I’m of the belief that a review (of anything) should simply spell out the facts in a way the intended audience can understand it (avoiding spoilers if applicable of course) so that the reader can decide by himself if it’s something he wants to invest in. Things like numbered ratings are unfair because what the reviewer likes or dislikes may not apply to everybody.
Which is not to say that reviews shouldn’t contain personal opinions- in fact those are often part of the fun (I may not always agree with the Nostalgia Critic, for example, but watching him rant is amusing. ) Such parts should always be clearly separated from the review proper, tho. (Simple headings such as “facts” and “my opinion” will do.)
I have always found SG’s reviews interesting and well-written, even when I disagree with them. I hope he keeps posting them here.
They pirated a bundle of games that required a credit card (and giving its info) that you could buy for a cent. If nothing else, kids don’t have credit cards.
Sorry to have dropped out of this discussion so suddenly; I’m moving across the state…actually, like, today. So, I had to get a ton of stuff ready.
Basically, yeah, I’ve seen Kotaku’s reviews. While it’s a bit irrational, I don’t read Kotaku because I feel like they’re not a very respectable site because of their policy of posting anything and everything as news sources, along with the fact that they’ve been proven not to check their sources (people have leaked fake rumours just for the purpose of demonstrating this about Kotaku). So, while that’s irrelevant to their reviews, it’s just what I think about when I imagine reading them.
I’ve read that article by Dan Hsu and that was an excellent one.
Most fun vs. best fun really isn’t that hard to relay to an audience. I suppose it is for critics that try to pretend like they’re objective, but otherwise, it’s not that difficult.
Also, I’m not sure why you think I didn’t read the article just because I’m curious where that data was collected about pirates and their machines. Did they survey 1000 random pirates? Did a random sample of pirates just inform them of their system specs? It’s one thing to just state that and quite another thing to show your research. This article doesn’t even SAY that that comment was researched, so I’m not inclined to believe something just because Gabe Newell insists it’s true. I can tell you that every pirate I’ve ever known in my life does NOT spend lots of money on upgrading their computer systems and internet connections; they just buy computer parts because they can’t pirate 'em. And, this would be true, but it’s anecdotal, unscientific, AND I have no way of proving it.
I have never read anything in my entire life that even came close to a concept of best vs most fun. Re: Kotaku, I’ve found their information reliable. I’m not sure how far back what you’ve described happens.
I’m surprised you don’t understand the Newell interview. Basically, they use their sales data and Steamworks to collect information on the people who have Steam installed on their machines. In this fashion, they have extremely detailed statistics on how people are set up and what their purchasing habits are. This is very common knowledge. They have a fairly solid idea of how much money people need to put into their computers to run their games and who does what with their machines. Another reason that tells me you didn’t read the article is because what you’re saying is so completely away from everything he spoke of. It also helps to understand the context in which this debate is occurring.
Sales of PC games have gradually gotten worse in the past decade thanks to the advent of high speed internet and bit torrent sites. Companies like Ubisoft will look at how many times a game has been downloaded across different torrent sites and invent a magical value of how many sales that should have been and thus how much money it is that they lost because of it. They use this information to promote DRM software, which in the end just serve to piss off legitimate customers more. That being said, if you look at sites that discuss sales, specific types of games follow specific types of patterns with a logarythmic drop in sales over time. Typically you can expect sales to drop by 50% each successive week for core games because the pool of interested buyers diminishes at at that rate. The pool diminishes because there are fewer and fewer people willing to pay what the game is being sold for.
Enter Valve and Steam. They experimented with different prices and discounts and as Newell claimed, sales went up 100s if not 1000s of percent, proportionally to the size of the discount. What this demonstrated was that the available market of PC gamers was much greater than people everywhere otherwise knew. Of all people, PC gamers know how to pirate things, yet here they are purchasing a game at a discount when they could’ve gotten it for free on bit torrent. Since Steam essentially dominates the downloadable gaming arena, their data is representative.
And I think Rig very clearly explained the torrent phenomenon with the Indie bundle. I’m not saying all these people were kids, just that you yourself made a blanket, unsupported statement about it.
Well sure, yeah I know about how devs can collect info on people who have Steam and yadda yadda. Here’s the problem: it still doesn’t tell them whether they’re pirating stuff of not, or is that a statistic I didn’t know about?
