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[policedanceclub]

Well, you can download from these online service thingies that the three consoles have.


Demos, videos, games (BRAID) and whatever, depending on the console.


 

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

Yeah, but... how? Does it have an internet browser where you to go their site and download them, or does a list of games and demos to download appear when you go online? Is the console always online, or do you have to "dial-up" so to speak? Does it connect with a wire to the router, the way the computer does? It's hard to imagine something you don't have experience with.

[Tobasco Panda]

All three of the new consoles can be connected to the internet through a router (wifi in the case of the wii). Each uses a proprietory download service created by and controlled by that company, which function kind of like Steam if you are familiar with it.

The wii does have an internet browser (though the cache infuriatingly small).

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

Hmm, I guess that makes sense. Are you informed when new demos are available, or do you have to search for them? Is there any kind of messaging service, like sending "email" to someone else who also has a PS3 or an XBOX 360 (I assume with Wii you'd just be able to use your normal email)?

[Ragzouken]

If I'm honest the biggest thing that puts me off of piracy is how long it would take me to download the game on my connection. I pirated Myst but ending up buying the anniversary edition with all 5 games. I don't know if I would have done that if Riven wasn't so huge.

The two things that stop me buying a game legitimately are that paying online requires a credit card which I don't have, and if I go to a physical shop there's no guarantee I'm going to find the game I want, and the trip itself is a hassle. With piracy you can have the game then and there.

If we broaden from games to general piracy, there are things like Photoshop. It's the standard tool for most people but I don't think £570 (~$1140) is in any home user's price range. I guess that's not relevant to here though.

I'm not really connected to game piracy now though as no one seems to make linux compatible proprietary games

I don't think indie games are overpriced at all.

[Movius]

Anything about prices being stupidly high/out of reach to the common user, restrictions on availability, lack of demo, etc. are utterly irrelevant. However contrary to business logic or 'evil' the action of the seller is, it doesn't change the ethical correctness of the person copying it.

The fact is that the piece of software is the property of it's owner and they are free to put any price or other caveats on the sale of the product. If you don't agree, don't use the software.

[Pixelworship]

sorry if someone's already said this, can't be arsed to read through the whole thread...

I'm sure it's the same with game publishers as it is in the music industry.

They can point to the number of downloads (don't ask me how they come up with these facts) and say like "1.4 million people downloaded this album from you, and that means 1.4 million people who would have bought this album didn't, and so you owe us 21 million dollars". And the fallacy? Who can say for sure that these people who pirated the album/game/movie would have bought it if they didn't pirate it?

Question can't be answered.

I have lots of pirated games. And at the same time I spend the equivalent of US$ 200 every month on games. I download some stuff (albums and games) to try it out. I guess lots of people do. Among us who have a strong interest in gaming and the gaming industry and the "culture" (whatever that is supposed to mean) I think that we try before we buy and then pay for the games that are interesting. Because the same goes for the gaming industry as for the music and movie business: 90% is shit. And you don't wanna pay for shit? Then try before you buy. And sometimes a demo does not make a game justice, the same way as a trailer for a movie or one song from an album doesn't do a movie or an album justice.

Ok, now I came across as one who tells people to do stuff. Which I'm not. This is just what I do.

[Cheater‽]

Also, there's the publishers punishing actual customers with their copy-protection and stuff.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

Nnobody here is claiming that 1.4 million pirated copies equals 1.4 million lost sales. And nobody is claiming that 1.4 million pirated copies equals 0 lost sales.

I'm not sure you're right when you say the question 'can't be answered' though -- you can estimate this sort of thing and make educated guesses based on experimental data. For instance, one guy wrote about how, when he added DRM to his game, the conversion rate (the number of games bought per downloaded demo) went up by 85%.

In other words, if 1 out of every 100 people who tried it bought his game when they had the option to pirate it easily, and 1.85 out of every 100 people who tried it bought the game when piracy was more difficult. His was just a single case, and you'd need a larger sample size to be more accurate, but I think his case at least shows that piracy causes *some* sales to be lost. So I think the question can be answered through experimentation.

So if DRM is "punishment", it's a punishment that seems to work at least some of the time, for some people.

[Cheater‽]

Nnobody here is claiming that 1.4 million pirated copies equals 1.4 million lost sales. And nobody is claiming that 1.4 million pirated copies equals 0 lost sales.

I'm not sure you're right when you say the question 'can't be answered' though -- you can estimate this sort of thing and make educated guesses based on experimental data. For instance, one guy wrote about how, when he added DRM to his game, the conversion rate (the number of games bought per downloaded demo) went up by 85%.

In other words, if 1 out of every 100 people who tried it bought his game when they had the option to pirate it easily, and 1.85 out of every 100 people who tried it bought the game when piracy was more difficult. His was just a single case, and you'd need a larger sample size to be more accurate, but I think his case at least shows that piracy causes *some* sales to be lost. So I think the question can be answered through experimentation.

So if DRM is "punishment", it's a punishment that seems to work at least some of the time, for some people.

I was actually talking about extreme DRM, like Mass Effect's validation system, or Bioshock's whateverithad, or Sony's rootkit, though we are straying away from games now..

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

I'm not familiar with what those games did.

The only DRM I've had problems with is Softwrap, which Game Maker uses. It only lets you activate the program once, never mind if you format your hard drive or if you want to move it to another computer, once is all you get. It also has the tendency to *revert* to the unregistered state if you change anything about your computer (or even if you don't do anything at all, in some cases). I wouldn't care if it limited the number of activations to a reasonable amount, say five or ten, but one?

