The future of Flightsim - an interesting roundtable

[gojozoom]

Hi guys,

I just foundthis rather interesting interview with some of the big guns in the flightsim market. It gives a pretty accurate view of what we can expect in the future....

Dan

[Charl]

Interesting read...
It probably is time for something a little different, can the PC remain the platform of choice, or will consoles rule (at present: 80% of the market)?

QUOTE

Rampant piracy has killed the PC as the premier platform for game development. Whether it can live on as a niche market remains to be seen.[/quote]

I see stuff being done for FSX that was done before, and before.
Can it be interesting enough to do again, when MS Flight arrives?

It's been so many years...wonder what would amuse an ex-flightsimmer?

[Peppermint]

I'm kind of getting sick of the whole 'blame it on piracy' thing. Sure its a problem, but so is charging $100 for a heap of you know what game that's full of bugs, incompatibilities etc etc. The developers are shooting themselves in the foot in my opinion.

[Michael]

Piracy didn't kill the PC - the ease of a console (shove a disc in) and specifically the ease to play with friends on a console killed the PC.

[Ian Warren]

'End off the day' its what you want ''blame it on piracy' yip , you are not going to stop this , be amazing to see a persons registered list (ie;mine - my payware) im not even going to start this ,that is not the point , if you are part off the community you should be backing the designers .... 'end off the day' the future is backing all come free or pay ware
The future of Flightsim - an interesting roundtable

[Rotordude]

QUOTE (Ian Warren @ Jan 8 2011, 02:35 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

'[b]if you are part off the community you should be backing the designers .... 'end off the day' [color="#8B0000"]the future is backing all come free or pay ware

That is a very true quote, BUT what has to happen is a lot of payware designers need to get off their high horse they are on and acknowledge a very big fact that we the customer pay sometimes huge money for this stuff and they need to back us.
As a customer we have a right to air a complaint if we the customer are not happy with something and not be flamed / banned from support forums or have threads deleted because you do so. This has not happened to me, but I have seen it many a time.
If our money is good enough for designers then the swings and round-a-bouts must be good enough for the paying customer.

[Charl]

There's probably room for a mediation forum in the flightsim business...
Vendors and consumers often have different expectations: where they do not meet, there is unhappiness.

Abuse (from either side) cannot produce a good result.

Taking revenge on a vendor by stealing his product, cannot produce a good long-term result either.
(He will go out of business, or get bitter and twisted about all the lost revenue: bad result)

Backing the good folk who produce stuff can produce a result.
If there's a problem with a product, and constructive criticism is given, perhaps a fix can be found.
Or at least, the problem can be avoided next time.
This adds to the hobby.

Most of all, the Them and Us attitude does not add to the hobby.

EDIT: And, increasing piracy absolutely will kill (high quality) PC simulation.
Why on earth should someone sweat it out and see half his income go down the drain because some lowlife steals it, when he can produce for a console and get paid??
The consumers will decide the future of flight simming.
There are those that pay, but if it becomes more popular to "borrow" stuff and not pay, it is dead.
Which consumer are you, and do you feel like gambling?

[Rotordude]

QUOTE (Charl @ Jan 8 2011, 02:09 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Which consumer are you, and do you feel like gambling?

Thats a good question, and the answer for me is. - If the jar say's it has peanut butter inside and I take it home to find it hasn't, I get would be extremely P*$SED off.
I gamble every time I purchase an addon online.

[Charl]

That's exactly what the forums are about - it's a rare instance where you will be buying into something that hasn't been chewed to death.
i had an impulse buy recently - Gibraltar X (which works for me in FS9) - and discovered too late that I couldn't live with their treatment of the Rock.
Caveat Emptor!
Credit to Aerosoft, they let my comments stand on their support pages, because I tried not to be too negative in my criticism.
What they made clear in response was, that for the price, that was as detailed as the scenery could go.
Someone buying the product would have to make the call about what was important to them in the scenery, as a result.

I don't think a vendor would ever actively try to rip you off, it could really only happen once.

