"XBox 360 banned? Too bad, go buy a new console or go away" says Microsoft

Xaeos said:
This has less to do with piracy, but more the "PC gamer" mindset vs the "Console gamer" mindset.

In general, PC gamers, especially those that have been gaming on the PC for more than a decade or two, are pretty smart people with pretty high expectations. The remember thick manuals, inventive games, putting lots of work into building or configuring their hardware and software for their games to play, patches including both bugfixes and content for free, and more. PC gamers are hard to please. Someone on the [H] can tell if his 16x AF isn't working. We remember when games were cheaper. We remember when a $30 expansion pack put more than twice the content into the title. etc...

Since the advent of the Xbox and subsequent 360, a HUGE amount of individuals became gamers. These were people who never played Mechwarrior or Xwing vs Tie Fighter. These were people who never even had a SNES. The proverbial "Madden and Halo" gamers were born. They don't complain when games cost more, because they've never known differently. They don't complain about expensive, feature lacking day one DLC, because they didn't remember patches and "thanks" from the developer back in the day. On the whole they are young, impressed easily, and consume whatever is put in front of them ceaselessly.

There are now more of THEM then of US, so developers figured "Hey, why try to deal with these smart, irritating people when there are so many slack-jawed idiots who don't question anything we do and can't wait to extend a grimy fist full of bills in our direction"? This is why we have "dumbed down" games; dumbed down gamers!

Piracy is a lovely scapegoat, but quite simply a new breed of consumers has arisen that is much easier to control.
Click to expand...

That hits it right on the head.
 
nobody_here said:
yeah except one thing, they claim they are doing this to protect the health of the online community.....all you have to do is make it unable to connect and this is accomplished 100%, the functionality of the hard drive and use as a media extender have absolutely nothing to do with protecting the community, they went too far with it

what about the guy who bought a 360 just because he was impressed with the media extender feature? this is a feature completely independent from Live service, it is a functional part of the 360 and is advertised as such. if said person hacked his box, why should he lose the ability to stream media from his PC to his 360 on his network? why should he even lose the ability to install games to the HDD? these are features of the machine he purchased, not features of Live
Click to expand...

read the eula.

I'm with MS 100% on this one.....you hack the console for whatever reason, you can deal with the consequences. if you cannot deal with it then too bad for you....


why aren't you fools bitching at sony for removing linux support from the slim?

yeah, that's what I thought.
 
YeuEmMaiMai said:
read the eula.

I'm with MS 100% on this one.....you hack the console for whatever reason, you can deal with the consequences. if you cannot deal with it then too bad for you....


why aren't you fools bitching at sony for removing linux support from the slim?

yeah, that's what I thought.
Click to expand...

Or for apple kicking Pre support.
 
to much going on in this thread but lets leave piracy out for a sec.

currently MS is selling a 120g hd upgrade for xbox for 149$. they are selling ancient technology at huge markup. they didn't offer this option for a long time. i considered modding my 360 for a larger hard drive, not to use hacked game. why cant we install any normal hard drive in the system? because they want to rip you off. i know most of us modders here look at the 360 cooling and and heat it created and knew it would overheat but they sold us hardware with a very high failure rate. sad thing is it doesn't deter people from buying on again.


world of goo was a flash game. they added virtually nothing to the game and tried to sell it. would you pay for a glorified flash game that you had already played ? i wouldn't i played it when it was a flash game for 2-3 minutes and never wanted to play again. look at game with the same standard price. TF2 or world of goo. how you would rate their value ? TF2 100$+ paid 30$ for orange box tf2 sells for 10-15 standard alone. played it for years on end over 500+ hours of play time for something that cost me 10$. no one ripping TF2 putting it on torrents with hacked server list and why not ? because it is worth every penny. world of goo is worth nothing to me. i would toss it in the 1.99 bin at walmart where it belongs.

when game has a very high sales and piracy rate people dont say look all these people pirated the game and it topped the charts maybe because they liked it wanted to pay for it. they say look at all these sale we lost. piracy cost is even more millions. when a game does poorly of course it has to be the pirates. it cant be because it is just a repackaged flash game with a price tag.
 
gesicht said:
to much going on in this thread but lets leave piracy out for a sec.

currently MS is selling a 120g hd upgrade for xbox for 149$. they are selling ancient technology at huge markup. they didn't offer this option for a long time. i considered modding my 360 for a larger hard drive, not to use hacked game. why cant we install any normal hard drive in the system? because they want to rip you off. i know most of us modders here look at the 360 cooling and and heat it created and knew it would overheat but they sold us hardware with a very high failure rate. sad thing is it doesn't deter people from buying on again.
Click to expand...

