What with the recent clampdown on pirates, both digital and analog, I thought it was high time I slap my own thoughts on piracy down here. First, if you hadn't heard: Read This.
Once again, Jim you disgust me but goddamn if I don't agree with you. I wanna start off with this choice quote: "Piracy is the single greatest threat to the development and release of innovative and creative entertainment software that consumers demand and enjoy". I take big issue with that statement. Dinosaurs who ran out of ideas ten years ago trying to please everyone because they don't know how to make a good goddamned game anymore is the greatest threat. Companies that tend to have a huge corporate face and are largely marketing driven are piracy's biggest enemies. Why? Mostly because those companies tend to rely on fooling you rather than delivering lots of content. If you can download a game for free and see that it's like seven hours long with no original ideas whatsoever, you're not going to buy it. However, if you're an idiot and don't know about piracy, you might be dazzled by shiny things and explosions long enough to plunk down sixty dollars. After that, doesn't matter if your experience with the product is great or garbage, you've already paid.
There are companies that make games that don't give a damn about piracy, however. Valve comes to mind as recently saying "pirates are customers you just haven't met yet". And trust me, Valve's games are pirated just as much, if not more than other people's games. So why don't they get all red faced?
They make good games that make money, and through their commitment to quality and staying on top of what the fans want, they've garnered a large army of support. They're rich, and always will be thanks to doing their fucking job.
I'm going to come out and say it: Piracy isn't a significant threat. In fact, it's one of the few weapons consumers of digital media have left. It's a good thing. It's as simple as this: If you make a good game, I will buy it, regardless of whether I have pirated it or not. Hell, I'll buy it if you have some really original ideas in there. I should get a fucking Medal of Radical for buying Matt Hazard at full price. There are people out there who pirate everything, and those people weren't going to buy your shit anyway. They don't have the money. You can sob and say "well then you shouldn't play it!" and if you want to be Policeman FunRuiner, you can do that, but it's irrelevant to sales numbers.
The flip side of this argument is what most people don't get. If you don't make a good game, you don't deserve any money. Shitty games making lots of money are the biggest threat to the industry, not piracy. If you make a shitty game, I hope everyone pirates your game, spreads word about how shitty it is, and then everyone at the company you work for loses their job. Maybe next time you wont make a half-ass garbage product and try and cover up your failure with a glitzy ad campaign. People with talent and vision don't have to worry about things like that happening.
The DS has a huge rate of piracy, and it's due to a number of reasons. There are the technology reasons, (SD cards and DS adapters being cheap), but it's also what the hackfucks have turned the system into: a dumping ground for cheap cash-in detritus sold at 40 bucks a pop. Review scores are irrelevant. The system is filled with so much trash that anything with a cool premise or two minutes of good gameplay gets a disproportionately high score. The only way to be sure that you're not going to be ripped off is pirate the game and see for yourself. Of course, most DS games aren't worth more than a play or two these days, so there go the sales. Even with the huge piracy rate, DS games sell like crack in ghettos, even shitty ones (the games, not the ghettos).
Of course, there's a bright light at the end of the tunnel in all this: Piracy will never be stopped. Pirates will always be better than the companies that try in vain to seal themselves off with lawyers and courts. As long as the internet exists, there will always be a way to get your digital product you spent years and millions on for absolutely free. Now all you have to do in order to avert tragedy is give me a reason to not do so.
Monday, April 20, 2009
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
HAHA OH WOW
Nintendo's resident lumbering golem of meat Reginald Fils-Aime has been a personal thorn in my side since the Gamecube days when he first got hired as their PR guy. Reggie went from that guy whose job it was to lie straight to my face going "No seriously guys, the Gamecube is going to be awesome any second now", to that guy pretty much making fun of me directly for being a fan of videogames. Now he's just as big a greaseball as Activision CEO Bobby Kotick, except funnier.