[toprob]

QUOTE (Charl @ Jan 8 2011, 02:09 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Taking revenge on a vendor by stealing his product, cannot produce a good long-term result either.
(He will go out of business, or get bitter and twisted about all the lost revenue: bad result)

I agree that this is the potential extreme of piracy, but they claim to be charging more because of piracy, yet most console games (which they claim are not prone to piracy) actually cost MORE than PC games! It's also in danger of causing more harm than good - I virtually NEVER pay full price for a PC game these days - I wait for sales, or for the title to go to budget ranges, etc. FS products are different, but by and large these are more realistically priced - perhaps because of the fact that flight sim is a bit of a niche market and the producers perhaps can't afford to price themselves out of the market?

QUOTE

Backing the good folk who produce stuff can produce a result.
If there's a problem with a product, and constructive criticism is given, perhaps a fix can be found.
Or at least, the problem can be avoided next time.
This adds to the hobby.

Most of all, the Them and Us attitude does not add to the hobby.[/quote]

Absolutely - I really appreciate a company that acts as though they too are sim FANS...and given that they really respect their customers point of view because they know where they are coming from.

QUOTE

EDIT: And, increasing piracy absolutely will kill (high quality) PC simulation.
Why on earth should someone sweat it out and see half his income go down the drain because some lowlife steals it, when he can produce for a console and get paid??
The consumers will decide the future of flight simming.
There are those that pay, but if it becomes more popular to "borrow" stuff and not pay, it is dead.[/quote]

see, this is the attitude that really annoys me - as if it's all the fault of "pirates". Many very, very commerically successful games have NO anti-piracy protection at all....Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas for example... If you've ever been part of "the scene", or know someone who has, or just lurked and watched what goes on, you'd know that apart from the ones that actually crack, copy, and distribute pirated copies of software (who do it for the thrill, or for bragging rights a lot of the time), most people are in it because the software is literally priced to high for them. I firmly believe that every software product has an optimum price, and currently, in my opinion, many games are released to the market at well above their "optimum" price. I could go on and on about this for ages, but I believe that if a game like Call of Duty Black Ops, which retailed as a new release on PC for $120 (OMG - what were they thinking?!?!?!?!?) was priced closer to what it probably will AVERAGE over it's saleable life (which would be more like $70 or $80), the revenue would be AT LEAST the same over the lifetime of the game, and perhaps even higher since at no one time would it seme to be OVER-priced.

Ok, time to crawl back under my rock....wheres my wine???!

markll

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Joined: Wed Jun 04, 2008 6:19 am

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[wairoaboy]

QUOTE (markll @ Jan 12 2011, 08:56 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I agree that this is the potential extreme of piracy, but they claim to be charging more because of piracy, yet most console games (which they claim are not prone to piracy) actually cost MORE than PC games! It's also in danger of causing more harm than good - I virtually NEVER pay full price for a PC game these days - I wait for sales, or for the title to go to budget ranges, etc. FS products are different, but by and large these are more realistically priced - perhaps because of the fact that flight sim is a bit of a niche market and the producers perhaps can't afford to price themselves out of the market?



Absolutely - I really appreciate a company that acts as though they too are sim FANS...and given that they really respect their customers point of view because they know where they are coming from.



see, this is the attitude that really annoys me - as if it's all the fault of "pirates". Many very, very commerically successful games have NO anti-piracy protection at all....Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas for example... If you've ever been part of "the scene", or know someone who has, or just lurked and watched what goes on, you'd know that apart from the ones that actually crack, copy, and distribute pirated copies of software (who do it for the thrill, or for bragging rights a lot of the time), most people are in it because the software is literally priced to high for them. I firmly believe that every software product has an optimum price, and currently, in my opinion, many games are released to the market at well above their "optimum" price. I could go on and on about this for ages, but I believe that if a game like Call of Duty Black Ops, which retailed as a new release on PC for $120 (OMG - what were they thinking?!?!?!?!?) was priced closer to what it probably will AVERAGE over it's saleable life (which would be more like $70 or $80), the revenue would be AT LEAST the same over the lifetime of the game, and perhaps even higher since at no one time would it seme to be OVER-priced.