Exactly. MS is scamming us all. I don't understand how so many people buy their overpriced, outdated, unreliable pos products.
 
worx said:
Screw microsoft dude, why would I want buy another shitty system from them anyways. Everyone I know who has owned a 360 has had the red ring of death or e74 error... Why should I pay them to play online when it should be included for free. Why pay them 100 bucks an overpriced wifi adapter? Why pay for no blu ray?
Click to expand...

Enjoy buying your new 360. Don't mod it this time and perhaps you wont get banned.
 
My only beef is the upcomiong ban on third party storage devices. If that means my 500GB external drives are no longer usable on the 360, I'll be permanently switching to a PS3. Thats a major problem IMO.
 
Mr Jim Brown said:
My only beef is the upcomiong ban on third party storage devices. If that means my 500GB external drives are no longer usable on the 360, I'll be permanently switching to a PS3. Thats a major problem IMO.
Click to expand...

They arent banning USB drives. You can still use those for music and the stuff you could always use a USB stick for.

This bans the mods that let you download content into non MS devices from live and such. 3rd party replacments for the memory cards and hard drives will be banned.
 
Wait, people had modded their Xbox consoles and were playing on Live? I am surprised there wasn't a check for mods when logging into Microsoft's servers. WTF are people angry about? You think Microsoft is going to allow you to play pirated games on their service?

Ironically, the only person I know that has never had a single issue with his Xbox 360 (except a failing case fan bearing) bought his console in the first month of its release. What is ironic about that? He's also the only person I know that modded it to accept pirated games.

BTW, I believe there is some network that actually allows people with hardware mods to their systems play online with each other. I don't know any details, but I figured it was pertinent to the discussion.
 
gesicht said:
to much going on in this thread but lets leave piracy out for a sec.

currently MS is selling a 120g hd upgrade for xbox for 149$. they are selling ancient technology at huge markup. they didn't offer this option for a long time. i considered modding my 360 for a larger hard drive, not to use hacked game. why cant we install any normal hard drive in the system? because they want to rip you off. i know most of us modders here look at the 360 cooling and and heat it created and knew it would overheat but they sold us hardware with a very high failure rate. sad thing is it doesn't deter people from buying on again.


world of goo was a flash game. they added virtually nothing to the game and tried to sell it. would you pay for a glorified flash game that you had already played ? i wouldn't i played it when it was a flash game for 2-3 minutes and never wanted to play again. look at game with the same standard price. TF2 or world of goo. how you would rate their value ? TF2 100$+ paid 30$ for orange box tf2 sells for 10-15 standard alone. played it for years on end over 500+ hours of play time for something that cost me 10$. no one ripping TF2 putting it on torrents with hacked server list and why not ? because it is worth every penny. world of goo is worth nothing to me. i would toss it in the 1.99 bin at walmart where it belongs.

when game has a very high sales and piracy rate people dont say look all these people pirated the game and it topped the charts maybe because they liked it wanted to pay for it. they say look at all these sale we lost. piracy cost is even more millions. when a game does poorly of course it has to be the pirates. it cant be because it is just a repackaged flash game with a price tag.
Click to expand...

I'm sorry, but two things. First, World of Goo was on PC and WiiWare, not Xbox 360. Second, WoG was NOT a flash game, it was a *phenomenal* game with a ton of replay value, a brilliantly realized art style and a subtle story told primarily through metaphor.

I paid $15 for World of Goo on Wiiware and it was worth every nickel. I also own TF2, as purchased in the Orange box for $20 (effectively making it about what, $4,5, when you divide the purchase price among all the games included in the orange box?) and although I do enjoy that game, I enjoy WoG MUCH more. It's just plain and simple a better, more artistic, more creative, more thoughtful title.

TF2 is great, and I love it-as an FPS, it nails a brilliant art style and eschews the utter boredom of "realistic" games and the lack of creativity they entail. But WoG is on a whole other level :)
 
Xaeos said:
This has less to do with piracy, but more the "PC gamer" mindset vs the "Console gamer" mindset.

