Pirating pirates pirating pirates... or something like that.

Yo ho ho... and a free game?

A couple of days ago, I saw Eurogamer running an article about a company, Greenheart Games,  which made pirates pirate their own games...

It actually makes a whole lot more sense than you would think. Game Dev Tycoon is a game about making games – a game development simulator, and the change they made was to introduce piracy in pirated copies of the game. Essentially this takes the form of a random event, whereby sales will begin to decline eventually making it impossible to run a profit.

Even more amusing is the fact that Greenheart Games have revealed forum posts of people asking how to combat the piracy in their games, with questions like "Guys I reached some point where if I make a decent game with score 9-10 it gets pirated and I can't make any profit”, and even asking if it is possible to research DRM with which to combat this piracy. While the irony here is of course amusing, more important is whether people understand that a mirror is being held up to their own actions, and start to realise that copying games (and other media) really is hurting the content creators out there, and small companies like Greenheat Games in particular.

Whether this will have any impact on piracy remains yet to be seen, however I fully applaud the attempts here, and I do not think that there could have been a better platform from which to do it. I can only wish I had come up with the idea first!

You can read the full article here; http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-04-29-game-dev-tycoon-forces-those-who-pirate-the-game-to-unwittingly-fail-from-piracy

And the company’s blog where they talk about it here; http://www.greenheartgames.com/2013/04/29/what-happens-when-pirates-play-a-game-development-simulator-and-then-go-bankrupt-because-of-piracy/

Eurogamer Expo Highlights - The Rest

So it has been a while since my last update, and while I have some rather major news to share, I promised to finish my coverage of the Eurogamer expo first so here goes for that; the other article will have to wait a little longer.

While for me the biggest hit of the Eurogamer expo were the people I met, there were of course the games too! The variety of electronic entertainment on hand was startling, and I have to say I love the policy of Eurogamer where a studio may only showcase their product if customers can actually play it, an important distinction over simply showing off a cinematic trailer or worse just a concept. The games then, were for most of the attendees the most important element, and there was certainly no lack of choice of what to try, though some were near impossible to play because of the outstanding queues leading up to them. Thankfully, I tried most of the games I was interested in early on, knowing from Rezzed that it would really get busy over the weekend.

Now, Eurogamer is big, really big and I do not have the space here to comment on each and every game, so instead I will bring up what were for me, the three highlights. Being primarily a PC gamer, I will concentrate mostly on those and it is here that we start with Company of Heroes II. Ever since it was announced that it was in development, I have been looking forward to having the chance to give it a go, and I was pleased to see it amply represented at Eurogamer. Thankfully it lived up to expectations; a definite sequel to the first (great) game, with upgrades such as the impact of the weather which had such a great impact to the Eastern Front. I even got a T-shirt out of it, though I am not sure just how my American father likes me wandering around with a hammer and sickle on my shirt! Still it is worth remembering that this game seeks to commemorate the many men and women who gave their lives on these far less appreciated battlefields, regardless of ideology.

I think this is actually one of the most important aspects to many of the games that I enjoy; that they are not simply a mindless action-fest (though those are fun), but rather they strive for something deeper. Some try to instil a sense of leadership or provide soft skills such as in Football Manager, while others give a historic overview. My current love of history was not brought through reeling off dates in dry history lessons, but through the little clips that really made Age of Empires alive, or the snippets of colonial background offered in Colonisation. That said, I am well aware that history is often added after the core game play, Sid Meier (Civilisation / Colonisation / Pirates) famously stated that they wrote implemented the history that fit the setting. As such I am not asking games to become the new educational tool, but instead that they can make the user interested enough in a subject to delve more into it themselves. Europa Universalis covers the Reformation very well for instance, and since then I have begun to read up about it because it was an interesting period of history which is only touched on (if at all) in schools.

Next up was Farcry III, which I had high hopes for having been an avid fan of both the previous titles. I am pleased that it is taking a similar route as Farcry 2, with a large open map that basically invites you to just come in and play. There is some deeper gameplay to it, for instance collecting items and craftables, plus fighting the hostile bandit faction to clear bases for friendly native fighters to move in. I don’t yet know much about how all this works together (I spent far too much time just crashing cars into trees, running from tigers and paragliding around the island), but I have a feeling that it will deliver something special.

Finally was a game which surprised me; Assassins Creed. I’ve spent a little time on the very first game, but not enough to call myself properly attached or even a fan but what I saw of Assassins Creed III was really very cool. Now, it has to be said I have a soft spot for the Colonial era which the game is set in, however it was the detail which went into the demo that I especially appreciated. Basically it was showing off the naval combat element (I know, naval combat in a stealth assassination game! Firing a broadside is hardly the epitome of sneakiness!) but what I saw looked like really good fun. Starting out, you hug the coast in the bright sunshine of the Caribbean, but as you venture out to sea the storm clouds come in as fast as the enemy warships. Now normally this would sound extremely cliché, but actually they pulled the transition off really nicely so that you probably wouldn’t even notice until you lobbed a volley of chain shot into the increasingly sizable waves instead of your enemies’ hull.