Sales of PC games have gradually gotten worse in the past decade thanks to the advent of high speed internet and bit torrent sites. Companies like Ubisoft will look at how many times a game has been downloaded across different torrent sites and invent a magical value of how many sales that should have been and thus how much money it is that they lost because of it. They use this information to promote DRM software, which in the end just serve to piss off legitimate customers more. That being said, if you look at sites that discuss sales, specific types of games follow specific types of patterns with a logarythmic droesn’t op in sales over time. Typically you can expect sales to drop by 50% each successive week for core games because the pool of interested buyers diminishes at at that rate. The pool diminishes because there are fewer and fewer people willing to pay what the game is being sold for.
Enter Valve and Steam. They experimented with different prices and discounts and as Newell claimed, sales went up 100s if not 1000s of percent, proportionally to the size of the discount. What this demonstrated was that the available market of PC gamers was much greater than people everywhere otherwise knew. Of all people, PC gamers know how to pirate things, yet here they are purchasing a game at a discount when they could’ve gotten it for free on bit torrent. Since Steam essentially dominates the downloadable gaming arena, their data is representative. [/QUOTE]
Yeah, I know all this because I read the article. I really don’t get what makes you think I didn’t. Another funny thing about this experiment is that that they performed it with Left 4 Dead, a virtually unpiratable game on PC. I mean, wtf are you gonna do if you pirate L4D? Play single player? I’m not saying I support DRM either - far from it - but L4D is an extremely poor game to use as an example. Are there any other games this experiment can be performed with which are actually able to be played effectively when pirated?
And I think Rig very clearly explained the torrent phenomenon with the Indie bundle. I’m not saying all these people were kids, just that you yourself made a blanket, unsupported statement about it.
Sure, I made a blanket, unsupported statement about it. Rig did, too. Which one do you think was honestly more likely to be the predominant scenario? How many of those people had no possible way of asking their mom or their friend to pay 1 frickin’ cent on a credit card and pay them back? It’s still a very flimsy excuse.
Steamworks doesn’t tell us who’s pirating and not pirating games. It tells us what the market is. The point about steamworks is making the case for how much money specific groups of gamers invest in their gaming rigs.
Man, how far are going to keep digging? Another example of how you didn’t read the article is how _I_picked L4D as an example when Newell uses multiple examples. The trend has since been repeated and proven with countless other Valve sales. L4D is a good example because it is clearly aimed at core pc gamers.
I think you’re overly optimistic about how understanding most people are about video games and internet game purchasing.
They may ask their mom, but their mom will not always want to give the details of her credit card to an unknown site for a cent. You can get 20 dollars for poker if you register at a site where they play for cash but not many people do, because they value their personal data more than a cent or $20. I know the USA is a far more credit-based economy, but people care about their data as the negotiators for the US find out when the Europarliament blocks their data agreements with the Commission time and time again.
Also, I didn’t say “poor pirates don’t want to surrender their data; of course they had to pirate the games”. They could have not played them.
Rock Band and Guitar Hero can be pirated, but you can’t pirate the DLC; you’re left with no choice but to buy it. While it’s not DRM in the conventional sense, it IS a failsafe that makes sure any consumer who uses those games has to pay money. Even if you pirate the game, you can only play with the selection of songs available with the retail game unless you pay money. So, the majority of the content of these games are unpiratable.
Team Fortress 2 and Left 4 Dead can’t be played online without buying the game properly, because you need to play them through Steam. Sure, you can technically pirate them, but what are you going to do? Play TF2 by yourself? Play L4D single player? Again, they’re using anti-piracy measures that aren’t DRM, because the game essentially assures that you can’t have any fun with it unless you purchase the game.
Left 4 Dead was the biggest example in the article, and the biggest one you used, so I went with it. I didn’t realize I had to cite the whole fuggin article every time I referenced it. In any case, the bottom line is that these examples do not give us any relevant data on pirates’ habits. They’re not buying these games because they think the quality is worth the price; they’re buying it cos they can’t have fun with the game when it’s pirated.
Furthermore, until we have any sort of source which detailed how Gabe Newell knows any of the things he’s saying about pirates’ spending habits beyond these games cited in the article, then his whole “Oh pirates would dish out the money if they felt the price met the quality” is completely unfounded and without any real data support the claim.
