stepurhan

My point is that you can sample a game by demo. The difference is that you then HAVE to go out and buy a copy of the game if you want to play the entire thing. If you've got a pirated copy then you don't have to.

As far as your "Game Boy etc emulator" anecdotes are concerned it seems that the only reason people went out and got legitimate copies is because they wanted to play them in a form that was more difficult to pirate (e.g. Game Boy cartridge) The advantages of this alternative form (e.g. portability for Game Boy games) were the deciding factor.

In fact, the only ocassion you mention where you bought a game IN THE SAME FORMAT as the pirated version is Myst. This story intrigued me because you say you bought all four games after Myst IV came out. Can you tell me where you got a copy of Riven from? I've found it really hard to get hold of one. Have you any other instances of someone buying a legitimate copy of a PC game from playing a pirated PC game?

Would you have bought Warcraft 3 if you hadn't copied your friend's Warcraft 2? Maybe not. But I got Warcraft 3 because I bought and enjoyed Warcraft 1 and 2. Did you ever buy a copy of Warcraft 2 to encourage the production of more games that you liked so much? My guess is no or you'd have mentioned it.

__________________
No Nonsense Nonsonnets #43

Cold Topic

A thread most controversial, that’s what I want to start
Full of impassioned arguments, of posting from the heart
And for this stimulation all will be thankful to me
On come on everybody it won’t work if you agree

MoriartyL

AFGNCAAP, I'm serious here. Tell me how slapping copy protection software on a game could possibly make the developer as much money as letting them play it for free and making fans out of them for later. When I come across a game I've downloaded with copy protection, I try to work around it. If I can't, I just don't play it, and continue to have the close-to-zero interest in the team's work that I had before. I'd never decide to buy the game just because the company wanted to bother me like that. So who, here, is being protected? As I have shown, piracy does the original publisher a lot of good. But how does trying to prevent it help anyone?

__________________
-Mory

MoriartyL

I can't speak about demos, because the games I like (from Nintendo) aren't given demos.

Not really. I mean, sure, that's part of it. But let's take Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, one of my favorite games. I first played it (twice, as I said) with an emulator. And nothing was lacking in the experience. GBA emulation works very well, so it's not like there was much slowdown. And a GBA's controls are all digital, so a keyboard is just as good as the original buttons. Actually, I'd have to say the emulator is more fun to use. If I am bored waiting through the other player's move, with a button press I can speed up the game. Thanks to the emulator's internal save system, I didn't have to replay hours of gameplay for tiny mistakes. My PC speakers are better than the Game Boy's. It's nice to have a big screen to play it on. And my SP's left shoulder button is broken, so that experience isn't exactly perfect.

But portability is not the reason I bought it (and went to such lengths to do so). I don't get out much these days, so when I play on my GB I do it sitting down at home, just as I would sit at a computer. No, I bought it for one reason, and one reason only: This way, I feel like I own it. Downloading a game feels like borrowing from a friend or taking a book out of a library. It doesn't seem like a part of your collection. I could give moral justifications for buying it, but I won't because that's really all there is to it.


No, I have no such stories to tell. As for Riven, I got the three first games in the very cheap Myst 10th Anniversary bundle. So I guess you could argue that I wouldn't have bought the first Myst if they weren't bundled together. But I really did love that game, so I don't believe that. To tell the truth, I always replay the game on the illegal copy of the 1993 version rather than the legal version, because it works better and doesn't give the solutions away. But it is nice to know that I have a copy of this great game in my collection.

Most of the games I play I do not buy, because they're just not good enough to merit the purchase. The argument you could make is that this harms the publishers of bad games (since I play their games without paying and then never play anything of theirs ever again), and I could certainly accept that criticism. I think the solution for everyone is that if a publisher sees they've got a stinker on their hands, they should put on as much copy protection as possible. That way, they benefit from me not starting to dislike their team, and I benefit from being turned off by the protection and not having to play it.

No, I never bought Warcraft 2. I'd already played it (and gotten sick of it) with an original, legal disc, so I had no such pressing desire. And would I have bought Warcraft 3 without this? Not "maybe", absolutely not. I would never have known anything about Warcraft- it wouldn't have even caught my eye.

