Far Cry is the game that rocked me the most in recent years too. Many players complain about the setting, but it just makes me want to get back down to the tropics with white sandy beaches and clear water for miles. Oh, St Thomas why did I ever leave (oh yeah, to avoid poverty and starvation since I would have lost my job otherwise). 

2 question interviews are copyright 1997-2008 by Scampco Industries Limited Inc. LLC. Any unauthorized usage, reproduction, or public viewing of these interviews in prohibited. 

Are you sure that's legally binding? 

it's legally banning... 

"public viewing" 

I've been thinking of some of the things you have said about the effect of piracy on the viability of the PC as a commercial game platform. It really sucks that Epic's policy is to consider PCs as a third tier market compared to the PS3 and Xbox for games that are not centered on the multiplayer mod market. Not casting dispersions. It sounds like you are facing market realities over there.

I have a question that I hope can be helpful, though it may just be naive on my part; how much can the size of a product discourage piracy? Would ten trig discourage all but the most valiant fanboi attempts?

Say, if and when Epic decides to sale GOW2 to the PC market, what if, you had a seperate DVD
that must be in the PC in order for the game to function and it was cram full of binary noise, nothing but noise, except for maybe a few thousand bytes scattered about the disk which the executable routinely searches out to insure the viability of the copy.

I recently spent an evening downloading the Knoppix disk, at 700MB I was a bit discouraged, but do you think the method I outlined would discourage the pirates? 

If the rest of it is random noise, then there is a good chacne that it could match substantial chunks of the real code. Which means that it would be possibly impossible to filter out the unnecessary bits. Plus that random noise disk is still copyable... 

have to be random, but as long as the executable knows where to look, what the filler material looks like would be unimportant. It would be futile for a hacker to separate the necessary stuff from this end. They would have to dissassemble the executable, and many barriers could be placed on that end to make that futile as well.

Of course it could still be copied, and made into an .ico file (or the dvd equivalent?), but the idea is to discourage digital distribution through raw size. Another example: Say if the size of the game could be fit on one DVD, but instead, you pad it out on
five separate DVD's with filler material and only the installer can distinguish between necessary and unnecessary data. At 8+ gigs a disk, you have over 40 gigs of data for any potential download. That would bring the bandlength of Pirate Bay to its knees!

Just trying to save the PC gaming market, for my own selfish, I wanna play a dozen Deus Ex, Quake, System Shock clones on it. that's all. 

That would bring the bandlength of Pirate Bay to its knees!

Through turrents Pirate Bay uses dispersed distribution, so that may not be a barrier in its self, though even dispersed, I imagine the size could be inhibiting to piracy. 

I'm all in favour of the opinion that goes around func routinely - that respecting end users is a better strategy than fucking them over on the off chance they want to rip off your game.

I remember a qoute for some reason - it was along the lines of anyone who tries to pirate a game and fails won'y buy it, because they never had any intention of paying for it in the first place.

Interesting idea, but I can imagine the logistical nightmare of installation - remember each game goes through many levels of idiot proof testing, and that's before it leaves the producer's office and goes to QA, legal and distribution. 

I wonder if it would make more sense as a quick and dirty solution for indies to use than the A title producers. 

Don't think so - any backed games company goes through the same process, since the money always comes from the same sorts of companies - the ones who ask;

What is a rar file? Can we put an advert frontend inside the gui? The loading screen is static apart from the moving bar for neary three seconds (we timed this!)

And indy companies aren't consolidated enough to worry about this sort of crap.

tbh I can't think of an application for it, but there almost definately is. But money = time, so to develop it is the real problem. The discs are cheap, so that's not a problem.

I've heard lots of suggestions when porting stuff from PC that we block maybe three or four features, then the "downloadable content" is basically a >128k bat file that unlocks the blocked stuff. In a similar way I think there is a corporate name for what you're suggesting, but without the extra discs.

Personally I get everything for PC from Steam, because it's me that owns the game, not the hardware, which is pretty cool. My wii I'm going to have chipped because I can't play my PAL gamecube games on it. Definately illegal, but as a good customer why should I have to cross the line.

Am I right that the only non-regional recent console is the DS - the one that's got a better turnover than free cake? 

"it was along the lines of anyone who tries to pirate a game and fails won'y buy it, because they never had any intention of paying for it in the first place. "

That's not entirely accurate. Many people will pirate the game if they can and buy it if they must.

As for the size suggestion - I'd say, personally, not really. Pirates don't care about bandwidth or storage. If they have to wait an extra day for the torrent to finish, they will. No skin off their nose. And the more likely outcome is that the crackers will simply spend the time to strip out as much of the noise as possible anyway.

And as far as GoW2 and the PC and Epics future plans - I'm sure you'll understand that I really can't make public comments on that sort of thing. Not my area and not my place. :) 

http://eu.blizzard.com/diablo3/

'nuff said 

Wow... looks impressive ! 

No, shit, damn purple penguin thing.

One of the best pieces of viral hype I've seen in a while tho (the splash screen, the hidden jpegs, etc).

http://kotaku.com/5019490/blizzard-splashwatch-+-day-three in case you live under a rock 

there goes another hundred hours or so :) 

That should of course be 'no shit', not 'no, shit' 

And as far as GoW2 and the PC and Epics future plans - I'm sure you'll understand that I really can't make public comments on that sort of thing. Not my area and not my place. :)

Especially, if those methods involve mercenaries and Pirate Bay owner's heads on stakes as a warning to other pirates, mums the word on my end ;) Anything to get a vibrant PC game market back! 

just to address your earlier post,

i'm of the firm belief that if someone wants to crack a game, it *will* be cracked.

i look at games like the HL2 series or Bioshock. HL2 games all have the online authentication stuff with the steam integration, but there are copies of all 3 (HL2, Ep1 and Orange Box) with the steam portion removed.

and bioshock. remember all the stink that was raised about it's copy protection? there was a cracked version like a week after it was released.

the way i look at it, you waste your time putting fancy piracy protection. what should be aimed for is stopping casual piracy-- lending the game to a friend so he can copy the DVD or whatever. no one ever liked having to have a cd/dvd in the drive to play, and bringing it back is not going to win any points with your consumers.

i also don't think pure online distribution is the ticket either.
in canada at least, almost all ISPs here have download caps, and that puts a real damper on how much stuff i'd want to download esp. since i'm paying for the product essentially twice. 

thought this may be of general light interest/amusement. i just sent a mate completely batshit insane by showing him the following screenshot:

http://isoterra.co.uk/images/quake00.jpg

alcohol may have have had a part to play in things but alas. i've uploaded the messenger log.. i tried to offer some serious insight later on but in reality i was pissing myself laughing most of the way through:

http://isoterra.co.uk/stuff/sandman.txt 

He doesn't play modern Q1 then?

Insomnia is sort of mild by now - some of the areas in Travail.

Poor sod probably woke up a few times in the night - judging from that transcript.

Reckon everyone who still plays / makes this game has their head a bit twisted. 

i don't think he's ever even played quake

travail did have some pretty twisted bits but i don't think anything will ever top the final level of zerstorer for pure evilness 

I reckon everyone remembers the bit where you enter the small shrine and hear the warbling idle sound of the troglodyte.

"You have a sense of pure evil" 

there's plenty, czg being responsible for quite a few and nehahra a lot of the others.

I'd have to go through my maps cd to list teh rest but there is plenty, which is why I'm still playing it :)