Why Not Digitial Distribution?

[Slobby]

Kristoffer O said:
I don't have any problem with shrapnel not using downloads. I quite like it. Then there will be less morons playing my game. Since my game is a masterpiece only ace-players should play it. With downloads there is no way to ensure that the potential player is not afflicted by short attention span.

haha

It took me about a month (tho to be fair half the time was shrapnel the other half another distributer) to get my copy of dom3, and there were plenty of times while waiting that I wished and wished that there was a direct download. Now that I have the game though, I can barely remember the distress caused by only being able to play the demo for a month!

[Edi]

The following is a completely personal general opinion and in no way represents the official Shrapnel Games position. It is also, despite its wording, not a reflection on any single poster here, but a more general rant on customer service and how things tend to be delineated in that field wrt specific services.

About the "Customer is always right" argument: It is usually full of crap. Very often really smelly, liquid variety of crap.

I happen to work in customer service, giving tech support to people when their internet connections go down or they have some other problem and most of them are either pig-ignorant or outright goddamn morons. Yet all of these arseholes who call me to fix their problems presume to tell me how to do my job and insist that "The customer is always right!". That particular line is the surest way to make the customer service person you're saying it to wish that you'd drop dead or at the very least bugger off and not come back. My job is to make sure that the connection from the network to the customer's DSL modem is okay so that he can use broadband. IF the customer calls and whines about his computer being infected with a virus or that he did something and now all his files are deleted or his computer broke down or whatever, I could not care less. I don't give a flying fornication about those problems since I don't get paid to fix them and I especially don't like it when idiots get shirty with me about that. Those services are provided by various other parties, including equipment manufacturers, but the problem is that most of the people demanding that service from us are cheap bastards who don't want to pay for anything.

If someone provides a service under certain terms and at a certain price, that is their right. Just because the customer demands some other kind of service, or additional service on top of that or wants to put conditions on how far he will obey the terms of service after he agrees to use the service on the terms provided does NOT mean that he is entitled to it or that he is right in his demands. If he's not satisfied, he can go elsewhere. Unless the service is unique, in which case he's stuck with it and all the crying in the world won't do him any good.

All of the above presumes that the service we're talking about is being provided as described and competently, which Shrapnel does. The "Customer is always right" whinge only has traction if the service is being provided incompletely compared to description, otherwise fraudulently or if the cutomer is being treated like crap and basically being pissed on. At which point in an otherwise competently run business the people responsible for that are going to have the management falling on them like a ton of bricks.

[Endoperez]

Velusion said:
It's the same reasoning that leads to the creators saying they don't want a save game feature and why glaring interface/ai issues exist but we get more expansion nations. It's also the one of the main reason why dominions will never get above the reputation that it is just an eccentric niche game for "hardcore" players.

It's very hard to define "a glaring interface/ai issue". Even if they are "well-known", they aren't actually discussed here, on the forums where the devs might see it. The only example I could think of right now is the fact that dead nations completely vanish from the score graphs, and while that's annoying it isn't game-breaking. If you want to discuss this further, I suggest doing it in another thread.

[AdmiralZhao]

Wow. It is suddenly clear to me. Edi's years of posts make perfect sense now that I know he works in tech support.

(BTW, I say this as a fan; I love the unit database and have found it absolutely invaluable in MP).

[quantum_mechani]

Velusion said:
Dominions is a fine strategy game but it's players are not uber-gamers anymore than Civ4 fans are uber-gamers.

On the contrary, dominions gamers are a special tenacious breed of gamer adapted to survive in conditions too extreme for less hardy specimens. These remarkable players have adapted to survive and flourish in surroundings filled with such dangers as unintuitive interfaces, undocumented features and inexplicable battle AI behavior. Even ferocious bugs are no deterrent to their industrious efforts, where they have adapted mods to combat these fearsome creatures so feared in more hospitable environments. But despite the best efforts of the tribe, young newbies still fall victim to the numerous hazards, leading to declining numbers in this remarkable culture. Next week- Exploring the Mysteries of the Dwarf Fortress Dwellers: How Do They Tell Where They Put Buildings.

[johan osterman]

Velusion said:
Jazzepi -

You are wasting your time. They don't really care about getting the game out to more people or increasing sales. The creators said it themselves in this thread (in so many words) and in other places.

While this concept is bizarre to most people (i.e. us) it is their purgatives.

It's the same reasoning that leads to the creators saying they don't want a save game feature and why glaring interface/ai issues exist but we get more expansion nations. It's also the one of the main reason why dominions will never get above the reputation that it is just an eccentric niche game for "hardcore" players.

The reasoning that leads to more nations is that JK and Kristoffer make the game for fun. They both have adequate incomes outside illwinter, and at least in Kristoffers case no desire to become a full time developer. The strengths as well as the weaknesses of the game are all a reflection of this. Your post almost make it sound like this is some sort of moral failure. Besides the nations vs AI interface is a red herring, in the illwinter division of labour Kristoffer does the nations, and he doesnt have the skills to fix any AI or interface issues no matter how much he wanted to. So the new nations does not in any significant way impact AI, bugfixes or interface issues.

The above is a different issue from the digital download, which is entirely shrapnels decision, I think you conflate the decisions of shrapnel and illwinter. Kristoffers post was a joke, I assure you he is not personally invested in not providing digital download. Illwinters interest in these matters are to do stuff they enjoy and avoid hassles, with the bonus of making a few bucks out of their hobby.

