Interview with Good Old Games
Category: PC, Posted: 10/27/2009 at 11:47AM EDT by Phil Williams, Columnist
In celebration of the service's one-year aniversary, GamerNode recently got the opportunity to sit down and interview PR & Marketing Representative for Good Old Games (GOG.com) Lukasz Kukawski about the service itself, the company's philosophy, publishing partners, the staff's favorite games, and GOG's plans for the future, among other things. GamerNode's Phil Williams (boldface type) does the questioning, and gets some very good answers. Give it a read, because who knows, there may be a chance to WIN 10 FREE GAMES on GOG.com if you make it to the end of the article! *hint*
First of all, congrats on your first birthday, guys! GOG.com seems to have really taken off over the last 12 months. How has it been for you?
Thanks, the last year was really great for us. When we first announced GOG.com just before E3 last year, gamers and gaming journalists went crazy! There were some big expectations before we let in the first users who signed up for the Closed Beta, but it turned out our service and the whole "GOG experience" exceeded those expectations - we've received and we're still receiving lots of emails with positive feedback from our users. After the first ... then came time to work hard and to maintain the interest of gamers with the old games. Thankfully our Business Development secured lots of great deals with publishers and we've managed to revive lots of great titles from the past. With the things to come in the next few months I believe the next 12 months for GOG will be even better :)
One of the biggest draws for using GOG.com is that all the titles are DRM free. Was this always the plan when you were putting the service together? How have publishers reacted to that requirement in the year since launch?
Yes, from the very beginning we knew that we won't have DRM in our games. We're gamers ourselves and we hate all those restrictive copy protection schemes as we believe they're not the best way, in our opinion, to fight piracy. DRMs usually make the life of legitimate customer harder with all those on-line registrations and limited number of installations, and if you download the game from a torrent site, it's already cracked and deprived of the DRM. We believe that the best way to encourage gamers to buy original games is to offer good games, reasonably priced and with some added bonuses which they wouldn't get with the illegal download -- that's what we're trying to do at GOG.com and with The Witcher (we're part of the CD Projekt group of companies that includes CD Projekt RED development studio, the creators of The Witcher).
As for the publishers reactions on our DRM-free approach, they were pretty good. You can see it by the growing number of companies that decided to join the "DRM-free revolution" at GOG :). Of course some publishers are a bit afraid of releasing their games without any copy protection, but we're trying to convince them that the games we're interested in are so old that if someone wanted to pirate them, they've probably already done it. Besides, in most cases publishers aren't doing anything with the old titles, so GOG is a great opportunity for them to monetize their back catalogue.
We have to mention the extras that get bundled with games. Everything from manuals, soundtracks, and avatars, right up to exclusive artwork, screen savers and the like. How hard is it to collate all this stuff? How do you find it all?
The additional materials are a very important thing as it's another incentive that might encourage people to buy a legal copy at GOG rather than download it from abandonware. If we get lucky, we receive the addons from the publisher or developer, but unfortunately in most cases we have to dig through the internet or our own private archives. The older the games the harder it is to find any materials for them, but we do our best to get our users as much bonus stuff as we can.
You have two price points across the whole range -- $5.99 and $9.99. What's the thinking behind that? Are there any plans to add any other price points?
You forgot to mention the third price point: $0.00. We have three games that are completely FREE to everyone who registers on GOG :). But we've chosen the two price points which in our opinion are some sort of compromise between what gamers are willing to pay for older games and how much we and publishers want to sell those games for. That's what I was saying earlier, offering good games for reasonable price. I believe we're doing just that. As for plans for other price points, at the moment there's no reason to add it. Maybe later in the future we'll do something about it, but right now let's leave it like it is.
When you download a game with GOG.com, you get a really nice, easy installer, and none of the hassle that used to be associated with installing games on the PC -- manually assigning IRQs, extended and expanded memory, etc. It used to be a nightmare. How long does it take to go from the original DOS or Windows files to the end product that goes up online?
Oh man, I remember creating different boot disks on floppies for different games and changing the config files, it really was a nightmare ;). On GOG we're doing everything to make it as easy as buy, download, and play. The time spent on optimizing the games to run flawlessly on modern operating systems depends on the game: it can be a couple of days up to a couple of weeks. Sometimes our programming team just makes some tweaks with the game and sometimes they have to use all of their skill, knowledge, and some black magic to make the titles run on XP or Vista. With DOS-based games we're using the DOSBox software and we have support from the DOSBox team who are really helpful and we appreciate it a lot.
