Aquaria hit the P2P

[silverkitty]

Besides, a metric buttload of people use ISPs which give them dynamic IPs, so really you can only narrow it down so much. With a non-mega-hit maybe that's enough (my IP probably says I'm on Mercer Island in Washington and that's probably unique on this forum), but certainly of no use to track down people pirating the kind of games that can afford tv commercials.

[DSProgrammer]

You're misunderstanding me - the game is telling you its fingerprint, not the IP address of the installer.  You have on records who each fingerprint belongs to - who paid for the copy that is telling you it was installed 50 times, and their credit card info with their name and address.  You aren't suing the people downloading and installing the game, you are suing the first person who bought the game and posted it for everyone to download.  You also at that point have a fairly accurate number of how often the game has been downloaded, and copyright law in the US allows you to get damage amounts for each time the game was distributed without your persmission.

Heck, you don't even need to have the game phone home if you really don't want - you could just watch the p2p sources for your game  to pop up and then download it yourself, read the fingerprint you embedded into the game.  But phoning home makes it so you can track how many people are downloading it (at least until someone catches it phoning home - that's why you wait until they've been playing the game for like 15 minutes).

[realyst]

Phoning home = bad.

Many smarter network owners monitor the traffic leaving their network.  If they see a mystery signal and they can't immediately read what it's saying, it means it could effectively be transmitting anything about you, even stuff you don't want it to send.

This leaves to very bad press.

Remember the stink about some Windows Updates sending more then just your distro info to Microsoft?

Again, it just makes the pirated version "safer" then the real one:  the true problem with DRM as a model(again, I don't consider simple reg keys as DRM).

[Zixinus]

Sorry for not following the discussion, but I have a simple thing to say:

I've brought the game. By wire transfer, the money should arrive sometimes late next week. Let me explain why I find this a big deal.

I live in Hungary and purchasing online is not popular, let alone the idea of purchasing a game. P2P is the expected way to get games around here, if not trough a network of friends. Typical classes has students trading copied games like pokemon cards. Hell, even moreso then pokemon cards, as most kids outgrew pokemon cards in elementary school.

After I played the demo of Aquaria I was very tempted to follow that example.

What changed my mind is that this game was developed by a couple of guys, and I want those guys have the money to make more great games like Aquaria.

God, does that sound childish to you? What am I expecting here anyway?

Oh right. A word of complements for going the honest path.

So complement me. Please.

[Sfiera]

Oh right. A word of complements for going the honest path.

So complement me. Please.

Good for you!

[Xiagan]

Welcome in the club of honest Aquaria fans!

[MedO]

Schoolyard sharing of games/music is quite popular in Germany too, but I think most people "grow out" of it once they get a job and 25 Euro stop sonding like a big lot of money. At least, that's my experience

[rinkuhero]

I don't really care about kids trading games in school, what bothers me is adults with jobs who could easily afford it pirate a game and then use the extra money to buy some extra beer or potato chips or something instead, and then say that piracy doesn't hurt games and that the reason PC game sales are down to about a third of what they were before the world wide web existed has nothing to do with piracy.

I think the long-term answer to piracy though is to make games free and make money through advertising. A lot of popular free Flash games make hundreds of thousands of dollars for their creators through advertising. I just hope Flash improves enough that games like Aquaria will one day be possible to make in it.

[Crizzle]

Advertising in games is the worst idea. EA is already doing that quite a bit and it sucks, it's so distracting and blatant. It's almost like breaking the fourth wall.  Even though the latest Simpson's game was bad to begin with, having "EA" all over the game made it that much worse. I mean the enemy Krusty dolls had "EA" slapped across their chest. Wtf is up with that?! 

[Lambchops]

I seem to remember reading another interview with Chris Delay from IV where he said that they'd actually released a 'leaked' full version of DEFCON on p2p themselves a few days before release which was in fact only the demo. Trying to use p2p as an advertising network as it were. If you know the game is going to end up there anyway you might as well as least try to take advantage of it like that first.

As for sharing games, I still do that amongst my flatmates, we'll lend each other games we think the other guys might like (I got my flatmate even more addicted to Puzzle Quest than I was!). What's the point in a bunch of students all paying 30 quid to buy one game when we can just pass it round the flat? Besides most of the games we end up sharing are multiplayer console games anyway so we don't each need our own copies as we'll never play them separately.

As for Aquaria it's so cheap that I didn't even think twice about it. Due to the favourable exchange rate it's costing just under 15 pounds. That's nothing for the 20 hours or so of gameplay Aquaria offers. I'd easily have paid about 25 for it.

[Zixinus]

I think the long-term answer to piracy though is to make games free and make money through advertising. A lot of popular free Flash games make hundreds of thousands of dollars for their creators through advertising. I just hope Flash improves enough that games like Aquaria will one day be possible to make in it.