In general, PC gamers, especially those that have been gaming on the PC for more than a decade or two, are pretty smart people with pretty high expectations. The remember thick manuals, inventive games, putting lots of work into building or configuring their hardware and software for their games to play, patches including both bugfixes and content for free, and more. PC gamers are hard to please. Someone on the [H] can tell if his 16x AF isn't working. We remember when games were cheaper. We remember when a $30 expansion pack put more than twice the content into the title. etc...

Since the advent of the Xbox and subsequent 360, a HUGE amount of individuals became gamers. These were people who never played Mechwarrior or Xwing vs Tie Fighter. These were people who never even had a SNES. The proverbial "Madden and Halo" gamers were born. They don't complain when games cost more, because they've never known differently. They don't complain about expensive, feature lacking day one DLC, because they didn't remember patches and "thanks" from the developer back in the day. On the whole they are young, impressed easily, and consume whatever is put in front of them ceaselessly.

There are now more of THEM then of US, so developers figured "Hey, why try to deal with these smart, irritating people when there are so many slack-jawed idiots who don't question anything we do and can't wait to extend a grimy fist full of bills in our direction"? This is why we have "dumbed down" games; dumbed down gamers!

Piracy is a lovely scapegoat, but quite simply a new breed of consumers has arisen that is much easier to control.
Click to expand...


So what you're trying to say is console gamers are basically the siblings of this guy?

ALeqM5igBt5zH89kqda3E6b2PqyHyUxRgw.jpg
 
SpeedRunner said:
Why even play Xbox Live in the first place?
Click to expand...

cuz it owns the Playstation Network. Last I heard teh PSN doens't have Facebook, Twitter, or Last.FM for free. or even at all. And you have to have a disc for Netflix? such non-sense.
 
iGamer said:
cuz it owns the Playstation Network. Last I heard teh PSN doens't have Facebook, Twitter, or Last.FM for free. or even at all. And you have to have a disc for Netflix? such non-sense.
Click to expand...

psn offers free online multiplayer; so for the price, it's a very good value, lol.

pc does all of those things w/o paying an annual subscription free.

xbox live is nice and i have a gold membership still, but paying for online multiplayer when it should be free like on the psn and pc just flat out sucks.

honestly, i could care less about facebook or twitter on my xbox. i barely have any interest in them on the pc or my smartphone as it is, lol.
 
iGamer said:
cuz it owns the Playstation Network. Last I heard teh PSN doens't have Facebook, Twitter, or Last.FM for free. or even at all. And you have to have a disc for Netflix? such non-sense.
Click to expand...

yea... obviously you have a PC.. so why do you need that stuff on your xbox?
 
kumquatsrus said:
psn offers free online multiplayer; so for the price, it's a very good value, lol.

pc does all of those things w/o paying an annual subscription free.

xbox live is nice and i have a gold membership still, but paying for online multiplayer when it should be free like on the psn and pc just flat out sucks.

honestly, i could care less about facebook or twitter on my xbox. i barely have any interest in them on the pc or my smartphone as it is, lol.
Click to expand...

i suppose paying for the service is worth it when a AAA title like MW2 comes out and the servers dont crash like they did on PSN
 
SpeedRunner said:
Why even play Xbox Live in the first place?
Click to expand...

+1

I have yet to find a reason to need to get an XBox, not to say I havent looked. I find plenty of mature, honest, well spoken, and easy to get along with people on PC games. I couldnt imagine trying to find a good game in XBox live, with the majority of the users being early teens to mid 20-somethings. Not that all of them are bad, but being in my mid-30s I dont care for some of the sophomoric talk, chatter and language that is used with the younger people.
 
I'm on my third banned Xbox...never have bitched when they get banned.
I know the risks so oh well.
I just buy one of those 60% RROD Xbox's from someone, X-clamp it in 20 min then mod it and move on.
 
Xaeos said:
This has less to do with piracy, but more the "PC gamer" mindset vs the "Console gamer" mindset.

In general, PC gamers, especially those that have been gaming on the PC for more than a decade or two, are pretty smart people with pretty high expectations. The remember thick manuals, inventive games, putting lots of work into building or configuring their hardware and software for their games to play, patches including both bugfixes and content for free, and more. PC gamers are hard to please. Someone on the [H] can tell if his 16x AF isn't working. We remember when games were cheaper. We remember when a $30 expansion pack put more than twice the content into the title. etc...