But most DRM is not like that. You can't really characterize something by its worst offenders.

[Nathaniel607]

I don't think indie games are overpriced at all.

Hold on there. Now although I agree with that most the time, Braid DEFINITLY isin't overpriced, or audiosurf. But ther are exceptions to that rule, anyone heard of Swords And Sandals? Well it was a Flash game, you had to buy it to play the full vesrion. Yes, a flash game.

If we broaden from games to general piracy, there are things like Photoshop. It's the standard tool for most people but I don't think £570 (~$1140) is in any home user's price range. I guess that's not relevant to here though.

Agreed. Thats why I use a combination of the semi-clone 'GimpShop' (despite weird name, its really good [AND FREE!!!!] ) and 'GraphicsGale', the freeware version.

So, yes, piracy sucks, but some pricing is ridiculous, like Macromedia Flash, what, is it £500 or something? And also rubbish games, like the aforementione Ninjabread Man and othere shovelware like Anubis II (Ninjabread man with different graphics and sound! Oh the joy!) and Rock'n'Roll adventures (Another Ninjabread man reskin) And also music, but if you can't afford it, don't get it!

But the majority of Indie games are underpriced if you ask me. Although I didin't personally like the Aquaria demo, what do I do? Pirate it? NO!!! I just don't buy it.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

I've paid money for a Flash game before -- Dofus, a MMORPG made in Flash, is a really wonderful game and worth more than the money I spent on it (7$ a month). I don't think what you make the game in should affect it. Is my game worth less because I made it in Game Maker?

[Corpus]

Although I didin't personally like the Aquaria demo, what do I do? Pirate it? NO!!! I just don't buy it.

Did you spend the time you would otherwise have spent playing Aquaria on perfecting your shift+1 technique?

Is my game worth less because I made it in Game Maker?

I'd say no, but other people would say yes. It depends on whether you see the price as a reflection of the manufacturing process/creation of a product, or as a reflection of its worth as a product.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

The engine really has very little to do with the manufacturing process, though. The most expensive and time-consuming part of game development is usually resource creation, and sometimes programming. And programming games isn't any less difficult or time consuming in higher-level languages like GML or Flash than in lower-level ones like C++.

I see pricing as neither related to the creation costs or its innate worth -- pricing is just based on something more simple: at which price will it earn the most? I.e. if the game would sell 1000 copies at $5 and 500 copies at $20, $20 is better; if it would sell 10,000 copies at $5 and 100 at $20, $5 is better. This varies by the game's audience, genre, platform, and other factors.

[muku]

I'm not sure you're right when you say the question 'can't be answered' though -- you can estimate this sort of thing and make educated guesses based on experimental data. For instance, one guy wrote about how, when he added DRM to his game, the conversion rate (the number of games bought per downloaded demo) went up by 85%.

That's interesting. Do you have a link for that? In the music industry, there have been recent news that un-DRMed music files (i.e. good old MP3s, OGG Vorbis and FLAC) seem to sell a lot better than the proprietary DRM crap Apple and cohorts have been trying to shove down the consumers' throats. This is only now starting to catch on, though, but I think it's a good development.

[Hayden Scott-Baron]

On two separate occasions I've had DRM render software completely unplayable on my machine. I remember buying an indie game and trying for several hours to get it working as their 'online authentication' system choked on the hyphen in my name, and some other junk.

Eventually I just gave up and walked away without playing that game and a bad impression of the company. Same goes with the other company that I sent emails to regarding my serial not working, and got sent the same serial after a few days... eventually I just thought 'screw it' and chalked it up as a mistake.

I won't knowingly buy games with fruity DRM anymore, but of course - most people hide this information from you until after you've paid your money. 

My favourite indie purchasing experience is Lexaloffle, where they will email you a download link and time you want to re-download it, and they let you download it on both mac and PC  on the same license (my laptop is XP, but I have an imac also).

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

That's interesting. Do you have a link for that? In the music industry, there have been recent news that un-DRMed music files (i.e. good old MP3s, OGG Vorbis and FLAC) seem to sell a lot better than the proprietary DRM crap Apple and cohorts have been trying to shove down the consumers' throats. This is only now starting to catch on, though, but I think it's a good development.

Unfortunately I don't have a link, I think I read it in the blog of Winter Wolves. http://www.winterwolves.net/blog/ -- if you go through the entire blog you'll probably find it somewhere. Sorry I couldn't give a more specific source than that.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

Nevermind, I found the specific entry (it was in the antipiracy tag):

http://www.winterwolves.net/blog/2007/03/19/truth-about-piracy-some-facts/

It also turned out to be 35%, not 85%, I had misremembered the figure.

[Tobasco Panda]

An alternative solution is what is widely done in Korea.

The game is free, since it is ASSUMED that it would be stolen otherwise, but either the online play is subscription based, or there are items in the game that can (some times only) be purchased for real world money (see: Gunbound).

It's interesting because I've heard of writers having good success with releasing their work as Creative Commons as well as published books. In these cases people who wouldn't otherwise read buy their books would read them, and in some cases, then be motivated enough to buy physical copies.

I thought that Fantasic Contraption http://tigsource.com/articles/2008/07/21/fantastic-contraption was a great example of allowing enough content to whet the appetite, but allowing more to those who pay (unlocks user created levels and the level editor).