ROFL @ Yerli, CryTek and EA

http://www.develop-online.net/news/34545/Crytek-foresees-the-end-of-free-game-demos

I don't think this guy gets it. First off he doesn't backup any of his claims with any real factual numbers of sales loss for CryTek or EA for piracy.

He just doesn't get it... People pirate games because of lack of Demo or a Demo that actually let's you see what the game is. People pirate because of the obscene prices.

He thinks charging $10-15 for a Demo is better for the gamer... He doesn't get it that most people believe that EA/CryTek games are ONLY worth $15 for the full game to begin with!

Also has Yerli figured out that Crysis sales figures were really low because he created one of the worst optimized PC games ever? That his low sales figures were squarely on his shoulders, full blame on him. Maybe next time develop a better game moron.

Good grief.

 

I would never pay for a DEMO.

 

Haha that is so true!
Really 15$ for a demo? WT...

 

Personally, I say forget game demos, I am not going to waste valuable time on Demos because they are usually too buggy and bad examples of overall game play. Pirates are pirates, doesn't matter the motivation. I don't really care what they do either, it may hurt me in some indirect way, but I'm also not going to waste time evangelizing about the evils of stealing digital IP.

The issue is really price. I don't pay full price for any game, because I don't feel like paying 50-60 dollars for a video game. That doesn't mean I go out and pirate the game, it means I wait for a good deal on Steam or Impulse or GOG or Amazon.com or Walmart.com or Bestbuy.com or WHATEVER. Most of the time I can get a legal copy of a game I want for as much as 50% off the MSRP this way.

I think more good could be done for the industry if publishers adjusted prices (lower) instead of introducing all the DRM and complaining like in the article linked above.

I really have to get on my soap box, if not for just a moment. I work a full-time hourly wage near minimum (9 dollars an hour). I live in a crappy apartment in a big city in a cruddy part of town with a few roommates. IF I CAN AFFORD TO PAY FOR VIDEOGAMES, YOU HAVE NO EXCUSE.

 

StormEffect, for CryTek I don't piracy was the issue. Releasing the worst optimized game until that point that can only run on only the best very best computer with 8800 Ultra at that time, was the real reason why CryTek sales were abysmal.

But it's far easier to blame piracy since he doesn't have to back it up with any real numbers, as apparently piracy is just an accepted reason without any facts.

 

HAHAHAHAHHA this guy is insane.

It's unfair to blame the guy for piracy. Yes, Crysis is unoptimized, but keep in mind that this the CryEngine 2 is pretty much the most complex game engine so far. It's not easy to optimize such an engine. And what caused Crytek to lose that much sales was the combination of the game's great graphics and the lack of optimization. I guess everyone wanted to see how well it performed on their pc's.

 

If video games were indeed $10-15, I would definitely buy a lot more video games.

 

If they can make such a complex engine, and if they're willing to produce such a complex game, why not take a bit more time to optimize it?

 

It's just "the great divide". The customer and peon workers that understand what's going on, and the shareholders (well those with deep pockets usually) and executives have no clue. For them it's all about the money. What it takes is someone like Gabe Newell who was a peon and still actually understands quality and customer loyalty, and the needs and wants of the end user.

 

"It's not a money-hungry plot"

Who? EA?! Of course not.

 

Valve is not among my favorite developers. Charging $50 for L4D2 was pretty insane IMO.

I believe developers and publishers have only themselves to blame for their low sales figures.

 

There is no way on Earth I'm paying for a demo. If anything else, I'd just go to justintv and the likes and watch other people playing to see if it is something I'd like to pay...

 

That was one of the biggest problems. The actual spec requirements were too high. Great for Nvidia in that if you wanted decent frame rates to get what you paid for - that is to say, with most to all eye candy and effects - you had to spend extra coin for new kit.

Rumors that one needed so and so specs was enough to make many think twice about risking the coin to buy the game that might not run properly on their system. So how did a number find out if it could run? Pirated it.

 

“A free demo is a luxury we have in the game industry that we don’t have in other industries such as film."

What is a movie trailer then....?

Free food samples, road vehicle testing, trying on clothes etc.
Almost ALL industries have 'Try before you buy'.

 

Hell any decent MMO has a 10 day trial period!

 

i'm okay with no demos, but i'm not gonna pay for them, the whole point of demo is to try BEFORE you pay. however i understand that as game development becomes more and more expensive, it's hard for a company to spend resources on free stuff, but 10 - 15$? a quarter to a third of the game itself? come on, that's practically highway robbery. i won't even bother for 5 bucks, especially nowadays there are so many professional and independent game reviews out there. besides you just know some company is gonna exploit this and release multiple demos during the development process.

 

Eh? If they're already making the game itself, why not release part of the game as demo? Isn't that what a demo basically is? The buggy part of the early section of the game which also shows what the game is like? It's like filming a movie, you shoot scenes and put em as trailers and use the same parts in the trailers in the movie itself

 

Lol, wow, just wow.

I read about half of the article before I started to get upset, and couldn't read the rest, lol.

First off, demo's aren't a "luxury", they are there to test the game for flaws, and to get the customers feedback (Modern Warfare 2, anyone?).

