Posted September 26, 2010
Given the amount of impassioned feedback that has already been given on the events of the past few days (impassioned in the sense of "I hate GOG.com and the PR stunt sucked" or "I love GOG.com and the PR stunt was great and everyone who says otherwise is an idiot"), I thought I'd try and offer a little piece of 'unimpassioned' feedback.
I don't believe myself to be an excessive customer of GOG.com, although I have bought 13 games here (in addition to the various freebies)
The PR stunt received quite a fair bit of attention. It was, however, by no means original or a first - 3D Realms pulled the same stunt a few months back by claiming that they were shutting down, then suddenly miraculously bounced back.
It was also a bit of a slap to the face of those that have supported GOG.com loyally over the past couple of years. If you read the feedback on Facebook, you'll notice that the stunt was almost negatively received and gave those against firmly digital distribution plenty of ammo. I perhaps almost exclusively only ever buy retail, but have been testing the waters with GOG.com and a very small number of games with Steam. Unless the games I'm looking for are ridiculously cheap on Steam (I'm talking below €4), I'll always buy retail or GOG.com.
This has been a bit of a wake-up call to me though. I hadn't downloaded all my games, and although I'm thankful that I have the chance again to download them (which I am), it has also made me very cautious about DD as a whole. I certainly won't be buying any more from Steam or any games with DRM for that matter, and I'll only be striving to buy the game from retail or over eBay on DVD before I try with DD again.
Quite frankly, I am glad that GOG.com isn't dead. I'm not a huge fan of the Steam client, Impulse's games are by and large all rubbish and minor provider like D2D also suffer from DRM problems. GOG.com does represent a positive beacon in the largely poor quality DD market, but I suspect I won't be alone in being very cautious before I buy again. Everytime I buy a game now, I will immediately be putting it on CD or DVD together with all the bonus materials. While it shouldn't really make a difference, I've noticed that many of my purchases have been spontaneous decisions that I've made when downloading a game I've already bought.
As for the new GOG.com:
Given the hoo-haa surrounding the relaunch, I am absurdly disappointed with it. The GOGmix feature is pretty much useless, and I'm not really interested in seeking out games with female protagonists, Nazis, zombies, fantasy backgrounds or the like. I'll always look for genres, prices or ratings - which the vanilla GOG.com already offers.
The remainder of the changes are largely cosmetic, and I find that the spreadout of the title image has caused GOG.com to lose some of its characteristic look.
The loss of the downloader is critical for me, especially given that I'm now downloading ALL of my games to burn them onto DVD.
I've noticed nothing of the claimed server and code upgrades with regard to speed. I especially didn't notice it on the first day of the relaunch.
At the same time, I find that there a number of missed opportunities:
People who buy games from GOG.com have one thing in common - they are aficionados of the PC gaming golden era, and might have a lot to talk about. It's a good place to get to know people. A dedicated client à la Steam (the only area where Steam has the upper hand) would have been excellent, even better if created in Adobe AIR.
A system of achievements for the games could have been implemented. I don't mean re-coding the games - address value checks would have been sufficient to do this.
Linux and Mac versions for the DOSBox and SCUMMVM based games (and maybe even WINE version of the Windows games) would have been an excellent addition. Again, a missed opportunity.
So, all in all, a pointless PR stunt to advertise a relaunch that places too much emphasis on style than on substance.
I don't believe myself to be an excessive customer of GOG.com, although I have bought 13 games here (in addition to the various freebies)
The PR stunt received quite a fair bit of attention. It was, however, by no means original or a first - 3D Realms pulled the same stunt a few months back by claiming that they were shutting down, then suddenly miraculously bounced back.
It was also a bit of a slap to the face of those that have supported GOG.com loyally over the past couple of years. If you read the feedback on Facebook, you'll notice that the stunt was almost negatively received and gave those against firmly digital distribution plenty of ammo. I perhaps almost exclusively only ever buy retail, but have been testing the waters with GOG.com and a very small number of games with Steam. Unless the games I'm looking for are ridiculously cheap on Steam (I'm talking below €4), I'll always buy retail or GOG.com.
This has been a bit of a wake-up call to me though. I hadn't downloaded all my games, and although I'm thankful that I have the chance again to download them (which I am), it has also made me very cautious about DD as a whole. I certainly won't be buying any more from Steam or any games with DRM for that matter, and I'll only be striving to buy the game from retail or over eBay on DVD before I try with DD again.
Quite frankly, I am glad that GOG.com isn't dead. I'm not a huge fan of the Steam client, Impulse's games are by and large all rubbish and minor provider like D2D also suffer from DRM problems. GOG.com does represent a positive beacon in the largely poor quality DD market, but I suspect I won't be alone in being very cautious before I buy again. Everytime I buy a game now, I will immediately be putting it on CD or DVD together with all the bonus materials. While it shouldn't really make a difference, I've noticed that many of my purchases have been spontaneous decisions that I've made when downloading a game I've already bought.
As for the new GOG.com:
Given the hoo-haa surrounding the relaunch, I am absurdly disappointed with it. The GOGmix feature is pretty much useless, and I'm not really interested in seeking out games with female protagonists, Nazis, zombies, fantasy backgrounds or the like. I'll always look for genres, prices or ratings - which the vanilla GOG.com already offers.
The remainder of the changes are largely cosmetic, and I find that the spreadout of the title image has caused GOG.com to lose some of its characteristic look.
The loss of the downloader is critical for me, especially given that I'm now downloading ALL of my games to burn them onto DVD.
I've noticed nothing of the claimed server and code upgrades with regard to speed. I especially didn't notice it on the first day of the relaunch.
At the same time, I find that there a number of missed opportunities:
People who buy games from GOG.com have one thing in common - they are aficionados of the PC gaming golden era, and might have a lot to talk about. It's a good place to get to know people. A dedicated client à la Steam (the only area where Steam has the upper hand) would have been excellent, even better if created in Adobe AIR.
A system of achievements for the games could have been implemented. I don't mean re-coding the games - address value checks would have been sufficient to do this.
Linux and Mac versions for the DOSBox and SCUMMVM based games (and maybe even WINE version of the Windows games) would have been an excellent addition. Again, a missed opportunity.
So, all in all, a pointless PR stunt to advertise a relaunch that places too much emphasis on style than on substance.