Since the advent of the Xbox and subsequent 360, a HUGE amount of individuals became gamers. These were people who never played Mechwarrior or Xwing vs Tie Fighter. These were people who never even had a SNES. The proverbial "Madden and Halo" gamers were born. They don't complain when games cost more, because they've never known differently. They don't complain about expensive, feature lacking day one DLC, because they didn't remember patches and "thanks" from the developer back in the day. On the whole they are young, impressed easily, and consume whatever is put in front of them ceaselessly.

There are now more of THEM then of US, so developers figured "Hey, why try to deal with these smart, irritating people when there are so many slack-jawed idiots who don't question anything we do and can't wait to extend a grimy fist full of bills in our direction"? This is why we have "dumbed down" games; dumbed down gamers!

Piracy is a lovely scapegoat, but quite simply a new breed of consumers has arisen that is much easier to control.
Click to expand...

Beautiful post, and completely true!
 
iGamer said:
cuz it owns the Playstation Network. Last I heard teh PSN doens't have Facebook, Twitter, or Last.FM for free. or even at all. And you have to have a disc for Netflix? such non-sense.
Click to expand...

I lol'd, big-time.

Live is a better service, sure... but these above arguments are as stupid as the first word that was used.
 
Xaeos said:
This has less to do with piracy, but more the "PC gamer" mindset vs the "Console gamer" mindset.

In general, PC gamers, especially those that have been gaming on the PC for more than a decade or two, are pretty smart people with pretty high expectations. The remember thick manuals, inventive games, putting lots of work into building or configuring their hardware and software for their games to play, patches including both bugfixes and content for free, and more. PC gamers are hard to please. Someone on the [H] can tell if his 16x AF isn't working. We remember when games were cheaper. We remember when a $30 expansion pack put more than twice the content into the title. etc...

Since the advent of the Xbox and subsequent 360, a HUGE amount of individuals became gamers. These were people who never played Mechwarrior or Xwing vs Tie Fighter. These were people who never even had a SNES. The proverbial "Madden and Halo" gamers were born. They don't complain when games cost more, because they've never known differently. They don't complain about expensive, feature lacking day one DLC, because they didn't remember patches and "thanks" from the developer back in the day. On the whole they are young, impressed easily, and consume whatever is put in front of them ceaselessly.

There are now more of THEM then of US, so developers figured "Hey, why try to deal with these smart, irritating people when there are so many slack-jawed idiots who don't question anything we do and can't wait to extend a grimy fist full of bills in our direction"? This is why we have "dumbed down" games; dumbed down gamers!

Piracy is a lovely scapegoat, but quite simply a new breed of consumers has arisen that is much easier to control.
Click to expand...

This = Thread.
 
Xaeos said:
This has less to do with piracy, but more the "PC gamer" mindset vs the "Console gamer" mindset.

In general, PC gamers, especially those that have been gaming on the PC for more than a decade or two, are pretty smart people with pretty high expectations. The remember thick manuals, inventive games, putting lots of work into building or configuring their hardware and software for their games to play, patches including both bugfixes and content for free, and more. PC gamers are hard to please. Someone on the [H] can tell if his 16x AF isn't working. We remember when games were cheaper. We remember when a $30 expansion pack put more than twice the content into the title. etc...

Since the advent of the Xbox and subsequent 360, a HUGE amount of individuals became gamers. These were people who never played Mechwarrior or Xwing vs Tie Fighter. These were people who never even had a SNES. The proverbial "Madden and Halo" gamers were born. They don't complain when games cost more, because they've never known differently. They don't complain about expensive, feature lacking day one DLC, because they didn't remember patches and "thanks" from the developer back in the day. On the whole they are young, impressed easily, and consume whatever is put in front of them ceaselessly.

There are now more of THEM then of US, so developers figured "Hey, why try to deal with these smart, irritating people when there are so many slack-jawed idiots who don't question anything we do and can't wait to extend a grimy fist full of bills in our direction"? This is why we have "dumbed down" games; dumbed down gamers!

Piracy is a lovely scapegoat, but quite simply a new breed of consumers has arisen that is much easier to control.
Click to expand...

I agree, and yeah I'm one of the old guys from PC gaming, I still own every title you mentioned.

New games do suck, oh yes there are some that are gems, but that's the 10% that started life on a PC and were actually worked on, then you have the 90% of utter crap or really bad console ports.
 
Last edited:
class action lawsuits always make me laugh.... nobody gets any significant amount of money, except for the lawyers.
 