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GOG is great, I love that service. I really do. Bought a few games there and all run flawlessly and are as good as I remember them.
Praise GOG and praise its allies! o/
Great interview. (:
GOG.com is apparently one my most visited websites. Great service and great community :-) Keep it up!
GOG is awesome! Free games are the awesomest. :)
I'm possibly more hooked on GOG.com than the games themselves :) Thanks for giving them the spotlight.
Gog is the best download service of all!
Good interview, can't wait for these up and coming big suprises.
GOG.com is always a good service for good old games. Awesome interview BTW.
Always looking forward to new releases on GoG. For so many of those games, playing them is like re-living my childhood.
Woo, GoG rocks.
I'm a big fan and have been a member of GOG for nearly 400 days now (yes, since the beginning). This was a great interview though and i for one am really looking forward to the new old titles!
I love GOG, but I'm still waiting for System Shock 2! Great interview and an interesting read.
GOG is a great, well presented website. So much incredible nostalgia in that header image alone :--)
GOG is strong!
(dont really know what to post, since winner will be chosen by random :p)
Long live GOG!
I' think GOG is already a great site and their plans for the future are very exciting. It will be great to see some games like Simcity 2000 and Transport Tycoon on it in the future.
You rock GOG!!!!!
www.gog.com is just one of the best ideas in recent years. I love it too bits.
This would be the best contest win ever. Love GOG and their continued devotion to taking my money by providing awesome games.
www.GOG.com is an absolute pleasure to use. Looking forward to seeing it grow of the next few years.
I had my doubts if GOG could survive - I can't believe how great it worked out. Really, really awesome work and one of those websites I just *love* spending money on.
GOG has probably become my favorite site ever lately.
GOG has been the first site where I've bought digital material and it's worth it!
GoG is pretty cool. I especially like the forum community which sprung up. Some intelligent gaming discussion goes on over there.
I love GOG - re-bought Fallout 1 from them so it'd work on Win7. :P
GOG, first site i bought a game on :)
I feel that it is pretty amazing that they've gotten the collection of awesome games that they have already all for sale in one store. I know I've bought a game or two just to play for nostalgia and others that I play because they did fly under my radar! Interesting to see that they are actively searching out holders for long forgotten games. I look forward to seeing what else shows up in their store.
Had I not spent all of my meager salary on buying my home a month ago, I'd have purchased every game on their site!
GOG has given me the chance to replay titles that I left unfinished. I love the fact they are DRM, just download, install and play; I try to avoid buying classic titles from other digital distribution services for that reason.
The community is awesome too.
I would love to win these games. GOG is awesome!
I love the heck out of GOG and have supported and will continue to support them with my business, but this interview sounded really... marketingy. Understandable, I guess, when you just want to get the word out about your (wonderful) business, but in future interviews I think y'all would come off a lot better if you sounded more natural and the questions were made to elicit a bit more insight.
Obviously I'll still be buying stuff from you whenever I have some spare cash and/or whenever you have your delightfully frequent sales either way. :)
GoG.com is a very good website. I haven't purchased a lot of games yet, but I certainly will in the future. It feels good to be a part of this community.
Nice interview, keep up the good work :)
I support GOG as much as the next guy. :)
A shame that the interview didn't add much to what we already know about GOG and the upcoming stuff. They really should enjoy these opportunities to add some expectancy.
Well, here's me hoping for a game or 10... ;D
GOG.com is my favorite place to buy games period. Not just old games. They make the experience so easy, and the added little touches like game soundtracks and avatars make each game special. I love GOG.com and it's good to hear they've got plans to add more great games and publishers!
Great article.
GOG.com is awesome, I really hope they get the LucasArt-classics soon.
I've been using GOG.com since it's beta and I check it regularly along with my other sites. It's provided a service, I think, that rivals any other software retail site. Not only are they allowing access to titles that I've grown up with and have loved, they do it in a way that's non-invasive and intrusive. My only hopes are that they spend time going further back in to the much older titles such as Jones In The Fast Lane and Zeliard instead of trying to rebox semi current titles. For me, if I can to go a game store and find it in the used bins, it shouldn't be on GOG yet.
