Why Not Digitial Distribution?

[Motomouse]

Ahh, you finally got me!

I was waiting till now for a digital download option. After reading this thread ...

(and playing along the demo for a while, third tier by the way, first and second attempt I went for graphics over gameplay, to no avail )

... finally I succumb! I ordered per mail , ugh!

Regards
Mtomouse

[Innocence]

Saxon said:In other words, you might want to stretch your ideas on the impulse buy idea. Computer games are entertainment, which is pretty much about satisfying impulses and emotions.

Excatly! When you get hooked on game, you have to be able to buy, download, register and play the full version instantly. Nothing sexy about searching hours for a shop, paying overprice and then having to wait several weeks for it to arrive

Last game I bought on impulse was Mount & Blade, which is a small indie game developer in Turkey (IIRC). Game is digital distribution only (they use the esellerate.net webshop).

As for copy-protection, I understand Dom3 uses a similar scheme as Stars! did: The game might seem to accept homemade serials, but into the game strange random "accidents" start to happen (planets rebel, whole fleets disappear etc.) in the end ruining the game for the pirate .

So while someone could easily make a serial-generator which *seems* to work, the only way you will know for sure is to play 100+ games and see if anything unsual happens. NO hacker is willing to spend that much time checking! Top that off with regular gameupdates (where the protection scheme is secretly slighty altered), and noone will bother.

This strong protection system also makes the whole fear of making a PDF manual a moot point. What good is the manual if you can't play the game because you can't get a valid serial

Alas, at least as far as Dom3 goes, ShrapnelGames is in the perfect position to offer it as download+manual option. Actually it's something that Illwinter could do themselves if they hadn't signed up with ShrapnelGames to handle their distribution.

I sometimes get the feeling that distributors forget they work for and get paid by the developers and as such have a responsibility to promote and make available their product in the best way possible. It's the same bond which exists between music artist and the record labels, and many artists are currently realizing that they no longer live at the mercy of their labels - it's the other way around

[MaxWilson]

I have mixed feelings about the whole "impulse buy" thing. I was exposed to Dominions via a Usenet thread about Master of Magic where a poster (probably Gandalf Parker) recommended Dominions 2 as a worthy successor. I downloaded the demo, read the manual, thought it was interesting, started the demo, and ran into a bug. (When I Alt-Tabbed out to look at the demo manual again, I came back and couldn't see any commander icons. I didn't realize it was caused by Alt-Tab, so I thought Dominions 2 just wouldn't run on my system.) I quit.

A couple of years later, I ran across Dominions 3 again. I don't remember why, but I tried again and this time this demo worked for me. I really liked the game. I hesitated when I saw that the game was only available through mail-order, because there's always the danger with an impulse purchase that, if you have to wait a couple of weeks to get it, the impulse will have waned by the time you receive it and you won't get any enjoyment out of it at all. Still, I had the demo and could play that in the meantime, so ultimately I decided to buy the game. In my case I think I definitely would not have bought the game if the demo had not been available electronically, but the demo did its job and sold me despite the mail-order wait.

I don't know if that's useful data, but there it is. I suspect Shrapnel is choosing a pretty good middle ground, from a business perspective.

-Max

[Edi]

Innocence, suffice it to say that this issue has been discussed enough times already. You don't actually have any statistical evidence to back your claims up and you do not know all the details on how this goes with Dominions 3. Tim Brooks has already given several answers that address the issue and why things are done the way they are and I for one do not see any holes in his logic.

The Dominions 3 manual is not and is never going to be available in a downloadable PDF format nor is the game going to be distributed in digital download format. End of story.

The thing is that demos are precisely for checking out whether one likes a game and if a demo is good, usually the game is worth waiting for even if it takes a week or two.

[Innocence]

Edi said:Tim Brooks has already given several answers that address the issue and why things are done the way they are and I for one do not see any holes in his logic.

The hole in part of the logic is the lack of trust in the Dom3 copy protection, which is excellent. And when you don't have to worry about piracy, the rest of the why-not-to arguments are invalid, since they ultimately build on the first dogma that releasing the manual in digital form will make piracy ruin this game (which might be true if it wasn't for the protection build in by Illwinter).

The Dominions 3 manual is not and is never going to be available in a downloadable PDF format nor is the game going to be distributed in digital download format

And "640Kb of RAM is enough for everyone" I've read those statements before, repeating them wont make them any more right.

