Some interesting stats

Visual Novel Community Archive, 2000-2009
#1

Before getting off to bed from working 8 hrs straight on LMM at 5am, I did some checking on peapri site’s logs, and something struck me.

Just for this current month alone (feb2004, and the month isn’t totally done yet), 850MB of bandwidth goes to the BS patch. Now everybody knows how big that file is, so do your own math to see how many downloads there are for this month, for this patch. Anyways, obviously that number, combined with previous months since we had the patch released, do not reflect the sales or copies we produced/pressed.

Note that I only gave you guys the stat for this current month…anyways, just a good guestimate for us to see how bad piracy is on brave soul (we can just compare the bandwidth versus the number of copies we produced/sold, although obviously we won’t tell you guys the latter number)

Sorry if I am not making any sense, just woke up…and now back to LMM…

#2

Heh, don’t worry about it. Interesting numbers though. (Wish you could tell us the actual sales numbers or number produced, but I can live without them…) Probably doesn’t suprise most of the regulars. Ah well…

Hey, don’t wear yourself out. If you drop dead from exhaustion, I don’t think we can survive another delay on LMM! Just kidding. It’s just good to hear that it’s being worked on.

#3

Well, I am sure people know about piracy, but nobody really knows how big an impact/magnitude (as in, how much potential sales are lost because of piracy) it causes, but at least with these stats, we might get a general idea.

okay i will delay the release of LMM to…errhm…2010 :stuck_out_tongue:

Sorry, but the game has some insane permutations and combinations of events so it’s very tedious to go through all of them, it’s something you players prolly won’t notice too much, but it’s something we have to go through thoroughly before releasing it. Anyways, don’t be surprised if you will see a delay, but honestly, I am working hard on it…VERY HARD

[This message has been edited by Lamuness (edited 02-24-2004).]

#4

Actually yes I believe we have made a new batch of cds that has the patch applied already…but still…

#5
quote:
Originally posted by Lamuness:
Well, I am sure people know about piracy, but nobody really knows how big an impact/magnitude (as in, how much potential sales are lost because of piracy) it causes, but at least with these stats, we might get a general idea.

Hmm, well if my math is correct and if my estimates on the actual number of units sold is even close, the numbers come out to about what I sort of expected based on my observations. Of course, the only thing I had to work with were the G-Collection order numbers and they aren't exactly solid numbers either. But it does give me a few more numbers to throw at people during arguments...

quote:

Sorry, but the game has some insane permutations and combinations of events so it's very tedious to go through all of them, it's something you players prolly won't notice too much, but it's something we have to go through thoroughly before releasing it. Anyways, don't be surprised if you will see a delay, but honestly, I am working hard on it......VERY HARD

That's probably one of the main reasons I didn't go into a more programming oriented line of work when I got out of college. Just coming up with the code is annoying enough but having to go and test all the possibilities throughly would drive me nuts. Not that I'd would mind trying my hand at something along those lines, like Ladyphoenix-san is doing with Gibo, but doing it full-time would do nothing to help my tenuous hold on sanity...

Heh, well I think I can survive another delay or two. At least other games are coming out that can distract me. It'd be much harder if it was only PeaPri out there. Which reminds me, I need to tackle CRC after I finish Heart de Roommate. I think I definitely have my bishoujo fix for the moment... [img]http://princess.cybrmall.net/ubb/biggrin.gif[/img]

#6

Do you think you can survive a year or two? :stuck_out_tongue:

Well, the japanse company graciously gave us a 115-page flowchart of all the events (entitled “Huge My Flowchart”) so it makes things just a tad easier to keep track of. Honestly, if we don’t have this flowchart, I swear to god this game will be canned…

[This message has been edited by Lamuness (edited 02-24-2004).]

#7

How big was the file? I think it was 1.2 MB, if I remember well…
starts Calc
708,33333333333333333333 You get the point. :stuck_out_tongue:

Hmm, maybe it was 3 MB?
Calc action
283,3333333333 Yeah.
Now that sounds reasonable, but of course I’m not sure how big it was…

I haven’t being on P2P in a long time now, else I could say if this game was being shared for sure.

#8

That’s why I only told you guys the bandwidth for this month and not any previous months…

#9

Course we do have to figure in some people re downloading the patch, if they reinstalled the game and deleted the patch. But yeah I suspect that piracy is taking a good chunk from that BW Damn losers need to start buying games instead of stealing dammit!!

#10

Wasn’t there a special code with the game that you had to know when asking support? Can’t this be applied to the patch download? That way, most pirates are stuck with a ‘more buggy’ version of Brave Soul.

#11
quote:
Originally posted by Lamuness:
Do you think you can survive a year or two? :P

*shrug* I've been waiting for it for a couple years already. After a certain point, it's just same old, same old. If it comes out, I'll be extremely happy, if it doesn't, I'll just be annoyed but I'm pretty sure I can survive. After all, I was one of the psychos who waited all that time for Transfer Student...

Well, the problem is that even those special codes get around. After all, unless you start putting those ridiculously long key strings like Microsoft and some other companies use, how will you keep it from getting out?

#12

It would reduce the piracy a bit, though…

I have another idea. I’ve noticed that after you install the game (at least with Brave Soul), that you don’t need the CD-ROM anymore (I still put it in just because). If the games were CD-ROM-dependant then it would also reduce the piracy a bit. Not everyone has a CD burner these days… not yet.
But I guess that’s something the Japanese companies decide, no?

#13
quote:
Originally posted by Benoit:
It would reduce the piracy a bit, though...