Second, charging for a demo? You gotta be kidding me.

So charging for a demo is supposed to increase market, or increase your wallet size? And idiots like this say they aren't "money-hungry".

If this does go through, Pirates are going to have a field day with this one, and they will lose BIG TIME. And I will laugh, and laugh, and laugh.

 

Articles like that make me want to do something just to spite those people *wink* *wink*

 

Demos are supposed to be a marketing tool to try to sell the full game, not to sell to the customer... stupid. It's like paying to watch a commercial (oh, wait, we do that with cable already, d'oh! ) or a movie trailer. Almost as bad as airlines charging for an aisle seat or for them to take your luggage.

 

I hate reading this everywhere...Crysis was NOT poorly optimized, it was just graphically beyond what normal hardware at the time could do. Dont blame Crytek cause your 8600m cant play Crysis maxed out...not that Im saying thats YOUR problem or what not...but come on...my G72GX plays Warhead at almost all max settings perfectly fine.

Dont blame a game because of your slow PC...just saying....

 

You are wrong, it's been proven Crysis had almost zero optimization. Do your research.

They game looks good, but not that much better. I can play BC2 with 32 players running around with DX11 enabled with 50 FPS average. I can play Crysis with same settings in DX10 and get around 20 FPS... and really, BC2 has implemented DX10 and DX11 features 100% better than Crysis did. You can see that when you see no improvements in quality from DX9 to DX10 in Crysis but get a massive 50% loss of performance. CryTek Engine 2 while looked great, is one crappy engine. Which is why it's not utilized for any other game.

While playing Crysis you never have that much action, even with just a little action, frame rate drops to single digits. It's a horrible engine from gameplay standpoint.

BC2 has more destructible environments, tons more action, has DX11 features, and the framerate stays steady. There is no excuse from CryTek. If they can spend that much time to make it look good, they can spend the time to make sure players can actually enjoy playing it with steady framerate.

 

Anyone can make a poorly optimized, ultra-realistic game that can only run on a few PCs. I played through Crysis, and I can safely say that although visually astounding, its pretty much a generic shooter.

I don't really think most people care that much about graphics as to spend 3000$ on a state-of-the-art gaming computer. This is why developers like ID-Software opt to create more developer-friendly engines like ID-tech 5 that can help ease the burden on game development instead of visually impressive, poorly optimized engines that really add nothing to gameplay.

I'm not a big fan of CryTek. The fact that they keep whining so much about piracy doesn't make it better; why do people assume so much that every pirate is or has been a potential costumer?

 

Yep especially considering Crysis has one of the worst AI I have ever seen in a game. I can kill during a level and never get shot at and never have one AI come looking for me. Use a silencer on Scar, use Sniper Scope. AI watch each die like as if they are just sitting around eating crackers and sipping tea.

I enjoyed the game, 3 years after it was released. I didn't even bother trying to play it before.

But Yerli should take the full blame for low sales for creating a game that runs horribly and has mediocre story and with Artificial Stupidity, incredible short campaign and lackluster satisfaction at the end of finishing the game.

 

i never played crysis bec i dont really play fps'es

but it seems like people dont really play it either and use it more like a glorified benchmark to show off their rigs being able to play it and such.

almost everyone agrees that crysis as a game was kinda mediocre in all aspects aside from grphic fidelity

 

yeah I'll have to agree on this one. Crysis is a very mediocre game aside from the graphics. I played HL1 a year ago, and HL1 even by today's standards was a more satisfying game than crysis was.

 

Unoptimized? Well you can´t compare BC2 to Crysis, the scale isn´t even the same and Crysis looks far more better. Now dropping to single digits? On what system not on mine at all, even my old XPS M170 with a single core CPU runs Crysis Warhead at Mainstream settings at 1280x800. I have a video of it and it runs fluid.

It has more to do with how you optimize your notebook and system. Also Crysis could be optimized from the start by yourself. Bad Company 2 looks good, but side to side with Crysis it isn´t even near the graphical quality of Crysis.

Crysis is a good benchmark to measure your performance with instead of E-peen 3D Mark programs. At least you get real in game performance with the Crysis benchmark. Now there is numerous configs to help people run Crysis good. I made my own Crysis config for both my XPS M1730 and my XPS M170.

When Crysis was released it run good for me, of course I had an 8800GTX desktop card to play it with and a heavily optimized system for both my desktop and my notebooks.

 

Although I'd be damned to pay $10-$15 for a beta/demo (Read: this is a bad idea) I can't help but feel there is a lot of misinformation in this thread.

1. Crysis sold poorly due to bad marketing. Who in there right mind decides that the way to sell a new game is by marketing it as the only game in 2007 you won't be able to play on your computer? No they didn't use those exact words but we all remember all the hype around how much this game was going to push the limits. Yerli even said hardware wouldn't be available for 1-2 years that could max the game out at high resolutions, and he was right. But the game did run fairly well at lower settings.

2. Crysis was heavily pirated despite a free demo... as was its $30 follow up Warhead. I think Crysis topped the 2007 most pirated games list. Other games that year with very high piracy rates and free demos (Bioshock & CoD 4).

