Downloadable Games are Important

[vasudaprime]

The idea of online vn's is novel and interesting, but I never make use of those already made, since it offers nothing new that makes them more interesting than what I have on my harddisk. I was talking with some others about this and we pretty much came to the same conclusion - we don't particularly hate the idea, but we don't see us making use of it either.

Speaking only for myself, as a customer, Vatina pretty much hit the nail on the head for me. When I buy a product that is restricted in some manner then I expect there to be something on offer to offset the negatives of that restriction.

For example, with Steam the restriction is that an individual copy of each game has to be registered with each Steam account. I.e. you can't share your game disk with other live-at-home family members, unless you're prepared to share your Steam account. In which case I'm guessing that would mean only one person would get to play at a time, short of trying to fiddle around with the offline mode. Also there's the non-zero risk that Valve might go bankrupt and Steam disappears. However, the upsides to Steam are:

1. Not having to worry about the game disk. If I lose it, I can download the entire game again.
2. Discounts on pre-orders.
3. Being able to download a pre-order to hard disk before the game is released. Then when it is, I only have to download a decryption key. This means I can be playing at soon as the clock ticks over to midnight on release day, so I don't have to wait for a copy to arrive at my door (online ordering), or visit a shop to buy the game there.
4. I'm still able to play the game whilst offline.
5. Some miscellaneous features, such as friends lists, chatting across games, etc. but I don't really use those.

If Valve should go bankrupt, and they didn't unlock the Steam client, then I suppose I'd have to resort to piracy to obtain a copy of the games I've purchased. A rather unsavoury prospect, but the benefits mean I'm willing to take that chance, and so far Valve haven't done anything to cause me to question my trust in them. Furthermore, the 'piracy option' would only become necessary prior to formatting my computer, as the offline mode means I'd still be able to play my games until I have to login to my Steam account. That would be necessary when I reinstall the Steam client, i.e. after a format.

When it comes to online only visual novels the downsides are:

1. No way to play the game offline. Single player games (and books) are one of the things I turn to when my connection goes down. An uncommon event, but it can happen.
2. No way to keep playing the game if the company should go bankrupt. I'd be relying on their goodwill to release the games for offline play, and if they didn't then I wouldn't be able to play said game again.

With those downsides in mind, I have to ask what are the upsides that will offset them? I keep hearing that it will increase revenue for the developer due to decreased piracy, but what does that mean for me, the paying customer? What benefits do I get from online-only games? Because as it stands, if there are no benefits to me, then given the choice between a downloadable game, and one that's online-only, I'd pay for the downloadable game.

--edit--

It turns out I should actually spend some time reading about online-only solutions (e.g. NovelStream) :p Hmm, about the only upside (for me) that I can see would be cross-compatibility with various Internet devices (e.g. Android, iOS, etc). I'm not sure if that's sufficient though... I suppose I'd have to try a game or two on my phone to see what I thought of the experience.

[DaFool]

OnLive is live! Anyone tried it yet?

Curious, since I'm not in U.S., and I only have 1.2Mbps connection.

(Also, my impression is that many people here have 'Bah, humbug!' attitude towards cloud gaming).

As a side-topic, OnLive is supposed to meld the Quality vs Convenience argument as explained in the following slide (which pits High Quality [Inconvenient] Console games against Low Quality [Convenient] Social / Web games ... which is ironic since console games are supposed to be more convenient than hardcore PC games)

http://www.slideshare.net/bcousins/king ... -future-of

My main beef with streaming games is that while they're more convenient to the end user, they're extremely inconvenient for the developer, since they eat up resources in needing to implement facebook integration, twitter integration, drm handshakes, as well as pass the burden of bandwidth onto the site host.

[Mikan]

From a directly financial standpoint I don't see any benefit in making a downloadable game: People will just pirate it and play it (I, for one, cannot remember the last time I bought a game after Starcraft Broodwar. Even that I initially pirated, and then bought ONLY because my cracked version stopped working and I was on SC like a crackhead on crack and needed it badly lol. I blame my blood.)

On other other hand, something where people will have to pay a subscription fee to play.. that would be quite nice. Which is why I dipped into making MMOs for a little while, but for now I'm willing to settle for a nice VN I can showcase to interested programmers. My goal for making a VN isn't money -- it's mostly to demonstrate and showcase...


But, especially considering all the times I looked in my wallet to find more receipts and old candy wrappers in it than dollar bills, MONEY WOULD BE NICE.


I would be totally content with drawing cartoons and making VNs all day if I could afford to do so, but alas what I do for fun does not yield any money.

[jack_norton]

People buy downloadable games, otherwise Steam, D2D, Gamersgate wouldn't exist... they would be bankrupt tomorrow morning.
Next year probably will do a MMO but because of the different monetization type, not really because of piracy.

