GalCiv 2 & Copy Protection

[obediah]

Overall, I'm liking galciv2 a lot better than galciv1, but I still don't think my playtime will get anywhere near M002 or probably even M00. SEIV might get passed though.

The big improvements for me are ship creation, the races, and the min-maxed speed rush has been toned down considerably.

It looks to have the breadth of gameplay features that MOO2 had, but has less depth in each of those features. It's too early to tell how the overall depth or replayability will be affected, but my guess is I'll have a really good first run with it, but then have trouble getting back into it.

With MOO2, I'm confident I could install it again and begin playing a race/strategy that is different than any I've tried before and do it for weeks. With SEIV, I could probably find a MOD that changes the entire game just enough to keep it fresh for a few play throughs.

 

[kingcomrade]

Overall, I'm liking galciv2 a lot better than galciv1, but I still don't think my playtime will get anywhere near M002 or probably even M00. SEIV might get passed though.

Enlighten a nub? What are these acronyms? And what are they about? The only turn based strategy games (of this type) I've really played are Civ 2, Civ 3, Alpha Centauri, and Civ 4.

 

[Nicolai]

GalCiv = Galactic Civilizations
MOO2 = Master of Orion 2
SEIV = Space Empires IV


how horrible

 

[Fintilgin]

Enlighten a nub? What are these acronyms? And what are they about? The only turn based strategy games (of this type) I've really played are Civ 2, Civ 3, Alpha Centauri, and Civ 4.

If you enjoyed those games then you have to play Master of Orion right now. It is one of those rare ultra-classics in the same league as Civilization, X-Com, Master of Magic, and other such 'golden oldies'.

MOO2 is also fun, but I would play the first one to start. It has a clean simplicity and ease of play that is quite refreshing. Plus, there is nothing quite like building a fleet of 15,000 starships and smashing your enemies.

Here is an abandonware link, you will probably want to run it in DosBox:
http://www.holyfile.com/file.php?fileid=691

 

[Human Shield]

MOO series will get more play because in those games you can have radically different playstyles, you have a race that eats rocks, or doesn't care about polution. In Galciv there is just one planet quality, and besides a different spending ratio between stuff you can't play anything really 'alien'.

 

[POOPERSCOOPER]

Look, I didn't read all of your guys posts but I'm going to say my opinion since its probably the best in the world.


Any company that makes a mediocre game without copy protection will get butt fucked back to the stone age. To be able to get away without copy protection your game has to be good maybe cause piracy is like free advertisement for good or bad.

You guys can close the thread now.

 

[Shinan]

The fact that it doesn't have any protection (and of course that it looks pretty awesome) is the reason I will buy this game. If it had only looked awesome I probably wouldn't have bothered but now I'm going to try to find it and buy it immediately when I see it.

 

[kingcomrade]

Overall, I'm liking galciv2 a lot better than galciv1, but I still don't think my playtime will get anywhere near M002 or probably even M00. SEIV might get passed though.

The big improvements for me are ship creation, the races, and the min-maxed speed rush has been toned down considerably.

It looks to have the breadth of gameplay features that MOO2 had, but has less depth in each of those features. It's too early to tell how the overall depth or replayability will be affected, but my guess is I'll have a really good first run with it, but then have trouble getting back into it.

With MOO2, I'm confident I could install it again and begin playing a race/strategy that is different than any I've tried before and do it for weeks. With SEIV, I could probably find a MOD that changes the entire game just enough to keep it fresh for a few play throughs.

I got MOO2 from a torrent, and a (real, not Internet) friend lent me GalCiv2 to install, and I've got to say, these are not my type of games. I don't like 4X games all that much, and I'm a little curious as to how people get addicted to them. I played a few games through GalCiv2, but it seemed only a little more interactive than Civ4, I spent most of my time clicking the "next-turn" button. I still don't know how the various game mechanics (like population) work and what ratios are worthwhile. It's just very obscure. I also don't like the shipbuilding interface, trying to balance cost and design and capabilities is just a little too complex when you're doing it blind. If anyone could give me some tips to help me play better, that would be nice, as I always end up at the bottom of the "Most Powerful Civs" lists after the beginning of the game. The space stations confuse me as well, the tutorial didn't help me much. Most of my game I spend spamming out construction ships and putting influence stations all around my borders and as many economic stations as I can fit around my planets.

 

[Jason]

This thread at the official forums might help.