TOOL1075 said:
class action lawsuits always make me laugh.... nobody gets any significant amount of money, except for the lawyers.
Click to expand...

i dont think anybody is looking to get "paid", although i could see them being forced to refund any unused balance of a pre-paid Live subscription at best....although doubtful

the idea is to make sure they own up to taking things too far, i have no problem with them banning users who use modded consoles for pirating games or cheating

what i and many others do have a problem with is disabling offline functions unrelated to Live for a console that can no longer connect to Live
 
Xaeos said:
This has less to do with piracy, but more the "PC gamer" mindset vs the "Console gamer" mindset.

In general, PC gamers, especially those that have been gaming on the PC for more than a decade or two, are pretty smart people with pretty high expectations. The remember thick manuals, inventive games, putting lots of work into building or configuring their hardware and software for their games to play, patches including both bugfixes and content for free, and more. PC gamers are hard to please. Someone on the [H] can tell if his 16x AF isn't working. We remember when games were cheaper. We remember when a $30 expansion pack put more than twice the content into the title. etc...

Since the advent of the Xbox and subsequent 360, a HUGE amount of individuals became gamers. These were people who never played Mechwarrior or Xwing vs Tie Fighter. These were people who never even had a SNES. The proverbial "Madden and Halo" gamers were born. They don't complain when games cost more, because they've never known differently. They don't complain about expensive, feature lacking day one DLC, because they didn't remember patches and "thanks" from the developer back in the day. On the whole they are young, impressed easily, and consume whatever is put in front of them ceaselessly.

There are now more of THEM then of US, so developers figured "Hey, why try to deal with these smart, irritating people when there are so many slack-jawed idiots who don't question anything we do and can't wait to extend a grimy fist full of bills in our direction"? This is why we have "dumbed down" games; dumbed down gamers!

Piracy is a lovely scapegoat, but quite simply a new breed of consumers has arisen that is much easier to control.
Click to expand...


I am another older PC gamer, I can say this is false. PC gamers were just as bitchy years ago, and there was never these "golden" years we are always fond of speaking of around younger gamers. It is akin to the "in my day, we had to walk to school in the snow uphill."

As a game designer, I have begun to learn why we don't get "thanks" from developers. It's because gamers are some of the most demanding, bitchy, and abrasive consumers of any industry ever. I've been working at a game company for over a year now, and I hate about 50% of the "customers" on our forms. It takes an ass-ton of money to "meet the increasing demands of discerning gamers" That is marketing speech for saying that gamers are like Children who always want a new toy every year and give no thought to how much goes into making those new toys.

You upset your DLC costs $40? I am sorry, I won't put in 75 hour work weeks anymore to give you a good gaming experience. I mean, I suppose they could pay the tons of people who work on your game less. Do you want us to just be your slaves, massah?
 
aces155 said:
I am another older PC gamer, I can say this is false. PC gamers were just as bitchy years ago, and there was never these "golden" years we are always fond of speaking of around younger gamers. It is akin to the "in my day, we had to walk to school in the snow uphill."

As a game designer, I have begun to learn why we don't get "thanks" from developers. It's because gamers are some of the most demanding, bitchy, and abrasive consumers of any industry ever. I've been working at a game company for over a year now, and I hate about 50% of the "customers" on our forms. It takes an ass-ton of money to "meet the increasing demands of discerning gamers" That is marketing speech for saying that gamers are like Children who always want a new toy every year and give no thought to how much goes into making those new toys.

You upset your DLC costs $40? I am sorry, I won't put in 75 hour work weeks anymore to give you a good gaming experience. I mean, I suppose they could pay the tons of people who work on your game less. Do you want us to just be your slaves, massah?
Click to expand...
I have to agree with this. I don't think the "old school" is so abrasive and vocal because they want things to return to "the way things used to be." I think they're that way because they feel self-entitled, and because they're ultra-nerds.

I mean, PC users who felt that their enjoyment of MW2 hinged entirely on the presence of dedicated servers started a "boycott." And I would wager that, being PC, if it was easy or even possible to play multiplayer on a pirated copy, that "boycott" would have meant "I'm going to pirate this." I've seen multiple people, even on just this forum, say something similar as though that meant that they were "keeping it real." These are the same people who are most responsible for the shift from PCs to consoles as a primary game development medium (even though these people typically also complain about that as well, and again, I've seen multiple people just on this forum cite "console-itis" as a legitimate reason for piracy).