"When Valve held its recent holiday sale, titles discounted by 10 percent (the minimum) they saw revenue (not unit) increases of 35 percent. At a 25 percent discount, revenue was up 245 percent.
At 50 percent off, revenue was up 320 percent, and at a 75 percent discount, revenue was up an astonishing 1470 percent. Newell stressed again that those revenue boosts represent actual revenue dollars, and not unit volumes."
Its safe to assume that Steam players are representative of the available pool of PC Gamers/Pirates.
I would hesitate to concede any games mentioned in the Holiday sales if they can’t be purchased anywhere but the Steam platform, for the simple fact that they can’t be pirated. You can’t use unpiratable games as proof that pirates will buy games if the price is right, because there’s no way of pirating them in the first place. Think really hard about why these deals are available on Steam or other Direct Download services, rather than on their console counterparts.
Also:
Its safe to assume that Steam players are representative of the available pool of PC Gamers/Pirates.Its safe to assume that Steam players are representative of the available pool of PC Gamers/Pirates.
No, it’s not. Nevermind the reasons I just explained about how games available through only Steam can’t be pirated in the first place; saying “Oh pirates love to spend money on their hardware and internet” and their best evidence is “Our Steam data shows that these users have high end PCs” doesn’t mean shit. They don’t know how many of those gamers are pirates, how many of them WOULD pirate their games if they had the chance, and they can’t even make detailed conclusions about buyer trends for computer hardward for pirates, because they don’t know who is pirating and who isn’t based on their data.
There is absolutely no empirical evidence backing up that statement, and even if there was? How many of those people do you think buy top-of-the-line computer hardware because they find it worth the asking price, and not because it’s impossible to illegally download it off of the internet?
My god, where do you keep coming with this stuff?!
You can pirate things that’s available on Steam. I once played a hacked version of Half Life 2 a long time ago. The Steam platform is not exclusive as games there are available on different online networks. Its not because something is on Steam its not on bit torrent. Claiming that its not piratable because its on Steam is the most ridiculous thing you’ve said yet. Its impossible to take anything you say seriously if you’re going to make comments like that.
Steam has a stranglehold on the online gaming market. To claim they have competition with the other online services is a joke. They know who buys what. Its easy to analyze the market and that’s how companies like Valve and Blizzard direct how they make their games, unlike Crytek. They study who they’re going to sell their product to and aim the specs at that to maximize the number of people who will buy their products…
Nowhere did I or anyone claim that people knew precisely who was a pirate. PC gamers are a specific demographic and they use the same machines as everyone else to run games like Call of Duty and other highly pirated titles. To pirate these games and play them successfully requires a substantial hardware investment to begin with. When your sample size is in the 10s of millions, you establish pretty clear distribution curves for hardware and if you’re going to tell me that pirates don’t fall within these curves, I’m simply going to laugh in your face.
Nowhere did I claim people had top of the line hardware. That doesn’t mean their hardware didn’t come cheap. You’re misinterpreting the idea that a high end pc costs 4000 dollars. Any PC that can decently run quality, up-to-date games is a high end PC and will set you back a chunk of money. Its easy to look at the Steamworks stats and derive the approximate value of the machines people build/buy to run their stuff. Your question makes no sense. Rephrase.
You need to work on setting up your arguments, SG because you simply jump all over the place and get nowhere. Be concise.
Alright, that may be a fair assessment. Let me try and start from the beginning.
You said:
This is the point I’ve been trying to argue. Here are the things I’ve said that I deem most relevant to demonstrating why I think I DO understand piracy, and that the points in the article are the ones which demonstrate a lack of understanding. I’ll quote the entire paragraphs, but I’ll also try and boil them down just under the quoted paragraphs.
Gabe Newell and Steam sales data have no way of proving that “pirates invest a lot of money in their machines and internet connections. Pirates that pirate games because something is not worth what they want to pay or because what they pay for is attached with a substandard experience, like DRM, should not be seen as pirates, but unhappy potential customers.”
This is mainly because Steam sales data can’t identify which buyers are pirates, or how many of them are pirates. It can not even determine how many of them pirate software, nor to the degree which they pirate software.
