Frogboy

Goo = DRM

It ties system specific information to the game executable. If that info doesn't checkout when you launch the game, it errors out. Granted it's not as bad as Starforce, but it's still DRM.

It's unfortunate the way things have gone, but I personally like Himachi. With it you're able to play LAN matches for older games that no longer have supported online play through the original devs/publishers.

I think a lot of what boosts stardock's sales is their price point and reputation.  It can be argued that Demigod is infact an excellent game and that fact alone makes it sell strong, but I think you and I both know that isn't a proper correlation.  Without a demo and not many people having played the beta, you have to realize that a lot of people are buying the game baised on what they know about stardock alone.

What's with all the bigger more commercialized companies (ie. EA) that make tremendous amounts of money but still charge $50-$60 for a game.  I don't have any involvment or insight as to what it costs to develop a game (my guess is in the hundreds of thousands to million) and I don't know what actual cost is ivolved with the physical product itself (packaging, maunals, cd printing).  It seems like to me, that smaller companies would have to charge more for a game due to high costs in development and not having the massive resources that other companies do.

Its the $60 dollar price point that is becoming more and more prevalent in the PC industry, a price once only reserved for the console industry, a reflection of the game maker trying to anticipate losses due to piracy?  If that's the case why are console games so expensive?  Granted console games are just as easily pirated but there are far fewer gamers with the equipment to do so nor willing the take the risk of bricking their console.  My hope is that the price point is legitimately a recoup on costs plus a little profit. 

I will say, I will never buy a PC game for $50 unless it's by a company I feel worthy of my money (Blizzard, Stardock, various indie companies) and I dare say none of those companies would have the audacity to charge $50 for a game.  Most blizzard new releases are $30 or $40 and indie game developers never charge more than $30.  Seems like a more wal-mart-ized company like EA could release games cheaper.  At $50 I'm more likley to pirate a game because thats $50 I'll never get back, get any trade in on. I'd also say that about 98% of the time I end up deleting the game after a couple hours.  Not because I feel so self-important to take a moral stance because I honestly don't care.  It's usually because its another shovelware title put out by the video game puppy mills that some of theses companies have created.

I do hope game companies realize that you cannot return opened sofware to stores.  That leads me to a second point.  If I buy a product at a store and don't like it or am unsatisfied with it, I'll bring it back.  Before I commit to buying a game, I either have to research and check reviews heavily and even then usually wait a few weeks for it come down in price.  The only situation I'll blindly buy a game is if it's by a company like blizzard or stardock where I know, A) its a quality game just because of the company logo B ) It'll be heavily supported and updated/revised over several months/years and not just patched one time and shevled like companies (*cough* EA) so often do.  When I commit to buying a game, especially in the case of a multiplayer game I expect to get a little use out of it.  I've played SC, D2, WC3 for years because they got updated, stuff was added, balance was changed, it kept the game intresting and you know what?  All those games can still be found on the store shelves and still sell regularly.  What other game can you think of that has been on the shelf since 1997 and still sells regularly.

Using EA/Maxis for example because of the "Sims" series being a game that shows massive sales numbers, it's intresting to see where EA releases a new expansion every few months for the game at $30-40 instead of patching things in.  Companies like blizzard patch regularly to add content and add an expansion pack maybe one time a year or two after release that is actually $30 worth of content.  So I guess the logic is: Add content in the form of patches to keep the same old game selling over and over again for years (ie. Starcraft, Warcraft, Diablo) or churn out and flood games and "must-have" expansions every six months.  It's debatable which is more profitable but there is no question which solution is a credit to the customer.  I will say games like The Sims and Spore sell well based only on the hype they build pre-release.  It's a typical maxis tactic to announce development of a game years before it's released and do all these "CRAZY WE ARE REVOLUTIONIZING THE WAY GAMES ARE PLAYED" taglines only to release a game that is nothing like what people expected and falling far and away short of the bar the game itself set (*cough* SPORE).