Ok, time to crawl back under my rock....wheres my wine???!

Yes I agree free much so...as for the rest, well....my silence will speak for itself

[toprob]

QUOTE (markll @ Jan 12 2011, 08:56 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

see, this is the attitude that really annoys me - as if it's all the fault of "pirates". Many very, very commerically successful games have NO anti-piracy protection at all....Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas for example... If you've ever been part of "the scene", or know someone who has, or just lurked and watched what goes on, you'd know that apart from the ones that actually crack, copy, and distribute pirated copies of software (who do it for the thrill, or for bragging rights a lot of the time), most people are in it because the software is literally priced to high for them.

I can agree with a lot of what you say -- I don't think I'd ever pay more than $100 for a console game, my acceptable price point is around $80 for something great. I generally wait a while and pick things up on special, when the rush is over. I need to be patient, but that's no real problem...

However I can't agree with your point about lack of affordability leading to piracy -- there are a lot of things I can't afford, even today I couldn't afford some of the things I wanted (specifically cashews, stone fruit and avocados:) so I am doing without. I can't make the jump from 'hey, avocados are over-priced at the momentt' to 'I'll just stuff this avocado down my trousers.' There are some things I'll never be able to afford (a new car, a nice house, for instance) and I can't afford to buy new, high-priced games. That's life. Luckily there are cheaper alternatives which don't involve outright theft.

I see your point about the higher price of console games, despite the lower chance of piracy. It does seem that the price is set that high precisely because piracy is unlikely, so you either pay up or do without, rather that what the games folks maintain -- that piracy drives up the price. Hmm. However I'd rather see the market determine the prices -- too expensive for everybody, and the price would soon come down.

The original linked discussion does tend to highlight that fact that the games market is a lot different from the niche simulation market. Two entirely different things, with two entirely different costing issues. If you spend two years and $50 million developing a game, and sell 7 millions copies at US$50, you probably make a good profit, a lot of which can be used to produce the next great game. (but there's a risk that it will fail dismally...) If you spend the same amount of time -- but a lot less money -- to develop a good sim addon, you might find a few thousand customers at the very most. If I had all the FSX owners to sell to, I'd be able to sell scenery for 50 cents (factoring in marketing and distribution costs, my take might be closer to 5 cents...) but if I'm lucky I might find 500 customers. No commonality there -- entirely different economies of scale.

[ZK-MAT]

Hmmmm, my in laws have a hobby orchard of 200 avocado trees. I don't like them, if I can get down your way again Robin I'll bring a box!

[Ian Warren]

QUOTE (toprob @ Jan 12 2011, 11:43 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I can agree with a lot of what you say -- I don't think I'd ever pay more than $100 for a console game, my acceptable price point is around $80 for something great. I generally wait a while and pick things up on special, when the rush is over. I need to be patient, but that's no real problem...

My attitude exactly - though there are one or two game franchises I won't wait long for (Whereforeart thou Diablo III? )

QUOTE

However I can't agree with your point about lack of affordability leading to piracy -- there are a lot of things I can't afford, even today I couldn't afford some of the things I wanted (specifically cashews, stone fruit and avocados:) so I am doing without. I can't make the jump from 'hey, avocados are over-priced at the momentt' to 'I'll just stuff this avocado down my trousers.' There are some things I'll never be able to afford (a new car, a nice house, for instance) and I can't afford to buy new, high-priced games. That's life. Luckily there are cheaper alternatives which don't involve outright theft.[/quote]

Sorry - I wasn't trying to imply that everyone who can't afford a piece of software is going to go out and grab a pirate copy instead, rather that it's been my experience that most of those that are in it for the purpose of obtaining and USING the software, at least started out doing it because they found something they wanted too expensive. I like your avocado analogy, though I'm not a fan of that nasty green paste inside them myself, but I still stick to my point - software IS a different beast, you're talking about something that has no physical form. I'm sure I will be able to come up with a different analogy to illustrate what I mean, but I'm too tired to think of one right now!

