Video games and piracy

slayer81

Legendary pimp, slayer of evils
Speaking of Berserk games, I've seen enough of the PS2 Berserk game from Japan to dig the Hell out of it. I have to say the Dreamcast game wasn't nearly as great. Unfortunately, instead of getting my PS2 modified and buying this game, I sold it when I got my PS3. I wish they'd come out with a Berserk game for the PS3... it would damn sure beat the 3 million 1st person shooters the consol has out... :serpico:
 

Serpico

Farnese is the bomb diggity
slayer81 said:
Speaking of Berserk games, I've seen enough of the PS2 Berserk game from Japan to dig the Hell out of it. I have to say the Dreamcast game wasn't nearly as great. Unfortunately, instead of getting my PS2 modified and buying this game, I sold it when I got my PS3. I wish they'd come out with a Berserk game for the PS3... it would damn sure beat the 3 million 1st person shooters the consol has out... :serpico:

Yeah, it was a great looking piece of work. I actually have the game myself but not the system. It looked amazing, so when I have some extra cash I will pick up a modded PS2 or some kind of capable emulator if one comes out.
 

Walter

Administrator
Staff member
Id say the Dreamcast Berserk game was actually a better GAME than the PS2's. The DC one had a unique, if stand-alone story that also added to the Berserk mythos, where as the PS2 version was a kind of truncated, BS version of volumes 21-27 with some fanservice thrown in. That being said, it had the best opening theme song of all time and the combo system was GLORIOUS, but got old pretty quick.

Way to derail the thread though guys, and yeah I know Im just as guilty, but I couldn't stand there and see the DC game get trounced.
 

Serpico

Farnese is the bomb diggity
Walter said:
Id say the Dreamcast Berserk game was actually a better GAME than the PS2's. The DC one had a unique, if stand-alone story that also added to the Berserk mythos, where as the PS2 version was a kind of truncated, BS version of volumes 21-27 with some fanservice thrown in. That being said, it had the best opening theme song of all time and the combo system was GLORIOUS, but got old pretty quick.

Way to derail the thread though guys, and yeah I know Im just as guilty, but I couldn't stand there and see the DC game get trounced.

Farnese was in the PS2 game so I am pretty biased in that regard. Believe me though I was kicking myself in the ass when that game came out and I didn't have a dreamcast anymore. I might try to pick up both on ebay still.
 

Aazealh

Administrator
Staff member
Serpico said:
If you mean no legitimate copy crashed due to the intentional bug that is possible Aaz.

Yeah, that's what I mean. Otherwise it'd defeat the purpose of copy protection, don't you think? The game ran fine on legitimate versions but crashed at specific points when it was pirated. It wasn't particularly buggy otherwise, though the framerate slowed down at times.

Serpico said:
The problem is that many bugs can cause the game to crash at any point and if it cooincidentally crashes there it complicates things. You can take my word on this or not, I've listened to 4 hours of programming lectures a week for the last year and written dozens myself, but it is actually more likely for legitimate users to crash specifically at that point. Why? Because at that point they run the copy protection function that very likely has bugs all of its own for different systems and configurations. My point is that they really confuse the issue writing in intentional crashes, and when the user reports an error they can't be sure it was legit or if it was the one they wrote in, especially since its long distance.

I agree with you in theory. It's clearly not the best way to go about it. However since it actually worked as intended I don't think we can hold it against them.

Serpico said:
Well, I only said some would buy it otherwise. I think thats more likely proven true than untrue.

Sure, SOME guys will buy it. But if it's 80 people out of 200,000 then it doesn't mean much, which is exactly what the problem is. I don't doubt you've done it yourself at times, but you're not representative of the average Internet user that posts comments on Youtube and bittorrent websites. And I'm sure the proportion I gave isn't far from the truth unfortunately (and it'd still suck if it was 10 times more people anyway). The most obvious proof is that more and more companies say they're changing focus because of it. The excuse of "piracy helps games get the word out, people just want to test, etc." has been around since forever and has been refuted since forever as well, only now that companies are going out of business we're reaching a dangerous point. I think it's time people stop deluding themselves about it. Piracy only has negative effects on the industry.