A modern, avarage video game has the budget offfffff... a couple million dollars. I think.

Advertising won't do it. Making video games is very expensive, about as expensive as a cheaper Hollywood budget. A decade ago, one could make a game from scratch (engine and tools and everything) and have a roomful of staff to be enough for the job. Nowadays, you can't.

3D made video games very expensive, especially with all the new, fancy and shiny graphic features that you have little use of.

Small or more simple games like Aquaria is a great exception and shows that simple, low-tech games can still be modern and great. It's just not the commonly held belief among publishers, and sadly, gamers.

As for Flash, I am no Flash Master, but I do think that it has its limitations and problems.

[PsyPhi]

I think the long-term answer to piracy though is to make games free and make money through advertising. A lot of popular free Flash games make hundreds of thousands of dollars for their creators through advertising. I just hope Flash improves enough that games like Aquaria will one day be possible to make in it.

A modern, avarage video game has the budget offfffff... a couple million dollars. I think.

Advertising won't do it. Making video games is very expensive, about as expensive as a cheaper Hollywood budget. A decade ago, one could make a game from scratch (engine and tools and everything) and have a roomful of staff to be enough for the job. Nowadays, you can't.

3D made video games very expensive, especially with all the new, fancy and shiny graphic features that you have little use of.

Small or more simple games like Aquaria is a great exception and shows that simple, low-tech games can still be modern and great. It's just not the commonly held belief among publishers, and sadly, gamers.

As for Flash, I am no Flash Master, but I do think that it has its limitations and problems.

His idea isn't that bad, free games filled with advertising (if it fit in the world/was tasteful, or if you had a commercial interruption like television shows...

I mean, there's a lot of made for TV movies that NBC makes (for example) on one of their sister channels like Sci-Fi.  Take the recent Tin-Man as an example.   Games could reach taht point if their popularity continues to climb.  If games were free to download (avoiding the cost of publication and distribution), and had tasteful ads on billboards in the game or commercials during loadtimes or even 2 minutes of commercials every 20 minutes or when you went through a loadscreen/menu (pausing the action in the middle would be bad unless itwas already paused).

Not many games can go the route of ads in game that woudln't be disruptive though.  Sports games would have no issue, and games like Hellgate London wouldn't bat an eye at putting up mountain dew or taco bell ads on the billboards and ad spaces in the world.    Anarchy Online is an MMO that gets away with it too because it's got places in the world that had virtual ads anyway.  Now they just play 7-11, Mountain Dew, Simpsons whatever...very unobtrusive.  Of course you cna choose to pay and not get that.

Maybe a program where you say you'll participate in market research for companies for X amount of hours to be able to play the game for free.  Or your commercial viewing would be limited ot 6 months or something (set amount of minutes viewing commercials) to pay for your product.  It's quite feasiable in many games. 

But for a game like Aquaria, real-world ads would really disrupt the flavor of the world, and the only opportunity to interrupt would be at start of the game, and during loadtimes between stages (maybe 30 seconds of commercial gauranteed, while it loads in the background).  The question would be, do the creative minds behind the game want ot have that sort of interruption in their game.  It would be gauranteed money for them from the advertising company so that would be good.  But it would compromise the creativity a bit.

[rinkuhero]

I wasn't thinking of advertising in the *middle* of a game -- I think when a game is first loading up (and only then) is a good time and wouldn't be too obstructive.

[the_redstar_swl]

I wasn't thinking of advertising in the *middle* of a game -- I think when a game is first loading up (and only then) is a good time and wouldn't be too obstructive.

I think Ubi did something like that with the free versions of Spinter Cell/Far Cry, Was fairly annoying according to some people.

I would not want to spend a minute and a half waiting just so a Mountain Dew advertisement can play.

[Zixinus]

I wasn't thinking of advertising in the *middle* of a game -- I think when a game is first loading up (and only then) is a good time and wouldn't be too obstructive.

Already done. Nvidia and Ati already do it. It just doesn't give enough money to cover development costs.

His idea isn't that bad, free games filled with advertising (if it fit in the world/was tasteful, or if you had a commercial interruption like television shows...

(snip)

I think its that bad. Not only would it not give sufficient coverage of the development costs, but I find advertising disgusting. By itself and as a whole. Especially in video games.

Although I recall there is one company that lives of advertising. Kuma games I think. They are making Dino Hunter, and so far, only managed to release a strange version of a HL2 deathmatch mod. And its a mod. Not terribly interesting. It's quite obvious they don't have much money for more stuff.

And from the standpoint of advertisers, its not worth it if its unobtrusive. Because if its unobtrusive, then its ineffective. And there is no point in paying large amount of money if its ineffective.