Yes, there are growing pains that come with the wide business-feasible acceptance of a particular medium. This results in a lot of hackers and 12 year old griefers who absolutely love that they get attention from people who are upset that a game that they paid $50+ is getting effectively ruined when those fuckers got it for free because they just whined til their parents got it for them to shut them the hell up. But is that necessarily worse than the way it used to be? Maybe, if you happened to be a member of some ultra-tight-knit community server that ran de_dust 24/7 back in the day and ran generally good interference on the griefers and hackers.
 
aces155 said:
I am another older PC gamer, I can say this is false. PC gamers were just as bitchy years ago, and there was never these "golden" years we are always fond of speaking of around younger gamers. It is akin to the "in my day, we had to walk to school in the snow uphill."

As a game designer, I have begun to learn why we don't get "thanks" from developers. It's because gamers are some of the most demanding, bitchy, and abrasive consumers of any industry ever. I've been working at a game company for over a year now, and I hate about 50% of the "customers" on our forms. It takes an ass-ton of money to "meet the increasing demands of discerning gamers" That is marketing speech for saying that gamers are like Children who always want a new toy every year and give no thought to how much goes into making those new toys.

You upset your DLC costs $40? I am sorry, I won't put in 75 hour work weeks anymore to give you a good gaming experience. I mean, I suppose they could pay the tons of people who work on your game less. Do you want us to just be your slaves, massah?
Click to expand...

I'm sorry but there is no way your going to sway an argument that we get our moneys worth on DLC. Games costing $70 for 3-5h gameplay and then $40 DLC for an extra 10% gameplay is just a money grab anyway you look at it. 99% of these DLC addons look like one person put in an afternoon of work.

Most of the big box games are just recycled sequels year after year.
 
What most people forget when they try to "keep it real" by pirating games is that it's not just some evil corporation lining their pockets. There are a ton of real folks - fellow gamers - who are working their ass off to make something you like. Pirating software is pretty much telling them "hey, I don't really care if they fire you because they take a profit loss. Your stuff isn't that good."
 
aces155 said:
What most people forget when they try to "keep it real" by pirating games is that it's not just some evil corporation lining their pockets. There are a ton of real folks - fellow gamers - who are working their ass off to make something you like. Pirating software is pretty much telling them "hey, I don't really care if they fire you because they take a profit loss. Your stuff isn't that good."
Click to expand...

i agree with this completely, i think the game developers, specifically the little guys who are coding like mad and working long hours for relatively small paychecks are the ones i can empathize with the most, unfortunately thats who always gets the shaft
 
aces155 said:
I am another older PC gamer, I can say this is false. PC gamers were just as bitchy years ago, and there was never these "golden" years we are always fond of speaking of around younger gamers. It is akin to the "in my day, we had to walk to school in the snow uphill."

As a game designer, I have begun to learn why we don't get "thanks" from developers. It's because gamers are some of the most demanding, bitchy, and abrasive consumers of any industry ever. I've been working at a game company for over a year now, and I hate about 50% of the "customers" on our forms. It takes an ass-ton of money to "meet the increasing demands of discerning gamers" That is marketing speech for saying that gamers are like Children who always want a new toy every year and give no thought to how much goes into making those new toys.

You upset your DLC costs $40? I am sorry, I won't put in 75 hour work weeks anymore to give you a good gaming experience. I mean, I suppose they could pay the tons of people who work on your game less. Do you want us to just be your slaves, massah?
Click to expand...

I think you missed my point a bit, I was saying that PC gamers are bitchy, have always been bitchy, demanding, and have high expectations. Modern western console gamers are much less so when it comes down to actually spending money; they're easier to please and easier to take advantage of for profit.

Are you really saying that things weren't different a decade or two ago? There were tons of changes including those I cited. In addition, the demographic of gamers was definitely skewed - the ubergeeks were the only ones gaming back then. You HAD to know how to troubleshoot an ISA issue and use memorymanager to allow your Rise of the Triad to work correctly with a joystick if you desired one, or hook up a null modem connection to play against your friends etc.. Games were much less pick up and play, so gamers had to be different. They were generally older (due to owning expensive hardware), more intellectual and had interest skewed towards technology as they were almost prerequisites to being able to game on the PC.

