3 ms·

My thoughts exactly. The pie chart towards the end should scare off anyone willing to try this: if 93.6% of users who played the game on the first day after rel

My thoughts exactly. The pie chart towards the end should scare off anyone willing to try this: if 93.6% of users who played the game on the first day after release got a shitty experience, it means that at least 93.6% of feedback is going to be negative (or more, because people are more likely to provide feedback when they are unhappy than when they are satisfied). Still think it's a great idea, and I love the irony (especially since it's a game dev simulator), but if I were them I would have put a timed delay on the pirate punishment.

Isofarro 14y ago
> if 93.6% of users who played the game on the first day after release got a shitty experience, It isn't a shitty experience though. They were playing the game, getting immersed into it, trying to win, and they got stuck. Stuck enough, and interested enough in succeeding, that they asked on forums how to deal with the in-game piracy issue. That isn't a sign of someone having a shitty experience. What is interesting now is what players of the pirated version of the game will do with the knowledge that their success is being hampered because they pirated the game originally instead of buying it. I hope a nice chunk will opt to buy the game, it's obviously immersed them enough to have provided entertainment value, and hopefully there's sufficiently extra gameplay and opportunities in the non-pirated version to justify the "add-on" purchase. Or, they'll crack the game to remove the pirated limitation. Or they'll walk away from the game. Or they'll find a genuinely pirated version of the real game. I hope they see the funny side, and appreciate it, and give kudos to the game development company. It's not a £40 boxed game.
- Gonzih 14y ago
  > They were playing the game, getting immersed into it, trying to win, and they got stuck. Stuck without any reason. Looks like shitty experience to me.
  - micheljansen 14y ago
    Exactly. Why would I buy this game if all I read is reports of people getting stuck after 1 day?
    - sukuriant 14y ago
      Man, that Mega Man 2 sure sucks, huh?
  - Isofarro 14y ago
    By that definition, any game you play that you can't master on day one is a shitty experience. That's an exceedingly hard customer expectation to meet: a customer who doesn't like difficult challenges or learning curves.
    - micheljansen 14y ago
      There is a difference between offering a challenge and letting players get completely stuck. There is an optimum (the mythical "flow").
      - Isofarro 14y ago
        The difference is the $8 purchase price. That's the optimum. And the players are not completely stuck, they are at the local optimal of their current gaming model - a plateau. That doesn't stop them from taking a different path towards a different optimisation strategy and find one where the localised high point is better than this one.
        micheljansen 14y ago
        Did you read the original post? The players that get stuck are not playing the same game as the players who paid $8. They are playing a version that is deliberately frustrating and almost impossible to play due to rampant piracy in the game. The normal version does not have this frustration built in and is probably a lot more optimised towards an optimal challenge / reward balance.
    - b0rsuk 14y ago
      And that's correct. When my brother played Hexen years ago - a DooM engine game with extreme switch hunting - he got stuck halfway through. He got a shitty experience. Maybe he wasn't good enough according to your judgement, but in the end he had a shitty experience nonetheless. It was not necessarily Raven's (developer) fault, but it happened. An ideal game would be hard enough for everyone, yet everyone would be able to beat it. The difference here is the developer makes the game a shitty experience by design. That's the definition of shooting himself in the foot.

Isofarro 14y ago

> if 93.6% of users who played the game on the first day after release got a shitty experience, It isn't a shitty experience though. They were playing the game, getting immersed into it, trying to win, and they got stuck. Stuck enough, and interested enough in succeeding, that they asked on forums how to deal with the in-game piracy issue. That isn't a sign of someone having a shitty experience. What is interesting now is what players of the pirated version of the game will do with the knowledge that their success is being hampered because they pirated the game originally instead of buying it. I hope a nice chunk will opt to buy the game, it's obviously immersed them enough to have provided entertainment value, and hopefully there's sufficiently extra gameplay and opportunities in the non-pirated version to justify the "add-on" purchase. Or, they'll crack the game to remove the pirated limitation. Or they'll walk away from the game. Or they'll find a genuinely pirated version of the real game. I hope they see the funny side, and appreciate it, and give kudos to the game development company. It's not a £40 boxed game.

Gonzih 14y ago
> They were playing the game, getting immersed into it, trying to win, and they got stuck. Stuck without any reason. Looks like shitty experience to me.
- micheljansen 14y ago
  Exactly. Why would I buy this game if all I read is reports of people getting stuck after 1 day?
  - sukuriant 14y ago
    Man, that Mega Man 2 sure sucks, huh?
- Isofarro 14y ago
  By that definition, any game you play that you can't master on day one is a shitty experience. That's an exceedingly hard customer expectation to meet: a customer who doesn't like difficult challenges or learning curves.
  - micheljansen 14y ago
    There is a difference between offering a challenge and letting players get completely stuck. There is an optimum (the mythical "flow").
    - Isofarro 14y ago
      The difference is the $8 purchase price. That's the optimum. And the players are not completely stuck, they are at the local optimal of their current gaming model - a plateau. That doesn't stop them from taking a different path towards a different optimisation strategy and find one where the localised high point is better than this one.
      - micheljansen 14y ago
        Did you read the original post? The players that get stuck are not playing the same game as the players who paid $8. They are playing a version that is deliberately frustrating and almost impossible to play due to rampant piracy in the game. The normal version does not have this frustration built in and is probably a lot more optimised towards an optimal challenge / reward balance.
  - b0rsuk 14y ago
    And that's correct. When my brother played Hexen years ago - a DooM engine game with extreme switch hunting - he got stuck halfway through. He got a shitty experience. Maybe he wasn't good enough according to your judgement, but in the end he had a shitty experience nonetheless. It was not necessarily Raven's (developer) fault, but it happened. An ideal game would be hard enough for everyone, yet everyone would be able to beat it. The difference here is the developer makes the game a shitty experience by design. That's the definition of shooting himself in the foot.