[Topagae]

"Neque porro quisquam est qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit..."

[littleramyun]

I'm late to the party, but I wanted to put in some of my own preferences as an avid consumer of visual novel games.

Speaking only of my own personal preferences, I will not play an online visual novel, even for free. I want my file and to be able to put it on every computer I own. Preferably, I want my game on a cd/dvd in a nice little package. I don't like to play browser based games whatsoever, and I only play multiplayer online games. My husband plays lots of online, browser based, and client based games, but they're all short skirmish types or shooters, nothing that will take several hours to complete, and once again, they're all multiplayer. I don't see any benefit, as a buyer, to purchase an online based game that is single player. What I do find to be valuable is mobile gaming. I like to be able to have games on my iPod Touch because I take it everywhere I go. I think if there is anything to be ventured, it would be porting to iphone/ipad and other mobile devices, and that has begun. Specifically in the realm of VNs, I don't see any benefit to taking it online. Personally, there wouldn't be anything you could do that would get me to buy it, even if it were a really good game. It would be a deal breaker for me. On the other hand, though many of them have terrible translations, I've bought every single visual novel available for the iPhone and will continue to do so.

Just my view as a consumer. I'm sure there is a market for them, but I can't imagine it being very large, even if piracy was completely eradicated.

[Topagae]

"Neque porro quisquam est qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit..."

[littleramyun]

What if it's both littleramyun?

If it's all of the above, that's great. It'd be yet another venue for gamers, like vNovel. vNovel has started working with existing downloadables. But it was my understanding that the goal was to get away from downloadable games altogether.

[Topagae]

"Neque porro quisquam est qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit..."

[neowired]

There is a clear difference between online and download-able games.
There are two types of user needs

First type of user is someone who looks for a deep, long, time consuming experience of a high quality, this user demands control over what he pays for and has time to play with it.

Second type of user has limited time, is looking for something quick, relaxing, which doesn't need to be engaging, something to start and finish quickly, this user won't care much if the game vanishes, because he didn't care much from the beginning, he will just move onto another game.
(visual novels usually go here, because you can usually play a simple game of tetris, but I certainly have never seen a person who prefers to read 50 x 1000 word of short stories rather than reading a good book. Novels are... duh, story intensive, usually, an intimate sort of experience, so naturally you would want to download it rather than play it online)

Being an user of the first type doesn't exclude being a user of the second type. People can and often are both.

There has been a large shift of users to the second type, I can understand that, because I do the same, they are more convenient. But that doesn't mean the first type will vanish, not at all. Sometimes you wish for something quick and easy, but if you have a bit more of free time, you sometimes wish for something longer, deeper, of higher quality. This seems natural and unlikely to ever go away.

Vanishing games, really? Our hard drive capacity is doubling every year or so, we are flooded with free flash games, and each of those sites repeats most of those games. I find the possibility of any at least slightly popular online flash game to vanish very improbable, as long as there is any demand at all, why would someone remove it and lower his revenue from it? It seems much more likely that they will be duplicated endlessly on more of those online game site clones.

The two above don't really include games like MMORPG, which are something else entirely. I would even place them above the first type, because they can often be much much harder to install/start, and take much more playing time that the other two types. And even mmorpgs can and are pirated and emulated. But keep in mind, even if mmorpg's would be playable offline, they wouldn't really be. Because the very medium makes it impossible to archive, because a large part of the game consists of other live users, so it's just something you have to live with.
If you compare MMORPG to MMOG, there is a large difference, MMOG are often more like the second model, because they are often short browser based games, but not always. There are MMOG which would fit the first type, and those which would fit the second type.

As long as people like a game it is unlikely to ever vanish. As long as there is some way to emulate... and if there is enough demand, well, that's why there are so many emulators and thousands of very old games out there)

That's my take on this problem

[jack_norton]

Vanishing games, really? Our hard drive capacity is doubling every year or so, we are flooded with free flash games, and each of those sites repeats most of those games. I find the possibility of any at least slightly popular online flash game to vanish very improbable, as long as there is any demand at all, why would someone remove it and lower his revenue from it? It seems much more likely that they will be duplicated endlessly on more of those online game site clones.

It's different from flash: the problem is only for those games that are playable only from the author's server. Even Flower Shop online you see on my site is only an iframe that points to vNovel website. If somehow unfortunately they disappear, that version will too (of course the author could upload it on some free hosting or make source code available).

[Ren]

Plus, your hard drive may as well be very capable, but if it gets fried, it gets fried.
If the game is somehow protected, I can't just go around and ask whoever bought it to let me play their copy, unless you want to hack into the code and make it so anyone can.

This thread, as I understand it was born to talk about games that you're not going to be able to download to your hard drive anyway, so the capacity of the HD is irrelevant. If the company that hosts games that you can play only with your web browser goes under, you're out of luck, as Jack said.