The last (but by no means least) paragraph goes for a very honourable mention to the Indie Games Meetup organised by Zero Dependency and others. This was an event for small developers like myself to essentially get together and swap stories, and meet with other people including industry professionals and journalists. It was a really cool experience actually, being able to speak about things that we are passionate about with others who share the same interests. At this event we were allowed to bring along laptops / tablets, etc in order to showcase what we were working on, and Vinland received quite a bit of interest, and I actually ran out of fliers to give to people. 

Image courtesy of; http://www.eurogamer.net/expo/

Eurogamer Expo Highlights - The Personalities

Well that was one of the busiest and most tiring weekends of my life, but what a weekend it was! I had been eagerly anticipating the Eurogamer Expo for a number of weeks now, virtually counting down the days until it happened. Finally though, the moment was upon me and I was on the train up to London, and found myself standing before Earls Court, the majestic blue banner waving in the wind, seemingly welcoming the thousands of eager gamers, developers, and journalists.

I plan to do a series of articles to cover all of my experiences at the Expo, however it is the people I met which stuck out the most, and as such shall be the subject of the first article. Over the course of my adventures at the Expo, I would get to meet all kinds of interesting people, from the gamers themselves to a varied breed of developers (one of whom has earned “Legendary Status”... read on to find out who, and why!), while trying out a large number of interesting games and listening to the best of the business discussing how they make the magic on our screens.

But first, there was a queue. A really, really long queue, and this would unfortunately serve only as a warning for how much waiting one would have to do before the weekend was out. I was one of the lucky ones, with an early entry “Super Pass”, giving me the chance to arrive on the first day (Thursday) and to get in early to the expo (I never did, it takes me about an hour to get there, and I *hate* mornings). It amused me to no end however that the usher was patrolling up and down the line shouting “Ten O’Clock Entry only!” despite it being past eleven before I got even remotely close to the entry.

Eventually, I did get inside however and while I had been prepared for something big (I had been to the London Book Fair held in the same venue), I was not quite steeled for the sheer amount of noise, both from the rat a tat tat of distant machine gun fire, to the continuous chatter of many excited gamers. Writers are after all known for being quite a quiet bunch, gamers... not so much!  

The first booth I visited was Dust514, a game I had been watching despite my dislike of console games, for one primary reason; it had the really interesting concept of merging two separate genres, on two separate platforms, to link players together to work towards a single goal. Basically the console gamers work as the soldiers battling it out on the planets of Eve Online, with the Eve players providing orbital support from above, by bombarding the surface of the planet with targeted strikes, and by shipping in new equipment produced in Eve Online itself. I immediately flagged one of their representatives down, unfortunately he was less than helpful, even rolling his eyes when I asked about the connections between Eve and Dust... this impression would change later however when I re-visited the booth on Friday with a friend.

We got talking another developer who seemed more versed in how Dust and Eve worked together, however when we began asking more queries about the planned scope of the game (would Dust battles take place on space stations, and other scenarios like that), he admitted he didn’t know. Just then, another man ducked into the conversation wearing a very cheeky grin and clasping half a pint of beer in his hand.

“Maybe I can help?” he offered.

“Err, maybe. Who are you?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.

“I’m Jonathan, the executive producer of Eve Online, I basically run it all...”

This led to a very informative discussion about Eve, about Dust, about CCP and their plans for the Eve Universe in general. During this we also talked about how CCP interacts with the Council of Stellar Management (or CSM for short; a group of players elected by the players to converse directly with the developers to air grievances and to make suggestions);

"We basically fly them out to Iceland and lock ourselves in a room with them for three days and argue like mad men, often throwing insults and swearing at each other. Afterwards we all go to the pub and become best friends again." (slightly paraphrased as I cannot remember the precise wording, it was something like that though.)

So yeah, legendary status awarded!

Anyway, back to the topic! One of the developer talks I had missed at Rezzed was the Creative Assembly talk on Rome Total War II, so I made absolutely sure I got to see it at Eurogamer, and I was not disappointed. Seeing the newly released gameplay trailer displayed on a cinematic screen was incredible, and the speaker was a shining example of how to do one of these sessions, talking first about how the game was made.

This included a run down of all the different roles, and how each interacts with the others and what precisely they contribute to the game. These went from designers (and how they have to think), artists (and a quick time helm being made), animators (showing off the very snazzy motion capture studio), sound creators (and a guy suffering for his art by being belted with a broom while wearing Roman Segmenta armour, and being recorded while they did it).

I deeply regret not staying behind to have a word with him afterwards, but I did immediately make my way down to the Creative Assembly recruitment booth to have a word with their staff there, and found them to be just as engaging as their speaker had been. If you ever have a chance to hear Creative Assembly speak, I very highly recommend attending it.

Still to come is an overview of the different games on offer, and my perception of them, and an article on the Indie Game meet-up that occurred on Saturday evening (and the personalities met there, too many to list in this article too). Stay tuned for more! 

Image courtesy of; http://www.eurogamer.net/expo/