__________________
-Mory

stepurhan

So you already played it (and got sick of it) with an original, legal disc. So this original, legal disc said it was OK to install on other people's computers did it? By installing your friend's original, legal disc on your machine that was just like buying your own copy was it?

Thanks for proving my argument. You played a game that you hadn't paid for until you got sick of it. You enjoyed the game immensely but at no point did your "sampling" lead you to say "I should get my own copy of this since I enjoy it so much". Has it occurred to you that if enough people had acted like you with Warcraft 2 there wouldn't have been a Warcraft 3? Like it or not games developers need to make money. If not enough people buy a game then it's not worth their while making a sequel.

Your enjoyment of Warcraft 3 is solely possible because people like me bought enough legitimate copies of Warcraft 2 to make it worthwhile. Given that I rather resent your trying to justify it.

By the way, I suspected you'd bought Myst as a bundle. You're right. I really don't believe you'd have bought another copy of the first game if it wasn't for that. Your attitude re Warcraft 2 is enough to prove that to me.

__________________
No Nonsense Nonsonnets #43

Cold Topic

A thread most controversial, that’s what I want to start
Full of impassioned arguments, of posting from the heart
And for this stimulation all will be thankful to me
On come on everybody it won’t work if you agree

MoriartyL

So what are you saying, that you've never borrowed a book in your life? No, it wasn't legal to play his game. But in the long term, that doesn't matter. The people who played the first Warcraft game would get the second legally. And the people who played the second would get the third legally. My older brother used to play the original Commandos, which he downloaded off the internet, and he enjoyed it, so he bought Commandos 2. Very rarely will a person buy a game he is already perfectly satisfied with, and that's just because he really really loved the game: If you read a book you've borrowed from someone else, and you feel like it should be a part of your collection, you buy it. But you're right that this is rare. More often it just convinces you to buy the sequel, or the next game from the same people. If more people had, like me, played Warcraft 2 illegally, then more people would have, like me, bought Warcraft 3 legally. That's the way it works.

Edit: And to add to that, I don't see where you're getting the idea that people who would have bought Warcraft 2 legally might play it illegally instead if there's no copy protection. If you want to buy a game, you go buy a game- you don't worry about whether you might get it for free somehow.

__________________
-Mory

MoriartyL

stepurhan, I'll make this very simple. I've given you many stories which show that piracy, in the long-term, helps the game industry get more money then it would have. If you want to refute this, calling my personal motives and character into question are not enough. You need to show me, in a practical example, how piracy makes them lose so much money that it outweighs all this profit.

__________________
-Mory

stepurhan

So something being against the law doesn't matter. Interesting viewpoint.
I see my comment about how a company needs to make a profit for there to be sequels passed you by. If enough people hadn't bought the first Warcraft game there wouldn't be a second and third. I really can't see developers investing time and effort for people who say "Your first game was great, maybe I'll actually pay for the second one." After all, ianyone that was happy to pirate the first is more likely to happy to pirate the sequels.
My point exactly. You've pirated a full copy of the game and really enjoyed it. but somehow not enough to actually reward the people who put in the effort of making it.

Wow, this could have great application in other parts of life. I think I'll start going into shops and eating things off the shelves. When they ask me to pay I'll just say "I really enjoyed that but I've enjoyed all the benefit of it I wanted so I don't see why I should have to pay"

Just because you aren't taking a physical item doesn't mean you aren't benefiting from somebody's work for free.

This is possibly the most unconvincing argument I've ever heard. If you've broken the law once then why would you not break the law again. A person that has no qualms about playing one game illegally is unlikely to have qualms about playing other games illegally if it's convenient for them to do so. I'm not referring to any of your anecdottes here. Just a logical observation of human nature.
Actually I'm arguing in the other direction. That people that would play a game illegally would buy it legally if the illagal option was difficult or hazardous for them. The people who look at the option of getting it free first and think it's too much hassle because they have to make adjustments to their computer or download files from a source they are unsure of.

