lied. AC4 is worse than AC3. I will not buy AC4's expack. I purchased my PS3 for 3 games and blue ray movies, that is it. GT5, Tekken 6, and AC4. AC4 flopped. I hope Namco and Polyphony digital dont drop the ball too. ive never liked bandai, which appearently now is somehow afilliated with Nacmo, so we will see. Time Crisis 4 wasnt a bad game, but it wasnt Time Crisis or Time Crisis 2. Tekken 5 wasnt Tekken 3 or Tekken Tag. GT5 is changing a lot of things, it needs to, but those changes could ruin the series, which is growing stale. That said, if the games were $20, Id buy them alot more often. When I go to Bestbuy, I spend atleast 30 minutes deciding WHICH really good movie i want to spend $15 on. When I go to walmart or blockbuster, and they have $5 movies to own, I buy movies ive never seen and spend $60.
haterade
come over to the eca forums, us fuzzy noobs(that would be me) and the higher life forms there are workign ona gamers bill of rights. http://forums.theeca.com/showthread.php?t=4485
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Also, more digital distribution would be great.
It doesn’t take a genius to realize that a pirate copy of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. ($10) was a much better choice than either waiting for it or over pay for it (specially since I didn’t like the game at all… way to slow for a FPS but that’s just me)
I did buy Quake4, BF2142, and more recently CoD4, & Crysis. An original copy of the game IS required for online gaming. Not the same for Bioshock, which I consider a masterpiece that I didn’t buy since it has no multiplayer, therefore, no re-playability. I’m the kind of guy who plays single player campaigns just once
As for the n00b thingy, I used to be a n00b in BF2142… People messed with me, kicked me form squads, or just made my gaming very uncomfortable. But after a few weeks the my only n00bish thing was my rank… I developed a passion for knifing n00b bullies, dick-heads, username abusers, cheaters, POD SURFERS (if you are one then I probably already have you in my dogtag collection :D ), etc… So, what’s my point? We are all gonna be n00bs – or newbies – some time (I’m still a CoD4 n00b so please be gentle… lol) the thing is to prove every body wrong in the battlefield. It’s a learning curve, and depending on the game it can be tough (specially BF2142 that you start the game with nothing…) but as soon as you kill (or knife ;D) your first Brigadier General, you then realize that they aren’t as tough as they were all bluffing about.
Actually this is a try before you buy tactic, it improves sales significantly and quite a few furniture brands do so along with several other product groups including speakers, TV's, whatever.
Youâve just hit the spot! Great article by the way
The best example of this has got to be Crysis. Sure itâs beautiful, sure the nano suit adds some incredible gameplay features, however at the end (literally) is just another FPS. What amazes me the most is the fact that I bought a new rig just for this game!!! Not the rig I wanted, but the one I could afford (say Core2 Duo, 8800 GTS, 2 Gigs of RAM, X-Fi XtremeGamer + Vista) At the end, Iâm left with a high-end rig (not a bad thing at all) specifically tailored for what was going to be âthe best FPS everâ, but on which I only play BF1242. As you read early, Iâm still getting used to CoD4âs fast-paced muliplayer.
Bottom line is, sometimes you CAN believe the hype - take a look at Bioshock or CoD4. Amazing overly hyped games that actually DELIVERD. Or sometimes, you just choose to believe it in order to justify a $2000 rig⦠(thatâs right! thatâs the least youâll have to invest in order to play Crysis at playable framerates with the eye candy set on High)
Also it reminds me of this article on ExtremeTech: (Link) Different points but valid as well.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/
Like the sig says buy old over clock and spend some damn money on the actual game!!!
I agree on the buying straight from developer's point, find them can sometimes be difficult but you can generally find the best games that way. Live For Speed (www.lfs.net) for instance I incourage anyone who is into racing sims to give this a go. Plus my favorite crazy critter and sincere police dog Sam & Max (www.telltalegames.com).
I think the problem is that pirating has become so mainstream that everyone thinks it is ok, I agree that demos need to be more available for the bigger games, but the smaller developers usually have several alpha, beta, pre-release demos for there games, in fact most of them rely on the community feedback throughout the development of the games.
It is a lot like open source development the community makes the product what it is. Put nothing or crap in, get nothing or crap out!
THAT is why i download. It's not right, i'm not defending it, i'm merely explaining it. I'm not going to hide behind the demo-excuse either. There's always demos, reviews and almost all games stores let you play it in the store for hours and hours if you really want.
