victor@dean.Berkeley.EDU (Victor Brueggemann) (08/04/89)
I have bided my time with this subject, and feel it's now time to add my $.02. Before I start, I do not condone piracy, and do not practice it. In this article I critique/flame many aspects of software development from conception to sales to piracy. Sullivan Segall writes >Gee. How do they measure piracy anyway? Count the number of unregistered >users? That's a good idea. Maybe they should politely ask the pirates to register their illegal copies, so they know what they are dealing with. >Personally I've tried most of the cinemaware games, but haven't >purchased one strictly because I don't like them. IMHO they are trying >to blame piracy for their own problems. Bingo. Thanks for getting to the heart of the matter. >As a general rule, cinemaware games are slow, accept only limited user >response, rely heavily on graphics instead of game play, and only load >from floppy. Not only that, but their implementation of the (good) concepts for their games sucks sewage-fouled swamp water. >Hardware copyprotection stinks. Games like "Lords of the >Rising Sun" are a sorry excuse for a strategy game. And slow..... have >you ever played a game of LOTRS? Six hours later you are so tired of >seeing the stupid little anecdote after reviewing your troops, that you >turn off the machine without saving, AND DON'T CARE. Worse yet, is the mouse-only interface they offer to the player. Remember Rocket Ranger? They DO know about joysticks, they just don't offer their users that option anymore. >Good riddance. We have enough game writers who know how to make truly >challenging games for the Amiga. Let Cinemaware die an ignominous death. Do we? I think the main problem the amiga faces is not in the quality of it's hardware, it's users, or it's programmers. The problem lies with the lack of software with decent concept-implementation available. A friend recently commented to me that amiga programs "...generally fit into one of 3 basic categories; Arcade games, Demo's, and 'productivity' software." True enough. For those of you who think "What else is there?!", don't bother flaming me, as you're likely as not part of the aforementioned problem. Karl Denninger writes; >Software development is an EXPENSIVE business. Packages like F18 >interceptor, Dragon's Lair, "C" compilers, and others are not cheap to bring >to market. Software purchasing, for the average consumer, is also an expensive pursuit. And just as risky. Although tested, many games still contain bugs known to the publishers before the stuff is released to the market. Most game packaging shows screen shots, but some leave the buyer completely in the dark about what the damn thing even looks like (e.g. Tomb of Azarok, or something similar. I wouldn't buy an expansion board without knowing what it did, or what manner of interface it required, or at the very least what chips were on it. Why should I buy software that way?). Even those who show screen shots are not without fault. These have no bearing whatsoever on how the game is played and tend to be singularly uninformative. Sure, the publisher guarantees the media. So what? It's not like that's a big risk to them. There is a statistical percentage of disks that will be defective, and they lose no sales over them. (HAH!, I say, to that. When dealing with Sir-Tech software, back in my apple 2 days, I went through 14 consecutive bad disks with the original wizardry game. Rest assured that they lose my sales!) Steven C. Den Beste writes; >It's been done. There were a couple of "magazine on a disk" that were selling >for about $8 for the Amiga, and I believe they both went belly-up. More >interesting is the fact that these were distributing documentation and >software from the public domain, so they didn't have to pay the programmers - >and they STILL went under. Ok, assuming they were games, what kind of games were these? Space Invaders v107.4? The price is not the issue if the quality warrants it. I don't mind paying $350 for a compiler, because I know exactly what it was designed to do, and that it was designed to do it in a decent fashion. I can't make those kind of assumptions about games, and neither can most others, unless they've played the game before, or spent a fair amount of time watching someone else play it. Thus it's no surprise to all but the densest folk that out of 500,000 (arbitrary figure) installed sites, that only 50,000 have sold. Most consumers will not buy software sight unseen, after more than a couple diappointments with a publisher's products. I myself will never again buy a product with the Rainbird logo, because I have consistently disliked their