Visiting the Village: Episode 34
Visiting the Village returns with a bumper episode packed with even more “lively gaming discussion” than usual. Includes minor arguments about digital distribution, the demoscene, Dante’s Inferno and bazillions of other things that will make your neurons sputter in confusion. Listen quickly!
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7 Responses to “Visiting the Village: Episode 34”
§ November 27th, 2009 at 12:23 am
The song was a definite highlight of this episode.
Does anyone know if Jimmy is signed up to a record label? If not, he definitely needs to consider it!
§ November 27th, 2009 at 9:26 am
Jimi is a megastar.
§ November 27th, 2009 at 10:09 am
Monstruous podcast (in terms of length) deserves a monstruous reply:
1) Regarding torrents, no, it’s the best anti-piracy method. It turns the leaderboard into a microtransaction. And as Ian mentioned, its a very good method to advertise.
Paul, people WILL torrent. As a developer, you’re faced with the decision of either trying to use that to your advantage, or try to fight it. SECUROM, anyone?
2) The Zynga guy got cocky, after running desperate for money for a good time.
What I know is that even if Facebook does ditch Zynga, that will not stop the dude to start a new company and do exactly the same thing.
‘Free’ games can be good: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/4046/what_are_the_rewards_of_.php
3) Ian, no. You bought it, you own it. But! You can’t buy the service. If the company that provides the service says it will provide it only for unmodded consoles, then so be it. So yes, mod the console, but at your own risks.
4) When you start selling IPs you will get in situations where you can no longer make a sequel to the game that you used to make. Them money you got for the IP carry a price.
5) @Steam issue: that’s competition power. It was a decision made by MW2 developers being full aware of the effects. They choosed the de-facto leader. They choosed simplicity in developing for a 70% majority of digital distribution rather than investing more and more time to cover the full digital space. For them, 70% with minimum effort is better than 100% digital distribution share but much more effort.
Steam owning 70% of the digital distribution market is as bad as Google owning the search market and Microsoft the OS market. Yet Doomsday fails to show up.
6) Jimmy, I sense a new 50 Cent in you
, congratulations for winning the competition!
You’re doing good with the podcast.
§ November 27th, 2009 at 10:48 am
Wow thanks for the in-depth reply and nice comments as ever Senor Alien!
1. )”It turns the leaderboard into a microtransaction”. Nice turn of phrase there. Yes, torrenting is inevitable – I do throw some weight behind the argument that devs shouldn’t legitimize the those putting up torrents. As one indie dev put it to me, “I *like* people to know 100% that all torrents of my games are *not* legit, and could contain all sorts of crazy shit.”
I also think that “heavy” online integration (even for SP games) is the only sane form of DRM available currently. People won’t accept anything else…oh, apart from Steam.
2.)Mark Pincus definitely won’t be stopped by anything other than a mega lawsuit, that’s certain. Those kind of business practises have been around on the internet for yonks and will continue to exist for as long as there are gullible people.
On free games and that Gama article: there is definitely a definition problem here. I don’t class Runescape as an F2P game – it’s a subscription-based game with a big free component. F2P games, in my mind, are games which are COMPLETELY free, but rely on microtransactions and other bullshit to generate revenues. Microtransactions THEMSELVES can be ok, but Ian and I both (I think) feel that the don’t lend themselves to interesting game design. The game design HAS to prioritize incentives for the player to buy; it makes money a necessary part of the overall gameplay, and this isn’t good for the purity of the design. It CAN and DOES work, and it certainly CAN work economically, but I think, for us personally, we’d have to find a really novel way of using microtrans if we were ever to base a game on that business model.
I have a suspicion that microtransactions can only really work in a small amount of games (well, maybe I’m proved wrong by horse armour, one of the greatest microtransactions success stories of all time), and that the F2P model inevitably leads to the alleged Pincus situation.
3.) I think that’s basically Ian’s point, but I might be wrong!
4.) Yes. Absolutely yes.
5.) I’m not sure that decision was based on *effort* per se. Ha, we’ll see about Doomsday. As I’ve said, I’m just glad the company in this position are Valve and not someone else.
6.) We love Jimi!
Thanks for the support, man – tell all of your friends to listen. We need more listeners!
§ November 27th, 2009 at 1:17 pm
@2: games with microtransactions need to be REALLY CAREFULL at what they decide to be on a paid basis and what’s free. That is the point that makes a player either enjoy the game or feel like being scammed.
For some games (or type of games) it’s just easier to draw that line.
@3: Ian kept suggesting that its hilarious to consdider that paying for a console will make you the owner of the console.
What I tried to strech out is that while you do own the console, yo do not own the service. Microsoft owns the service.
As for getting other people in, well, a friend of mine “threatened” he’ll cut my internet service if I keep listening to podcatsts and such. I’ll see if I can convince him to listen to your show; maybe hearing the familiar accent (he’s from UK like you guys) will make him actually listen.
§ November 27th, 2009 at 3:05 pm
2.) Completely agree.
3.) I’m sure Ian will zoom in and land precariously on this discussion soon.
I would expect someone who hates podcasts *ON PRINCIPLE* to especially hate our podcast, but it sounds like a fun experiment.
§ November 27th, 2009 at 5:01 pm
Hmm, rarity collecting. The girl at the bus stop might not care about radiant silvergun, but she will care about my Reebok pump reissues (28 of 29 pairs!).
More relevantly i just bought a gamecube and most of the games i wanted on it. it set me back 150 pounds in total, and i got about 11 games, and I’m totally psyched. I completed the twin snakes the other day and had a great time doing so, and that’s so rare it costs the price of a new current-gen title (as did twilight princess). My conclusion would be if the enjoyment you get from the game is not just from the rarity then it’s fine, but if that’s the *only* charm, then it’s pretty lame.
lols. Ian has definitely got my question right here, but then you’ve squabbled over the question’s steering wheel and crashed it into an unsuspecting cottage. I really dislike them, as there is always song and dance about an extra mission or this or that, and as a regular game preorder..er, I have been consistently let down by the APPALLING quality and all-round lack of effort put into the bonus content. about two years ago it was quite a rarity to see a game with a preorder bonus, but nowadays, it’s rare to see a decent sized release without. I definitely like the idea, but when it’s used as a cheap hype builder, I think it’s a con. I’ve not had one i’ve enjoyed, and the red faction walker bonus i unfortunately missed, so my impression is nothing but tacked on tat. I suppose actual physical bonuses like little toys or different boxes are a different matter, but I’m going to have to say that when it comes to bonus downloadable content, I DISLIKE.