In all honesty I agree with a point made by others in this thread. Copy protection in it's traditional form is probably unviable now. There are people out there with the skills and the time to crack any software-based protection and the increasingly invasive nature is proving to be a problem. This is why I'm looking at alternatives and some of the ideas (bonus content for fully registered copies for example) have merit.

As for providing you with practical examples. I've shown two instances where you could have bought a game but played an illegal copy instead (Warcraft 2 and Myst. Since you bought Myst in a collection I remain unconvinced you would have bought it separately) Saying "the industry will make money in the long-term" is AGAIN, ignoring my point about why a company makes sequels. If they don't make profits on current games then there WON'T BE A LONG-TERM for a company. They will fold and all those future games that you supposedly would have bought will never exist.

Potential future sales are worth precisely zip when the cash runs out.

__________________
No Nonsense Nonsonnets #43

Cold Topic

A thread most controversial, that’s what I want to start
Full of impassioned arguments, of posting from the heart
And for this stimulation all will be thankful to me
On come on everybody it won’t work if you agree

MoriartyL

You are talking about physical properties, of which there is only a set number to be sold. When you take that food, someone else now cannot buy it. If you could somehow take that food without harming anyone, then there would be no problem with it. So getting something for free in itself is no problem at all- it's the consequences of that action that have always been the problem in the past.

This isn't just theory I'm talking about here, which you might have been able to disagree with- I'm talking about how it actually works in practice. I bought Warcraft 3. I could have downloaded it, but I didn't. I didn't have to buy myself a GBA- as I have said, it is actually a more satisfying experience on the computer. But I did, and I bought lots of games for it. Earlier on, a bunch of you were talking about how there are different types of pirates. There are those who, like you say, will always download the games no matter how much protection you slap on. And then there is the "in-between group", as you put them. As one of these "in-betweeners", I am telling you how this works, as a matter of fact. I do buy games. Other people I know who play pirated games do buy games. You don't have to understand this, you just have to accept it because it is the truth.

You never know how much copy protection is on a game until you download it, and once you've taken the time to download it you're going to want to get it to work. If you can't get it to work, you get annoyed at the publisher. And a person who is annoyed at you will not buy your game.

Blizzard lost no money on me because I was not a potential customer at the time. Without that game, I would not have been enough of a fan to buy their games, so I wouldn't have played it and they still wouldn't have my money. As for Myst, for whatever you think of my motives they did get my money, so you have no argument here. In both these cases, the publishers (and developer) lost no money at all.

It's always hard to start a new series, sure, but this has nothing to do with piracy. It's because people in a store make "safe" purchases that they can depend on. They buy sequels to games they've already played, made by teams they're familiar with. Now, I see you don't like talking about the long-term. So let's talk about the short-term effects of piracy.

A world without piracy:
A new game is made, and gets lots of marketing and good word-of-mouth. Gamer Joe, having the money to spare, buys it. Gamer Bob does not give out his money so easily, only spending on safe purchases. So he doesn't buy the game. The game industry has made one sale.

A world with piracy
A new game is made, and gets lots of marketing and great word-of-mouth. Gamer Joe, having the money to spare, buys it. Gamer Bob does not give out his money so easily, only spending on safe purchases. So he borrows the game from Joe. The game industry has made one sale.

Now, it seems to me that your whole argument hinges on the supposed existence of mythical Gamer Zeppo, who will buy games as a last resort. In my life, I've never had an experience which would allow me to relate to such a person. So I'm not convinced that he actually exists.

The law says you can't buy these games used. The law says you can't lend them to a friend, even if he deletes the game as he gives it back. The law says that you can't make a backup copy of a game you've bought in case the original is scratched. So yeah, I don't care all that much what the law says in this case.

__________________
-Mory

JohnGreenArt

This has become a very "Ends DON'T justify the means" vs. "Ends DO justify the means" sort of argument. One side being it doesn't matter if piracy creates fans of a game because the company will lose money on that game, the other being it's a benefit that piracy creates fans of a game because they'll potentially buy the sequels.