Gabe Newell has made this claim, but doesn’t have any real research data to show for it other than his mysterious sales data from the Steam Platform, which is ineffective at demonstrating pirate consumer habits for all the reasons mentioned in the previous point, plus a few more which will come up later. I’m not against the idea that Newell has perhaps done his own independent research to make these claims about pirates’ spending habits; however, he hasn’t shown any reliable empirical data to support his claim yet.
Then, you said:
I have no idea why this would even be brought up. I explained succinctly why Steam sales data does nothing to determine who pirates are and who pirates AREN’T. They can have as many detailed statistics on their users as they want, but unless the data can demonstrate who’s pirating, how much they are pirating, what games they are pirating, and the system specs of their PCs, it really doesn’t do anything to support your original claim.
Again, this was stated in spite of my claim that Steam sales data can’t demonstrate anything about their users’ pirating habits. Unless you can show me some additional research Newell did, it doesn’t matter.
Anyways, at this point, I don’t even know WHAT to say. Nothing you posted in that post was a rebuttal to my claim, because you pretty much said the same thing you did in your first post (that pirates pirate games because the product isn’t worth the price, and not because they’re fuckheads who would steal anything they can), and backed it up with virtually the same argument (Steam data proves it’s true), only in more detail. So, I responded with:
Again, this is my main point, and it still has yet to be countered with any definitive proof.
Even if everything Newell says about piracy is correct, L4D is a horrid example because it’s a game that can’t be enjoyed properly without purchasing the game normally.
I shouldn’t have made this point, though, because it got us severely off track.
You then said:
And my point, which still has YET to be countered, is that there’s no telling if these specific groups of gamers are pirates or not. Who cares how much gamers invest in their PCs? Unless they can be directly linked to piracy habits, it doesn’t support his claim!
I felt a little sad when I read this, because I think this was a flimsy way of trying to demonstrate that I didn’t read the article. But, I discussed it in my next post:
Again, I demonstrate that the other games specifically named in the article can’t be enjoyed to their fullest extent (or even at all) without purchasing the game or some sort of content in one way or another. As such, they are all poor examples of proving Newell’s point, because pirates have no choice but to make purchases in order to enjoy the games to their fullest extent.
Then, I again pointed out that there’s still nothing that proves Newell’s claim that pirates invest a lot of money in their gaming PCs, and would not pirate games is the game matched the price, because he has no data about pirates’ spending habits whatsoever.
To which I replied:
This was a poor argument for me to make. The main points that I had made before this are still strong, in spite of this.
So I said once again that “all games on Steam can’t be pirated”, but nevermind that; the point is still valid even looking at the games specifically cited in the article (L4D, TF2).
Beyond that, this is the exact same argument you’ve made before (Steam sales data proves that pirates bla bla bla bla), which still doesn’t counter my argument, which I stated plainly in this post, yet again.
Anyways, that inspired this reply from you:
You’re right; sorry. Doesn’t change any other claims I’ve made, though.
Nowhere did I or anyone claim that people knew precisely who was a pirate. PC gamers are a specific demographic and they use the same machines as everyone else to run games like Call of Duty and other highly pirated titles. To pirate these games and play them successfully requires a substantial hardware investment to begin with. When your sample size is in the 10s of millions, you establish pretty clear distribution curves for hardware and if you’re going to tell me that pirates don’t fall within these curves, I’m simply going to laugh in your face.
You’re right, again. You did not claim that you knew precisely who was a pirate. I think Gabe Newell did, though, when he made this statement:
“these people” are the pirates, right? I mean, this was under the piracy section of the article. What data is he using to make these definitive statements on what pirates are spending their money on? I have no idea, and THAT is the problem I have with his assessment of pirates’ spending habits: however he knows what their spending habits are, he’s certainly not telling us. And, neither have you, not yet.
Nowhere did I claim people had top of the line hardware. That doesn’t mean their hardware didn’t come cheap. You’re misinterpreting the idea that a high end pc costs 4000 dollars. Any PC that can decently run quality, up-to-date games is a high end PC and will set you back a chunk of money. Its easy to look at the Steamworks stats and derive the approximate value of the machines people build/buy to run their stuff.