Therefor i encourage one point hugely: buying direct!
The inflated prices because of retailing, advertising and publishing a game doesn't add a penny to it's value for me, yet over half of what i pay goes to people that do these things. Next time i'm getting into some new games i'll have a look around to see if i can buy direct before i download.
Another note: instead of fighting the torrent community, why dont game developers use the vast networking and distribution capabilities? Put a distribution on torrent, and make keys available, payment through paypal. Sure, it wont be watertight, but none of todays games are. Cutting on distribution, publishing and marketing costs this way, i'd MUCH more happily pay what's left of the price. If devs started doing this, they'd see me buy a lot more games.
[EDIT]
sorry if i'm making this thread a bit single issue :D
I really do agree a lot on the n00b-point you make too. I've always been a big helper of complete and utter n00bs, even if they were idiots. We need idiots to shoot at in games, so the better they like it, the more fun i'll be having aswell. We agree too much on that point to have an interesting discussion though.
[\EDIT]
i don't agree with piracy, unless it's music... they can go to hell i am not paying a cent for them.
I buy all my games, but i hardly buy any games through retail, steam ftw.
And if people want to cut down piracy, how about lower prices, you lower prices, a lot more people will think "hmm actually I'd rather go out and buy that, it's a decent price" instead of "Well, I don't have £35, and I might not like it, so I'll just download it".
/end Rant
However, back on topic... 2,6, and 7 really hit home for me. I don't mind joking around with friends online but it really puts me off when someone new to a game is scolded and belittled by someone for asking a question, or people are overly annoying just to get attention or a rise out of others. People that are annoying just because they can be annoying piss me off to no end. Also I've found that helping new people really can benefit you in the long run. Most of the time people asking questions and a lot of them are the ones you want to help. I know in SWG I found one of my now good friends running around trying to sell and give away his weapons so he could gain experience from it. He asked tons and tons of questions about the game and eventually became one of the First Jedi in our guild. I guess what it comes down to is that many new players will adapt to how others act in games in order to 'survive' and if everyone is an ass, if you want to play the game, you have to get thick skin and a sharp tongue or you'll be an outcast. Where ass if people are helpful and offer guidance, they're more then likely to do the same.
And for Hype games... I despise games that try to ride the wave of hype that have no substance (Game to Movies and Movie to Games) both of these tend to suck horribly since they're just slapped together for some extra cash. I would love to see more games based off a movie world (I.E. Star Wars Episode 3, you don't play through as Anakin/Obi instead you play as different Jedi's which show more storyline in a different direction which enhance your overall Episode 3 experience while still having appearances from your Star Wars fav's and still being in the Familiar environment. (*Glares at SWG*) As well, game to Movies don't really need to change much to be entertaining, however perhaps if they shot the movie from a different aspect it would give them more credibility. (Also if they weren't directed by Uwe Boll...)
3: Steam is great, and instead of pirating, why not go out and rent the game from one of the huge # of rental outlets?
4: Its the marketing people's job to tell you how
smartstupid they are.5: Navy Field FTW!!
As for piracy, I'd love to see some anti-piracy measures which don't actually make piracy more desirable. If your copy-protection scheme is noticeable or irritating to your legal customers, you have failed. You have failed because removing those measures in the process of pirating will actually make the game less annoying and more desirable. Guild Wars is brilliant, and Steam is quite good about this as well. You pay them, you might enter a license key once, and your game isn't tied to a computer, it's tied to an account. From that point on you can legally play that game on any computer in the world. There are probably significant copy-protection measures in place in both systems, but the important thing is that they're totally invisible unless you're actually trying to pirate the game!
Poor anti-piracy measures promote piracy. Help stop piracy by not trying so hard to stop piracy.
But i do agree that sometimes that annoying lil' idiot constantly spamming about such and such cheating or he killed me no fair does make the blood boil and sometimes it's just nice to vent.
Anonymity just seams to turn some people into douche bags strange eh?
n00b can be used in a friendly context as well, i.e. when someone's made a silly mistake and it's among friends, but, during my brief stint on Runescape, got fairly fed up of people calling me n00b as I was walking around.
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-and yes, I bought some of it direct.
Reasonable and realistic but that goes beyond gamers dose it not?
