5punk

I will indeed download it, DOWLOAD IT WITH MY BROOM, HARD, AMIRIGHTLOL

If no-one plays the multiplayer cos it's broken an shit then why would I even bother to buy it when it's cheaper

It's as if you're proving the point the developer/publish has about piracy on the PC. I'm not sure what that point is, but I'm certain they're against it.

Woaw, £45! Someone else can pay that and give it to me as a Christmas present.

spoodie wrote:It's as if you're proving the point the developer/publish has about piracy on the PC. I'm not sure what that point is, but I'm certain they're against it.

Not really, developers/publishers always seem to bleet on about every pirate copy being a lost sale. If it wasn't easy to obtain a pirate copy at £45 they'd still see less sales but wouldn't have the crutch of "piracy" to fall back and blame.

IW moaned about CoD4 being one of the most pirated games ever, but seeing as they've gone and slapped the entire PC market in the face, who are less inclined to take the slap like the majority of the console market do, with the rather negative changes to the series, it should be expected. Probably why they've waited until just before it's due before informing the public of the changes in order to minimise damage.

But if that article is truth and IW are aware of the petition (now at 180,000+), then I suspect the bean counters will have noticed that they're set to make less money than expected.

There's blame on both sides of the argument. But pirating the game is not taking the moral high-ground.

spoodie wrote:There's blame on both sides of the argument. But pirating the game is not taking the moral high-ground.

I don't think anyone has claimed that.

I buy games so I can play them online, if the SP game appeals to me for long lasting fun, or it's something different/special.

Examples:
BF2, 700 hours from that, great buy.
STALKER games, countless hours played, really like the setting.
Portal, short game, frustrating as fuck, love it.


I know from previous experience that the CoD SP campaigns are fun but short, I personally value CoD SP at £17.99.

The multiplayer is what makes me buy CoD games full price, usually pre-ordered.

In this case they're trying to sell me a short SP game for more than double my perceived value of the product.

It's not moral high ground for me, in fact I feel morally suspect in illegally downloading a game, It's not to prove a point to IW either, it's because it's not value for money for me.

I didn't buy COD4 for months, until after I'd completed the SP and played many hours online, but I did buy it because it was worth the money and wanted to carry on playing it, not that I think I have to try a game out before I buy it either, many games I've bought before playing even a demo.

In this case it's because 1: It's expensive 2: they've advertised the fact that it has features I don't like the sound of and 3: features I want are absent.

It's not throwing toys out the pram (which seems so prevalent on other forums) and I don't want to shout out loud my disgust at IW, they aren't interested in what I think and I'm not interested in telling them, it's just rather disappointing as I was very much looking forward to it, if it follows the same pattern as COD then I will almost certainly end up paying money for it, but if not then meh.

That said I still want to play the SP, but I don't think it's worth the money, if it makes me come in my pants I may well decide it is worth paying for, I guess I'll have to wait and see.

All of that covers my thoughts pretty much exactly.

Except the morally suspect bit, I don't really possess any.

I don't think I'll even bother sweeping it for SP. CoD4's SP had two or three really great moments, but I didn't think it was all that great. Also what I've heard of the SP for MW2 makes it sound like they retarded it up just as much as they did everything else, some spoilers for the campaign I read sounded like stupid hacky 13 year old gun-action-kill-death-wank material

I haven't cancelled my order yet, I don't like what they've done with the multiplayer, but I like the look of the singleplayer and want to play it.

It is the price that it is, I don't feel like waiting until the price drops and I'm not a thief.

You're willing to pay £40 for what is possibly a better looking equivalent of COD4? Well fair play to you, because I don't have that kind of money to spend.

I'm not a thief either, and I won't be torrenting the game for two reasons; I like to get the legitimate experience, movie or videogame, and I won't give them the benefit of blaming reduced sales on pirates. That and, to a far lesser but more poignant extent, I don't have a fast enough connection to warrant downloading a game which has, quite frankly, insulted me. *



*Only read on if you want the long version.