Completely irrelevant. I never said you made that claim. I said that Gabe Newell did. Read the quote above: “thousands of dollars.” It doesn’t matter anyways. It doesn’t matter if he said that they spend five dollars on their PCs. WHAT MATTERS, is that he’s making a factual statement on typical pirate spending habits, while showing no data on how he came to these conclusions.
Okay, let me state it as a declarative sentence. Gabe Newell has stated that pirates spend “thousands of dollars on their PC and internet connectivity”. There’s no proof. Without proof, it’s just as valid for me to say “The only reason pirates are spending thousands of dollars on their PC and net connections is because there’s no way to pirate their PC and internet connections”. Can you demonstrate proof of Newell’s claim? Can you demonstrate proof of my claim?
This was also a bad argument for me to make, anyways, because it was tangental.
Here’s the bottom line:
You made the claim that I don’t understand how pirates work, because Gabe Newell says they spend a lot of money on their computers, and they are clearly willing to buy games if the price matches what they perceive as the quality of the product. You’ve said that this is supported by Steam sales data.
I said, you can’t make that claim because Gabe Newell has no fucking idea who is a pirate and who isn’t, so he can’t make definitive statements about their spending habits either which way…at least, not based on Steam data. If Gabe Newell has done any independent research to back up his claims, it’s not in that article.
I’ve said this in every single post I’ve made since the beginning of the argument, and you have yet to counter it with anything other than restating your original point with different words, or using irrelevant evidence to ‘prove’ I didn’t read the article By the way, I re-read several times thanks to that, because I felt stupid, like maybe I had missed something important which demonstrated why I was wrong. There wasn’t.
Sorry this wasn’t concise, but there was no concise way for me to demonstrate that I’ve been making the same argument the entire time without receiving a proper rebuttal. Perhaps that’s my fault for making my arguments poorly. Either way, that’s the fact of the matter.
Alrighty, that was pretty clear. I put the headlines bold to compartimentalize the post.
My perspective is that you throw the baby out with the bathwater because you are hung up on is that I (or anyone probably) knows EXACTLY how much money is spent, EXACTLY what everyone is doing at every minute. That is all irrelevant. I concede it is impossible to know who precisely is and is not a pirate. However, in the greater scheme of things, that point is irrelevant. The idea behind marketing is to look at demographics, populations of potential customers.
The investment question: pirates are a group of people within the PC gamer group. They are not a distinct, nebulous entity of people. What was not known is what proportion were purely dickwad pirates. It is also very clear what kind of investment is required to make their machines run the games they pirate because Steamworks tells us how PC gamers are equipped and because of the baseline requirements of the games being pirated. The precise value of money per computer is not pertinent. The magnitude of the investment is the point. You say you don’t care if it cost more than 5 dollars, when that is the entire point. I’d like you to address this point specifically as I feel that this is central to the discussion.
Steam games being pirated: you can’t just say “ok you showed me I’m wrong, but I’m not wrong!”. It is silly. And again, the article doesn’t cite only L4D. It uses those as specific and representative examples of a trend that is further described and which I quoted. The effectiveness of these sales is why nearly all publishers have them on Steam on a regular basis, not just on holidays. This leads us to spending habits…
The spending habits question is distinct from the investment question.You brought up the idea that people don’t know what pirates spending habits are. When Valve initiated these sales, no one knew know how the market would respond to these sales. One of the points Newell makes is that they were surprised to see the magnitude of the sales, relative to the size of the discount that was available. The sales were initially an experiment and this experiment has given everyone insight into the PC gaming market. This is interesting to developers and publishers because of previous claims that ~90% of people were pirating PC games. For whatever reason they have to believe this, there are a few and I’m not here to debate the validity of these reasons as it is not pertinent, the bottom line is that a lot of devs/publishers thought that it wasn’t worth it to sell games on the PC platform because it was going to get pirated to hell. Yet lo and behold, people are buying these things like its going out of style. This means that pirate spending habits were not understood.
The lesson people learned (or claimed to) is that these sales mean that the PC gaming market is not entirely composed of pirates like it had been previously claimed since these discounted titles could’ve pirated had the consumers chosen to.
ServiceYes, some pirates are fucking dickwads. As I mentioned earlier, no one knew how many PC gamers were dickwads and how many were not. You brought up Newel’s quote about pirates being ahead in terms of “service”. The idea here is that many pirates pirate their games because their experience with pirated games is superior to that than if people buy boxed products. No DRM bullshit for PCs. The PSP is an excellent example of this phenomenon as using the UMD drive slowed games down and drained the battery. Similar concept for PCs. It isn’t about enjoying things more, but avoiding things that are not enjoyed.