Edit: I would also like to point out that illwinter do certainly listen to customers, and try to meet their requests within reason.

[kasnavada]

Bah...

This is pathetic, and as said above, not going in circles at all. It's just reasonable people trying to change the opinion of a brick wall. Distribution for dominions 3 is just as the game is. A good concept served by the bare minimum acceptable services.

Dominions has a pretty good concept. As a game, it's good, interesting, because it's different and has many possibilities, including above average modding abilities, factions that do not feel the same, possibily for long game and much much more... However, compared to most other games, it has crappy graphics, unattractive and unintuitive UI, weak AI, little balance between different factions.

Same goes for distribution. Instead of using distribution methods that goes with the current times, it remains backward. Actually, I wonder why smoke signals ain't used ! Even forgetting digital distribution (which space empire does), the distribution services doesn't even offer to use "fast" delivery services like UPS or DHL.

I saw a little above a set of "reasons" for which digital distribution is bad. Let's review them :

1) If you want the manual shipped to you after you download the game, it becomes more expensive than just shipping the game and manual, because no costs are saved on production, and bandwidth costs are added (and bandwidth is not cheap.)

Everything but the conclusion is correct. The cost per copy is higher, but it sells more copies. Therefore you can't say that digital distribution is by definition bad because it costs more money. Given the fact that dominions pretty much needs internet to be interesting (updates, maps, community, multiplayer) it's rather obvious that many potential buyer look away from the game for this reason.

2) If you don't want the manual shipped to you, then there will be a sizable amount of players that will play the game without a manual. These might enjoy the game less, since they will have a weaker understanding of it, and they will give the game a bad name.

Elitist thinking like this does give the game a far worse name that more newbies will. Furthermore, the manual isn't up to date, and many things are not in the manual, which means that if I follow what you say, people already have a bad understanding of the game. And are already giving it a bad name. Finally : you are assuming that people need the manual ? Have it sent by mail even if you buy it online ! Why should disappear all of a sudden ?

3) Furthermore, there will now be an excuse for not having a manual, so all the pirates that "lost their copy" won't be immediately spotted on the forums

... that was the most ridiculous argument ever. It's not pirates you spot, it's idiots. The ones that want to pirate the game and have half a brain working won't speak about the manual at all. And won't be caught by such a simple thing.

Furthermore, does it also mean that anyone playing the demo, since it doesn't come with the manual, is giving the game a bad name ?

And, in order to end this argument, ever considered the slight possibility that it might actually be true in some cases ? There is a number of reason why it could be : theft, fire, accidental destruction, lost when moving to another place...

4) Without a physical manual, the CDKEY is just a number transmitted to you once, with no backups. Suddenly Shrapnel has to deal will all sorts of people that lost their CDKEYS and ask for new ones (expecting one since Shrapnel has to track their sales on their website) and potentially leading to all sorts of CDKEY scammers.

That is already done by other company and there is no problem with it. Why should it be a problem for shrapnel ? Are they dumber than others or something ? Besides cdkey scams already exist since the game can be resold. It's not a problem associated with digital distribution at all !

5) They will have to modify their entire CDKEY tracking model. They are no longer guaranteed that each copy of the manual corresponds to one CDKEY, that is printed on it.
They will have to either modify their production line to produce CDKEY free manual but store CDKEYS in some sort of other database or find some model where they print your manual with the code, and send the code to you before the manual is shipped (which creates problems for backorders.).

Why ? I mean, That is already done by other company and there is no problem with it. It's just a different writing of argument four. Saying it twice doesn't make it true.

6) There are probably some costs involved in uploading the game to the digital distribution service, plus increased maintenance.

Putting the same argument twice doesn't make it more true. More costs ? Yes, obviously. More sales ? yes obviously. I'm among those that believe that the new sales (given what the game is) will lead to more profits that the new costs.

That said, I don't really expect things to change to online distribution. However, I won't stand idle when people say that it is inherently bad, because it isn't. It's different, but not better or worse.

However, an option for a faster delivery service than 7 days (or more...) is really needed... 48 hours worldwide is pretty much standard nowadays when it comes to delivering books and dvds. Actually, except for dominions 3, I can't even remember when I last ordered something that takes so long to arrive.

Well, I'm in the process of waiting for the game to arrive. Which may take up to a month. Let's hope others after me won't have to.

[johan osterman]

kasnavada said:
...

Dominions has a pretty good concept. As a game, it's good, interesting, because it's different and has many possibilities, including above average modding abilities, factions that do not feel the same, possibily for long game and much much more... However, compared to most other games, it has crappy graphics, unattractive and unintuitive UI, weak AI, little balance between different factions.
...

I would argue that dom3 has a decent balance between factions compared to most games, most games with any noticable difference between factions doesn't have that good a balance. Not that dom3 is perfect in this regard, but I think it does ok.

[llamabeast]

But despite the best efforts of the tribe, young newbies still fall victim to the numerous hazards, leading to declining numbers in this remarkable culture.

Actually, I get the impression that the community is still growing nicely, which is impressive so long after release. Newbie games still fill up very quickly (the last one got loads of genuine newbies very fast), and the LlamaServer has no fewer than 20 games on it at the moment (will be 23 in a couple of days), which is really a lot, especially considering it is only one of several servers (and presumably there are any number of people playing MP outside of this forum).

[Dedas]

Yes, the moderate balance is pretty good overall except in a few extreme cases (like MA Ulm). If those nations were brought up to moderate standard I would be a happy camper.