| From: | Adam J <fro@***.AB.CA> |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Re: SR 3rd Ed. CD-Rom |
| Date: | Thu, 3 Jul 1997 16:49:32 -0600 |
>>One day I advocate Acrobat format, the next, I shall slam it. Don't
>>release the rulebooks in a format such as Acrobat, PDF, DOC, TXT, Anything
>>like that!
>>Write a custom reader, with a custom filetype. BLOAT the size of the
>>reader. And the filesize, for that matter. Otherwise, its just too damned
>>easy to pirate.
>
>1. FASA is a gaming company, not a software company. Writing a custom
reader
> is *waaay* far away from their line of work, and would require an
>amount of
> investment that would make a CD-ROM project completely unprofitable.
You think they might be able to throw it down the hall to FASA Interactive?
Gee...
>2. Bloating the reader and filesize will just mean you need to ship it on
> more CD-ROMs and that it will take longer to ship around the Net once
> someone cracks it. Meanwhile, it's inconvenient for the real customers
>who
> have to swap CD-ROMs.
Not past the point of 1 CD-Rom, that truly would be pathetic. Do we really
care about people shipping it around the net once it is cracked? I would
just as soon it be larger and harder to pirate, to discourage people from
doing it.
Why do you think companies put FMV on games? Its not to make money, its to
discourage piracy.
>Laser printing costs a fair amount of money; so does Xeroxing. If you use
>the PDF documents to create paper output, it'll probably run you about as
>much money as it costs to buy the sourcebook by the time you have a stable
>binding attached to the paper.
I'm not sure about most places, but all the schools here, including the
university, let you print as much as you like on paper as long as you
provide the paper. Binding? Three ring hole punch it and throw it into a
binder. Alot of the time I find my net.books are easier to navigate than
proper books.
>CD-ROM publishing will probably have very
>little effect on book sales. Preventing CD-ROM piracy is more problematic,
>as most of the really good schemes for prevention entail investing in
>infrastructure back at FASA (which would make the project less profitable),
>but how many people are going to want to take up 200MB of their hard drive
>with the documents?
I probably have pretty close to that much in SR stuff already. Anyways,
I'm done with this thread. The chances of FASA doing a CD are so remote it
isn't worth bickering over, since we obviously see things from a different
end of a spectrum.
--
http://shadowrun.home.ml.org \ TSS Productions \ The Shadowrun Supplemental
ShadowRN Assistant Fearless Leader \ WildAngle@******** \ fro@***.ab.ca
-
"Can I have a cup of angst to go with my un-happy meal?" -- Hi & Lois