I would just like to say that the number of hours it takes to get from the beginning of the game to the end is not necessarily how long a game is. If it’s sufficiently fun, people will replay it. I’ve done the WC3 campaigns many times and beaten Children of Mana like 4 times through… and it’s not even THAT good.
But if you have no information on their demographics, you can’t make any definitive statements about them in the first place. My main point of contention is that there is absolutely no information available on pirates’ spending habits whatsoever. Having exact numbers doesn’t matter - there’s not any data to be shown about pirates. All we have are Steam sales data and Gabe Newell’s reassurance. I’m surprised you’re condoning something so unscientific, because this is more like an act of faith: “I just KNOW that some of these people are pirates!” Well, you don’t.
Also, some exact numbers do matter. If Newell is going to make a statement about what pirates’ spending habits are, then he needs to show that he knows the majority of pirates operate in the way he described. How can he prove this is true with the data he’s shown thus far? It’s impossible!
The investment question: pirates are a group of people within the PC gamer group. They are not a distinct, nebulous entity of people. What was not known is what proportion were purely dickwad pirates. It is also very clear what kind of investment is required to make their machines run the games they pirate because Steamworks tells us how PC gamers are equipped and because of the baseline requirements of the games being pirated. The precise value of money per computer is not pertinent. The magnitude of the investment is the point. You say you don’t care if it cost more than 5 dollars, when that is the entire point. I’d like you to address this point specifically as I feel that this is central to the discussion.
I still feel that this doesn’t matter, because the bottom line is that pirates can’t pirate PC parts. Of course they’re going to buy higher-end PC parts that allow them to pirate newer games if they have no choice. When presented with the choice to have something for free or for not-free, which one do you think they’re gonna pick?
Your point, I feel, would have more weight if you could prove your original point that pirates are actually really good guys who just want to make sure they’re getting their money’s worth. But at this point, it’s Gabe Newell’s word (“Oh yeah, they’d totally buy the products if they were priced lower - TRUST me”) versus mine (“Oh yeah, they’re douchebags who will pirate just about anything they’re interested in - TRUST me”), and there’s not a reason yet to believe that his statement holds more water than mine.
Steam games being pirated: you can’t just say “ok you showed me I’m wrong, but I’m not wrong!”. It is silly. And again, the article doesn’t cite only L4D. It uses those as specific and representative examples of a trend that is further described and which I quoted. The effectiveness of these sales is why nearly all publishers have them on Steam on a regular basis, not just on holidays. This leads us to spending habits…
I was wrong about Steam games that can be enjoyed fully in single player, because those can be pirated.
I was NOT wrong about L4D, and TF2, which can’t be enjoyed to their fullest without buying the game.
I was NOT wrong about GH and RB, which can’t be enjoyed to their fullest without purchasing DLC.
I was NOT wrong about my point that we have no data on pirates, and just because I made the erroneous statement about all Steam games being unpiratable, it doesn’t change the things I wasn’t wrong about, and it doesn’t take the wind out of my argument.
So, yes, I was wrong, but I’m not wrong. I was wrong about something that hasn’t been demonstrated to have any relevance yet.
The spending habits question is distinct from the investment question.You brought up the idea that people don’t know what pirates spending habits are. When Valve initiated these sales, no one knew know how the market would respond to these sales. One of the points Newell makes is that they were surprised to see the magnitude of the sales, relative to the size of the discount that was available. The sales were initially an experiment and this experiment has given everyone insight into the PC gaming market. This is interesting to developers and publishers because of previous claims that ~90% of people were pirating PC games. For whatever reason they have to believe this, there are a few and I’m not here to debate the validity of these reasons as it is not pertinent, the bottom line is that a lot of devs/publishers thought that it wasn’t worth it to sell games on the PC platform because it was going to get pirated to hell. Yet lo and behold, people are buying these things like its going out of style. This means that pirate spending habits were not understood.
The lesson people learned (or claimed to) is that these sales mean that the PC gaming market is not entirely composed of pirates like it had been previously claimed since these discounted titles could’ve pirated had the consumers chosen to.