Having bitchy customers is nothing new, but it seems like an attitude like yours is what is turning a good many of us off to modern developers today. Don't be mad at PC gamers. If you're working for a major developer today, you are not instructed to design games for "old school" ubernerd gamers. All those things that frustrate you, those "increasing demands" aren't from us, they're from the target market. The same slack jawed yokel who wants Modern Warfare 2. They want big explosions, they want things that are just new enough to get them to open their wallet, but not innovative enough to be new and scary. They want all sorts of expensive graphics, but the game underneath can be sub par as long as there's enough new shiny lead-based paint on top to distract them. You're right, the target marking you're designing for ARE the "children" I referenced in my original post. "we" however, are not included. You're generally not making anything we want, because "we" don't matter anymore now that there's a new breed of cash pinatas out there.

I don't know what titles you're working on, but you're busting your ass for the wrong reasons. Unless it is a complete expansion set, there's no justification for $40 DLC, nor day one paid DLC, nor $5 pallet swaps, etc... or any of the other aspects that publishers have been doing lately to choke every cent out of the "children". I have plenty of respect for a hard day's work, but if you want to look at the culprit here look directly at the new "target market" and even more so, at the executives who employ you. They're the one profiting from all this. There are plenty of (normally indie) developers who make excellent games and sell their for a fair price, without gouging the consumer. Look at Stardock, S2 Games, and other development houses. They save money in a variety of ways (ie full digital distribution, free client software etc..), sell their titles for a reasonable price, even support Linux and Mac at times, and create a great experience for the player, all without resorting to the tactics of larger publishers. These are the developers that have earned my patronage.

People talk about gamers being "entitled", but don't you think its just as bad when developers and publishers act entitled as well? There was a time when it was "okay" for the customer to have the power and merchants listened, working hard to earn purchase of their goods and services. Now I think there's a larger systemic problem where the customer has become the "consumer", expected to consume whatever slops is put in front of him and corporations just expect others to turn over their hard earned money as if they're owed a sale. "I work hard, you need to buy this" is invalid if there's someone else working just as hard as you, that is churning out a better product and has a more customer-friendly business plan.
 
Last edited:
Xaeos said:
I think you missed my point a bit, I was saying that PC gamers are bitchy, have always been bitchy, demanding, and have high expectations. Modern western console gamers are much less so when it comes down to actually spending money; they're easier to please and easier to take advantage of for profit.

Are you really saying that things weren't different a decade or two ago? There were tons of changes including those I cited. In addition, the demographic of gamers was definitely skewed - the ubergeeks were the only ones gaming back then. You HAD to know how to troubleshoot an ISA issue and use memorymanager to allow your Rise of the Triad to work correctly with a joystick if you desired one, or hook up a null modem connection to play against your friends etc.. Games were much less pick up and play, so gamers had to be different. They were generally older (due to owning expensive hardware), more intellectual and had interest skewed towards technology as they were almost prerequisites to being able to game on the PC.

Having bitchy customers is nothing new, but it seems like an attitude like yours is what is turning a good many of us off to modern developers today. Don't be mad at PC gamers. If you're working for a major developer today, you are not instructed to design games for "old school" ubernerd gamers. All those things that frustrate you, those "increasing demands" aren't from us, they're from the target market. The same slack jawed yokel who wants Modern Warfare 2. They want big explosions, they want things that are just new enough to get them to open their wallet, but not innovative enough to be new and scary. They want all sorts of expensive graphics, but the game underneath can be sub par as long as there's enough new shiny lead-based paint on top to distract them. You're right, the target marking you're designing for ARE the "children" I referenced in my original post. "we" however, are not included. You're generally not making anything we want, because "we" don't matter anymore now that there's a new breed of cash pinatas out there.

I don't know what titles you're working on, but you're busting your ass for the wrong reasons. Unless it is a complete expansion set, there's no justification for $40 DLC, nor day one paid DLC, nor $5 pallet swaps, etc... or any of the other aspects that publishers have been doing lately to choke every cent out of the "children". I have plenty of respect for a hard day's work, but if you want to look at the culprit here look directly at the new "target market" and even more so, at the executives who employ you. They're the one profiting from all this. There are plenty of (normally indie) developers who make excellent games and sell their for a fair price, without gouging the consumer. Look at Stardock, S2 Games, and other development houses. They save money in a variety of ways (ie full digital distribution, free client software etc..), sell their titles for a reasonable price, even support Linux and Mac at times, and create a great experience for the player, all without resorting to the tactics of larger publishers. These are the developers that have earned my patronage.

