Game Design, Programming and running a one-man games business…

Tag: piracy

82% of World Of Goo players are pirates?

According to World Of Goo makers 2DBoy:

http://2dboy.com/2008/11/13/90/

And yet, despite this, I’ve been reading comments on the web where people are hurling abuse at them. These are likely from people who pirated the game anyway.

So these guys worked hard over 2 years (AFAIK) to make one of the best original indie games of the year, released it with a demo and no DRM at a good price, and then happened to mention in a comments thread once that 82% of the players stole their hard work, and yet they get insulted and abused for mentioning it.

I’m sick of the attitude of some PC Gamers. Carry on pirating if you insist, but don’t have the cheek to hurl abuse at the people you are stealing from. As usual for daring to suggest something be done about piracy, I got a load of sarcastic insults and abuse from internet trolls today too.

Seriously kids, grow up and get a job, then see how you feel when people take your work for free…

Internet Trolls

“Yeah, you are such a brave man. I mean posting on a web forum! With an alias! Wow, that certainly takes HUGE balls. It couldn’t possibly be because you want to plug your poorly made site.

I will give you one thing, you certainly have no shame (or maybe you’re just completely out of touch with the gaming world). You are willing to let people know that you produced those “games” that all consist of graphs and bar charts. Nobody would waste time to pirate your crap, let alone purchase them when they could have just as much “fun” making Excel spreadsheets or watching paint dry.”

People get really wound up on slashdot don’t they? Anyone who isn’t a signed up member of the pirate party who has a ‘F**K the RIAA’ T-shirt and thinks that Richard Stallman is the new messiah is REALLY yelled at.

It never ceases to amazes me the level of casual aggression, insults and abuse that passes for normal on the internet. Kids grow up thinking this is how people should discuss things. It really is not, and will not get you very far.

My first job was as a boatbuilder and bridgebuilder. Everyone was pretty fit, and we worked with chisels, knives, hammers, hacksaws and even chainsaws. Occasionally you would be dangling over a river from ropes a co-worker had tied in place.

We were all VERY polite to each other. You learn not to be abusive to the guy next to you when you are all effectively armed to the teeth and working somewhere dangerous :D

Guardian Newspaper + Dublin radio?

I am on the front page of the IT-section in today’s guardian newspaper here in the UK. It’s an article about games piracy and the various responses to it. I should also hopefully be interviewed live *eek* on the radio in Ireland tomorrow, around 10amish hopefully.

here’s the online version:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/sep/11/games.piracy

Still working away on Kudos 2, doing play balancing and so on. Gradually getting there…

Dropping More Prices

I just dropped Democracy 1 (the original game) down to just under ten dollars. As of right now you can get the game for $9.99.

This is partly because it’s an old game, and partly because it’s a response to all those piracy comments about the price of games. I think the game is pretty good value at ten dollars. The basic game design is the same as Democracy 2, although the way it simulates stuff is a bit simpler, and the interface and presentation isn’t as slick as the newer one. However, if none of that bothers you, you can get a pretty decent stratgey game for under ten dollars now!

My companies year-end is at the end of September, so yesterday I entered all the data to see how I was doing in the run up to the business year-end. It’s not as good as I would ahve liked, definitely making less money than last year. Tbh, most of the profit of last year was selling Kudos and My other games on portals. Democracy 2 sold well, but Rock Legend didn’t. I didn’t really make any money worth getting excited about from retail at all. This is all a bit worrying, although I guess you could blame the ‘credit crunch’, but that just sounds unlikely to me. I’ve possibly spent too long making Kudos 2 (and it’s not done yet), and I really need to get my ass in gear now.

Here’s hoping Kudos 2 sells as well as Democracy 2 did (or better!). That would keep things ticking along.

Response to pirates

Ok, I did a lot of thinking about it, and rather than post it as a blog post, with all the inevitable crashing and website burning that would involve, I’ve posted my response

HERE.

Feel free to comment here though…