See, this is what I don’t get. Just because a bunch of people bought these games doesn’t mean that PIRATE spending habits were not understood. It means that CONSUMER spending habits were not understood. To wit, I know about ten or so people who bought Left 4 Dead during that Steam sale, and not a single one is a pirate of anything more than old Nintendo ROMs. I don’t see the point where consumers magically turn into pirates in this experiment of Newell’s.
ServiceYes, some pirates are fucking dickwads. As I mentioned earlier, no one knew how many PC gamers were dickwads and how many were not. You brought up Newel’s quote about pirates being ahead in terms of “service”. The idea here is that many pirates pirate their games because their experience with pirated games is superior to that than if people buy boxed products. No DRM bullshit for PCs. The PSP is an excellent example of this phenomenon as using the UMD drive slowed games down and drained the battery. Similar concept for PCs. It isn’t about enjoying things more, but avoiding things that are not enjoyed.
But even that’s not really true, is it? Many more PC games are being made with game bugs that only appear when the game is pirated.
The important point in that article is that there’s a point in the game where you get the ability to glide…only, you don’t get the ability to glide if you’ve pirated the game. Is that really a better experience? In fact, this brings up yet another thought: of those games in the Steam sale which weren’t L4D and TF2, how many of those games don’t work properly if you pirate them, making them unpiratable?
You didn’t address my comments about PC gamers. You tell me the demographic isn’t known, but they are. You did not address the specifics of this statement: “pirates are a group of people within the PC gamer group. They are not a distinct, nebulous entity of people. What was not known is what proportion were purely dickwad pirates. It is also very clear what kind of investment is required to make their machines run the games they pirate because Steamworks tells us how PC gamers are equipped and because of the baseline requirements of the games being pirated”
This is not a statement about who can pirate pc parts. This is a statement about what is known about pc gamers and the pirates amongst them. This statement addresses both your first responses.
I explicitely stated that people essentially equated the PC gaming market to piracy and that this has since been discredited, so we’re on the same page about this assumption about how the pc gamers were misrepresented. I addressed the issue about spending habits in the spending habits paragraph, stating that the habits weren’t known as there was no data until Valve started mining it and experimenting on Steam, in collaboration with other publishers. Prior to this, it was difficult to distinguish actual consumers from dickwad pirates. The point Newel makes is that there are consumers within what is believed to be this massive aggregate of pirates which publishers believe pc gamers to be.
You’re also really irritating me with your constant fall back on Rock Band and co. You’re completely missing the point of what I’m trying to say to the point where I’m wondering if you’re being intentionally obtuse. The sales phenomenon is not isolated to those games. Period.
Your statement about pirated pc games being buggy is unsubstantiated. Yes there are games that do this, but I’ve only heard of 1 other example whose name I can’t remember. I remember that ironically, word of the bugs went out in the internet and led to lower sales of the game because it made consumers think the game was buggy. This kind of experiment can and has backfired.
Ultimately , this entire irritating piracy discussion is a tangent of the original point. The only point I ever wanted to make was that Valve clearly showed that lower prices and a good service increased sales and that this was interesting as it worked outside of the normal sales cycle. It was symbolic of existing demand and how price points influenced consumer purchasing habits.
Then maybe it’s not clear. What exactly does that statement tell me about pirates?
“pirates are a group of people within the PC gamer group.”
Okay, I can guess what this sentence is telling me. I agree.
“They are not a distinct, nebulous entity of people.”
…They aren’t a distinct, indistinct entity of people? I can’t say this sentence makes any sense to me, and based on the adjectives used, it could mean one thing or the complete opposite.
“What was not known is what proportion were purely dickwad pirates.”
Are you telling me we NOW know what proportion are purely dickwad pirates? Cos I’m pretty sure we haven’t figured that out yet…
“It is also very clear what kind of investment is required to make their machines run the games they pirate because Steamworks tells us how PC gamers are equipped and because of the baseline requirements of the games being pirated.”
Not sure what I’m supposed to get from this sentence either. Games on Steams need pretty damn good PCs to run these games. Are you saying that we can assume anyone who pirates certain games should at least have a PC of a certain strength?
If that last sentence is the important part, then sure, that’s a good point, and I hadn’t thought of it. Thanks for helping me understand.