products, and have only actually bought one. The others look too much the same. What I'm saying here, folks, is if you write a game that doesn't cut it in the market, maybe it's not pirates...maybe it's your game. As far as the plethora of demo's for the amiga goes, as amazing as some of them are (esp. the walker2 demo), what we need are more good programs - not just things to show our [other PC]-owning friends. I realize now that after such 'kind words' I'm either going to get flamed or I have a bad newsfeed. :) ============================================================================== Opinions? Ummm...I filed them somewhere...can I get back to you on that? Victor Brueggemann victor@dean.berkeley.edu CIS: 71211,3552 *Knave* ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ You're serious, aren't you? About what I do, yes--not necessarily the way I do it. -- Sarah and The Doctor, I don't remember where ==============================================================================
sean@ms.uky.edu (Sean Casey) (08/04/89)
What really peeves me is the "License" that companies plant on their software. This "License" usually says you really don't own your copy, you aren't allowed to make any copies of it, the software company isn't liable for *anything* the software does, and to top it all off, they don't even guarantee that it will work. About the only thing they will guarantee is that there is a disk in the box. And software companies whine about piracy. I know of few such industries that hold the consumer in such utter contempt. Sean -- *** Sean Casey sean@ms.uky.edu, sean@ukma.bitnet, ukma!sean *** Copyright 1989 by Sean Casey. Only non-profit redistribution permitted. *** ``I'm a state machine with no state!''
milo@ndmath.UUCP (Greg Corson) (08/06/89)
> Sure, the publisher guarantees the media. So what? It's not > like that's a big risk to them. There is a statistical percentage of disks > that will be defective, and they lose no sales over them. (HAH!, I say, to > that. When dealing with Sir-Tech software, back in my apple 2 days, I went > through 14 consecutive bad disks with the original wizardry game. Rest > assured that they lose my sales!) > If copy protection actually WORKED all the time, I wouldn't mind it so much, but I have had cases myself (and heard of other people's problems) where rightfully purchased copies frequently don't load. I had a similar problem with Sir-Tech on their old Apple II "Glactic Attack" program. It would fail to load about 5 times for every 1 time it loaded. I went through about half a dozen original disks and a disk drive realignment before I gave up on a game that I really enjoyed playing. Greg Corson 19141 Summers Drive South Bend, IN 46637 (219) 277-5306 {pur-ee,rutgers,uunet}!iuvax!ndmath!milo
michael.hainsworth@canremote.uucp (MICHAEL HAINSWORTH) (08/07/89)
I agree totally with your views that the Amiga Community lacks severely
in quality software. For the past 3 years, the IBM PC owners have been
oohing and ahhing about the amiga graphics, butcomplaining that there's
no software base... almost nonexistant. Well sorry PC guys, but we now
have the base just a lack in quality.
Any 2bit (or should I say 8bit) software author can create medeocre (sp)
or even very poor software and still make some money on it. Your
reference to Cinemaware software is very well founded. Cinemaware
relies on wooing their potential buyers in the store when the
salesperson boots the disk up. Rocket Ranger is a prime example.
Software publishers and authors spend too much time on the intros and
title screens and less time on the game play.
I have no complaints about the productivity software for the Amiga, with
the exeption of a few and this relates primarily to bugs and price.
There are considerably more Amiga 500's around than the higher end
machines (A2000, A2000HD, A2500) and who are the people buying these
A500s? Students, and middle to lower-middle class households. How
often do these people get a chance to drop down $300 for a
wordprocessor? The Graphics of the Amiga are fantastic, but if you want
to develop some exellent artwork you must be willing to put down at
least $700.00 for the software as each package has it's strong points
but never has them all.
Hey, we're not even going to get into the price of hard drives now, are
we! :-)
Michael Hainsworth
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*** The opinions expressed here are entirely my own. Any
duplication of these will lead to the offender being
shot. If he's lucky...
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*** above quote stolen from (KerPOW! Bang! Ehh....)
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