Serpico said:
Hard to say. I'm considering going into this field so I think about this myself on a regular basis. I like AI, and I like physics, and I like games. I can't see it dying for a few reasons. One is that computers will likely always be ahead of consoles and its compelling to write cutting edge stuff. Two is that there are a lot of people who just have personal preference to game on the PC and and are willing to pay for games. That number is at least in the millions so thats a decent market. Third is that while the console market is limited to the number of consoles sold, the PC market is potentially triple that if you can compel them to buy the game somehow. I can't give you the numbers on this but it is also always possible to create a PC game with a cheap budget. I think with the consoles you incur more licensing fees.

I think you're irrealistic here man. I'm glad to hear you want to develop games on PC, but at the same time I'm afraid you'll get a cold shower at some point in the future. You say computers will always be ahead of consoles? Maybe, but to what extent? Bioshock runs fine on consoles. Age of Conan is coming out on X360. Call of Duty 4, UT3, the Orange Box, etc. Traditional PC developers are already thinking their games for consoles as well as for PCs. And they make much more money with the console versions, even if much more people play it on PC. And let me tell you that while the PC market is still big, it's stagnating if not regressing while the console market keeps expanding itself. Now about the PC market being larger, unfortunately that's negated by your first argument. Cutting edge technology on PC is very costly and only a very limited number of people can afford it. A number far smaller than the number of console owners. And those who have the systems to run those cutting edge games, do you think they always buy the games? Well I guess not, since my post just before your first reply was an announcement from Crytek saying the piracy of their games was crippling them and forcing them to abandon PC exclusivities. Lastly, about the wide PC markets and people with low performance systems, they can indeed be interested in games. But those are more likely to be free Flash games with ads revenue than "real" games you need to install. The kind of stuff you play at work in your browser.

Serpico said:
Semi related but I'm already working on the engines for 2 games. I will get more into that after finals, at least untill AoC comes out but I wanted to do Berserk related stuff with each engine so you will probably get a look at some point. One is for classic zelda style RPGs and the other is similar to a dating sim engine.

That's pretty cool, but a classic Zelda-style "RPG"? You mean adventure game! :SK:

Walter said:
Id say the Dreamcast Berserk game was actually a better GAME than the PS2's. The DC one had a unique, if stand-alone story that also added to the Berserk mythos, where as the PS2 version was a kind of truncated, BS version of volumes 21-27 with some fanservice thrown in. That being said, it had the best opening theme song of all time and the combo system was GLORIOUS, but got old pretty quick.

I'll have to second the fact that the DC game is a better game to me. The fighting wasn't as good, but all the rest was better (including the graphics for the time).
 

Serpico

Farnese is the bomb diggity
I don't want to pick things apart too much so I will agree with you on the point the PC gaming industry is taking hits. I hadn't heard that about Crysis though. I thought it sold over a million which is pretty good at $50 bucks a pop, plus profits from licensing the engine. Unless they put over 50 million in production and advertising I'm not sure what could have went wrong for them to say that. I don't doubt it is possible though. I think the potential is always there for the PC with a with a proper strategy.

I have pretty varied interests so I probably won't need a cold shower anytime soon unless we get a heat wave or something. I am taking up C# and directX on top of C++, and both those apply to console games on the xbox as well if I go that route. There is a lot I can do in AI and physics aside from games. They have game development degrees these days but I went with computer science because it is extremely flexible. I do plan to write games on my own just because it is interesting though.

And yeah, Zelda is more an action game. I am considering RPG style battles though. I am just not sure because making fancy animations for them might be difficult. Sprites are tedious enough as it is.
 
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