Confession...

[Harry]

One thing thats really gotten my goat recently in the way games are advertised is that they throw up all these pre-rendered shots and clips (e.g. Kane and Lynch 2) and seem to forget that the reason most of us play games is not to watch the cutscenes but to be IN the action.

It's almost as if the major publishers would rather be making a film and just 'happened' to make some gameplay on the side just to make the player feel like they actually did something meaningful to make the next cutscene appear.

Demo's should be a major part of a videogame's marketing strategy. Very few companies realise that if you put out a thoroughly wretched and bland game, you might get large sales because you kept it all hush hush, but the word of mouth and ill feelings spread quick and remain in a consumers mind when the next game comes 'round. Customer loyalty is a big issue which companies like Frictional Games understand, and which the big companies like EA and Activision will never command.

Good to hear the OP came around to his senses, but its still kind of a bit strange. Frictional DID release a demo which in my mind ticked all the boxes it needed to to inform a potential buyer about graphics/plot/gameplay so there really is no excuse for pirating the full version. On top of that, many of these early release pirated games are usually review copies, which usually have bugs and glitches that get fixed right before going gold. It's hard to see how one can make a decision to purchase when you're playing an incomplete product.

Personally, I usually go onto pirate sites to get no-cd cracks for my own games or to remove some of the purely evil DRM measures companies use but indie games are out of the question.

The love, passion, blood, sweat and tears that go into creating an indie game should always be rewarded, and even torrenting their game can affect this. You might have pure intentions but what about the people who leech from you? Numbers of people torrenting will also affect the company policy in future DRM measures of cost viability of a game.

TLR = OP has conscience, but faults too