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General discussion (archive)New Gaming Options: Follow-up Survey(519 posts)(519 posts)
(519 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted April 15, 2013
We (still) want to hear from you!

We recently asked you guys for feedback based on some potential games that we may be able to sign in the future. The results were pretty clear--and we will be sharing them with you all soon--but we did want to ask you a single follow-up question with an actual real-world game example. One of the games that we would like to add to our catalog is Planetary Annihilation. This is an RTS with many modern gaming features, and we figured we'd use it as our test example.

<iframe width="590" height="332" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Xpze54xgqtg" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Planetary Annihilation is distinctive for the following:

- Multiplayer and skirmish focused gameplay; there is no story-based single-player campaign, but AI skirmish matches provide a great single player experience.
- Optional persistent online features such as scoreboards, social features, achievements, and the online multiplayer campaign - a persistent galaxy-wide war; an account with the developer's online service is required in order to use these features.
- No activation, unique codes, or third-party accounts are required for single-player play or, LAN/direct connection multiplayer.
- A unique key is required for Internet multiplayer, and an account with the developer's service is only required for the persistent online features.

Now, that you know about the game's specifics, here's our question:
Post edited April 15, 2013 by G-Doc
Posted April 19, 2013
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jsjrodman: When the publisher goes out of business, permanently, or if my internet fails for 4 months, will i have an unmarred, complete gaming experience?
Yes. Single player is unaffected, and that includes skirmishes against AI and galaxy map conquest (again, against AI). LAN play is also unaffected, as is internet play with direct connect. The only thing you'll miss is the "official" galaxy map conquest, and the automatic matchmaking.
It is possible that unofficial servers will be available though, no info on that yet.
Posted April 19, 2013
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HypersomniacLive: No, I'm not saying that at all. I was asking StingingVelvet an honest question in regard to his suggestion that the customer base doesn't care (at all) if GOG.com will grow or not - independently of new or old games.

And I'm also not suggesting that new titles are their only way to grow, but they certainly can be (and probably already are) an additional and effective way. As long as these newer titles comply with GOG.com's core principles (in letter & spirit), I see no reason why they should turn them down if they have or can build a target-market for them.

Is it so unreasonable that they'd want to grow bigger and faster?
Remember when Netflix doubled their prices so they could successfully grow & compete in the video on demand market? That went swimmingly.

I believe that Gog's new focus HAS affected their efforts to provide older games. How could it not? You only have so many employess - they can't do everything at once. If it is the case that they were running out of publishers that would sell them the rights to sell old games, or that publishers were raising their prices to make it prohibitive, then I'm fine with their new focus. But they should tell us that because otherwise, I think they're just being another greedy, pointy-haired-boss-run-corporation-in-the-making.
Posted April 19, 2013
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twaitsfan: I believe that Gog's new focus HAS affected their efforts to provide older games. How could it not? You only have so many employess - they can't do everything at once. If it is the case that they were running out of publishers that would sell them the rights to sell old games, or that publishers were raising their prices to make it prohibitive, then I'm fine with their new focus. But they should tell us that because otherwise, I think they're just being another greedy, pointy-haired-boss-run-corporation-in-the-making.
I'm curious: why do you think that?
Posted April 19, 2013
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twaitsfan: I believe that Gog's new focus HAS affected their efforts to provide older games. How could it not? You only have so many employess - they can't do everything at once. If it is the case that they were running out of publishers that would sell them the rights to sell old games, or that publishers were raising their prices to make it prohibitive, then I'm fine with their new focus. But they should tell us that because otherwise, I think they're just being another greedy, pointy-haired-boss-run-corporation-in-the-making.
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TheEnigmaticT: I'm curious: why do you think that?
Because you're (potentially) watering down the awesome service that brought many of us here in the first place. I've seen many companies follow the 'expand expand expand' mantra that it seems like you're following, and in the end lost their identity.