What it really boils down to is a "try before you buy" attitude. In all of MoriartyL's scenarios, he tried games and that was the decided factor for buying them. Any game he tried and didn't buy was no loss to the gamemaker because he wouldn't have bought it anyway, he says. But that's not really true. Any retailer wants your desire to have something be strong enough to make you purchase it. They want you to take the chance, put up the money, and if you like it or not is up to you. If you do like it, hey you both win. If you don't like it, well too bad for you, but now you know not to buy anything from that developer again (and in my experience, when it comes to console games, I've had no problem returning to the store a week later and saying "dude, this game sucks" and they give me store credit.) But in the piracy scenario, your desire is not enough for you to buy the game, but enough to want to sample it. There's nothing wrong with that, inherently, and that can be a viable business model, and many companies have incorporated it with demos or varying forms of shareware (like, first episode is free, or certain percentage of the game is free, and when you play up to that point then you have to decide to pay or not.)

Essentially, it sounds like in MoriartyL's case that if publishers put out demos/samples of games, then that would cease the need for piracy. Any game that he played the demo of that he liked, he'd buy, and any demo he didn't like he wouldn't buy.

That's great and all, but there are still people who would (or could) NEVER pay full price for a game no matter how much they liked it, nor would they wait for it to go on sale a year after it came out, and they download whatever games they can find (even if they have no plans on playing them) so they can increase their ranking on p2p warez sites.

Copy protection is not there to stop the "casual pirate", ie the gamer who just wants to "try before they buy", it's there to stop the pirates who are SOLELY pirates.

Unfortunately, the only pirate any copy protection usually stops IS a casual pirate.

__________________
"Games are fun. Making games is funner!"

stepurhan

Actually I would be interested in MoriartyL's response to this point. If you could get reasonable demos/samples to games would you not obtain illegal copies? Here in the UK gaming magazines for consoles have cover discs with demos on. I don't know if such magazines are available where you are. Would that make a difference to your console approach?

I fully accept there are hard-core pirates that will pirate regardless. They're pirates and proud to be. It's justifying piracy as somehow legitimate that is giving me issues.

I was being sarcastic about stealing food by the way. Books are equally physical items and you seemed happy with that as an analogy. I'll grant that when food is gone it's gone but isn't a book's owner deprived of the book while you're borrowing it? This was not the case when you "borrowed" warcraft as you were able to play against that same friend.

I notice in the world with piracy analogy there was no "Gamer Bob borrows the game and likes it so much he buys his own copy" Pity but I'd like to take that idea as a starting illustration. I'm using Warcraft solely as a recognised reference in this illustration.

Gamer Bob, being careful with his money, only buys "safe" games being ones in a series where he's played the first game without shelling out his hard-earned cash. He manages this by a mixture of borrowing friend's discs and downloading cracked copies. One such game is Warcraft. The results of this are.

• If Gamer Bob represents the majority of gamers then sales for Warcraft are poor. Small companies fold and large companies decide such games are a bad investment. There is therefore no second game for Gamer Bob to buy.
• Alternatively enough Gamer Joe's exist to make Warcraft profitable. There is a clamour for more of the same. The problem is, that's exactly what the clamour is for. More fo the same. Gamer Bob liked Warcraft but is unsure of this Diablo game. Blizzard is therefore steered into making more Warcraft and not producing other types of game.
• Furthermore Blizzard better not mess with the tried and tested formula. If Gamer Bob reads an article saying "the Warcraft 4 is a radical departure in the seriees" then Warcraft is no longer a "safe" purchase. Therefore Gamer Bob won't buy it but will download to see if the new departure is something he likes or not. Even a very similar game like Starcraft (same principle but sci-fi instead of fantasy) could be different enough.

I have no problem with people sampling games before they buy, either by demo or having a go on a friend's copy (though I prefer the former) as long as they then get their own copy of games they like (Yes I know you bought proper copies of Nintendo games but they are on a different platform which is not so piratable. You even said the experience of playing them on console was no different than emulation. So why didn't the same logic apply to Warcraft 2? A legal copy of that would have played EXACTLY the same)

It's this idea that you have to "sample" an entire game in a series (which is what happened in practice with MoriartyL's Warcraft 2) to know whether you want to buy. This means that, to start making decent sales a gaming company has to make TWO games. If Gamer Bob is allowed to be careful with the relatively small amounts buying a game in a shop costs why should companies shell out so much more on "risky" games. (See this qutie old article on Ron Gilbert's webpage, Grumpy Gamer for how much making a game costs) Best stick to the "safe" games people will buy rather than risk whopping losses on something untested.