QUOTE

I see your point about the higher price of console games, despite the lower chance of piracy. It does seem that the price is set that high precisely because piracy is unlikely, so you either pay up or do without, rather that what the games folks maintain -- that piracy drives up the price. Hmm. However I'd rather see the market determine the prices -- too expensive for everybody, and the price would soon come down.[/quote]

Interesting too that the "you cant copy console games" attitude seems to prevail despite the fact that it IS possible to pirate console games - just look at all the PS3 USB dongles on trademe, or check the torrent sites for console games, for example. Anyone remember mod-chips for the original PS and Xboxes? Its maybe not as common as with PCs, but it's definitely happening. Yet you can even TRADE console games you've "finished", and you can RENT THEM from the video store as though they're wrapped in impregnable defences....

QUOTE

The original linked discussion does tend to highlight that fact that the games market is a lot different from the niche simulation market. Two entirely different things, with two entirely different costing issues. If you spend two years and $50 million developing a game, and sell 7 millions copies at US$50, you probably make a good profit, a lot of which can be used to produce the next great game. (but there's a risk that it will fail dismally...) If you spend the same amount of time -- but a lot less money -- to develop a good sim addon, you might find a few thousand customers at the very most. If I had all the FSX owners to sell to, I'd be able to sell scenery for 50 cents (factoring in marketing and distribution costs, my take might be closer to 5 cents...) but if I'm lucky I might find 500 customers. No commonality there -- entirely different economies of scale.[/quote]

And yet, counter to my (admittedly limited) understanding of economic theory, the ones with the larger scale sell for a much higher unit price? Not sure how that works...! Even if you factor in the fact that a typical blockbuster franchise release may have been in the works for a couple of years, and had a team of 50+ working on it, the scale is THAT MUCH bigger, that it still seems ridiculous that you pay so much more.

And of course, I see your point about sim addons being a totally different beast to, say, a major FPS game release. Perhaps its like comparing Avocados to bottles Milk or something, but still...

markll

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Joined: Wed Jun 04, 2008 6:19 am

Posts: 345

Location: Whitby

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[Ian Warren]

QUOTE (ZK-MAT @ Jan 12 2011, 11:56 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

a hobby orchard of 200 avocado trees.

Avocado Yummy ... avocado/apricot pasta on chicken ..or thin sliced beef , i would pay for them Matt .. bring em home ..... any thing is worth something and it was a mission to teach downloading games /software/movies is the thing not to do , you pay for what you get , to many cheapskates Pity for them , away from that - looking at the recent screens .. this really is FSE , now back to them avocado trees.

[toprob]

QUOTE

Interesting too that the "you cant copy console games" attitude seems to prevail despite the fact that it IS possible to pirate console games - just look at all the PS3 USB dongles on trademe, or check the torrent sites for console games, for example. Anyone remember mod-chips for the original PS and Xboxes? Its maybe not as common as with PCs, but it's definitely happening. Yet you can even TRADE console games you've "finished", and you can RENT THEM from the video store as though they're wrapped in impregnable defences....[/quote]

I think you've only just scratched the surface of the whole whacky system, mentioning renting. For a long time we accepted that buying music meant buying a physical disc (vinyl or CD), so the concept of selling or lending made sense -- although the licensing was probably no different from today. I don't think it ever mattered to anyone that we purchased a license to listen to the music -- this was so tied to the actual disc that it was a lot easier to think of owning the disc, rather than the right to play it. So it was ok to consider them like books -- lend them, give them away, sell them, and even borrow them from the library. This easily transfers to DVDs and games.

Once it became commonplace to be able to copy them, the music industry etc just expected everyone to grasp the notion of licensing -- and it just didn't happen. So at the moment a lot of people are just unable to see it as a matter of right or wrong, it just happens -- borrow a CD from a friend, put it in your computer to have a listen, and it is just as easy to rip it as listen to it.

So once we get to media-less stuff like FS downloads, there is a huge number of people who have been trained to believe that easily available means freely available. It is hard to blame them really. I have been known to go on about pirate scum, but my attitude has softened a lot.