As I said, if it has become impossible to operate the service the way it used to be (emergence of new competition undercutting you, dwindling suppliers/willing publishers, etc.) then I understand the need to branch out. But I've seen this story unfold too many times before not to be skeptical. That being said, I applaud your communication with your users with this survey and responding to this thread! As it stands, I buy from GOG above any other online digital seller.
Posted April 19, 2013
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twaitsfan: Because you're (potentially) watering down the awesome service that brought many of us here in the first place. I've seen many companies follow the 'expand expand expand' mantra that it seems like you're following, and in the end lost their identity.
But the identity is:
- Good classics - just this year GOG gave me two instabuy classics (Omikron and Undying).
- One fair price for everybody - nothing changes here; what's more, CD Project another shop just for Poland (which is all but a wealthy country) - I still prefer to get my games on GOG... and often I can get better deals here!
- DRM-free - I can run all my games without additional clients, limited activations or similar crap. They always come as I like them - as .exe installers. I heard some games have some features locked by cd-keys (Neverwinter Nights for example) but that doesn't bother me much.
Posted April 19, 2013
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TheEnigmaticT: I'm curious: why do you think that?
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twaitsfan: Because you're (potentially) watering down the awesome service that brought many of us here in the first place. I've seen many companies follow the 'expand expand expand' mantra that it seems like you're following, and in the end lost their identity.

As I said, if it has become impossible to operate the service the way it used to be (emergence of new competition undercutting you, dwindling suppliers/willing publishers, etc.) then I understand the need to branch out. But I've seen this story unfold too many times before not to be skeptical. That being said, I applaud your communication with your users with this survey and responding to this thread! As it stands, I buy from GOG above any other online digital seller.
See, I don't think we've watered things down. By any measure, we have more classics released each week than we did during our first two years' run; we have signed and released some of the most-wanted games in the last 6 months; we have brought classic games back for Mac gamers as well as PC, and we're continuing to further the cause of DRM-free gaming. By any measure I can think of to use--except, perhaps, that things were nebulously better "back then"--we've continued to bring you guys more of what brought you here in the first place.

As an added bonus, we also give you guys more other stuff as well. You may fear that we have only so many people to dedicate to bringing both old and new games to GOG, but we've nearly doubled in size since I started here, so the fact that we have more games on offer, more quality content, and a busier release schedule shouldn't surprise you. It's a sign that things are going well for us, and we want to strike while the iron's hot.
Posted April 19, 2013
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TheEnigmaticT: Happily, what we are at for GOG.com's future and what you guys are suggesting you'd like to see in the survey results match up quite nicely. I'm working on the report we're going to share tomorrow, so I'll be spending all my free time today on getting that finished up in time to post it by the Friday deadline. :)
Today's Friday, young man, your report's due. :) Are we still getting the results today?
Posted April 19, 2013
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twaitsfan: Because you're (potentially) watering down the awesome service that brought many of us here in the first place. I've seen many companies follow the 'expand expand expand' mantra that it seems like you're following, and in the end lost their identity.

As I said, if it has become impossible to operate the service the way it used to be (emergence of new competition undercutting you, dwindling suppliers/willing publishers, etc.) then I understand the need to branch out. But I've seen this story unfold too many times before not to be skeptical. That being said, I applaud your communication with your users with this survey and responding to this thread! As it stands, I buy from GOG above any other online digital seller.
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TheEnigmaticT: See, I don't think we've watered things down. By any measure, we have more classics released each week than we did during our first two years' run; we have signed and released some of the most-wanted games in the last 6 months; we have brought classic games back for Mac gamers as well as PC, and we're continuing to further the cause of DRM-free gaming. By any measure I can think of to use--except, perhaps, that things were nebulously better "back then"--we've continued to bring you guys more of what brought you here in the first place.

As an added bonus, we also give you guys more other stuff as well. You may fear that we have only so many people to dedicate to bringing both old and new games to GOG, but we've nearly doubled in size since I started here, so the fact that we have more games on offer, more quality content, and a busier release schedule shouldn't surprise you. It's a sign that things are going well for us, and we want to strike while the iron's hot.
That's good to hear! I'm not above saying that I may be mistaken with regards to whether or not things have been watered down. It seems that way to me, but like I said, I'm always willing to listen. I'm happy to hear that you guys are conscious of not 'watering things down'. Hearing that from you guys directly goes quite a way to allaying my concerns.