Not being funny but are you the same MoriartyL who has such a bee in his bonnet about innovation? See this thread and this follow up.

__________________
No Nonsense Nonsonnets #43

Cold Topic

A thread most controversial, that’s what I want to start
Full of impassioned arguments, of posting from the heart
And for this stimulation all will be thankful to me
On come on everybody it won’t work if you agree

MoriartyL

The games I like are made by Nintendo, and Nintendo doesn't make demos. But I think that if I could get demos for their games, I would definitely pirate their games less, yes.

I can see how you'd see it as illegitimate. That's a question of morality, and not the sort of thing which can really be debated. But this is a separate issue to the question of whether or not it harms the company's bottom line.


I don't think that's as big a problem as you think. Every Pixar movie is radically different in style to its predecessor, but it's still safe to assume that a Pixar movie is good because everyone trusts the team. I doubt all that many people decided not to buy Warcraft 3 despite liking the previous games just because of the RPG elements. And I didn't hear all that many complaints from Resident Evil fans about Resident Evil 4.



When I played Warcraft 2 I was in grade school. I have no burning desire to play it again.


I'm the same MoriartyL who said in this post:
My favorite games are almost all sequels.

__________________
-Mory

Grey

How was that illegal?

I bought Grim Fandango from eBay, and played it. Lucas Arts didn't make any money from the sale. If I sell the game for the same price I paid, have I broken any laws?

What you did isn't any different.

JohnGreenArt

If you bought an original version of Grim Fandango, then no, you didn't break any laws. In fact, you could sell it for MORE than the original price and you still didn't break any law. LucasArts made their money off of the original buyer.

However, the sale and distribution of copies of the game would be illegal.

And MoriartyL, why don't you just rent Nintendo games? Plop down the three bucks to rent a game you're interested. If you like it, well maybe you'll finish the whole game in the two days you get to rent it for that tiny amount of money. Or if you REALLY like it you can go buy a copy. And if you didn't like it, you're only out the three bucks.

Or is that still too much of an investment?

__________________
"Games are fun. Making games is funner!"

MoriartyL

I live in Israel. Game rentals don't exist here.

I don't want to make this about me personally and what I can or can't do. I'm talking about a more general concept, which is that piracy does much more good than harm (despite less-than-pure motives).

__________________
-Mory

MoriartyL

I'm pretty sure it's not legal to lend other people games, in the same way it's not legal to lend someone your Windows CD. And game companies are trying very hard to get used games to be illegal. (In some cases, they already are.)

__________________
-Mory

MdaG

I believe that it's all a trade off. I don't think that some piracy harms the business. In a way (as stated before) it's a kind of marketing, but only as long as it's not widespread and the general course of action when people obtain games. I don't think that copy protection in the form of Starforce is the answer (it has only made me boycott certain games), but rather something that will make it uncomfortable (in some way) not to buy the game. I don't see how offering patches and updates to registered users only. Can't they also be copied? Or are we talking about a M$ approach where it's all done automagically with a update system? I'm not sure how secure that would be...

MoriartyL

I don't understand what you mean about patches. My sister plays an illegal copy of The Sims 2, and I was able to get the patch for her with no problem. It doesn't check if the copy is real, it just checks whether you're registered with EA, and anyone can register for the site.

Edit: By the way, I don't think piracy will ever be the standard as long as game stores are accessible.

__________________
-Mory

MdaG

That's what I meant. I got the impression some thought that would be a solution for getting people to pirate less... and you just gave me fodder that it won't work since it's so easy to just get through that and get the patches without buying the copy.

MoriartyL

No, what I'm saying is that there's nothing to get through here- there's no copy protection at all on the patches and extra content. The Sims was the example given before, so I'm not clear on what patches we're talking about.

__________________
-Mory

MdaG

I think that Galactic Civilization 2 uses some kind of system where only legitimate buyers can obtain updates and patches, but I'm not sure of how/if that works.