News Positech Games reveals results of piracy survey

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2008/08/14/positech-games-reveals-results-of-piracy-survey/1

Cliff Harris, semi-regular bit-tech columnist, has revealed the results of his latest survey into games piracy.

 

Couldn't agree more. Even though I don't make games for a living.

 

Its so true, games that are $10-15 dollars ie £5-8 are generally impulse buys for me, and now the price of many of his games are $9.99 I'm tempted to buy more. Up to about £15 and you've got a strong case for an impulse buy, and if I only play it 3-5 times its still cheaper then a night out and has give more entertainment. I mean I've only played through the penny arcade game a couple of times but i dont feel cheated as it was only a tenner and it was good.

I Have to agree that DD is much easier then buying a physical product either from the shops or online, and often its quicker. But the difference between buying from many small indie developers and buying form Steam is the integration and collation aspect. With steam its 1 password you type in to see all of your games, both installed and just purchased. Its one password to get updates for all of them, to buy new games and install old ones.

To get the same functionality I do from Steam with my indie games I keep an 8gig USB stick with installers, passwords and URLs to installers so that I don’t have to hunt around for keys and installers after I've uninstalled a game.

 

Even at US$ 50 or so, a game is less expensive per hour than going to the movies.

Yes, it is. I wish all you brave pirates go into creative careers - architecture, design, publicity, media... - and learn just how demoralizing and sad it feels to have your work ripped off.

 

piracy is a symptom that something is not right, and Cliff Harris got it right, we went and asked the pirates, he talked to his possible clients, i applaud your initiative and hope your future endeavours are fruitful!

 

Greetings!

How come every time we discuss the game industry, Steam always comes up as the standard\benchmark?

 

I completely agree with you.
I hadn't bought CS:S up until now, then I saw it at $9.99 last weekend on Steam. It then fell into the "Impulse buy that the missus won't notice" price bracket. £5-£8 is about right. AudioSurf also fell into that bracket.

Steam works so well, because it has a large userbase, and attracts a lot of games. I don't want to download another Digital Distribution platform for every game I buy. One is enough.

 

Audiosurf was my last impulse buy too. I played the demo, one track, and thought that that was worth the price. Even though I haven't played in a while I still feel it was a good buy.

 

I'm really glad to see that someone who makes games is paying attention and taking a realistic approach to providing what the market wants. The reality is that it will always be not only possible to pirate games but also cheaper. If you want to make a profit, you have to create a circumstance where people want to give you money for your game instead of downloading it. I think Cliff & Co. are on the right track.

 

I'm glad at least one developer is trying to tackle the causes of piracy instead of moaning about how it's ruining the games industry. I think there will always be at least some piracy but I also think most gamers will want to support their favourite games developers as long as they don't feel they're being ripped off.

 

glad to see someone working *with* his customers, rather than against/around them. Best of luck, Sir!

 

Finally some common sense. Lowering prices is always a winner and a no-brainer. Lack of intrusive DRM is also a plus for me, but I really don't have issues with it, except for the really dragonien ones, like Mass Effect's.

Where he really hits home, is with this one: Better quality. The ONLY games that have any real length to them, at the moment, are MMOs. The single-player experience has almost been completed replaced by tutorial-like campaigns, short and hastily put together, repetitive scenarios and all the focus seems to be on multiplayer and graphics. Stuff that looks good in advertising, basically.

Even the few, dedicated singleplayer games have been made into mindless, repetitive experiences, with uninspired stories and soulless characters. Oblivion being the prime example and it's spiritual successor, Fallout 3, showing many of the same symptoms.

And I personally don't care much for the current way digital distribution is being handled. I don't like Steam, because I don't like the idea of being forced to run (another) programme in the background, with more or less constant connection to the internet. Let me create an account on a site, let me download from the site and let that be the end of it (like every other online store in the world) and maybe then we can talk.

 

No matter how people try an analyze piracy, I don't think your gonna escape the fact that people who pirate, will continue to do so, because:
A) It's free
B) It's simple to obtain
c) Generally it's been cracked and so easy to run without jumping through security checks.

You cannot compete against something that is available for free, unless the laws get really tough on piracy IMHO.

 

I don't pirate pc games anymore and haven''t for awhile. However i have pirated pro software i.e cubase, 3d studio max photoshop etc. I'm a poor college kid and i can't jusify dropping 1K+ for something i just want to fool around with.

 

THAT'S ALL

 

One company that i believe dealt with piracy the correct way was Blizzard. Sure people pirated their games but that only gave you access to singleplayer content. If you tried to access battle.net you were screwed. The lasting power of all of blizzards games has been (for me) the appeal of gaming online. I think this started with starcraft and when diablo 1 was updated to give people unique names (this carried over to diablo 2 and warcraft 3)

 

Yeah, this. I think this guy is setting himself up for a drop in revenue and nothing more. Sure, some games can be marketed as $10 impulse buys, but if you're a larger company with more work going into the product (I mean man-hours here, not effort) you just plain can't sell your game for that little. There might be a few people more who will buy the guy's games because they're cheaper now, but it won't be the pirates. The pirates already "own" it.

The people least likely to give an accurate report as to why people pirate games are the pirates themselves. They know they are doing something wrong, and they will give a litany of the same tired excuses to justify their behavior, when the only real reason is that it's free that way.

 

An additional comment for Mr Harris, whether he ever gets this or not. He mentioned increasing the size of his demos, which I think is a wise decision. I'm usually not that impressed by demos because they typically don't put the game's best foot forward. You get to mess around in starting level areas with low level stuff, but it doesn't build the anticipation of what is yet to come.

The best demo I have ever played, hands down, is F.E.A.R. Even if you have the game I recommend playing through that demo. They compressed several levels worth of combat and creepiness into one level, to the point that when I played the actual game, the pacing was slow enough that it didn't feel nearly as scary as that demo. You got to play with weapons you wouldn't find until 1/2 way through the game as well. Granted, this must have taken some significant rewriting, which might be tough for a small developer. But that's one of the only demos I've ever played that made me think "I have got to get this game!"