I have no idea what the answer is, and I don't think that anyone really has an answer. For my own stuff, I rely on convincing people that they will be better off long-term if they pay me, and this seems to work. And I don't subscribe to the idea that each illegal download equals one lost sale -- it's closer to 1 in 10. If one out of ten who illegally downloaded my scenery bought it, I'd actually have a little to put back into resources to produce more scenery. But waddaya gunna do...

[AndrewJamez]

I agree that every pirated copy does not equal a lost sale. Thats why the music industry's "lost revenue to piracy' figures seem so out of proportion. I think that most people that willingly and knowingly copy games, music,software and movies would 9 times out of 10 not part with any money to obtain it. Therefore is only theft without lost revenue, someting that the entertainment industry needs to realise and accept before they lose more revenue to paying custmers due to some of the clunky DRM systems that we are starting to see in some software.

[Ian Warren]

One flightsimmer who stops at my hanger , Greg 'Scaber' Mackenzie put it in a nutshell the other day looking across my shelves , "I do like the box sets , it shows you have payed for them " . When this new 'Flight ' appears , it will join with the many others i have .

[Charl]

Commerce has a way of dealing with trading issues.

Look at the way Sony failed to protect their music rights (By installing a rootkit on your computer)
Then look at how Apple just cleaned up with iTunes - a dollar here, a dollar there, full previews etc.
Even the Beatles finally got converted to the Apple religion.

Piracy is really just a symptom of a broken trading model.

BTW there really is nothing like a GOOD avocado.
And almost nothing worse than a BAD one...

[toprob]

QUOTE (AndrewJamez @ Jan 13 2011, 12:16 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I agree that every pirated copy does not equal a lost sale. Thats why the music industry's "lost revenue to piracy' figures seem so out of proportion. I think that most people that willingly and knowingly copy games, music,software and movies would 9 times out of 10 not part with any money to obtain it. Therefore is only theft without lost revenue, someting that the entertainment industry needs to realise and accept before they lose more revenue to paying custmers due to some of the clunky DRM systems that we are starting to see in some software.

Not a big fan of DRM this month -- I've got a new phone, and started to use a new media player on my PC, so between them a great chunk of my music is unplayable at the moment. I'm sure I can sort it out by tracking down the licenses, but a) I don't know where to start, and b) I don't have the time. Luckily I still rely on CDs for the bulk of it...

HOWEVER, I'm also a bit wary of the people who say that rampant piracy will continue until the music/etc industry sorts themselves out, and then go on to condone it for this reason. Personally I think that the music industry is like any other industry which had a highly desirable and controllable product, and therefore pushes their market grab to the limit. (ahem... oil industry...)
Of course things have to change now that they've lost the control they had, but you can't blame them for trying to hold on for as long as they can.
I imagine the conversation like this:
'We're losing bucket loads to piracy!'
'Prove it, give us a precise dollar value.'
'Ok, 100,000 song downloads at $1 each...'
'But you can't say how many of those would actually buy a song, so you have no proof. Come back when you have something concrete. In the meantime we'll be downloading everything we can, since it doesn't cost you anything...'

So the real question is whether or not you think that these industries lose out to piracy. I don't know or care much, but I do know that I personally lose out. Sometimes I spend a week tracking down a few traceable folk who have illegally downloaded my scenery, and usually end up collecting payment for some. This can turn a normal poor income into a reasonable income for that week, but it does take time which I'd rather spend making scenery...

QUOTE (Charl @ Jan 13 2011, 12:54 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Commerce has a way of dealing with trading issues.

Look at the way Sony failed to protect their music rights (By installing a rootkit on your computer)
Then look at how Apple just cleaned up with iTunes - a dollar here, a dollar there, full previews etc.
Even the Beatles finally got converted to the Apple religion.

Piracy is really just a symptom of a broken trading model.

BTW there really is nothing like a GOOD avocado.
And almost nothing worse than a BAD one...

Mmmm, apple and avocado...