But I agree that trying to argue with logic here seems futile - it probably is, as you say, "end of story" . Clearly, if other small/one man companies do this successfully it's obvious that this will never work for ShrapnelGames [img]/threads/images/Graemlins/icon02.gif[/img]

Even in our small "group", half the people interrested say they "wont buy it right now" (which pretty much means they'll never get their act together and order it) because of how difficult the game is to come by. And if your friends wont play the game, there goes the chance for a nice relaxed multiplayer experience, meaning you'll feel tempted to skip the game yourself. I recon the picture is much the same in the rest of the world.

For what it's worth though, yes I'll likely end up biting the bullet and buy the game on mail-order just like most people here - but under protest, futile as it may be [img]/threads/images/Graemlins/VikingHelm.gif[/img]

On an ironic sidenote: Illwinter is a Swedish Development team. "Sweden" as in "Europe", "Sweden" as in "two hours of ferry transport from where I live"

[MaxWilson]

Innocence said:

The hole in part of the logic is the lack of trust in the Dom3 copy protection, which is excellent. And when you don't have to worry about piracy, the rest of the why-not-to arguments are invalid, since they ultimately build on the first dogma that releasing the manual in digital form will make piracy ruin this game (which might be true if it wasn't for the protection build in by Illwinter).

I'd be very interested to know what data you base this conclusion on, that piracy isn't an issue for Dominions3 because the copy protection is so good. I'm sympathetic to the anti-copy protection camp (my favorite e-book publisher is Baen because they make e-books totally hassle-free, to the point of simply distributing books as .html files in a .zip) but I'm also conscious that whether this is a smart business decision depends very much upon your product and market. What makes you think the built-in copy protection is a better deterrent than the lack of a manual?

-Max

[Zeldor]

Dom3 copy protection is good enough only because it is not popular game, so not huge interest in hacker community.

Most bad selling games are due to well... bad design, not piracy. And most anti-piracy things hit people that buy the game, not hackers. I think that most anti-piracy things [except for normal cdkey] decrease sales.

Dominions targets rather small community. Most people that try it get addicted and buy it. There are of course pirated copies of dom3, but mostly used by people instead of demo or by those that have problems buying it. And digital distribution could help those people. But there may be not enough of them to put all that into motion.

[Innocence]

MaxWilson said:What makes you think the built-in copy protection is a better deterrent than the lack of a manual?

First of all, the lack of a manual can be overcome by dedication. The tutorial is in the demo, lots of info on forums and wikis, and the in-game info is very good. I was up playing the demo in a few days/tried, and while there are some limitations, I doubt the full game is very different. The only way to *really* learn a game is, after all, by playing it. Once that's done, you don't really need the manual.

The brilliance of the Dom3 copy-protection is that it gives false positives - everything seems ok but really isn't. You might be in the middel of an exciting game, one you have invested countless of hours into, and suddently things start to go wrong. Small at first, then more and more severe, until your game is ruined and all your time is in effect wasted. It's like watching an exciting movie and then discover the last 10 minutes are missing (no actually it's much worse than that ).

In essense, *time* is the issue. Time wasted for the player, and time wasted for the hacker programming serial-generatores, which are close to impossible to get right, since the checks are many, spread out through the game, and don't reveal themselves until it's too late.

While a hacker might want to spend a few hours writing a serial-generator, there's no way in Ermor neither he nor anyone else will be willing to spend 100+ hours testing if every serial provided will pass every check, fully knowing that even if they by chance find a working one they'll be in trouble come the next patch

And if you simply don't patch you can wave goodbye to multiplayer - which after all is where these games really shine

So the equation is like this: Would you rather spend $50 one time to get a fully working, guaranteed problem-free gaming experience (not to mention a clean conscience), or would you rather try the freeride, filled with frustrating experinces like abandoned games and wasted precious sparetime (and knowing you haven't contributed a dime to make this rare genre live on)? I believe the answer is obvious

Like I said all this isn't new - it's the way they did it with Stars! (shareware) and it was very successfull in that department too

[Edi]

You're still claiming things without a single shred of evidence. Dominions 3 is not Stars!, so you can throw that comparison right out the window. There are some similarities, but that is all they are.

This discussion is also moving to territory where it might as well soon be shut down because it's not going to be productive in any way if things continue in the same vein.

[Wokeye]

I already have bought the game, but would have bought it digitally if that was possible. Maybe digital distribution is not right for Dom3 at the moment, as suggested - but it is the 'way of the future'. Maybe Dom4?

As for piracy of PC games, read:
http://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com...?postid=303512
Sums it up nicely, I think.