I have another idea. I've noticed that after you install the game (at least with Brave Soul), that you don't need the CD-ROM anymore (I still put it in just because). If the games were CD-ROM-dependant then it would also reduce the piracy a bit. Not everyone has a CD burner these days... not yet.
But I guess that's something the Japanese companies decide, no?

Are you sure this is true? I cannot play Brave Soul without the CD-ROM.

#14

Nor can I, and I just tried again with the opening song playing on a CD player seperate from the computer.

Keep this in mind though, whatever they do cannot be overly troublesome for those that would not copy and pirate the game. Remember those that will pirate it, will find a way around most simple things these companies can do to protect themselves, similar to how town curfews will never really control crime because they will never truly be followed by those that already commit crimes after the chosen curfew time.

So these companies walk a fine line between stopping piracy which is bad, and not making the protection overly annoying and burdensome to those that would not pirate the games if they were as easy to copy as it is to breathe.

[This message has been edited by SCDawg (edited 02-24-2004).]

#15
quote:
Originally posted by SCDawg:
Remember those that will pirate it, will find a way around most simple things these companies can do to protect themselves, similar to how town curfews will never really control crime because they will never truly be followed by those that already commit crimes after the chosen curfew time.

[This message has been edited by SCDawg (edited 02-24-2004).]

Sort of; you're half right, on both points really. You are right in that true hardened criminals won't be deterred by a curfew unless it's enforced by MPs who haul people off to military prison on sight. That's not the point. Ultimately you don't care what kind of perp a person is - if they commit a crime, they commit a crime. And curfews will stop an awful lot of people; in particular because it makes it harder for groups to be hanging out ready to cause trouble. It restricts precursor activity, which is the general idea.

Similarly the hardcore pirates won't be dissuaded by anything you do, it is in theory impossible to totally stop them. Doesn't matter. Their contributions to the overall level of piracy aren't even as large as you might think. If a game has no protection at all, many people will simply make a copy with their burner - or they will lend the CD's - and thousands of people doing this simultaneously, everywhere, will always be more of a concern than individual hard core pirates. This is true in spite of the fact that the hardcore warez d00dZ contribute, per person, FAR more to the availability of such material than the average people.

In short, in programming this is the first rule of optimization: Make the common case fast. If your program only spends 10% of its time doing task X, even if you are God and make task X happen in literally no time - your program only speeds up by 10%. Antipiracy measures are no different. Attack the most common sources and you will get better results.

#16

Perhaps so, but how to do it without angering people who want to stop piracy but not if it becomes inconvenient for them in the process?

The trouble is partly hardened criminals but also finding yet another balance between enforcing the protection with enough people and working hard to prevent turning everything into a police state by having people continually watched to make sure they don’t ‘break curfew’. When 16 year old is stealing cars he or she will not say to their ‘pals’ they have to stop because it’s 11:00 pm and curfew time and if they are out stealing cars most likely their parents won’t notice they are missing either, and such an area probably falls under the profile of high crime, low civic involvement and overworked police force, so the solution is not simply to make a rule those not committing the crime already probably follow out of fear of their own safety and those already committing one crime will not suddenly follow and lack of enforcement allows them to continue to break curfew as the police are more worried about car thefts then a few 16 year olds that might actually just be breaking curfew.

Similarly when thinking of piracy and as I mentioned at the start of this post, to stop it must be in a way that those that support stopping it will not find themselves inconvenienced by or they might not support the method. Those pirating are probably doing it in their homes and not at a library computer, so they are where they are not seen because thankfully “Big Brother” is not (yet at least) in our homes. So it is harder to monitor what means they are using and how skilled these people really are, or if it is just techonology advancing in the means that the ability to pirate outstrips the ability to protect against pirating. Nevertheless, you’re right making it harder to pirate will stop some of these people.

Regardless, I think enforcement of already existing rules is perhaps the key. However, once again how to do that while keeping the balance between enforcing the laws and not having a police state “Big Brother” watching everywhere including the internet?

Or perhaps more serious and a different way of educating about the harm of pirating rather then a lot of what these companies have now which even sometimes makes me slightly sympathetic toward the pirates (for about two seconds) even as I stand against pirating.

[This message has been edited by SCDawg (edited 02-24-2004).]

#17
quote:
Originally posted by Benoit:
I've noticed that after you install the game (at least with Brave Soul), that you don't need the CD-ROM anymore (I still put it in just because).

Perhaps, yopu should try starting the game without the CD being in the CD-ROM-drive.

If it really starts this way, you probably have bought a bootlegged copy that has the copy-protection removed.

#18

I guess I’ll try that. But I’m sure it’s not a bootleg, since I bought it from my manga shop, a bunch of honest people that I know for 2 years now, plus it was in the original case, the picture on the CD, and the full-color manual. They get their games from Jast USA.

In the manual I noticed an important when I first read it, explaining how piracy is the #1 barrier and so on… But people who pirate the game don’t see this, as they don’t get the manual.
I think displaying a similar note when you start the game or something, would help a little. Some of the people who download these bootlegs have no idea what they’re doing, and have a certain form of conscience, so if they read that, they may try to get it legally.

#19

Just tried it.
I can load the game and play the opening without the CD-ROM in the drive.

Is it really that strange? Installing the game is essentially copying all the files of the CD-ROM to a folder on your hard drive. Not that I did it that way, though.

#20

Well most games require you to have the cd in the drive to stop people from borrowing a friends copy and installing the game then giving it back to the friend. I don’t think there’s many games out that don’t require to have the game disc in the drive, they may not use the disc at all but they need to be able to read the disc.