Hi Dark, Dark said:
However I do wonder, if the situation were this dire, why people bother creating new multiplayer games at all? My reply: Its not really that difficult to figure out. In short, it is just one of those hazards of doing business, and every developer understands sooner or later to hope for the best but prepare for the worst. If we developers gave up developing software simply because we know people will pirate it, attack our web servers, intentionally screw up a multiplayer game, etc then everyone both good and bad would suffer for the actions of a handful of antisocial individuals who are doing the damage for kicks. To put it another way look at it like this. Suppose every game developer out there decided one day to no longer offer any kind of multiplayer games to punish those folks who constantly go around attacking sites that offer them. Sure, they'd punish the miserable creeps who were doing the damage, but how many thousands, perhaps millions, of people who did nothing wrong have to suffer the same consequences too? The other issue is simply financial. Right now multiplayer gaming is a huge boom for game developers. If the game companies simply got rid of multiplayer gaming altogether to help protect themselves from the online creeps that would be the equal of killing the goose who laid the golden egg. They would take a huge financial hit if they are depending on multiplayer and online gaming for a large source of their income. Quite frankly its not something commercial companies could afford if they wish to stay in business. Part of the reason for that is once a new technology is released into the general public the company can't go back and expect people to do without it. For instance, back in the 1980's we were all satisfied with games like Packman, Space Invaders, and Astroids that all had simple graphics and animation. They had no network play, simple sound effects, and looked pretty cheasy compared to todays standards. Believe it or not people paid $40 for some of those games when they were brand new. Now days, if you want to sell a game for $40 to the general public it better have 3d graphics, realistic sound, good music, and probably will have some form of multiplayer capability since the XBox 360 and so on support it. Activision, Nintendo, and the other game companies that got their big start in the 80's could never totally go back to selling games on par with the games from the 80's not with the features something like the Play Station III and XBox 360 offer currently. Even retro remakes of games tend to have features like better graphics, animation, sounds, music, and/or multiplayer modes that were not present in the originals. Cheers! --- Gamers mailing list __ [email protected] If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to [email protected]. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to [email protected].