Two: Confront bad behaviour online
The trouble is confrontation can get you banded no matter the intention, I might be part A hole but I am a nice my exp for online is confrontation leads to trouble more often then not, if you are polite and subtle you might can defend and distract from the flaming or word fighting but still....
Three: Buy the games
this dose not work for me on 2 levels I buy used at heavy discount becuse I no longer buy into the hype of shallow poorly made modern gaming, after a few broken PC ports and crapfests on the console I will check out any game first before I buy unless I can get it for under 20, but my point is mediocre 40$+ un returnable games suck and are hurting the industry more than the small proration of the consumers that buck the herd don black paint and wear tinfoil hats.
Four: Don't believe the hype
Oh god yes....Bioshock was frist billed as a FPS RPG and by the time launch rolled around it was a consoletard shooter with training wheels....it almost makes deus ex 2 lok good....
Five: Seek out niche games
How about seek out B and beyond games, even tho they have a ton of issues I enjoyed Infernal and Alpha prime,Infernal has some great bad dialog and decent game mechanics it could polish but its surprisingly fun,Alpha prime has a ton of issues and is truly built like a AAA title(bland level design wonky weapons,ect,ect) I even got the stream infected version...i found it had steam after I bought it >< oh well thats what non steam versions are for, still tho ti has issues and bugs, all in all get away from AAA over hpyed titles and try the B range of unknown sadly it dose not get worse than the rushed over hyped AAA titles...
Six: Don't defend the indefensible
And don't defend anti consumer practices by the game industry.
Seven: Embrace newcomers
I don't mind newcomers its the Gdamn casual focus of the industry thats rushing products and not finishing or polishing them or pulls a Bioshock and waters stuff down so much its like it has training wheels, its clear casuals need there own level of difficulty and us "real" gamers need our games back not these short sighted crapfefests.
Eight: Try to buy direct
Ya? when you are given a choice between a physical copy of your mediocre title that you can crack and make sure it works out of the box 10 years from now or pay 10+% more to download something thats needs the net to "work", sorry until they offer full offline modes with digi distro I can live without the bloat/spy/mal ware known as steam, even D2D has gone online activation, IMO digidistro should be half price of retail boxed items simply because you are getting less product with more quirks.
pendragon
I believe it will work as well drop game prices 20-30$ you will almost double new game sales, at this point and time I fight hard for my consumer rights because games cost to damn much,if they would lower the price I would be less inclined to buy used and rail agnist bad games.
server admin who abuse their power. Battlefield is notorious for this. "jets and choppers are for clan members only." "we can tk you with impunity, tk us and you get booted, if you tk out of retaliation, you will get banned." and ofcourse my favorite, the hurt epeen admin. this rambo dude kicks all of our asses, so we kick him so we can get back to wtfpwnage.
trolling... people who simply want to get their rocks off to pissing in someone else's oatmeal. purposefully doing things to inhibit the playing of other people. backstabbing team members to give an edge to the other team so that your team has no chance of winning.
exploiting... "cartillery" and "crate drop arti" and, IMO, using crates to repair commander assets in BF2, abusing the way the game is coded to circumvent the way the dev's wanted the game to be played. the one exception is humor or as with BF42, xpack jumping. engine and programming limits can be a hinderance. In reality it is not impossible or unheard of to climb up a building to get the advantage of higher ground, you cant "climb" in most games, unless there is a ladder. xpack jumping allowed you to get past that. its still alot of fun in BF2 if FF is off. but other than that, abusing poor coding to get an upper hand is just sleasy.
FotM'ing. people that make a science out of getting the upper hand in MMOs and such are such a pain in the ass. the bandwagoning dirt bags that copy and paste someone else's work so that they can "wtfpwn" are worse than hemroids covered in acid.
the purchasing of video game currency "gold, platinum, rubies, whatever" or assistance as in PLs and what have you... the guys that profit off this are scumbags that have no care for the Mplayer aspect other than making cash. when you pay for this crap you give them incentive to keep doing it, making it harder for the honest gamers. the coop server for DAoC, Gaheris, was pretty much ruined by a couple of guys who dominated realm point gathering, and im sick of chinese farmers overcamping something or camp blocking or camp stealing or even kill stealing. they are a bane to videogame economies, and as with drugs, the more people willing to buy from them, the more they are going to do it, and even more will try to become "dealers"
multiboxing and "botting", Team Wizzy from DAoC and all the little fanboiz he inspired, the 5 man lock teams on WoW, the sniper in BF2 that has a medic hiding around the corner to revive himself if he gets killed, this kind of crap is blatantly unfair, and the companies allow it for $$$$$$$. keep the playing field level, please.