People talk about gamers being "entitled", but don't you think its just as bad when developers and publishers act entitled as well? There was a time when it was "okay" for the customer to have the power and merchants listened, working hard to earn purchase of their goods and services. Now I think there's a larger systemic problem where the customer has become the "consumer", expected to consume whatever slops is put in front of him and corporations just expect others to turn over their hard earned money as if they're owed a sale. "I work hard, you need to buy this" is invalid if there's someone else working just as hard as you, that is churning out a better product and has a more customer-friendly business plan.
Click to expand...

You can't sit on your high horse and spout stuff like this. As much as you may say you are not part of the target market your loud voice has a lot of sway with those "children" who decide to pirate a game rather than buy it. That costs me, and my friends jobs. Yes, those things we actually have to work our ass off to get.

The game industry ain't puppy dogs and roses - even getting into a company like Stardock takes a long time, and most of the companies are not as "consumer friendly". Yes, you can sit in your van and tell me to work for a better company, but unfortunately it is not that simple. You don't just get to pick and choose who you can work for. It's cutthroat, and it only gets more cutthroat because rather than protesting or boycotting in a productive way people end up stealing a product. The difference being that instead of giving the company no feedback because you boycotted it, people still say they love it because they pirated it. It may be you, or a "child" who is buying it, but it is because of the stuff you and others like you say that convinces people to do this. Then they go around and say they like the game, even thought they didn't pay for it.

So the math then doesn't add up. Our execs want to make a sequal because of all of the good press, but we gotta charge more because less people bought it. And I get a lot of s*%^ because you are an elitist ass.

So please stop spouting your ideas until you pull a 15 hour day to make a game everyone steals. Thank you.
 
aces155 said:
You can't sit on your high horse and spout stuff like this. As much as you may say you are not part of the target market your loud voice has a lot of sway with those "children" who decide to pirate a game rather than buy it. That costs me, and my friends jobs. Yes, those things we actually have to work our ass off to get.

The game industry ain't puppy dogs and roses - even getting into a company like Stardock takes a long time, and most of the companies are not as "consumer friendly". Yes, you can sit in your van and tell me to work for a better company, but unfortunately it is not that simple. You don't just get to pick and choose who you can work for. It's cutthroat, and it only gets more cutthroat because rather than protesting or boycotting in a productive way people end up stealing a product. The difference being that instead of giving the company no feedback because you boycotted it, people still say they love it because they pirated it. It may be you, or a "child" who is buying it, but it is because of the stuff you and others like you say that convinces people to do this. Then they go around and say they like the game, even thought they didn't pay for it.

So the math then doesn't add up. Our execs want to make a sequal because of all of the good press, but we gotta charge more because less people bought it. And I get a lot of s*%^ because you are an elitist ass.

So please stop spouting your ideas until you pull a 15 hour day to make a game everyone steals. Thank you.
Click to expand...

Im a game developer and can understand your views and console is definetly the place to make the most money but it doesnt mean we got to ignore PC users too. They deserve a good product thats well built and a good product can sell well on the pc's.

Who the fuck put DICE and IW on the map in the first place? certainly not these console fans.

Piracy as always been on pc's yet 5-10 years ago, The pc gaming market was VERY HEALTHY and active.
 
jonneymendoza said:
Im a game developer and can understand your views and console is definetly the place to make the most money but it doesnt mean we got to ignore PC users too. They deserve a good product thats well built and a good product can sell well on the pc's.

Who the fuck put DICE and IW on the map in the first place? certainly not these console fans.

Piracy as always been on pc's yet 5-10 years ago, The pc gaming market was VERY HEALTHY and active.
Click to expand...


For sure. I am definitely not saying we should provide sub standard products, but it pisses me off when pirates think they are some how doing us or anyone a favor. All they are doing is scaring shareholders and making it harder for us in the industry to keep secure jobs.
 
aces155 said:
For sure. I am definitely not saying we should provide sub standard products, but it pisses me off when pirates think they are some how doing us or anyone a favor. All they are doing is scaring shareholders and making it harder for us in the industry to keep secure jobs.
Click to expand...

Yea exactly. no way are pirates helping. If they can standardise the internet properly then the best way to tacke piracy is that you have to be logged in so to speak everytime you want to play a single player game.

Look how succesful Guild wars, WOW and just about every MMO out there. Because you have to be online to play the game, piracy is less apparent. Yes its a online game but no harm in having that ability on a single player game too.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top