Piracy versus PC Gaming [Mar 09, 2007, 8:23 pm ET] – Share – Viewing Comments
Next Generation recaps a GDC talk titled "The Videogame Piracy Problem:
Fifteen Men on a Dead Man’s Chest" by id Software CEO Todd Hollenshead about the
impact of piracy on the game industry. They outline how Mr. Hollenshead says the
estimated $3 billion economic loss caused by piracy in 2004 does not include
piracy that takes place on the Internet. There is also an article about this
talk on
Joystiq that focuses on the statement that piracy is a factor in id's
embrace of consoles, quoting Todd as saying "Piracy has pushed id as being
multiplatform." On a related note,
Can PC
Gaming Survive in a Console World (thanks
Digg) recaps a panel discussion on the topic that brought up a similar
point:
Part of the problem is piracy. Big titles get stolen by cyber thieves, and it hurts revenue. "The market," said Capps, "that would buy a $600 video card knows how Bittorrent works."
Does that mean casual games, which exponentially outsell what PC gaming traditionalists think of as A-list titles, will one day rule? Hilleman made a point: casual is a poor choice of words. The average player on EA's Pogo "casual" game network plays "for 24 hours a week. There's nothing casual about that."
There is some light in the PC gaming world. World of Warcraft, for instance, is a massive hit, and the upcoming Spore looks not only creative and different, but promising. The MMO and other social networking games could become the norm for PC gaming, with big-ticket titles growing rarer with each passing year. Johnson added that MMOs are "successful because you can't pirate WoW. You cannot pirate an MMO. Period." Therefore, he said, "game design on the PC is going to bend toward persistence."
After reading some of the responses to my first post, I think I need to clarify it some cause I think it may have been a bit misinterpreted. The point I was trying to make in saying that CoH, GalCiv and Oblivion had no copy protection and yet sold well was simply that a lot of people will buy games they think are worthwhile. Putting copy protection on a game doesn't increase sales and all it serves to do is make life difficult for your legitimate customers. People who pirate games would not have been consumers for them anyway because their intent was never to purchase them. If they couldn't pirate it, they still wouldn't have bought it. I think some may have taken that as me saying that they are OK in pirating those games for that reason and that's not what I meant at all.
I haven't downloaded a game in years and I probably spend at least a couple of thousand dollars a year on game titles alone. I have two closets full of game boxes from over the years and I probably have at least 20 titles for each of the last-gen consoles. I'm one of those people who has to scale back my purchases from time to time because I'll have more games that I buy on impulse than I possibly have time to finish. I don't say that to brag, I just say it to articulate a point. I play demos when available and if a game doesn't get a demo, I read multiple reviews and also look for community opinion in various places. Going by that, I've never been steered wrong. If I game comes out in poor shape, I wait until its patched up or I buy it in the bargain bin. That's my way of telling the companies that I won't pay full price for unfinished product.
Why do I rent games for the current-gen consoles? Simply put, many of them aren't worth the now higher prices. I buy games that have long-lasting value for me such as Gears of War (multiplayer), Tony Hawk Project 8 (multiplayer and a very long singleplayer), Test Drive Unlimited (hours and hours of content) etc. I also bought Crackdown which I really regret. Why? It's 8 hours long at most! $70+ for games that are carbon-copies of other games and last a maximum of ten hours are simply not worth it. I don't care how pretty they are, I'm not a graphics whore. I will generally rent games that fall into this demographic and if I really like it, I will buy it. About 30% of the games I've rented for the 360 have converted to purchases. But raising the prices for less content that happens to be prettier (in some cases) is not good value for me. I've also bought a lot of stuff from Xbox Live Arcade to support indie developers but as is indicated on my protest site, the DRM put on those products combined with the horrible Xbox "customer service" is driving me away form that because once again, they are creating huge headaches for legitimate customers to stop pirates who'd never buy the games anyway.
To sum up my novel of a post, I don't agree with pirating under any circumstances. I was merely pointing out that if the ability to pirate was completely eliminated, game developers would not suddenly see a huge boon in sales. No more than Hollywood or the music industry would. But if eventually, my only choice for game genres that are better on PC (i.e. FPS and RTS in particular) is to play them on consoles, that's when you'll see less sales from me too.
Parallax Abstraction
Ottawa, Canada
Help Fix The Broken Xbox Live Marketplace: http://brokenxblm.blogspot.com
I haven't downloaded a game in years and I probably spend at least a couple of thousand dollars a year on game titles alone. I have two closets full of game boxes from over the years and I probably have at least 20 titles for each of the last-gen consoles. I'm one of those people who has to scale back my purchases from time to time because I'll have more games that I buy on impulse than I possibly have time to finish. I don't say that to brag, I just say it to articulate a point. I play demos when available and if a game doesn't get a demo, I read multiple reviews and also look for community opinion in various places. Going by that, I've never been steered wrong. If I game comes out in poor shape, I wait until its patched up or I buy it in the bargain bin. That's my way of telling the companies that I won't pay full price for unfinished product.
Why do I rent games for the current-gen consoles? Simply put, many of them aren't worth the now higher prices. I buy games that have long-lasting value for me such as Gears of War (multiplayer), Tony Hawk Project 8 (multiplayer and a very long singleplayer), Test Drive Unlimited (hours and hours of content) etc. I also bought Crackdown which I really regret. Why? It's 8 hours long at most! $70+ for games that are carbon-copies of other games and last a maximum of ten hours are simply not worth it. I don't care how pretty they are, I'm not a graphics whore. I will generally rent games that fall into this demographic and if I really like it, I will buy it. About 30% of the games I've rented for the 360 have converted to purchases. But raising the prices for less content that happens to be prettier (in some cases) is not good value for me. I've also bought a lot of stuff from Xbox Live Arcade to support indie developers but as is indicated on my protest site, the DRM put on those products combined with the horrible Xbox "customer service" is driving me away form that because once again, they are creating huge headaches for legitimate customers to stop pirates who'd never buy the games anyway.
To sum up my novel of a post, I don't agree with pirating under any circumstances. I was merely pointing out that if the ability to pirate was completely eliminated, game developers would not suddenly see a huge boon in sales. No more than Hollywood or the music industry would. But if eventually, my only choice for game genres that are better on PC (i.e. FPS and RTS in particular) is to play them on consoles, that's when you'll see less sales from me too.
Parallax Abstraction
Ottawa, Canada
Help Fix The Broken Xbox Live Marketplace: http://brokenxblm.blogspot.com
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