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Pirates playing a game dev simulator complain about piracy

greenheartgames.com

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Re: Pirates playing a game dev simulator complain about piracy

#121

Post by glomph »

CJefferson wrote: post #75
lelandbatey wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not really a claim of moral honesty as it is just one bit of factual data. A large majority of pirates won't buy the game. Ever. If they can't get a pirated copy, then they just won't play, but it's not as if they'll buy it instead. It's a sad but true fact. I only bring this up because there's often an underlying assumption that every pirate is a lost sale, when in reality there maybe 1% of pirates that would h…

The important figure (for developers) is not what proportion of pirates would buy the game, but what proportion of possible buyers will pirate instead. My experience with my social group is that this second group is quite high. I know (for example) people who have bought many xbox 360 games (as these are hard to pirate) and have never bought a PC game, despite playing similar number of games on each.

And yet every article (including this one) seems to compare raw numbers of pirates to number of sales, implying they think the former.

Re: Pirates playing a game dev simulator complain about piracy

#122

Post by vy8vWJlco »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #104
vy8vWJlco wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's only a problem if you consider a copy as damage. (I haven't seen a convincing argument.) There are also lots of factors in a financial proposition. Some people give away free samples, others invest in an education. It's interesting that iTunes is doing so well, without mandatory DRM, while copying has only gotten easier...

It is damage in the sense that you are consuming a product without "voting" for it in the marketplace. This can lead to products that are in fact popular being less economically feasible to produce under certain business models if the piracy rate is too high.

At the same time, popular copies - paid or otherwise - become more well known and potentially much more profitable. One may not be voting with money, but one is voting with time (and "time is money") by accepting it, using it, and sharing/promoting it to others. Microsoft used this strategy in China (Gates said something like: if they're going to steal it, we want them to steal ours...). They have done less well recently.

Re: Pirates playing a game dev simulator complain about piracy

#123

Post by JonnieCache »

lucian1900 wrote: post #97
JonnieCache wrote: post #17

Yesterday I bought some mp3s legally off amazon. They were 128 kbit/s. I deleted them out of rage/spite and ordered the CD, which is out of print and so all the money went to a second hand record dealer. If only I'd had recourse to piracy in that instance!

Although in almost all cases 128kbps is just fine and you couldn't tell the difference.

As StavrosK says, this is patently false. If you really can't tell the difference you owe it to yourself to upgrade your speakers/headphones/soundcard, or perhaps get your hearing looked at.

As someone who eagerly pays extra for FLACs when given the chance, I'd rather a poke in the eye than a 128 kbit/s mp3.

EDIT: Just to preempt the righteous nerd-anger crew, I'm aware that higher bitrate MP3s are transparant; I value the bit-for-bit archival of the original record that flacs provide.

Re: Pirates playing a game dev simulator complain about piracy

#124

Post by jiggy2011 »

eloisant wrote: post #112
jiggy2011 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Problem is , for everyone who will happily compensate the artist if they feel they got value there are probably ~100 people who will just keep it for free even if they feel they had value.

That's not really a problem, unless you have some server costs or something. The question game developers should be asking is not "How many people will illegally copy it?" but "How many people will buy it?" It doesn't matter if there are 100 free riders for 1 customers, as long as you have enough customers.

This doesn't factor in the number of people who have illegally copied it but would have paid something for it had an illegal free copy not been available.

It isn't equal to total illegal downloads, but it isn't equal to zero either. It's probably also not uniform across different game genres.

There isn't really such a thing as "enough" customers either. The more you sell the more budget you have to produce the next game and the more confidence you have that it could be successful.

Re: Pirates playing a game dev simulator complain about piracy

#126

Post by epsylon »

eropple wrote: post #23
algorias wrote: post #15

While I think this is a very clever idea, it's also somewhat dishonest. In the game world, pirates cause studios to go bankrupt. In the real world, the causal link is not as clear. People arguing that piracy is ruining gamedev routinely ignore the fact that those who pirate don't necessarily have the means to buy many games; their choice is purely between pirating and not playing. Of those 90% or more who pirate the…

> People arguing that piracy is ruining gamedev routinely ignore the fact that those who pirate don't necessarily have the means to buy many games And people who defend pirates routinely ignore that pirated products are also pirated by people who will take what they want for free if they can, because they can. Don't pretend to a higher level of intellectual honesty or moral strength. Your position can lay claim to ne…

Yep, I've always found ridiculous when pirates claim they don't have the financial means to buy a $3 game to play on their $600 smartphone with a $30 per month data plan.