Take his latest interview, found here. For those not willing to read, MeatGolem basically says that used games are bad for the consumer, never says exactly why, and then proceeds to tell me that Nintendo games have incredible longevity.
There's a few choice quotes here that aren't to be missed, like when he says earlier in the interview "I'm a big Zelda fan from way back" and then proceeds to talk about "unlocking levels in Zelda", which is not how it has ever worked. I hate to be that guy who goes "um sir, excuse me" but you're talking to a goddamned gaming blog. Try to at least look like you sort of know what you're talking about. He says "You don't see businesses selling used DVD's and CD's" and "used books have never taken off". First off, you out of touch corporate whore, yes you do. You see them all the time. You can buy pre-owned DVD's and CD's fucking everywhere. Second off, I have personally been in used books stores. I know people who frequent used book stores. Maybe they haven't taken off, but videogame used sales have. It's already happened. The comparison is dead out of his mouth.
I love how it escapes him that if Nintendo games really were deep and really did have longevity, then used game sales would be a non-issue. The fact is, they're the cheapest throwaway garbage since the NES days and so used game sales are huge.
Lots of developers are bristling at the used game market, and they're all big fat babies. They could eliminate the used game trade tommorow in one fell swoop by doing two things: pricing games accordingly, and making games worth keeping. If you priced games that clearly aren't worth more than twenty, fifteen dollars at most that price on opening day, then people would buy them. When you try and fool me into thinking a movie tie-in game is worth sixty bucks, you lose a sale instead. If you made games that had great replay value, were immense and complex, or were just plain good, then I'd have no problem buying the game new and I would probably never sell it. When you make a game that's linear, derivative, and 8 hours long, you're simply not getting my sixty dollars.
All the used game debate is over is developers that are irritated because there's a force out there that makes them work for their money a little. I don't care if Miyamoto himself comes down off his gardening fitness cloud kingdom or wherever he lives now and says "used games are bad", you tell his worthless used up hack ass to shut the fuck up.
Take his latest interview, found here. For those not willing to read, MeatGolem basically says that used games are bad for the consumer, never says exactly why, and then proceeds to tell me that Nintendo games have incredible longevity.
There's a few choice quotes here that aren't to be missed, like when he says earlier in the interview "I'm a big Zelda fan from way back" and then proceeds to talk about "unlocking levels in Zelda", which is not how it has ever worked. I hate to be that guy who goes "um sir, excuse me" but you're talking to a goddamned gaming blog. Try to at least look like you sort of know what you're talking about. He says "You don't see businesses selling used DVD's and CD's" and "used books have never taken off". First off, you out of touch corporate whore, yes you do. You see them all the time. You can buy pre-owned DVD's and CD's fucking everywhere. Second off, I have personally been in used books stores. I know people who frequent used book stores. Maybe they haven't taken off, but videogame used sales have. It's already happened. The comparison is dead out of his mouth.
I love how it escapes him that if Nintendo games really were deep and really did have longevity, then used game sales would be a non-issue. The fact is, they're the cheapest throwaway garbage since the NES days and so used game sales are huge.
Lots of developers are bristling at the used game market, and they're all big fat babies. They could eliminate the used game trade tommorow in one fell swoop by doing two things: pricing games accordingly, and making games worth keeping. If you priced games that clearly aren't worth more than twenty, fifteen dollars at most that price on opening day, then people would buy them. When you try and fool me into thinking a movie tie-in game is worth sixty bucks, you lose a sale instead. If you made games that had great replay value, were immense and complex, or were just plain good, then I'd have no problem buying the game new and I would probably never sell it. When you make a game that's linear, derivative, and 8 hours long, you're simply not getting my sixty dollars.
All the used game debate is over is developers that are irritated because there's a force out there that makes them work for their money a little. I don't care if Miyamoto himself comes down off his gardening fitness cloud kingdom or wherever he lives now and says "used games are bad", you tell his worthless used up hack ass to shut the fuck up.
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