It seems that you're using an outdated browser. Some things may not work as they should (or don't work at all).
We suggest you upgrade newer and better browser like: Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer or Opera

×
Community
General discussion (archive)Compete with steam? because im ready to try something else.(40 posts)(40 posts)
(40 posts)
Pages:
1
2
3
This is my favourite topic
Posted March 22, 2014
Hi,
a small rant before question

Today i watched the co optional podcast, i got disconnected from a csgo game, something that is happening alot recently. Ontop of that two of the five prince of persia games i bought bug during loading screens, and i have bought other broken games in the past. and possibly the biggest gripe i have with steam is the front page that has been bothering me for months since i got burned by early accsess and just seeing games i wanna play, but they are in early accsess also bother me more and more.

Question
Is it possible for GOG to release newer titles both indie and tripple a? and if so are there enough people that would buy them on GOG so that steam would notice. For example the games im looking to buy in the near future is Age of wonders, GTA5 and dark souls 2.
Posted March 22, 2014
avatar
ImBatman: Question
Is it possible for GOG to release newer titles both indie and tripple a? and if so are there enough people that would buy them on GOG so that steam would notice. For example the games im looking to buy in the near future is Age of wonders, GTA5 and dark souls 2.
GOG already releases indie titles. As for AAA games, they want to, but it's up to the publishers whether or not they want to offer their AAA releases DRM-free.
Posted March 22, 2014
Age of Wonders will be here. You can pre-order it -
Standard
Deluxe
Posted March 22, 2014
The amount of people bothered by Early Access keeps amazing me. Would they rather the games stay hidden till they are released?
Posted March 22, 2014
I really hope gog.com gets more video games released for sale in 2014. I wanted to see at least 1,000 video games released on gog.com by December 31st, 2014 but it looks like this won't be happening.

However I want to see a bunch of exclusive PC versions of video games released for sale on gog.com only and not on Steam. This will make competition huge for gog.com and Steam. Maybe Steam will stop letting broken PC versions of video games get released on Steam for sale and only be able to be sold once they are fixed up and patched up to get rid of the bugs that break the video game.

I also do not want to see Early Access on gog.com it is getting annoying on Steam. Sure I like to support the video game developers and video game developers by giving them my money when I purchase the video games from them that they develop. But the video games must be completed with all of the features that the video game developers promised that will be included in the video game when it gets released for sale.

Steam should also improve it's customer support services if gog.com gets close to being bigger than Steam. Which at this point I really want gog.com to get 75+ million PC gamer customers.

Steam is crashing a lot and VALVe is not doing anything about increasing server capacity. Also Steam does not let you get a refund on video games that you purchase from Steam only once which is ridiculous and makes me sad. You are also renting the video games you purchase from Steam which makes me sad.
Posted March 22, 2014
avatar
Pheace: The amount of people bothered by Early Access keeps amazing me. Would they rather the games stay hidden till they are released?
For games focusing on multiplayer, yes. There is always the risk of game-burnout and/or people getting a bad first impression of the game and then never playing it again, so when the game is finally released in a (hopefully) relatively bug-free state, the player base might not be quite up to expectations. Player burnout is at least the main reason why I avoid early access, as I usually don't stay with any given game for a very long time (with a few exceptions).
Posted March 22, 2014
personally yes, i would rather not be aware of alot of the games, and continue to stumble over them time and time again knowing it might be over a year before the full release. i can give two examples of my personal reason for that.

Might and magic X was something i discovered when it came out on early accsess and tought it looked cool. i wanted to buy the early accsess because i wanted the game knowing i might get burned. Resisting temptation is frustrating and waiting without it having a release date is also something i found annoying.

Banished on the other was a complete surprice for me and the feeling of discovery to instant gratification is amazing.

i also dont feel that early accsess helps the development of a game more than a traditiona beta where its all behind closed doors. Im sure that goes both ways but that just how i feel about the process
Posted March 22, 2014
LOL - you're about three weeks late with that question.


As far as selling enough that Steam would notice... I don't think that's the issue. It comes down to selling enough games that the publishers notice, so that more and more of them would be willing to use this service that differs from Steam and the others in some really significant ways.
Posted March 22, 2014
avatar
ImBatman: i also dont feel that early accsess helps the development of a game more than a traditional beta where its all behind closed doors. Im sure that goes both ways but that just how i feel about the process
While it doesn't always help development (sometimes it does, Folk Tales is going for a completely different game now), I highly prefer the Early Access games exactly because it gives complete transparency before you have to buy the game. I can see how it might be difficult to have patience for a full release if you can't handle alpha/beta's well or don't want to burn out, but by the time the game comes out or is close to release, you'll have a plethora of options to find out exactly what state the game is in, what problems it might have, etc.

I love the transparency of it. I certainly vastly prefer to that mystery releases that end up being turds (new Aliens game for instance), but that you ended up picking up because it was finally out and you get swept up in the pre/release day hype.

I understand it's risky for multiplayer games though, there should be some level of fun playability there already to keep players interested at minimum.

It depends on the EA really. I had great fun with State of Decay EA, since that only needed PC optimization when it came to EA. Loved Prison Architect as a game over a year ago already and it has just gotten better in the meantime, I'm looking forward to replaying it with all the new features. Xenonauts is getting close to release now but even that was fun to play a while ago and a game like that I'll play and replay in the future plenty (like X-com)
Post edited March 22, 2014 by Pheace
Posted March 22, 2014
avatar
ImBatman: ...
I'm sorry, but GOG will not save you from considering your purchases and doing your research.
Posted March 22, 2014
avatar
Pheace: The amount of people bothered by Early Access keeps amazing me. Would they rather the games stay hidden till they are released?
If I'm bothered by anything, it is by your implication that there is no middle ground between complete non-disclosure and outright selling alpha builds of a game.