Their emoticons are creepy.

 

[spacemoose]

snip

What did you think of MOO2? If you gave up on 4X after GalCiv you should really give MOO2 a try. I don't care for the GalCiv games, but MOO2 is in my personal top 10 and is still on my harddrive today.

 

[kingcomrade]

I tried MOO2 first. I got frustrated after a Space Dragon killed the 53058723th fleet I sent to kill it.

I'm not giving up on GalCiv2.

Does anyone else get SEVERE slowdown on the technology screen?

 

[Allanon]

And that quote describes me. I was one of the 2500 who downloaded it illegally, and once I saw it was good (it is), I happily purchased it so that I can get the updates and additional features in the future.

I was about to agree with your decision, but then I took a peek at the bittorrent warez site and saw the latest 1.0x update already there, ready to be downloaded. So, I wouldn't say their plan to convince people to buy the game for the updates worked.

 

[Halenthal]

True, Allanon, apparently the patches and bonus content are already available-but that's no surprise really.

All in all, I think it's a great decision by Stardock to release the game with no copy protection. I think they've figured out that the ones that constantly search for cracks for the patches and find methods to install the latest updates were not going to buy the game anyways. And I believe that they have some faith in computer users, even pirates, to give money to a company with a good reputation for a product that is worth it. As long as they keep up their reputation, which they've been stellar at so far, keep the quality of their games high, which they've also been excellent at, and continue real support for their games, piracy won't hurt them noticeably.

 

[Abernathy]

All in all, I think it's a great decision by Stardock to release the game with no copy protection. I think they've figured out that the ones that constantly search for cracks for the patches and find methods to install the latest updates were not going to buy the game anyways. And I believe that they have some faith in computer users, even pirates, to give money to a company with a good reputation for a product that is worth it. As long as they keep up their reputation, which they've been stellar at so far, keep the quality of their games high, which they've also been excellent at, and continue real support for their games, piracy won't hurt them noticeably.

At the very least they've won over all those people who have genuinely not bought other games because of Starforce or whatever - I have no idea of the ratio of just plain 'moaners' over those that actually mean it, but it's got to be a plus either way.

Piracy tends to fall into two demographics (is that the right word?). Those who enjoy 'cracking' games, and those who download them. Both are probably habitual - correct me if I'm wrong here - so you're going to get the same 'pilferage' no matter what you do. Make sense?

Except StarDock have pulled the carpet from underneath the 'crackers' and at the same time given respect to both the gamers who will buy and not worry about copy protection and those (probaly few, statistically) who wouldn't have bought otherwise.

Plus it's great PR. They're getting a good rep through this - and that's gotta be worth it's weight in gold!

 

[Gwendo]

Maybe people still buy the game because they need the patches that they can only get with a valid serial number.

Or maybe they just liked the game and decided to give them some money.

As pirates distribute the games, they don't even have to pay bandwidth. People download the pirate copy. Some will pay, other not. But those ones wouldn't ever pay for the game, even if that was the only way to play it.

It's risky, goes again't the first instinct: if it's possible to have it for free, no one will pay for it. But I guess they are proving that that is not so linear.

 

[Astromarine]

Going on a torrent site to check the number of seeders isn't a valid observation unless you took the latest copy-protected-to-buttfuck game and check ITS numbers there. Say, Star Wars: Empire At War. I go on torrentspy, and I see about 7 thousand people downloading it.

So what would Stardock gain exactly by spending money on a copy protection license that I'm sure would cost thousands?

 

[kris]

As for piracy, I think you're kidding yourself if you think it isn't hurting game sales. Obviously, not everyone who downloads a game otherwise would have purchased it, but its simple economics to think getting something for free is better then paying for something. So a lot of people will just download a game they were interested in, play it, and then already having the game they never consider buying it. This especially hurts smaller development studios like Troika. A quick scan of certain sites would show hundreds of people downloading this game even after a year. How many of those people would otherwise have bought it? So you good big budget games with as large an appeal as possible to make up for those who pirate.

Sorry this is just not correct. Sales are not hurt by not having a copy protection regime because someone that wants to download it will do that regardless. Them having a copy-protection regime only hurts the ones buying the game, since the pirates won't really have a problem. Paradox entertainment (Europa universalis and hearts of iron) have more or less scrapped copy protection completly and I bought pretty much all their games. Their sales have just gone up all the time. Because of that? I can't tell, but I am pretty sure it can't have hurt their sales.