hacks/cheats in MMOs.... go play doom and iddqd idkfa if you dont want to play fair, 3rd party programs are not cool, and they dont make you special, just pathetic.
thats all i can think of... as for piracy.... well, you dont buy a car simply because you see the name and emblem and maybe the hood and headlights. You get in it, you drive it, you get to know what your expecting, you know what kind of warranty you get. Videogames? hah! Hell, even movies and music. I hate paying for something that I do not enjoy. Would you pay for a kick in the nuts? I sure as hell wouldnt. I will no longer purchase mortal kombat games, because the last THREE that i bought were ****ing garbage. They got great reviews, and no demos were available, atleast not without subscribing to a magazine to learn the same **** i can get for free on the internet. If Tekken 6 or GT5 are junk, ill never buy them again, no matter how great the game is hailed to be. Demos are great, but not always available. And many pc games have piss poor support. With that said, I dont pirate videogames. I have pirated music and movies, and if I LIKED what I heard/saw, I either watched the movies again in the theater, or i bought them on DVD, as for music, ill buy the album, if it has more than 1 song I like, otherwise ill buy the single, if that isnt available, ill delete your song from my HD. unless ive bought an album more than once or paid album price for 1 song before. which leads me to my next point.
Can you make the mediums in which you get your product to us anymore fragile? Ive purchased Metallica Black 3 times, i think I have the right to pirate it when my disc gets too scratched or if some thief takes it. 99% of the music Ive pirated is music I have purchased before or isnt available to me unless I fly to japan or europe and buy the damned albums then fly home. CDs and DvDs break way too easily. The paper booklets that have our CD keys for video games are even easier to lose or ruin. If i lose my BF2 cd keys, I have to rebuy the ****ing game, that is weak. I paid for it, I deserve to play it when I want.
Make the mediums more durable, have a registration database so I can retrieve my CD keys or get new ones if I lose or damage my medium, FOR FREE and in a timely manner. Stop charging outrageous prices for mediocre products. Why is it that games that suck or dont last long rarely offer demos, yet games that have lasting value give you free trials? WoW and DAoC each give you atleast 10 days to try their game. Most other companies full games dont have replay value of even 5 days, after that Im left wishing i rented the game. cant rent PC games tho, no sir, and blockbuster doesnt carry every game, only the popular ones. back in the N64, PS1, SNES, Sega genisis, NES days... I never bought a game withou renting it first. I got to preview it myself. Computers and programming has come a loooooooooooooooooong way. Servers are everywhere. Put your product up for free and put a decay timer on it. Until I register my Microsoft word, I can only use it a total of 20 times or 2 weeks, whichever comes first, afterwards it will NOT allow me to run the program.... GENIUS! If you have faith in your product, that the masses will enjoy it, give us a "test drive" of it. Those of us who are decent human beings will buy it. As it stands right now, Im worse than the "pirates" youve gotten mad at, Im xenophobic about new games. Ive been burnt by too many crap games to buy many games anymore. the last game I bought for my PS3 was Armored Core 4. I loved armored core 1 and 2 was ok, after they started releasing xpacks for 2, it started sucking. I stopped buying it. AC4 came out and boasted that it went back to the way the game used to be, well they lied. AC4 is worse than AC3. I will not buy AC4's expack. I purchased my PS3 for 3 games and blue ray movies, that is it. GT5, Tekken 6, and AC4. AC4 flopped. I hope Namco and Polyphony digital dont drop the ball too. ive never liked bandai, which appearently now is somehow afilliated with Nacmo, so we will see. Time Crisis 4 wasnt a bad game, but it wasnt Time Crisis or Time Crisis 2. Tekken 5 wasnt Tekken 3 or Tekken Tag. GT5 is changing a lot of things, it needs to, but those changes could ruin the series, which is growing stale. That said, if the games were $20, Id buy them alot more often. When I go to Bestbuy, I spend atleast 30 minutes deciding WHICH really good movie i want to spend $15 on. When I go to walmart or blockbuster, and they have $5 movies to own, I buy movies ive never seen and spend $60.
come over to the eca forums, us fuzzy noobs(that would be me) and the higher life forms there are workign ona gamers bill of rights.
http://forums.theeca.com/showthread.php?t=4485