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General discussion (archive)Create a program manager(22 posts)(22 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted April 01, 2012
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hedwards: The thing is that now that they've also done away with their pricing scheme there isn't any reason why anybody should be buying from GOG rather than directly from the developer.
Assuming that the developer sells.

This might be true for Indy, but not for other games.

Either way, I don't feel this is related to a fixed 6$-10$ pricing scheme, but rather whether the developer sells for a lower price.

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hedwards: Most of the indie games I've bought over the last few years were DRM free and where the developer got pretty much all of the money.
Good point. However, GOG does go a step further and works on support for future OSes AND store a copy of your game on their servers.

Whether that is worth the extra cost of not really depends on how much GOG puts in it's pocket I suppose.

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hedwards: Indie games aren't likely to get any cheaper here than they are already available from many developers or through the ridiculous number of bundles.[

There are already enough of them at bargain prices due to the glut on the market that you're not likely to see them any less expensive or any more convenient by being brought here.
Less expensive, probably not (some bundles allow you to get the content for free after all, though I've never felt comfortable remunerating the devs such a low amount for their labor so I've abstained from buying the bundles as I didn't feel comfortable paying a decent price for those games either without doing some research and having a decent guarantee concerning their stability).

More convenient, I'd say probably.

By offering the titles on GOG, they can be conveniently added to a centralised repository of DRM-free titles associated with your GOG account and GOG provides a stronger support guarantee for the title (I might not know the Indy dev, but I know GOG and the stronger support guarantee for the present and the future that they provide).

Furthermore, the Indy devs probably appreciate the visibility that this web sites provide for their titles, as opposed to the erratic bundle deals that I mostly hear of through forum posts in here or through one of my friends.

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hedwards: Now, retro games, many of those are hard to get DRM free or otherwise and it's really where they ought to be focusing. Burying the games under what's likely to be a substantial number of indie releases isn't something that I would expect to help that aspect of their business.
Retro games are also a high maintenance mistress.

Beyond the need to secure the labyrinthine IPs, they need to make it work for modern OSes and even if it seems to work out of the box, they need to do some testing on it before they can even start selling it.

In contrast, they need to get permission from 1 developper to sell the Indy game and the game should work on a modern machine so there is no overhead for GOG there. There might be overhead in the future, but at that point, GOG's version will become more desirable, because it will work out of the box on a modern OS while the original version that was sold by the Indy dev won't.

So, I doubt that securing Indy games will divert much of their available man-hours from old games.

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hedwards: It would have made far, far more sense for them to expand their product lines into C64, Amiga and various console games that aren't readily available
That would be cool :).
Post edited April 01, 2012 by Magnitus
Posted April 01, 2012
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hedwards: The thing is that now that they've also done away with their pricing scheme there isn't any reason why anybody should be buying from GOG rather than directly from the developer.
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Magnitus: Assuming that the developer sells.

This might be true for Indy, but not for other games.

Either way, I don't feel this is related to a fixed 6$-10$ pricing scheme, but rather whether the developer sells for a lower price.
It's not inherently a problem, but it does make things like trades more complicated. Also, slightly unrelated, I don't like the fact that I now have to read the system requirements for a section of the catalog, yeah it's not a big deal, I just don't care for it.

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hedwards: Now, retro games, many of those are hard to get DRM free or otherwise and it's really where they ought to be focusing. Burying the games under what's likely to be a substantial number of indie releases isn't something that I would expect to help that aspect of their business.
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Magnitus: Retro games are also a high maintenance mistress.

Beyond the need to secure the labyrinthine IPs, they need to make it work for modern OSes and even if it seems to work out of the box, they need to do some testing on it before they can even start selling it.

In contrast, they need to get permission from 1 developper to sell the Indy game and the game should work on a modern machine so there is no overhead for GOG there. There might be overhead in the future, but at that point, GOG's version will become more desirable, because it will work out of the box on a modern OS while the original version that was sold by the Indy dev won't.

So, I doubt that securing Indy games will divert much of their available man-hours from old games.
Probably, but I'd rather they didn't commingle the games under one site. Even giving a secondary, but tightly linked, site would be preferable. It just dilutes attention from one or the other side of things.

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hedwards: It would have made far, far more sense for them to expand their product lines into C64, Amiga and various console games that aren't readily available
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Magnitus: That would be cool :).
Indeed, like I said, I think it would have been a much more logical expansion and one that would be less likely to raise a hubbub from anybody. I doubt though that it would be the most straightforward thing to do though.
Posted April 01, 2012
So few replies to the OP, so many "lets go over - yet again - the GOG catalogue expansion" ... sigh.

On topic - I'm not interested in such a development. It would not provide me with any features I want and would detract valuable development effort from other far more important things.

If you want a program launcher use your operating system.
If you want to know what your friends are playing - ask them.
If you want social media, use social media sites.
Posted April 01, 2012
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brianhutchison: So few replies to the OP, so many "lets go over - yet again - the GOG catalogue expansion" ... sigh.

On topic - I'm not interested in such a development. It would not provide me with any features I want and would detract valuable development effort from other far more important things.

If you want a program launcher use your operating system.
If you want to know what your friends are playing - ask them.
If you want social media, use social media sites.
What if we want to see our friends' wishlists before buying them a gift? Or if we want to see their reviews without asking that they keep a written record of all the games they've reviewed and then send it to us with their username so we can manually go through each game's reviews and find them?

Again, this wouldn't have to be tied to a client, but seems like an obvious set of features to add to GOG in some fashion. It would be very easy to avoid (don't friend anyone, or don't click the "friends" page or whatever). But if GOG did make a client I think there would be little point to it without an expanded feature set. Otherwise, it's just the downloader with auto-patching.

Which other things are you worried this would take time from? Of course such trade-offs exist, I'm not chellenging that at all. Just an honest question: do we know what we're weighing a client or other additional features against?
Posted April 01, 2012
GOG spend time sourcing the games and manuals and ensuring that they work on current systems as far as is possible. I would rather have more games, fully patched and working, than social features.

I believe there is a post kicking around here where someone has developed a script that lets you upload your wishlist to a wiki page somewhere. There are even gifting threads where you can post wishlists for random gifting from "strangers".

As has been stated, once patched, most of the games on here (the old ones at least, seldom require further patching - so auto-patching isn't that big a deal. That may change with the newer and indie games coming along.

The way things are at the moment you don't even need to use the downloader - you can download them straight from the browser. The downloader is little more than a convenience that auto-starts the installer when the download finishes. I personally like it that way.

That's just my personal opinion, if enough people are interested and GOG decided to do it I wont be running around screaming and waving my arms in the air in horror screaming "woe is me they've corrupted my beloved GOG" or anything.

But this is about the only forum I post on these days - so I'm not exactly a social media animal.
Posted April 01, 2012
You can add most GOG games as a shortcut to steam already (only the ScummVM games seem to be unhappy with it), so this is not really necessary.
Posted April 01, 2012
Here's the link to GOG Wiki:
http://www.gogwiki.com/index.php?title=Main_Page

Post your wishlist there, and your friends can see games you want if they want to buy you one.
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This is my favourite topic
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General discussion (archive)Create a program manager(22 posts)(22 posts)
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