Keep up the old game part of things and you definitely won't lose me as a customer. Thanks for responding.
Posted April 19, 2013
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twaitsfan: I believe that Gog's new focus HAS affected their efforts to provide older games. How could it not? You only have so many employess - they can't do everything at once. If it is the case that they were running out of publishers that would sell them the rights to sell old games, or that publishers were raising their prices to make it prohibitive, then I'm fine with their new focus. But they should tell us that because otherwise, I think they're just being another greedy, pointy-haired-boss-run-corporation-in-the-making.
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TheEnigmaticT: I'm curious: why do you think that?
I'm not the original poster, but let me answer nevertheless. The Omerta rip-off DLCs which started the whole debate left a very bad taste. I understand that if you offer a game you also have to offer whatever extra content is available for it, so once Omerta was on GOG you made the correct choice, but maybe it showed poor judgement in terms of which new games to release on GOG in the first place, and failing to ask the publisher some questions beforehand.
The DLCs were followed by a poll that gave me a strong impression of "the business people we've hired have decided we must grow and to do that we're going to have to cave in to some of the modern game industry's practices, so please choose the form of rape you'd find least objectionable". And finally, Planetary Annihilation - which is probably guiltless in all this except for reminding us of the current trend where the gaming industry thinks they have discovered that by marketing games as "multiplayer-focused" they can control their customers, which I despise.
So if I'm mistaken in all this, all the better. But you did ask for feedback with these threads, and this is mine, which I offer in the hope that GOG will remain my preferred platform for buying games.
Posted April 19, 2013
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TheEnigmaticT: Happily, what we are at for GOG.com's future and what you guys are suggesting you'd like to see in the survey results match up quite nicely. I'm working on the report we're going to share tomorrow, so I'll be spending all my free time today on getting that finished up in time to post it by the Friday deadline. :)
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SCPM: Today's Friday, young man, your report's due. :) Are we still getting the results today?
It goes live in a touch under two hours; the report is all written and scheduled in the backend tool.
Posted April 19, 2013
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TheEnigmaticT: I'm curious: why do you think that?
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bernds: I'm not the original poster, but let me answer nevertheless. The Omerta rip-off DLCs which started the whole debate left a very bad taste. I understand that if you offer a game you also have to offer whatever extra content is available for it, so once Omerta was on GOG you made the correct choice, but maybe it showed poor judgement in terms of which new games to release on GOG in the first place, and failing to ask the publisher some questions beforehand.
The DLCs were followed by a poll that gave me a strong impression of "the business people we've hired have decided we must grow and to do that we're going to have to cave in to some of the modern game industry's practices, so please choose the form of rape you'd find least objectionable". And finally, Planetary Annihilation - which is probably guiltless in all this except for reminding us of the current trend where the gaming industry thinks they have discovered that by marketing games as "multiplayer-focused" they can control their customers, which I despise.
So if I'm mistaken in all this, all the better. But you did ask for feedback with these threads, and this is mine, which I offer in the hope that GOG will remain my preferred platform for buying games.
There was a very strong reaction to Omerta in general, and the DLC in particular. I personally think that the reaction was much stronger than the game deserved; I've played it myself and find the tactical part of the game to be quite fun. It's not exactly prohibition-era XCOM:EU, but it's quite serviceable.

That said, there's no question that the reaction to the DLC, in part, precipitated the survey. I think that you're taking the pessimists' view of the reasoning behind it, though. We sign a lot of games, old and new, and particularly in the indie scene, there are countless ways people try to think of how they can make their game make money. Some we know we're cool with. Some we know are a bad fit for us. And some? Well, some of them raise some questions. We think we know what we want to do with them, but we also want to gauge your opinion as well.