You guys rock and have done a fantastic job so far. Thanks for all the hard work and it's good to see the continued expansion!
GOG's always a highlight of the week. It's nice to show up more or less every Tuesday and Thursday and see a new release, be it one you've been hoping for or one you didn't know you wanted.
Yes yes yes!!!
I love the gog service, and it's nice to see bigger and bigger interviews featuring those guys.
Here's hoping for Mac and Linux games with quality, and always drm-free. ;)
When I first heard what the idea behind GOG was, I thought it was too utopian to be true.
Some time passed and they don't cease to amaze me; with jewels like The Longest Journey and Heroes of Might and Magic 3...
Recent games aren't as good as they used to be. Thank you GOG.com!
GOG is awesome
I have much love for GOG--I just wish it could get System Shock 2, or Planescape: Torment already!
I love GOG. I just wish they had multi-language games tho.
Interesting interview! It was nice to read about their selection and conversion process!
Looking forward to the surprises GoG has lined up for us! Really hope it includes Outcast ;-)
*waits for the new Gem of the Week to be announced :D*
The only mildly annoying thing is that GOG seems to be pushing newer titles rather than old ones lately. But I still love them.:)
GOG is an incredible site. It's harder to find a simpler pleasure in life than a computer game that is cheap, DRM-free and ready to go.
GOG offers an incredible service at an awesome price. Does their site not show developers how much people hate drm? lol. anyway well well done GOG.
Love me some GOG, got Freesapce 2 incredibly cheap, and with the awesome modding community for it am still having great fun!
I find that since GOG has no DRM, I would rather buy (gift) something like Lords of the Realm 2 to friends at a LAN party rather than copy it to them. This is completely unprecedented in LAN parties around here. The lack of DRM has actually drastically decreased piracy from my experience.
And $18 extra is definitely worth it to play a 4-player game of LOTR2!
Its the add ons that keep surprising me: like the quality of the soundtracks ... And, those manuals: for me, I need more info on some aspects of games (like refining, for example). With the extra instructions, I don't get frustrated and quit a game because I am stuck.
What I see from the other posters above me is the same thing I feel: that surprise when I come back to the site and there is still quality info and services. Maybe we have all had that disappointment when you come back to a site and it might be gone or have intermittent posting or just a copy of news from other sites. So thank you for providing new News and featuring games that we might have missed elsewhere.
I love being able to play a number of classic games that I missed out on when I was younger, especially at the great prices they're offered. Go GOG!
I'd die happy if they got Planescape Torment (or any other D&D franchise) :D
Games from EA could also be interesting to see in GOG catalogue :)
I can't add an more praise. I just want free games.
Adding Planescape to their offerings shouldn't be that hard, considering CD Projekt is already selling it at retail.
GOG.com is fantastic - the only problem is finding the time to play all the good old games!
I spend way too much time hanging out at GOG. Plus i've bought too many games there.
There's something about them that makes me want to support them. Highly recommended.
Freespace and Patrician rock!
Keep it up gog.
GOG is the best DD service for old games.
GOG is epicly great!
GOG is selling my childhood back to me. I'm not sure if this is awesome or evil. Probably both.
SIIIICK
woot, I love video games. GoG is awesome for bringing back the classics.
GoG is indeed awesome.
Love GoG since i found them have been able to relive some of my favorite old games and found a couple I had not played before. Thanks GoG
I've seen GoG around plenty but hadn't made the step to get anything from them. But dang seeing they just released Divine Divinity might push me over the edge.
GoG is the dopest idea...great games with no DRM. THANK you CD-Projekt!
gotta love the fact that they have a lot of sci-fi in there, those are my favorites!
Good Old Games, all i can say is the best invention/web ever made. Cheap Classic Games what more could a gamer ask for. i love going back in time with GOG and experienced the games that i played when i was a little kid and see how bad i am playing them compared to back then. GOG is also a marking point in Digital download easy web 2.0 look with there own GOG Downloader makes life easy as PIE!!!
To all who are patiently waiting to find out if they won, Zardus has taken the prize and is now swimming in Good Old Games. Thanks for participating!