The way I see it is that Activision/IW/whoever have seen their console market and compared it to their PC market. Consoles sell a lot more.
So their reaction is to emulate their console success on their remaining non-profitable platform, the PC. This may or may not be flawed. In the most immediate sense they have alienated the very customers who built their franchise. Not only that, the customers who enabled them to build the multi-platform juggernaught that is COD4. But COD4, and indeed COD5, have proved profitable far beyond their PC roots. In fact, COD4 is a household name among console gamers, which in gaming terms is synonymous with average joe. And average joe is a vast market. But average Joe does not play on dedicated servers. Average joes is put off by servers which tout names like "knife only" and "24/7 Shipment" and, as far as many are concerned "no n00bs allowed".

It's actually a viable business decision, albeit a nefarious one, to sacrifice your hardcore fans in order to attract many more casual ones. So many gamers play COD4 on their Xbox after coming back from the pub.

But wait, how many gamers play COD4 after coming back from the pub on the PC? I'll bet my gaming reputation** it's not a huge market. That's neither a good thing nor a bad thing. In fact it's precisely neither. People who come back from the pub and play a little COD4 will carry on and play a little COD42. Which would make them XBox 360 owners. Now that's not a bad thing, it forwards the genre in a way PC gaming never could. But that doesn't leave behind the home of the series, which is the PC. You can keep the ADD*** single player campaign. In IW's eyes what should happen is that all the playboy middle class who own a PC with a good video card can play COD42 on their PC just like an XBox owner can, and everyone is happy. All these gaming PC pub dwellers suddenly swell into the market because the hardcore types who kick you from their servers for being a n00b are gone. Only the dislodged 360 market who mistakenly own a PC remain, and they are legion. Still sound viable? Probably moreso than you'd think, which is what will propel COD42 to the top of the PC charts in the first few weeks, but will also cause it to flag far faster than COD4 did after release.

Now individually this may have been treated as an anomoly, an experiment, or an atrocity. I'm open to the opinion that it may have been any or all of the above. What it ultimately does for those who closely follow PC gaming is act as a test subject. If COD42 is a success then other Activision games will certainly follow. EA have already taken sides with the anti-P2P lobby, but if COD42 sales speak a profit then how long before their stance changes to support?

This**** is a defining moment in PC gaming. Activision are throwing down the gauntlet, whether they intend to or not. Can they get away with charging console prices for PC games? Can they make their PC gaming experience better by offering a more console-equivalent experience for a slightly lower price? Basically, is their PC market the same as their console market, but shackled by clans and the hardcore elite? The consumer will obviously be the judge.

But then this will inevitably open up the piracy argument. We already know that many people are outraged by the steps taken by Infinity Ward to standardise the multiplayer experience on the PC. Many people have openly admitted that the multiplayer experience, as presented in its current form, is worthless to them, and as the single player campaign is worth approximately 8 hours, based roughly on COD4's single player campaign, it is only worth the time and bandwidth of downloading the inevitable cracked version. Not all PC gamers subscribe to this (myself included), but such a boycott of the multiplayer system on such a tech-savvy platform as the PC can only harm sales, whether it be in the short term or the long term.

Ultimately though, it is the acid test of who PC games are most profitably aimed towards. The Xbox360 has shown that FPS games are a viable business in the Halo and Gears of War franchises. But Activision are gambling on whether such a simple market exists on the PC. On the surface, sales of Championship Manager, The Sims, and World of Warcraft would indicate there are millions of casual gamers who would fill the evolutionary gap between now-and-then 360 players and hardcore PC clanners with a profitable boundary, but look a little deeper, even so deep as to actually play any of these games, and the differences are startling. PC gamers often treat their computers like racing motorbikes, and alienating them would be like Ducati abandoning Moto GP because more people buy scooters.

But then what do I know? All I have are my 20 years of gaming experience and my limited income to speak for me. Maybe Activision have the correct model for PC gaming, and I'll be forever grateful that they took such a bold step, like Valve did with Steam. Or maybe they've got it terribly wrong and will serve as a warning to future developers, like ID did with Daikatana. Or maybe they'll transform the PC gaming market into a sort of hardware transferrable X-Box, where no knowledge is required to keep your PC safe and happy, working and malware-free. Hell, maybe there'll even be an ECDL in gaming.

Or maybe that's too cynical.