We've become one of the most successful digital distributors through a few qualities, but chiefly we have focused on thinking what we think the digital distribution market lacks--as gamers--and then went out to try and fill the need that was unaddressed. We are passionate about gaming, and we believe that we need to treat the gamers who pay our salaries right. That has been a constant thread in all of the work that we've done, and we hope that we've built up a little bit of trust in the community that we aren't going to go haring off and try to find ways to squeeze every last penny out of you.

I agree that if, say, news came that the CEO and MD of the company had both changed and then we ran that survey, yeah, that would look bad. But Guillaume is the same guy who lead the team when we signed EA, Activision, Ubisoft, and new games like Grimrock and FTL. Oleg is the same head of business development we've had for, like, four years. They aren't going to lead us all off in some crazy new direction, throw DRM on every game, and then laugh as you find that you can't play the stuff that you bought.

We're excited by the new opportunities that we see in the gaming world. We hope you'll enjoy them as much as we believe that we will, but don't think we're ever going to give up on our roots. We know what has gotten us here, and we're not dumb enough to throw that away. ;)
Posted April 19, 2013
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StingingVelvet: snip
And yet how many times have businesses over-extended going after the "big money" and ended up losing it all? In gaming specifically how many times have developers or publishers shunned their original audience to try and get more mainstream dollars only to gain very little and lose a lot?

You call it "staying afloat" but I would call it "steady, reliable profit." They set up a go-to website for selling old games for cheap to everyone in the world and made a profit on it. Anything they do from this point on risks that reliable setup. And if you read my post nowhere do I say they should NOT do this, I just said none of us really care about their profit margins or their desires for a bigger role. We come here for old games sold cheap and promise nothing beyond that, nor to stick around of they deviate from that.

It's just business, as they say.
Late reply due to different time zones.

Ok, I see your point – and I didn’t read your post as a suggestion to GOG to not go ahead with their plans; It just sounded a bid confusing when I first read it - I mean I’m not making any promises into eternity either (it goes without saying that if things shift into directions one doesn’t like, the logical thing for them is to not stick around), I just feel more supportive to companies that practice policies I can get behind and thus want them to do well and grow.
Just one more question - is GOG actively and consciously shunning their original audience? To me, the answer so far is “NO”. Is it correct to assume that you do feel like they are?


The gaming industry is going to do what it thinks is best for them based on all sorts of reasoning and motives - if you don't agree with it or feel you're not being treated fairly, you can always actively demonstrate it by not supporting those developers/ publishers/ distribution platforms.
As for GOG, TET stated how they think and feel - it’s up to each one of us if we want to believe him or not and to what degree.
Bottom line is that if one feels a particular game shouldn’t be in GOG’s catalogue for whatever reason, they can vote with their wallet. If enough people don’t buy it, then the message sent is clear enough, imho.
So far, GOG seems to be listening.
Not saying that things can’t change for the worse in the future, but it looks to me that there’s no evidence yet to support such a change is nurished.
Posted April 19, 2013
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HypersomniacLive: Not saying that things can’t change for the worse in the future, but it looks to me that there’s no evidence yet to support such a change is nurished.
That obviously depends on the person though, some people seem to think DLC is heinous evil. Some people thought selling anything new or indie at all was heinous evil. I disagree with those people, but they have their own priorities.

For me personally I am here mainly for simple exe downloads without DRM as much as I am old games. For the future on GOG looks pretty rosy, but not everyone is me ;)
Posted April 20, 2013
Nice to hear the thoughts of the most enigmatic T. :)

I agree, let them sign all the newer games they can get. It's not going to affect their values or keep us from getting more classics. The more new titles they secure, the more they send a message to the industry that DRM is worthless.
Posted April 20, 2013
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Export: Second of all, you significantly over-estimate how much the average person cares about DRM.
That's only your opinion.

Many people just refuse to buy games with DRM. There would be no GOG without DRM-free, because if you don't mind DRM, then there's no reason to not buy those games on Steam. Other DD stores just don't deliver all the services that Steam delivers.
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This is my favourite topic
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General discussion (archive)New Gaming Options: Follow-up Survey(519 posts)(519 posts)
(519 posts)