When: April 24th 2010, Saturday.

Time: 3PM ~ 9PM.Location: Bond Place Hotel.
65 DUNDAS STREET EAST,
TORONTO, ONTARIO M5B2G8
416-362-6064 www.bondplace.ca

Ticket: Cheaper tickets available online: http://anzubday2010.eventbrite.com/ (Special Discount code: “iSupportACG” for our supporters and followers. This code is limited to 40 people only.)
$28 cash-only at the door.  ACG NA VIP Members receive $5 cash-back (even if you purchased tickets online). Membership for sale($35) at the event and on our website http://acgnorthamerica.com.

Cosplay: Encouraged (Cosplayers have the chance of winning more PRIZES!)

ACG NA’s very own Anzu Chigusa is having a birthday party on April 24th and everyone is invited! If you love Anime, Comics, or Gaming and wish to make some friends with the same interest or just want to relax and have a good time, this is where you should go. Don’t miss out on ACG NA’s biggest event so far!

For complete detail, visit the ticket page:
http://anzubday2010.eventbrite.com/

Hope to see you guys there

Image via Gelbooru

Stardock announced The Gamer’s Bill of Rights a day before Penny Arcade Expo. It contains list of standards or guidelines that they hope to be followed by game developers/publishers in particular PC game developers. The document was aimed toward PC games because console games developers already have some standards set by Nintendo, Microsoft or Sony. The objective of The Gamer’s Bill of Rights is

to increase the confidence of consumers of the quality of PC games which in turn will lead to more sales and a better gaming experience.

For those who are wondering about Stardock, they are the maker of Sins of a Solar Empire game which is a hit game in 2008. I also briefly mentioned about Stardock in my last game article Yar!! a Game Developer talked to Pirates and how they view piracy differently than other game developers.

The Gamer’s Bill of Rights(source: Stardock’s website) :

Gamers shall have the right to return games that don’t work with their computers for a full refund.

Gamers shall have the right to demand that games be released in a finished state.

Gamers shall have the right to expect meaningful updates after a game’s release.

Gamers shall have the right to demand that download managers and updaters not force themselves to run or be forced to load in order to play a game.

Gamers shall have the right to expect that the minimum requirements for a game will mean that the game will play adequately on that computer.

Gamers shall have the right to expect that games won’t install hidden drivers or other potentially harmful software without their consent.

Gamers shall have the right to re-download the latest versions of the games they own at any time.

Gamers shall have the right to not be treated as potential criminals by developers or publishers.

Gamers shall have the right to demand that a single-player game not force them to be connected to the Internet every time they wish to play.

Gamers shall have the right that games which are installed to the hard drive shall not require a CD/DVD to remain in the drive to play.

Thoughts

The only problem that I already foresee is in the first one. I think there should be a time limit for this one otherwise people will abuse the loop hole and I know some people that will do this for sure unfortunately. Surely, it’s a good thing that there are developers out there thinking about gamers but this is only the beginning because the next step would be for others to follow this bill and it’s not going to be easy to do.

The rest of the rules are more related to DRM so if DRMs are removed from PC games, it will pretty much follow more than 50% of those rights. Easy , right? ^^ Creating the bill is easy but to follow them, can those companies do the same as what Stardock did ? The saying ‘Easier said than done’ fits perfectly in this situation ^^;;

Image via Moe Imouto

A game developer named Cliff ‘cliffski’ Harris from Positech Games, a small independent PC games company in UK, has been wondering why people (pirates) pirate games (re: his games) and out of curiosity and good intentions, he posted in a well known forum and site: slashdot and Penny Arcade forum . From both, his question made it to arstechnica, digg and bnet.

The answers that he got were massive and he summarized to 4 major points as of why people pirates PC games or other games:

image via google

1. Money / Financial problems

He stated that:

This *did* surprise me. A LOT of people cited the cost of games as a major reason for pirating. Many were kids with no cash and lots of time to play games, but many were not. I got a lot of peoples life stories, and a ton of them were my age. Even those who didn’t cite cost as their main reason almost always mentioned it at some stage. A lot of anger was directed at the retail $60 games, and console games. People in Australia were especially annoyed about higher prices there. My games were $19-23, but for a lot of people, it was claimed this was far too high. People talked a lot about impulse buying games if they were much cheaper.

Although it does not surprise me, I agree with others that the cost of games is one of the major problem.s If you take a look at the price of games these days ranging from $50 to $60 per game, they are quite expensive  especially since one of the major target markets is kids who does not have any income and depends on their parents to buy them games. From the perspective of parents, they have other needs (rent,mortgage,foods, cars, tuition fees,etc)  to fulfill and games are at the bottom of their very very long list. So how do the kids get their games ? Internet is the answer. Cheap and fast way to get their hands of any games they want. I was no exception when I had no income, I downloaded games because I could not afford them.