 

[Section8]

GalCiv 2 is on my list of games to buy when i can afford it. Why? Because all I've heard is praise for it from people who have played it. Some of those people have bought it, some have pirated it. Either way, it's getting exposure and "word of mouth" (which is actually a pretty darn powerful marketing tool on the internet) is spreading.

Personally, copy protection and DRM are neither here nor there. Protection schemes will always be cracked, so I don't see the point of coughing up licensing fees for them.

 

[Jason]

There's something new on the GalCiv2 main site that's tangentially related to the topic:

"We knew that not having multiplayer in the game would affect reviews. There's no way around it. We are still certain it was the right decision.
First, it allowed us to make the game and sell it for $40 rather than the prevailing $50. The sales figures seem to back that up. Simply put, we just didn't feel that players should have to subsidize the small % of people who play multiplayer.
[....]
Secondly, we simply wanted to focus on the single player experience. Seems like more and more games forgo the single player experience in order to put a checkbox on multiplayer."
http://forums.galciv2.com/?ForumID=161&AID=106365

OK, so it's barely related to the topic, but there are no rules in Star Wars! Anyway, did the lower price tag convince anyone to buy the game? And did the lack of multiplayer chase anyone away from it? My answers would be yes and no, respectively, because I love money and hate people. But I can imagine that a lot of people would see the lack of MP as a lack of long-term replayability and reduced bang for the buck.

 

[LlamaGod]

The lack of MP doesn't bug me since so many other games DO try to squeeze it in. The gameplay is still great so it's only a matter of wanting to show up your friends.

And Stardock likes putting in new content with expansions, so if the demand for it is REALLY high, theres a good chance it'll be put in with an expansion.

 

[Azarkon]

Piracy isn't fair, but then life isn't fair, either. I see no one doing anything about the rampant nepotism of modern society, so I'm not worried about piracy as a moral issue. In fact, morality itself with respect to capitalism is a retarded concept given the everyday practices of businesses and countries.

Now, with respect to what Stardock is saying, I'm of the following mind: no, you don't lose alot of sales to piracy, but you're also not gaining alot of sales by making it easier. It's not a win-lose situation. The truth of the matter is piracy isn't nearly as big a problem as people make it out to be. Starforce didn't cause Space Ranger 2 to sell nine million copies, and piracy didn't prevent Blizzard from selling nine million copies of Starcraft. The reason Stardock sold alot of copies of Gal. Civ 2 is because it's a pretty good game, not because the infamous crackerz decided to play honor among thieves.

That said, being soft-on-piracy does make good PR, since most gamers are not game business men and would tend to support a players-first policy (as opposed to money-first). Still, I'm not going to go out and buy GC2 because I'd like to see companies follow Stardock's example. I might, however, not buy Space Rangers 2 because I hate Starforce. That, perhaps, is a prime example of how copy protection works wrt gamer perception.

 

[bryce777]

Companies that worry about copy protection are idiots.

There is always a core group that will always purchase, you just have to do what you can to increase that.

I think this is a good point. What companies try to do now is to SORT OF appeal to everyone in some way, whereas what every successful franchise in history has done has found some way to massively appeal to a certain core audience that makes them froth at the mouth and evangelize their product all over the place and absolutely have to have the edition that comes with a magic pedant and a tshirt.

Still, I don't mind some copy protection, but ffs put the cd key on the motherfucking disk so I don't lose it within 2 fucking weeks.

 

[Jason]

Wardell & Co had more to say on this today:

"Our primary weapon to fight piracy is through rewarding customers through convenient, frequent, free updates.
If you make it easy for users to buy and make full use of your product or service legitimately then we believe that you'll gain more users from that convenience than you'll lose from piracy.
We realize that some people or companies might feel threatened at any evidence that implies that draconian DRM schemes or CD copy protection may not make that big of a difference in sales.
For example, we were quite disturbed to discover that the company that makes Starforce provided a working URL to a list of pirated GalCiv II torrents. I'm not sure whether what they did was illegal or not, but it's troubling nevertheless and was totally unnecessary."
http://forums.galciv2.com/?ForumID=161&AID=106741

Starforce is a class act all the way.

 

[kingcomrade]

What stops people from putting the updates into torrents? Or just on another server?

 

[Nicolai]

Nothing, people have been doing that since day one.