Demigod released at $40 US.  Frankly I would consider it more appropriate at the $30 price point but that's just me.  Blizzard shows heavy sales numbers for all their games and if I recall correctly, fall in the middle line of the price spectrum (not taking into account blizzards reputation that could also attribute to their numbers)  Stardock has developed quite a reputation and robust sales numbers over the years and again I think a loyal customer base has a lot to do with it.

For a couple years now i stay clear of EA and all their games. most of them now are just a useless incomplete bugged overpriced bag of poo.

I have to admit i had no clue whatsoever about stardock - i bought the game because:

1. played the only available "demo" version
   
2. the price is right for a game that's this much fun

But Stardock has stated numerous time that the retail version of their products don't use GOO.

A little rich hearing a pirate talk about buying the game after network issues are improved, as in network issues that were partially caused by pirating. I say partially because there was obviously a design flaw at works, but still.

For example, if I had to do it over again, I would be inclined to require a valid user account to play LAN even if it only has to be validated one time

 

This sort of thing gets cracked anyway, and it'probably would have been a waste of your resources - and probably would have caused more problems considering you haven't yet sorted multiplayer out.

I can understand why people pirate games, the fact is there are so many shitty games out there that don't deliver on their promises, some of them blantaly lie about features - and most of them offer no way to get a refund.  These days many games don't offer a demo until long after launch as well.

Anyway we have deducted that the multiplayer issues are NOT the fault of pirates (what would people be saying if you had 120,000 legit customers and the multiplayer broke), whe have deducted that your sales are pretty good even with pirates.  Personally I think the discussion of pirates has been done to death ot these forums.

What I would like to see now is:

- Multiplayer fixed

- Posts acknowledging the bugs and concerns people have, that stardock simply seem to be ignoring

Demigod could turn out to be a good game, but you guys still have a lot of effort to put in to make that happen, multiplayer is still *extremely* painful, and if it was my game I wouldn't be taking a single day off until that was sorted.

Well for the record i never once tried to connect to the normal servers so I wasn't adding to the network problem.

I had someone I know ask me to torrent Demigod. Now, normally, I'd hem and haw, and wind up waiting for him to forget (doesn't take long), but I flat out told him no this time. I dunno what effect it had, but I think he won't pirate it. Though I probably have too much faith in him.

It also doesnt help it wasnt released everywhere at the same time. It doesnt come out here until end of may (in retail stores). Which is a real pain in the ass. and is just inviting pirates. But all in all Congrats on retail sales . In terms of more people buying it, when some issues have been ironed out and extra content added, youll prolly see a "second wave" of buyers sort of thing

I think more and more pirates will buy Demigod as time goes on.  There's a couple factors there I would expect to be relevant:

1.  New content, like new maps and new Demigods will make the pirated version seem lame.  Same with some needed balance changes.

2.  Shrinking playerbase on Gameranger leaving pirates with the connection problems!

3.  Be sure to require some validation to play LAN in new versions of Demigod so that they can't all just pirate a new version and start using it (I don't know exactly how that would work though).

I'm going to have to disagree with the idea of having it validate for a LAN. Here's why: Stardock might die.

Look back many years, imagine if say Master of Orion 2 had activation required. (Granted, it's mostly a single player game, but occasionally played on a lan) The game is great, it stands the test of time, like another of Microprose's titles (bonus points for catching the reference, if you can). Unfortunately, Microprose does not.

Fast forward a bit, a company called Cavedog creates a great game called Total Annihilation (and another fun one called TAK) which among my friends is played until Supcom comes out and ruins us with strategic zoom. Unfortunately, Cavedog dies.

What would have happened when we had to reinstall, or moved to a new computer in the years later?

Now, those are just two cautionary tales. Granted, I've screwed myself if that happens by buying a digital copy, but several friends, who I've known for about as long as I've played those games, did buy the retail copies, so I can grab a copy from them. (And I'm willing to bet on knowing them more than I am on any game compay.) And even CDs die. In a successor to one of the games above, my Civ2 CD simply stopped being readable.