As for the main topic of the thread, I would very much like to see GOG become even greater competition to Steam. But Rome wasn't built in a day and neither will GOG's status as Steam's competitor. There is a lot of things that need to change and a lot hurdles that will need to be overcome before GOG can further improve their position in the DD marketplace.

To answer the OP's question, I would say...to some degree. GOG is quite obviously already taking strides to release brand new games as close to their original release date as possible. However, it's been a difficult journey trying to get AAA publishers/developers to release their older titles on the service as it is; trying to convince them to release their brand new titles DRM-free would be near impossible at this point. So all GOG can do is focus on the developers/publishers they CAN get to do that (primarily indies) and then slowly work their way up the chain.

But anyway, it's not just up to the willingness of the publishers/developers; GOG too will need to continue to evolve and expand its service if it wants to get more of them on board. The two things that I would regard as the biggest priorities in that regard would be:

1. a better update system. One of the reasons both customers and developers like Steam is because it simplifies updating of games, which is a big deal when it comes newer games. If GOG wants to get more newer games on the service and close to release/on release, they need to create a system that handles updates better than what they currently have. An optional client or an improved GOG Downloader would help in this regard.

2. some sort of multiplayer API. One reason for Steam's success that often goes unstated is the fact that it makes it easier for developers to intergrate multiplayer features into their games. I don't think it would be an exaggeration to say that multiplayer games are pretty much Steam's bread and butter. And given that such games are very popular, it's important for GOG to provide some sort of support in this area if it wants to expand its customer base and be more attractive to publishers/developers. I'm not saying that setting something like that up would be easy or cheap, but I do think it's necessary to ensure GOG's further growth.

Overall, though, I remain optimistic. In spite of the odds against it, GOG has been successful, has continued to grow every single year and is pretty much the closest thing to competition that Steam has. As long as GOG continues to evolve and expand, I think they can achieve even greater things.
Posted March 22, 2014
avatar
Gandos: If I'm bothered by anything, it is by your implication that there is no middle ground between complete non-disclosure and outright selling alpha builds of a game.
I'd be surprised if I implied it anywhere, I simply stated that was one of the bigger benefits of the current EA system, imo.
Posted March 22, 2014
avatar
Pheace: The amount of people bothered by Early Access keeps amazing me. Would they rather the games stay hidden till they are released?
I'm not bothered by it really, but at the same time I'd rather not see Early Access games show up for me. Having the option to say "Don't show early access stuff for me." would be a nice option to have as I am only interested in games that have been completed and are officially released and don't really have any interest in paying money to become a beta (or even alpha) tester. If there are people out there who do like Early Access in its various forms however and are willing to pay for it, then there is a market for it and I see no problem with them providing it as a service to the market that wants it.

It isn't everyone's thing though, and being inundated with non-completed titles in advertising all of the time does have some kind of effect on people. I know that I for one almost always ignore Steam's daily/weekly advertising now for many many months and just click "close" when it pops up because it seems like 50%+ of the titles being advertised are alpha/beta titles and not completed games. I just don't want to see it so I just close the thing and ignore the ads pretty much 99% of the time. Mind you I don't have a problem with it either as I get plenty of advertising from a multitude of other places for things I am actually interested in and a lot of that is stuff that is on Steam as well - although usually purchased through some re-seller such as GMG, GG, or others.

Steam itself could definitely use some user configurable and store-able filters though, including the ability to set a filter as the default.
Posted March 22, 2014
Well, I am loving my time with an early access game: Wasteland 2. So, I would love for GOG to get early access games, however they should be clearly marked as Alpha/Beta access. Now if someone doesn't understand what Alpha/Beta means, then perhaps you should do a little more research before you make rash purchases.

If you purchase an early access game you should realize the reason why it is early access...for testing...if you don't want incomplete features or bugs in your game wait for the full release. You can still purchase it if it has a discount, just don't play the damn game until it is released.
Posted March 22, 2014
avatar
Johnathanamz: I really hope gog.com gets more video games released for sale in 2014. I wanted to see at least 1,000 video games released on gog.com by December 31st, 2014 but it looks like this won't be happening.
It'll be tight to make 1000 by the end of the year, but I think it wont be too far off from that at the current rate and acceleration of growth on the site. The total game count is not visible at the moment on the homepage or browse games page probably due to a glitch, but I think it is somewhere around 725 titles or so, so that would be 275 more games or so to reach 1000, and we're almost 1/4 done the year so far. A rough ballpark guess is that we have about 280 days left in the year, so that'd be approximately 1 game per day including weekends which means 7 new titles per week. Sounds a bit steep and unlikely. ;) We're likely to see at least half of that I think though, so I wouldn't be surprised to see GOG finish off this year with 875 games in the catalogue or roughly half-way there. Of course there will also be new releases of existing games for Linux as well although that doesn't count towards the total per se.

This could all change if GOG were to score a couple big publishers that have been inaccessible in the past, or a good list of titles from a few publishers perhaps due to the pricing changes lately or something like that. There's the ongoing fantasy about LucasArts, Take Two etc. for example. :) Ya never know... :)
Pages:
1
2
3
This is my favourite topic
Community
General discussion (archive)Compete with steam? because im ready to try something else.(40 posts)(40 posts)
(40 posts)