Games and DRM: Introversion’s Thoughts

[Anach]

Developers need to shift their view of piracy and digital distribution, as much with games as with film, music, tv, or any form of content. We can’t complain that people copy our games, then go home and comfort ourselves by watching series 2 of the West Wing on DivX. Any stance that criminalises the majority of our customer base (10 out of every 11 Uplink players, for example) should be ringing alarm bells in our ears. We need to rename “pirate users” to “customers who’ve yet to be convinced”, and consider the pirate copies that will INEVITABLY appear as extended demos of our games. Then we need to offer something more when they upgrade to the full legitimate game.

http://forums.introversion.co.uk/introv ... php?t=1046

Having good online multiplayer content or bonus online content will encourage people to buy the game, if they like it. Most the time people are pirating games they wouldnt have bought in the first place. Then there is the flipside of people who buy games because they enjoyed playing the pirated version. Even illegal downloaders are still able to review the game for themselves and offer feedback to others, often adding to the game's community, which is also good for the game.

I have a couple disk racks of games that i've bought, but only after trying a friend's copy first, hiring it from a game rental shop or downloading it. I've bought these games because of the ease of having the proper disk, the ability to play online, the availablility of online content or community, the desire for the manual and simply because I enjoyed it. There have also been times where i've bought the expansion packs for a game that I originally copied from someone else due to not being able to find the game.

I think game companies are laying far too much blame for lack of sales on the pirates shoulders. When they should be looking more at the quality and features of their games. I want to try a game before spend 50-100 dollars to buy it, for much the same reason i test drive a car before I buy it. I also dont want to be worse off in actually owning the game compared to having a pirate version, like I am when it comes to DRM.

DRM often means that the game owners have to install invasive anti-piracy software on their PC, yet the pirated cracked versions do not. So who is that hurting...

Replay is another factor in the decision to buy a game. Even if a game has good single player gameplay and a great story, if it's finished in a few hours with little to no replay value, then it's not going to be something I'd bother with. I know I would have gotten a lot more enjoyment out of Introversion's own Uplink if it had some multiplayer content.

Again a good source of replay value is online multiplayer content, open endedness, game modifications, and and the ability to modify the game easily. Which a lot of games simply do not have.

These modding communities that popup with certain games that allow for easy modification, can keep a game in the market for many years compared to games which are locked down tight.

Of course there will always be someone who isnt going to buy the game, no matter whether they enjoy it or not, possibly due to income, age or location, and those people would still be unlikely to buy it even if it was pirate proof, but in the very least, those people help promote the game and the community along with it. Which in turn helps those who have bought it. So how many of the Uplink modders do you think own the game

[Lores]

I cant get my money back if I go to a movie I didnt like. That's why many games have demos.

[Anach]

I cant get my money back if I go to a movie I didnt like. That's why many games have demos.

You mean like taking a Game back to the store that you didnt like? That's an entirely different point.

Recently I said to a friend of mine that i'll buy a particular game when it comes out, if it's any good, so we can get some online competition going.

I tried the demo and it sucked, it was very very limiting and showed really nothing of the game and none of the multiplayer features.

The pirated version of the game was quite fun though (cant play multiplayer though), and it's on my list of games to buy after Christmas.

You should check out this article where a producer thanks pirates for pirating his film. If it wasnt for pirates, there'd be a lot more people simply not watching his film.

Movies fall into the same boat as games. People may download movies they wouldnt normally go to see at the cinema, or buy on DVD, they may also download music albums they would never have bought. Sometimes they find they actually like them and go buy them, compared to simply never seeing/hearing it. However downloading a movie doesnt stop me going to the cinema, or hiring out a DVD.

If you dont sit and watch the TV commercials during a movie on TV, does that mean you are a pirate, it does when you download a free to air show, minus the ads, so shouldnt they both be called pirating. Similar to the outcry over those recorders that cut out the ads.

Still I think you missed the point. DRM not only causes games to cost more, but it only hurts the paying customers in terms of installing software, freedom to use paid software where and how they want (Bioshock) and of course it hurts the community be having less people there to support the community.

Pirates dont need to install DRM, only non-pirates do. Where's the logic in that.

Instead the game companies need to focus more on their actual games than trying to stop the pirates, who probably wouldnt even have bought the game, even if they couldnt pirate it.