3. It's already been proven that neither free demos nor lower prices make much of a dent in piracy rates. Many smaller indie developers of high quality, low cost $5-$20 games (with free demos) are seeing 90%-95% piracy rates of their titles.

4. Believe what you want but piracy is making an impact on the industry and many pirates do it because they can without worry of repercussions. Some indie devs have held open dialogs and done surveys with pirates and found this to be the underlying truth.

 

From what I've seen, most system engineers spend their time optimizing rendering systems for fast performance. If Crysis was not optimized fully at start it was due to problems they had little control over (ie... we must release it now mentality). I don't blame CryTek for it, they hire some of the brightest guys in Europe (or used too).

The main idea is retarded, excuse my poor language. It is stupid to charge for demos, I don't know if I like a game unless I try it first... I guess I won't be buying any more EA games except Battlefield since it is tried and true.

 

Nver.... Yup same here... nver pay for a demo.. anyways , as for crysis , i had nver heard of it until i came to this forum.. very bad marketing.. as for how well it worked , at 1280X800 , i still could run it on med but quite laggy... that graphics engine almost roasted my computer due to the stress it put on the laptop.

 

Agreed with the first two, but I dunno where you got the second two from. Link?

 

Bah I can't find the actual blog of the indie dev that did this... I'll keep looking though. But here are some links to satisfy your curiosity with tons of good info on all sides of the argument.

World of Goo Piracy Rate
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2008/11/acrying-shame-world-of-goo-piracy-rate-near-90.ars

Bruce on Piracy
This guy just stomped on Evony in court, but that's another story, lol.
http://www.bruceongames.com/2008/04/23/game-piracy/

Insomnia
http://insomnia.ac/commentary/pc_game_piracy/
This is actually a great article trying to dispell piracy myths and actually contradicts some of what I say. I think the writer has done a hell of a job and in many cases I think he's right too. However I said that piracy is impacting gaming. That much is true no matter which side of the argument you are on.

Tweakguides PC Piracy Examined
Another great read on the subject.
www.tweakguides.com/Piracy_1.html

 

I think another reason Crysis was pirated so much was because of its own notoriety as a benchmark.

 

Thumb Up. Way Up!
I think some users (with high-end gaming laptops) complaining about game prices, should read this every morning (especially the last part).

 

Since I never really have bleeding-edge hardware, I usually tend to wait to purchase new games. Since the vast majority of modern titles are shovelware (thanks consoles!) there aren't a lot of new games out there I'm really interested in.

I may download anime fansubs, but I sure as hell pay for every game I own. There aren't enough games out there that I care about for it to even remotely cause me any financial strain.

 

Just to let you know, Crysis barely runs well on my desktop which has a GTX 295. (Yes, I tried everything.)

 

Paid demos are a really bad idea. This is an interesting read (whether you agree with the guy's views or not, its interesting):
EDIT: lol just realized this link was posted above by Thund3rball as well. It's really a good read:
http://www.tweakguides.com/Piracy_1.html

Here are some recommendations he makes:

IMO all good things that publishers can do to reduce piracy. nowhere does it say:

 

It's in the interest of publishers to put as low "minimum specs" as possible, so that more people will consider buying the game. I know I've been fooled by those labels before. Now I don't even trust "recommended requirements" to get decent FPS.

 

Honestly I think more developers should, from an economic standpoint, take a page from Blizzard and make games that can run on virtually anything. There's only a small fraction of the gaming population that has bleeding-edge systems, after all.

STALKER: Call of Pripyat is a great example of scalable graphics--this game has been set up to work under DirectX 8 through 11...

 

I haven't understood why more companies don't take Blizzard's cue. Better gameplay accessible for all modern computers.

They make more money with a single game than most publishers do with their entire arsenal of games... So I'm always baffled why they release games that may have good eye candy, but horrible gameply and story.

 

Uhm... most games ARE accessible by most modern computers. Looking at the top few demanding games of the last few years in a library of 100s (1000s ?) is not the industry standard. On my 8600M GT I have played all kinds of new AAA games that run well enough on lower settings & resolutions.

Heck I can play FC2 on my 8600M GT. Just because Crysis or Warhead runs like crap it doesn't set a precedent for the whole industry.

Edit: Here are some games that ran well and looked pretty on my machine.

Borderlands
Batman AA (no PhysX)
Red Alert 3
Fear 2
Tomb Raider (Legends, Anniv, Underworld)
Prince of Persia
Quake 4 (with a GFX mod)
Far Cry (with an HDR mod)
Timeshift
... ... ...

 

@Thund3rball

I agree wholeheartedly with your statement.. Games like Crysis et. al are the outliers not the commoners in the PC gaming realm. Ironically we have consoles to thank for this 'positive' stagnation; not having to upgrade hardware every year is a big plus.

Any semi modern laptop/desktop with a dedicated, mid range gfx card, C2D and adequate RAM can handle any recent DX9 class game with reasonable settings.

As for the topic itself... to reiterate, aren't demos meant to be try before you buy?