I also heard about games in Australia are considerably higher than the one in North America. Some of you guys who live in Aussie probably can say more about this matter.

image via google

2. Game Quality

Cliff said that

This was a big complaint too. And this also surprised me. I have a very low opinion of most new games, especially triple A ones, but it seems I’m not alone. Although there were many and varied complaints about tech support, game stability, bugs and system requirements, it was interesting to hear so many complaints about actual game design and gameplay. Not a single person said they had felt ripped off by a game due to substandard visuals or lack of content. The consensus was that games got boring too quickly, were too derivative, and had gameplay issues. Demos were widely considered to be too short and unrepresentative of the final product. People suspected that the full game was no better than the demo. Almost everyone had a tale of a game that was bought based on hype which turned out to be disappointing.

As much as this was a surprise to him,it’s nothing new for me nor others. How do you feel when you spend $50 on a game and you play only like a day if you are lucky ? I bought Oblivion for around $50 and I ditched it after a day because it’s getting to repetitive and boring, although, I seemed to like it when I played it at my friend’s house.

Do you remember Crysis,  the most over hyped game ever? A friend of mine bought it for $50 and finished the game within a day. Personally, I am not willing to pay $50 for a game that I am going to play just for a day and I would rather spend it on a figure for example. According to this news, only 86,633 units were sold in the first month of its release in US. Pretty disappointing numbers considering, it’s one of the most anticipated games in 2007. I am sure it would have done better if the requirements are not so ****ing high. It’s like telling people that you need to upgrade your PC to play the game and you expect to shell out $500 or more back then. Minimum upgrade would be your video card so add that to the cost of the game, total cost would be somewhere around $200.

Out of many PC games that I bought: FFXI , Diablo II and Orange Box are the ones worth every penny. I played Diablo II for 2 years, have been playing FFXI for 4 years and Team Fortress 2 for almost a year.

As for Demos, it’s not a true representative of the game. Unless they have beta version for everyone to test it out, a short demo is not enough to know the game. From marketing point of view, demo is like a movie trailer but your opinion on a trailer compare to the actual movie may be different. I understand that he wanted to give a teaser and not to reveal too much but if majority complaint about the demos then there must be something wrong with those demos.

image via http://talk.bmc.com/blogs

3. DRM

Quote from Cliff

This was expected, but whereas many pirates who debate the issue online are often abusive and aggressive on the topic, most of the DRM complaints were reasonable and well put. People don’t like DRM, we knew that, but the extent to which DRM is turning away people who have no other complaints is possibly misunderstood. If you wanted to change ONE thing to get more pirates to buy games, scrapping DRM is it. These gamers are the low hanging fruit of this whole debate.

The root of all evil: DRM. The easiest example for a game with DRM problems is Mass Effect. It requires to be activated every few days and each user can only have up to 3 activation keys. Even then there are still other problems with the DRM which stopped gamers from playing. The funny thing is that the pirated version works more smoothly so it means you spend $50 and couldn’t even play. Why would you want to play $50 for a problematic game while you can get the cracked version for free and run more smoothly XD ? Honest games who actualy buy the game got totally pwned in this case -_-;;. DRM is just bunch of marketing BS and a way to squeeze in more $$$ from gamers/customers. Check out Espy’s blog for an article regarding Mass Effect, Piracy and DRM.

If a game has qualities, people will buy it regardless for example, Sin of the Solar Empire released by Stardock Entertainment or World of Warcraft. Unfortunately, a lot of non-online games has minimal content and no re playability in particular FPS games. What I notice from most PC games these days, they are just eye-candy games. Looks good visually and crappy contents -_-; and I am not the only one who is frustrated with the content of PC games these day. Brad Wardell, CEO of Stardock Entertainment also expressed his frustration in this article and he also added why he does not care about piracy in his personal blog. In case if you don’t know, Sin of the Solar Empire does not have any DRMs but made it to top 10 of best selling games in March 2008 according to ign.

image via Gama Sutra

4. Digital Distribution

He said that

Lots of people claimed to pirate because it was easier than going to shops. Many of them said they pirate everything that’s not on Steam. Steam got a pretty universal thumbs up from everyone. I still don’t get how buying from steam is any different to buying from me, other than you may already have an account on steam. For the record, I’d love to get my games on steam. I wish it was that easy.

Well…. I disagree with what others said. Steam is convenient and nice which is true but if you like the game, you will go to a game store and get it. I mean don’t tell me those guys are too lazy to go to a game store to get the games they want. I think this is just an excuse to pirate the games.

What others said above is valid reasons but of course, they are always a group of people that will pirate games just because they can or it’s free .

The reason Cliff asked people around is because he wants more sell from his games and to understand why people pirate his games. Unlike others, he actually listened to the complaints and took some actions (not just empty promises) as he mentioned them on the last part of his article. I think other developers should learn from him and what he has done so far and also Brad Wardell. Small game companies may follow his footsteps easily but big one like EA, it’s like wishing for a rain in a desert.

Yar!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Updates:

• Added a link to Epsy’s blog

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