Crysis 2 developer Nathan Camarillo pours his heart out over the anguish caused by the recent piracy of his game, and describes how you can show solidarity
The presence at Gamesblog Live of Crytek's Nathan Camarillo, executive producer of Crysis 2, provided a unique chance to explore the implications of one of the games industry's least savoury recent stories: the leaking and subsequent downloading and filesharing of an unfinished build of the PC version of Crysis 2.
Digital piracy may be a fact of life these days, but it still hits those on the receiving end of it hard, as Camarillo recounts: "We were really high off the feeling that wow, we've got this really awesome game that came together, that we want to play and which will be a lot of fun. Then, getting that kind of news swings your emotions in completely the opposite direction. Our offices are generally really energetic, upbeat and excited but suddenly, everyone was deflated and walking around with their shoulders hunched. We're normally very communicative at the office, but people just weren't talking to each other like they normally do ? it hit really, really hard. We went through all the phases that you do when you experience a loss ? denial, anger and depression. That's the one that sat in the longest."
Ironically, it was the flipside of the download-culture that ameliorated Crytek's collective moping ? namely, the support of the online community that flourished around the company's games. Camarillo explains: "What really got us out of that was our fans and the community, and even people who haven't been the biggest fans of Crytek, all jumping to our side. They were saying, 'Don't download it, don't post anything from it, don't participate in file-sharing of this ? it's not the final version, so it's not what they want you to see. Don't spoil it for me ? I want to see the final version. I'm glad, at least, that it runs on your PC ? it runs on my PC as well, but you still shouldn't have downloaded it.' Everybody was very supportive, and the community exercised self-policing in that regard, so it didn't quite erupt like when, for example, a final version is leaked."
Camarillo provides an unimpeachable reason for resisting the temptation to download the leaked code: "For us, the bad part about it is that this isn't the game that we wanted you to see. With a team of 250 people working on the game, 1,000 bugs get fixed in a heartbeat. A lot of time has gone by since that build went out ? even though the leak was recent, that build was over a month old, so a lot of things have got better in the game, and a lot of things have been fixed. If people are excited about that early version, that's great. But we only want people to see the final version, which is why we've been working so hard and putting in so many extra hours for months."
He also pointed out that anyone who wants to experience Crysis 2 can download the demo: "That's been a really big success for us ? we had well over a million and a half people download the demo and play it online, which is a huge positive response. We collect telemetry showing the way people play, how long they play and how many matches they play, and people really stuck with it and played it a lot. That's a good sign for what the size of the community will be when the final game releases."
If you want to show solidarity with Crytek ? and the company deserves it, as spending two years sweating blood over a game, only to see it pirated before it is finished, must be a sickener ? you can. Camarillo explains how: "Our community has been really super-supportive and responsive to the situation, and the best thing I can ask for is that if you're going to buy the PC game, show us that you're out there and pre-order it. Even if you're not going to buy the PC version, you can still go and pre-order it to show us your support. Because we can kind of see how many people have downloaded it, and the community made a lot of postings in support of us, but we can't read all of them since there are so many. However, we see the pre-order numbers every week."
SEAGATE TECHNOLOGY SCIENTIFIC GAMES SANDISK SALESFORCE COM SAIC
No comments:
Post a Comment