Have people read this article on piracy?

T2A` said:

CoD4 is getting the sh*t pirated out of it, yet it consistently makes the top-selling lists. Piracy didn't kill UT3. UT3 killed UT3.

I'd post links of proof, but I don't think hal would like that.

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QFT!

Since I'm definitely out of the "quoting" loop, can someone kindly point out where Epic has blamed piracy for the perception that UT3 is failing?

Call it a failed game if you will, but in some parts of the world, UT3 is doing okay. Yes, Martha, even the lowly PC version is doing okay over in Europe, apparently.

Anuban said:

Numbers for Februarys best selling games is out ... or rather what were the top 20 games to be clear ... once again our beloved UT3 missed the cut. I wonder if piracy is part of the reason. Thoughts on this?

http://firingsquad.com/news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=20044

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I wish they would use a seperate list for bundles and expansions sometimes hey, sure they sell well but I dunno its alittle unfair for full titles even though they maybe sequels you know.

It just might remove some of that EA and Blizzard domination long enough to see what the other titles are doing.

[SAS]Solid Snake;2101737 said:

Those extra steps can get really frustrating, especially when the game is dependent on other services being online, for most people. In fact, I wrote UWindow2 to also bypass the GameSpy online verification (unless of course, you want to play online). I know there is also offline verification, but UT3 doesn't give you the option as it tries to log in online by default.

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Yeah I agree and good to know

What could be kewl is like a more open steam like system but instead of holding your cdkeys and login info (although it could, just as browsers hold your passwords). Like what Im thinking is it would be sweet to have like a torrent, game irc client in there so people are sharing game patches and mods. Not only that but if it had a plugin/module system for games so all it needs is the module and whamo it has that game support and you can use their browser. Im guessing Xfire might be something like this, never really got into it.

Either way I think the PC market has alot of untapped potential especially now with the flood of developers moving to "concentrate on consoles".

Well I can't understand bitching at the high system requirement of games like Crysis, like that guy obviously did. It's only one game, it's not like it's the only option available for pc gamers. So what if the 15% of the market actually get a game, sometimes, that will push their PC a bit and look fantastic and make the best looking console games look like dog barf? Because that's exactly what kept the PC gaming market alive for all these years. PC gaming needs to continue if gaming in general is to advance, the current console makers don't know jack about updating their hardware, all they know is to give as much money as possible to PC hardware makers to adapt their stuff to a console environment. Everybody knows Crysis wouldn't look half this good, had they scaled it for lower end systems. Worse is that many people who complain about crysis, actually can run it very well and just whine for the fun of it.

IMHO the biggest threat to the industry is prolific internet driven mudslinging by those who for a variety of good or purely personal reasons which they have prioritized unto themselves as necessitating the activity of tearing things up & focusing on anything that stirrs up pooop from the bottom of an otherwise peaceful lake or otherwise pleasant/entertaining experience.

Edit: Humble apologies for posting in a thread which asks if I read something that I have not actually read.

Anisotonic said:

Well I can't understand bitching at the high system requirement of games like Crysis, like that guy obviously did. It's only one game, it's not like it's the only option available for pc gamers. So what if the 15% of the market actually get a game, sometimes, that will push their PC a bit and look fantastic and make the best looking console games look like dog barf? Because that's exactly what kept the PC gaming market alive for all these years. PC gaming needs to continue if gaming in general is to advance, the current console makers don't know jack about updating their hardware, all they know is to give as much money as possible to PC hardware makers to adapt their stuff to a console environment. Everybody knows Crysis wouldn't look half this good, had they scaled it for lower end systems. Worse is that many people who complain about crysis, actually can run it very well and just whine for the fun of it.

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Uhm...no. Better graphics than anyone else sure was an asset to PC gaming, but it never was crucial to it.

What you seem to forget, yet the article author knows, is that the PC market is becoming saturated. Everyone has a PC, and it becomes increasingly harder to convince everyone to keep upgrading into something they only need for gaming purposes (my current PC is about 3-4 times as fast as my previous one...yet I ONLY notice the difference in a high-end game). And I doubt the scenario that happened at my house is a very rare one.

Scenario: I upgrade my pc. My former PC goes to my brother (who uses it more for office applications than gaming). His former pc goes to our dad (who uses it for e-mail and solitaire). His former pc (actually my former former pc) either goes to the junkyard or gets donated to a friend who doesn't yet have one...or who had his own pc die out on them and didn't had the money for a new one.
PC's are more than just for games, and that is exactly the reason they stay around much longer than consoles. Every student now has his/her own pc, and they're NOT all top-of-the-line. They're just enough to run office applications decently, which means they do very well with just one CPU and "just" a gigabyte of RAM.

Meanwhile, hot game developers are increasingly having their games sponsored by NVidia and Intel (it isn't just UT3 starting with commercials...crysis and bioshock start exactly alike) to justify their existence. Sure, there's a market for them. It has millions of potential buyers. But if you forget about the high-end systems and look at the medium-end, you'll suddenly have tens of millions potential buyers.

As for the game looking less fancy and people complaining about it...that's in the article too. "Would you buy it if those things were in it?"
Those running pirated versions of Crysis and complaining about it wouldn't rush to the stores to buy it if some "major" bug got fixed.

or look at it from this way: I've got friends with computers. Mine's the most advanced one. I can show them Crysis, Bioshock or UT3 and make them green with jealousy because they can't afford it, OR we can agree and get Sins of the Solar empire, bring in the computers and laptops and have a blast on the LAN (we've done that with Red Alert 2 and Age of empires 3 not so long ago). Sure, it'll be a pirated version at first (it's not like we're going to get 5 copies if we're not going to like it)...but if it's a good game, we will.
My gaming closet contains both pirated and bought games...and a large chunk of the games I ended up buying (after playing the pirated version) were ones that were awesome to play at LANs.

