Massive Assault
http://www.massiveassault.com/forum/

Massive Assault Distribution?
http://www.massiveassault.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=960		 Page 1 of 1
Author:  Fraggler [ Sun Apr 18, 2004 4:01 pm ]
Post subject:  Massive Assault Distribution?
Hello again!

As the Massive Assault Network (MAN) community is building, I'm looking to buy Massive Assault (MA) for its single player gameplay. MA is the only single player game I enjoy playing, which shows its goodness of gaming.

MA seems to be mostly sold in online software stores, as I could not find MA at retail outlets such as CompUSA, BestBuy, and EBGames.

This brings me to the idea of distributing MA as an "unlockable" download aka "Try & Buy." Not only does it offer instant gratification, but it saves people from ordering online (such as UK's play.com) with large shipping fee's. Though MA is being shifted into MAN, I think there's a site that would help sell MA and do the complete Try & Buy and merchant/ordering for the product.

So for all Wargaming.net employee's, please take a look at, and consider using the services of: http://www.trygames.com

I'm not connected to TryGames in anyway, but I think it'd be a great idea. TryGames is a fairly new service that is catching on very quickly with cooperation from large businesses such as GameSpy/FilePlanet and many more. Their service takes a PC games "demo" and uses a copyprotection (that so far hasnt been cracked) similar to V-Box as it lets the gamer buy an unlock serial from the trygames.com store and immediately give full access to the full retail gameplay. They seem to streamline this process and it looks like theyre getting a lot of customers. It could possibly be implemented with MAN, but MA is definitely suited for this service!

Hope this helps with sales. and help me from ordering MA overseas! :)
-Fraggler
Author:  Strategos [ Mon Apr 19, 2004 6:18 am ]
Post subject: 
I like the idea, but that leaves the game open to Software hackers and crackers. They would have a keygen out for it in no time. I think though if we made it unlockable, we should make the game download the other files neccessary to run it. This also makes it a no-CD game, and therefore still increase the chance of being cracked.
So we need a fail-safe.
Author:  Fraggler [ Mon Apr 19, 2004 3:11 pm ]
Post subject: 
When it comes down to it, if a software cracker has enough time, it will be cracked. You can use sentinel dongles, strange math routines, V-Box, Armadillo, or SafeDisc, they all get defeated. And if it's not a cracked trial, then its a warezd retail boxed copy. Though as warez seems to go, if its an older release, its much harder to obtain, so in that aspect the publisher/developer has an edge.

When it comes down to TryGames and their protection, sure it can be cracked, though it hasnt been yet (publically at least), even if it was, they'd immediately fix the crack, as their business relies on it. With the distribution being soley through TryGames, only users with the download up to the point of the patch would be able to get it illegaly. So TryGames has an edge over other software protection for the fact they control the downloads *and* protection. Also, the software protection they use is "server-side authentication" so it uses TryGames server to allow an unlock. Though serverside auth gets cracked, its usually a process most crackers rather avoid.

Then comes into play my point of that the sells from TryGames would outweigh the thefts that *might* occur. Even if the day comes that TryGames gets cracked, the sales they made to that point, and after TryGames patches, are still sales that wouldnt of normally occured.

If TryGames isn't a costly process to setup, as I doubt due to their large indie game dev customer list, I can only see TryGames as positive in the sales deptartment. It can't hurt, can it?
Page 1 of 1 All times are UTC - 5 hours
Powered by phpBB © 2000, 2002, 2005, 2007 phpBB Group
http://www.phpbb.com/