**Comments on that seperate please.
***Apologies to our ADD readers whose attention span outpaced COD4, this is not meant as a stereotype of ADD, more as a dismal example of blockbuster mentality of this particular series.
****I base my statement on 20 years of gaming, close study of the home computer phenomenon from Sinclair 128+ to the vapourous entity of a modern gaming PC (able to run any game I care to install in 1900x1200 with a second monitor, up to and including Borderlands and Dragon Age Origins as of 07 Nov 2009)

Isn't GoW a 3ps?

Otherwise, I mostly agree, apart from the ADD thing, mostly because probably 50% of supposed cases of ADD are more likely kids being hyper from eating shitty processed crap 3 meals a day.

Oh, and I'm not a thief, I don't deprive anyone of property by pirating a game (AFAIK no game devs are on commission*)


*Apart from indie devs, which I'll usually pay for, even if I never pay the game.

Dr. kitteny berk wrote:Isn't GoW a 3ps?

lolololol so is cod42.

On a more serious note, where the gave devs might not be on commission, I believe that the publisher's income depends on actual sales.

My personal stance is that if I enjoy the game, have enjoyed a previous game in the series, respect the developer, or trust the game from previews and reviews, I'll buy it.
Otherwise I'll try a demo of the game. If there ain't a demo available.. Well I'll just source one, yeah?

Grimmie wrote:On a more serious note, where the gave devs might not be on commission, I believe that the publisher's income depends on actual sales.

Perhaps as a business, but at a personal level, I'm not stopping anyone getting paid or taking anything tangible from them.

Sure, I'm pirating a game, but I'm not committing theft, that's just what they want you to think.

I agree with Berk. Piracy is not theft. It doesn't make it right, but one pirate copy does not equal one lost sale. Someone pirating a game and then buying it later doesn't harm the profits of a product as much as someone just not buying it at all, and by pirating a game you're not depriving that company of the cost of producing that particular 'copy' of the game.

And I'm sure Berk is also right about the ADD thing. The phrase just felt so right to my beer addled brain.

Dog Pants wrote:Someone pirating a game and then buying it later doesn't harm the profits of a product as much as someone just not buying it at all.

This is a very, very 5punk relevant point.

Remember CoD4? We had a private cracked server for maybe 2 months.

How many people went on to buy cod4? I'd bet considerably more than if we hadn't pirated it.

Although we're probably in a minority. But as someone who was a prolific pirate in my Amiga days I can safely say if I couldn't pirate a game I just wouldn't play it; as a young teenager I just didn't have the money. The fact that I did pirate games doesn't help the likes of Gremlin, Bitmap Brothers and Ultimate: Play The Game, but it nurtured a gaming hobby on which I've spent thousands and thousands of pounds later in life.

Interesting points Pantsu, made me think of another, COD4 was (is?) very popular within 5punk, I think it's the kind of game that would make me want to buy new hardware to get the most out of it. No money that goes to the game developer but it is money going into the PC platform, be it graphics or memory manufacturers etc.

If MW2 struggles to play well on my PC I very much doubt I'd consider forking out cash for a new graphics card, I definitely would have considered it for COD4

I saw that mentioned on the PCG forums, in the guise of a rant. If COD42 fails to sell on the PC because of this it will have knock-on effects. Retailers like Amazon and Play will be stuck with lots of copies they can't sell and so will be far less likely to buy lots of stock in future. For the hardware manufacturers the next big game to send people out buying their stuff is Battlefield Bad Company in March, a whole six months away. I can't see them being pleased with the turn of events either, particularly since their target market are exactly the people Activision and IW are alienating.

The "piracy = lost sales" thing is such an annoying cop out. They are not going to lose as many sales to piracy as they are to the missing features and high price.

If it had the features and/or a more reasonable price, I would be buying it. It doesnt, so im not. Whether I then chose to pirate it or not has absolutely no bearing on that.

Joose wrote:The "piracy = lost sales" thing is such an annoying cop out. They are not going to lose as many sales to piracy as they are to the missing features and high price.

If it had the features and/or a more reasonable price, I would be buying it. It doesnt, so im not. Whether I then chose to pirate it or not has absolutely no bearing on that.