Re: Pirates playing a game dev simulator complain about piracy

#127

Post by Sandman »

vy8vWJlco wrote: post #57
eropple wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People arguing that piracy is ruining gamedev routinely ignore the fact that those who pirate don't necessarily have the means to buy many games And people who defend pirates routinely ignore that pirated products are also pirated by people who will take what they want for free if they can, because they can. Don't pretend to a higher level of intellectual honesty or moral strength. Your position can lay claim to ne…

Are people who go outside and drink from a stream (through a filter/firewall, of course), stealing? What about people who take in the scenery, or people who breath? Is nature a starving artist? I'm not for dumping toxic waste in the river, or stealing property, but the Internet is my environment, and copying data is not only cheap, that's what I pay my ISP to be able to do. IMHO, that makes copying as moral as breath…

That said, I do support artists and research, etc, only I do it after I evaluate them and feel like I got something - similar to how I choose to upvote/downvote on HN, only there is no way to downvote a game producer after you have paid for something you didn't know in advance that you would like.

And luckily, a lot of games (this one included) come with a free demo, so that you can try them before buying them. So fortunately for all of us as customers, we don't need to download a cracked copy. We can play through the demo, see if welike it, and buy it if we do.

Re: Pirates playing a game dev simulator complain about piracy

#128

Post by jiggy2011 »

vy8vWJlco wrote: post #122
jiggy2011 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is damage in the sense that you are consuming a product without "voting" for it in the marketplace. This can lead to products that are in fact popular being less economically feasible to produce under certain business models if the piracy rate is too high.

At the same time, popular copies - paid or otherwise - become more well known and potentially much more profitable. One may not be voting with money, but one is voting with time (and "time is money") by accepting it, using it, and sharing/promoting it to others. Microsoft used this strategy in China (Gates said something like: if they're going to steal it, we want them to steal ours...). They have done less well rece…

If you are a game developer, the fact that several hundred thousand hours have been spent playing your game isn't helpful to eating or financing your next game if you have no way to monetize those hours.

There are of course business models that are aided by copying (such as those based on open source software).

The difficulty is how the video games industry can adapt to this. The route they seem to be increasingly taking is to sell games as a service rather than a product but then this is decried as "always on DRM".

Re: Pirates playing a game dev simulator complain about piracy

#129

Post by mcintyre1994 »

kenkam wrote: post #21

Slightly unrelated to the original point of the article: has anyone heard of Kairosoft and Game Dev Story [0]? It's ironic the OP wrote an article about irony. Having said that, it looks like they have elements not seen in GDS, but the premise is similar enough. [0]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_Dev_Story

They claim that was their inspiration, but the gameplay is very different. [0] I don't think we can judge that from the screenshot.

[0]: http://leviathyn.com/games/pc/2012/12/04/interview-greenhear...

Re: Pirates playing a game dev simulator complain about piracy

#130

Post by shpiel »

ekianjo wrote: post #117
algorias wrote: post #15

While I think this is a very clever idea, it's also somewhat dishonest. In the game world, pirates cause studios to go bankrupt. In the real world, the causal link is not as clear. People arguing that piracy is ruining gamedev routinely ignore the fact that those who pirate don't necessarily have the means to buy many games; their choice is purely between pirating and not playing. Of those 90% or more who pirate the…

Yeah, and its more or less the same thing as Hollywood claiming piracy or copying destroys their industry. I think in general game developers miss the point about piracy: - its free advertising. Just like radio is for music. - maybe pirates will not buy your game this time but they may buy the next. - simply your game is not attractive enough and most people dont want to spend any money on it. It's not because your g…

This is a false equivalency. Musicians can opt out of having their music played on the radio. If they do choose to have their music played on the radio, there is a genuine attempt made by radio stations to track how often their music is played and make a commensurate royalty payment to the artist. (source I worked on college radio).
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