Very good article.

What Defeat said.

Article said:

So we return the favor - we make the games they want and deliver them how they want it. This is also known as operating like every other industry outside the PC game industry.

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I think this describes well how Epic, unfortunately, misproduced UT3 for the PC. Let's hope it can still be fixed.

I think you're in the wrong thread, Brizz. As far as I can recall, nobody specifically requested this to be a next-gen game. I'd almost say the opposite, as most people (if not everyone) agreed that gameplay outshines visuals.

Of course nobody requested UT3 to be built on the same engine as UT200x, but it could have been done...easily. It just wouldn't look so dazzling as it does now (still...UT2004 doesn't suddenly look ugly, does it?)

I'm mostly in agreement to the subject of hardware requirements. Most people who have played more than a few games will start to realise gameplay>graphics, so it's a shame that graphics are still such a focal point of marketing and hype. I'm just nodding in agreement as he talks about how little sense it makes to develop a game that will only be playable on what, 5-10%? of your potential customer base.

I recently upgraded my rig and am on a "fairly high end" setup with an 8800GT and core2duo E6850, but I'm still reserved about picking up games like Crysis because there's no guarantee I will be able to run them without making them look like system shock first - if it will even let me.
I'm just so tired of tech demo games.

There's a sorta similar read here, just in terms of being from 'the inside'. The writer is somewhat on the opposite side of the fence regarding piracy though.
ILE = Iron Lore Entertainment, dudes who made titan quest and the latest Dawn of War expansion.

Yeah. Exactly. "Should" be able to, "if" I turn certain settings down to certain levels, and so on.

What it boils down to is that I might not or will not be able to run it "as advertised", and it puts me off buying any product in general when I'm not entirely certain what it is I'll end up with.

The biggest problem with scaleable graphics as far as I'm concerned, is consistency. I could get oblivion running fine on my old rig at really decent graphics - until I encountered this certain area or situation where it was back to the drawing board with adjusting options and editing .ini's.

Thanks Fuzzle for that link. I had no idea ILE closed. Damn they were a good company and made a fantastic game. TQ is and will be one of my all time favorites.
This article shows an entirely different view of not only piracy but of reviewers and the world of PC development in general.

Damn....I can't believe they closed

Anuban said:

^^^ I would have to disagree with those statements. ... I think a lot of people were looking forward to seeing UT3 on the Unreal Engine 3. The lighting engine and physics engine alone were enough reasons for tons of people to really get excited about ... plus when it was originally announced there was going to be Conquest which definitely needed a new engine since it was going to be very large environments. People wanted better looking, more detailed character models, weapon models and vehicles (bump mapping being something else modders were looking forward to as well) again UE3 delivers this. So yeah I know for myself I did want the visual enhancements that the new engine brings.

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I'm not denying that, Anuban. There were a a lot of people looking forward to see UE3. But there are also a lot of people who are unable to play UT3 because of it's huge system requirements. And I think the latter group of "lots of people" quite outshines the first.

I remember the early commercial video's too...you wanna compare them with how the game actually turned out to be?
-seemless loading: scrapped
-environments that "can be as wide as 2 or 3 onslaught maps": scrapped (in fact, most maps are smaller than their onslaught counterparts)
-destructable terrain: okay, that's in...too bad it's barely ever used

All in all, it's perfectly doable to create a warfare-mod in UT2004. (minus the destructable terrain...but how many people are really going to miss it?)

People wanted better and more detailed characters and weapons? Congratulations...you're the first non-Epic employee I hear who actively wanted it. The majority of us only see models from a far distance...this game simply goes to fast to admire the full details of high-end characters, let alone their weapons. The vehicles look less cartoony, yes...but not once in years of playing onslaught I disliked the looks of the vehicles. They just got worse by comparison, that's all.

Taleweaver said:

-environments that "can be as wide as 2 or 3 onslaught maps": scrapped (in fact, most maps are smaller than their onslaught counterparts)

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I think they scraped it in order to have lower system requirements. I was thinking of making a larger version of Onyx coast like the one in the E32006 video, but I realized that on my rig (which barely passes the system req's), I was getting only about 10 frames on the normal version. If I tried expanding it, I probably would not be able to run the map.

I find it amazing that they managed to get the requirements as low as they are.

Considering it looks worse than UT2004 at low settings, I'm not that surprised. Though, my experience with my old computer showed it still ran at much lower framerates even once it looked worse. Not cool, IMO.

Properly optimized it doesn't matter at all how large the maps are because all that's rendered is what's directly around you. I'm thinking it was more of a gameplay concern as to why they scrapped Conquest and everything that would've made Warfare more than ONS v2.0.

I think it's odd that people are arguing that UT3's system requirements are unreasonable or demanding. What are we comparing it to? Crysis? Because UT definitely wins there in terms of performance, if not visuals. Any comparison to Source engine games is ridiculous because Valve's engine is four years old (and looks it in my opinion). I think performance wise UT3 is about average for what one should expect of a modern game. Anyways, the graphics engine isn't to blame for UT3's relatively poor sales performance. It might be keeping away some diehard UT99 players, but not the average pc gamer. Look at Crysis' sales numbers in comparison.