But even then, it only proves half of the equation. Pirates spend a lot of money on their PCs. Great. We still don’t know what their spending habits on games are. Newell thinks that lots of pirates bought the games that they put on sale. I think lots of people who don’t pirate bought those games, and sure, some pirates for the games they couldn’t enjoy properly without buying them. It’s still not enough to debunk the theory of pirates all being dickwads.
I explicitely stated that people essentially equated the PC gaming market to piracy and that this has since been discredited, so we’re on the same page about this assumption about how the pc gamers were misrepresented. I addressed the issue about spending habits in the spending habits paragraph, stating that the habits weren’t known as there was no data until Valve started mining it and experimenting on Steam, in collaboration with other publishers. Prior to this, it was difficult to distinguish actual consumers from dickwad pirates. The point Newel makes is that there are consumers within what is believed to be this massive aggregate of pirates which publishers believe pc gamers to be.
Take a look at what I’ve bolded there. That’s quite a spell different from what you originally said, which kickstated this entire argument:
THAT is a very definitive statement about what ALL pirates do. What I’ve bolded up there is not quite as definitive, but something I could agree with. You have never said up to this point that “some pirates”, “a few pirates”, “many pirates” “a small/large percentage of pirates” do these things; you’ve said that “pirates” do these things. If you think I’m harping on your phrasing a bit heavily; maybe so. However, you’ve done the same to me this entire discussion, even way back when it was about 3D DGH, so I don’t think it’s unreasonable to hold your choice of words to the same level of scrutiny.
You’re also really irritating me with your constant fall back on Rock Band and co. You’re completely missing the point of what I’m trying to say to the point where I’m wondering if you’re being intentionally obtuse. The sales phenomenon is not isolated to those games. Period.
I only brought up Rock Band because you tried to use the fact that I talked about L4D only as some sort of asinine proof that I didn’t read the article. I was content to keep talking about L4D, because that was the most prominent example in the article. I didn’t mean to upset you.
I still don’t see why it’s not relevant to bring up L4D or any other multiplayer game that was indicated in this discount though, because it’s still true that these games can’t be enjoyed to the fullest with piracy alone. If pirates buy it when the price drops, that doesn’t prove anything other than “Pirates would rather not have the game at all than pay full price for it.”
Ultimately , this entire irritating piracy discussion is a tangent of the original point. The only point I ever wanted to make was that Valve clearly showed that lower prices and a good service increased sales and that this was interesting as it worked outside of the normal sales cycle. It was symbolic of existing demand and how price points influenced consumer purchasing habits.
Actually, I was pretty sure this started because I didn’t understand a core element behind piracy. If THIS was all you wanted to say, I would agree. But this wasn’t about just that; this was about the fact that I didn’t understand piracy, and that’s what I was arguing about the whole time.
The statement you point-listed was written as such because you were implying that the potential pirate pool was undefinable and unrepresentative of pc gamers.
Finally you agree that running good pc titles requires substantial money invested in computer hardware.
I used L4D not to make a point about piracy but to show that price could affect sales of a game outside its normal life cycle. The point about price drops doesn’t have to do with pirates but the earlier discussion about gamestop/steam and how we got into this mess of a conversation. It had to do with price driving sales.
My final statement is as explicit as I could be in defining my terms, which as you can see, is something you agree with. However, it is not contradictory to my original statement as I defined a pirate subpopulation as “Pirates that pirate games because something is not worth what they want to pay or because what they pay for is attached with a substandard experience”. I defined this pirate subpopulation as a function of its motivation and explicitely stated that these pirates should be seen as potential unhappy customers. I did not claim all pirates were as such. The use of the article “that” serves this point.
About SG’s review:
I wonder how your review would have gone if you had never played any of those old games. I wonder, did you not like the game because it didn’t live up to those old games?
Heh, I saw some vids on it a few days back messing around with the character creator. You could literally play the game as a giant cube (or dice), a ball, or whatever the hell you can come up with within the predefined space. I could imagine trying to play the game as a dot Gundam or a 1-inch wide character…lol
Though I’m sure someone will make the inevitable penis and such.
) Such parts should always be clearly separated from the review proper, tho. (Simple headings such as “facts” and “my opinion” will do.)
