Piracy: Software and Video Games

More cynical readers (of whom I’m sure there are many) are probably sniggering right now and asking “So Evis, if you’re so knowledgeable about all this and against piracy, how do YOU propose we stop it?” Well, I have a few ideas.

To Developers

• Lower the price of games. Publishers can afford to take a smaller cut from the sale of the game. Lower prices mean people will pay for not taking the risk of pirating. No one wants to pay up to £50 for a single game. In terms of value for money, Valve’s orange box was second to none.
• Stop the extreme copy protection. You’ll drive people off if you keep doing it. Stop it now before it gets endemic. Loosing a few thousand sales is going to be nothing if you end up loosing millions as people refuse to buy a product they can’t get to work.
• Give us more with our games. Nintendo’s stars system is on the right track. They’re basically like loyalty cards at supermarkets, you get the game, register it and earn points that can be redeemed for stuff.
• Better demos. Playing the first five minute level of a game does NOT constitute a taster. Like a movie trailer demos should feature all the exciting bits of a game. Walking around with two guns is not fun. Let players play one of the later levels where they have more weapons and are in a “cooler” setting. Even create a special “demo level” for the game highlighting all the best points, Valve did this with half life the lost coast, and it made me buy episode two.
• Stop treating us like idiots and stop acting like idiots. Don’t spout bullshit about piracy and how it will destroy the industry. In any industry a degree of corruption will always be preset. Stop trying to get rid of piracy completely and focus on making people want to buy your legal copies rather than free illegal ones. You make take a profit hit in the short term, but you’ll save your asses in the long run.
• Create something new. For too long the industry has been churning out endless FPS games. Give us something new! Write better stories in games, experiment and play! Nintendo lead in this field, being the first company to give us analogue controllers, and the motion sensitivity of the Wii. And look at the sales figures of the DS compared to the PSP. And they said touch screen would never work… Point is once you’ve played one FPS, they’re all the same just with little extra bits tagged on. Bioshock was a big disappointment for me.
• Experiment within the genres. Play Call Of Duty 4 and Halo 2. One is clearly better than the other. A few years back the industry was churning out WWII games, before that it was star wars. Yes, I know you need to make profits, but you can only get so much activity out of a dead horse. If you want to keep in dollars, keep people interested in your company.
• Don’t buy a series or franchise as it’s doing well and then try to make it better. We’re looking at you this time EA. These guys are hell of picking up games and them murdering them within two sequels. You got it because people liked it, don’t change it.

To Pirates or Would-Be Pirates

• Go open source. It’s legal, it’s just as good and in most cases just as free. Don’t think MS office, think open office. Don’t think winamp, think songbird.
• Be generous with your games. If you own a game, let people try it, at least until the game industry learns how to make a decent demo.
• Demand a better deal. Get on the forums of publishers and say you’re not going to pay more than £35 for a game, unless there’s good reason (Like the guitar controller for guitar hero). Stick to your laurels. If publishers notice a slip in sales and there’s an identifiable reason why, they will change their ways.
• Remember, in most cases it’s the publishers who price games and institute the copy protection. Yet it’s the developers who need to pay their bills, and they have nothing to do with how a game is marketed.

Well, I think that about sums it up for software piracy. I could go on for another fifty pages, but I daresay you’ll be bored by the time I’m done. If you found this interesting, please leave comments as I value the opinions and ideas of others. Keep an eye out for my next article in which I will be looking at other forms of Piracy. Until then, haul away yer halyards and ready the cannons, lest we loose our booty! Arr! At least until the ninjas get here!