As much as I like the approach and especially the implicit ideal behind it, I think it’s a bit pollyanna on the game players’ side to believe that the relative success of GalCiv for Stardock is in any way due to the CD and whether or not you can pirate it. GalCiv is:
Relatively modest in terms of absolute production costs vis. other PC games out there.
Incredibly lucky to have positive word of mouth press from near shareware/indy days with Stardock.
A niche game without broad market appeal. Jim-Bob and Joe-Buck aren’t quite as likely to say “Hey, d00d, burn me a copy of GalCiv so I can stay up night building trade empires.” as they are to say “Hey, d00d, burn me a copy of Doom III so I can stay up night trying to spell ‘I love Betty’ on the bathroom walls with the spray patterns from shotgun blasts.”
I think in general it’s fair to say that a larger proportion of the folks who’d want to play GalCiv have the discretionary income and long-range outlook necessary to see the cause-effect relationship between pirating the game and more games of that quality presenting themselves. The “bigger” a game gets, the less I’d expect that to be true.
Everyone feels worse when they rip the little guy off.
DaveC is arguing that most people don’t know about cracks.[/quote]
Sure, a lot of people do. That’s not the point. As long as the perception is that it saves more than it costs it will continue. Also, unless there is some kind of online verification a serial code can be cracked or just passed on.
Getting back to the thread’s original question, when can I expect Railroad Tycoon 3, which I paid good money for, to stop treating me like a criminal when I try to play it (read: actually be able to play it)?
Why yes, the copy protection is indeed timing out trying to verify the disc. Philips PCRW1208 w/ 4.0 firmware.
If you’re having C.P. issues with the game, I suggest calling or e-mailing tech support. They probably have a list of CD Drives/Firmware releases with probs and can hopefully help you through it. It’s possible we’ll release an unprotected EXE at some near term point, but I can’t say for sure.
On the one hand, I think it should be incumbent upon the publisher to refund the money of anybody that can’t get the game to work.
On the other hand it is trivial to get the crack and then simply call up and say “my game doesn’t work give me my money back.”
The best solution to this problem was when EB and Gamestop would let you return the games and simply reseal/resell them. It’s really too bad that this practice was dropped (although I understand it was a financial burden for those companies).
I can’t get to my webspace or I’d upload some pix I took at Steamtown in Scranton, PA. They have a Big Boy on display there among others. We’re going up there for the Polar Express this winter near the Holidays I think.
I also have a lot of pix taken at the Pennsylvania Railroad Museum in Strasburg, PA which is also pretty close to where I live. One of the great things about living in Reading is all the railroad history nearby (or right downtown even).
St. Louis’ Museum of Transport is about 4 miles from PopTop’s offices, and has a lot of cool trains, including one of the few surviving Big-Boys. We DO have a Big Boy in the game, BTW, though not the other 3 engines mentioned a couple posts up. (Might do a Gas Turbine as a post-release freebie - we had thought about including one of those with the game).
We’re actually trying to film some footage at the Museum of Transport tomorrow (still have to get an agreement with the museum that is mutually agreeable). It’s unclear what we’ll do with the footage - but our artists have time on their hands now so one is doing a bit of documentary type stuff for unspecified future use.
I think it’s more a matter of time, as in, if you can delay the cracking of a game for a few days at release time, you can reap more sales during that critical "honeymoon’ phase. Or at least, that’s the thinking behind it.
I also don’t think that you can make an easy parallel between slumps in PC game sales and pirating, no more than you can between dropping music CD sales and mp3 trading. I think it’s more likely that console games are booming because their market is simply bigger.
The 6-4-4-6 IS pretty cool looking, but functionally, I’d have to imagine it’s stats would be pretty similar to the Challenger and Big-Boy we already have from that period. I dunno, maybe the 6-4-4-6 would be faster but with less grade ability or something.
Haven’t had a chance to pick up the game yet, but I’m really looking forward to it.
Phil, are any streamlined steam locomotives in the game? If not, yes, I’m with Jakub in hoping the mod community supplies some. This thread reminded me that back in the '80s in my office I had reproductions of two great travel posters. One is the famous bows-on view of the SS Normandie. I still have that one. The other was a fabulous painting of a streamlined Hudson pulling the Twentieth Century Limited. That was lost in a move and I’ve never been able to replace it. <sigh>
And Jakub, thanks for that toy train site. Great stuff.
