(22/03/2012 04:11 PM)Assassinator Wrote:  A lot of people seems to think that the issue of piracy is split between 2 extremes.
- People who think "every game pirated is a sale lost", and that piracy is the cause of why the industry is dying.
- People who think "piracy has almost no detriments, (or even benefits), to the industry".

I think both of these views are naive, product of one sided thinking.  It's obviously somewhere in between.

(21/03/2012 07:40 PM)SkyDX Wrote:  Now wee add piracy to the mix:

-» The situation is pretty much the same only that wee have the option to "get" A, B and C either way
-» There is the possibility that all three are now pirated but people who flat out pirate anything they can get are very unlikely to buy anything either way since they most likely simply cannot really afford buying games
-» Having no piracy would simple increase the likeliness of them to buy things, not actually surely make them buy games
-» Piracy comes with it's own problems, sometimes complicated, warranty, bricking the device, loss of online functionality etc.
-» Assuming now wee still buy A, B and pirate C
-» If wee like C, wee might still buy it out of support/for online, or wee become uninterested in it after a while, so a sale is still uncertain

So if companies say that each download = a lost sale they are pretty much talking poo poo^^ All piracy does is making the "uncertainty factor" of a sale fluctuate in either a positive or negative way that nobody is able to foresee.

"A model is only as good as it's assumptions", is what stats lecturer used to always say.  Assuming that the only, or overwhelming majority of people who pirate stuff are those who can't afford to buy, or otherwise won't buy anyway, is unrealistic.

Yes a lot of people who buy will still buy, and a lot of people who pirate will never buy, but people who stay still aren't important, what's important is the group of people who will shift positions because of piracy (that is, change from buy to not buy, or vice versa).  Having studied business/economics, you shold know that one of the primary factors which influences consumer's purchase decisions is the price.  This is well documented and explained in every single economics textbook out there.  Now, piracy is essentially free, so I think it is very reasonable to say that given the option, a whole lot of people will substitute from $80 to buy a game, to $0 to pirate the same game.  However, in order to reach a solid conclusion, wee must also consider the opposite side of the shift - from not buy, to buy, because of piracy, and compare the two.  People come up with a whole lot of colourful ways of trying to explain that, I will quickly review some of them in the spoiler below (to save space).

Spoiler:

Argument:  I need to try before I buy, so I need piracy otherwise it's too risky to buy anything.
Reply:  There's plenty of reviews and ratings everywhere for that.  Also, most stores offer returns within 7 days and stuff.

Argument:  People are going to pirate, and then realize how awesome and totally worth the money the game is, and go buy it to support the developers.
Reply:  Wishful thinking.  Really, how many people do you think are going to do that?

Argument:  Look at anime, anime became an industry here because of piracy, without all the piracy anime would be nowhere.
Reply:  Games already have a mature, developed industry, which is already pretty popular, and doesn't need piracy to spread awareness.  You can't compare that with an industry that used to not exist outside Japan.

Argument:  If you can perfectly afford something, pirating it is morally wrong.  People who can afford it will buy it, and people who pirate can't afford it.
Reply:  Not a whole lot of people will actually put morals above money.  It's like everyone knows cage hens are treated cruelly and stuff, but most people buy caged eggs anyway because they're 1/2 the price of free range.  Well piracy is 0% of the price of buying.

Lets just say I think only a very small minority of people who are originally unwilling to fork out money will somehow become willing to do so after obtaining the thing for free.  Much much smaller than the amount of people who will switch from $80 to $0.  So in conclusion, piracy does have a detrimental effect on sales.

You know I actually agree 100% with you Assassinator. I guess what I wrote came of a bit different than I intended, like said I was tired and wrote it out of boredom >.<
Of course it's naive to say that piracy doesn't cause any issues. Piracy is wrong and I'm all for developers getting their money. My girlfriend develops indie games and I myself made a game with about 5 minute play time in a RPG Maker Engine that took me three weeks to create it so I know the hard work behind it and Proper knows it even better since he codes it from scratch so I can understand his anger on that matter.

What I merely wanted to point out that piracy alone isn't the cause the PSP did bad. If piracy alone would be able to run any system into the ground the SNES/N64/PS1/PS2/PS3/Wii/XBOX360 and DS would all suffer like the PSP did for a certain degree but they don't.

Like you said price is a important factor and to take that into account for another side of videogames, I might exaggerate a bit but I fear the industry itself might run itself into the ground if things continue like they do now on the long run.

I can only talk for Europe now but the average console games costs around 60-70€ by now that's a good 20€ price increase from the PS2 generation. Now why did games become this expensive? In my opinion because of the crazily rising developing costs, the hardware gets better and better, mainstream gamers demand better and better graphics and cinematic experiences and don't think one second about the consequences of what they actually demand.

One thing I noticed this generation the "middle ground" of developers largely crumbled, many dev studios got either closed or bought up by large publishing groups like Activision and EA. And I think "professional" gaming journalism also is to blame here partially, having bad graphics (lets say around PS2 or PS1 levels) means usually that you get a worse press all around and nobody seems to give a damn that graphics are actually mostly only a matter of money and manpower, both things aren't easy to afford. I really have the feeling that cinematic experiences are more important nowadays than actual gameplay...

That publishers do more and more poo poo isn't helpful either... DLC that is supposed to be finished developing six months after a game is found on the release disc, day one DLCs that are "developed after the game was finished" is actually on the retail release... EA banning a users entire Origin account because he was QUOTED by someone that broke the rules and lastly, every MMO that doesn't come close to WoWs subscriptions is automatically labeled a failure to only name a few things...  

So yeah to fix things atleast slighty in my opinion these things would help:

1: Make a demo mandatory for each and every game, timed or content limited. That way interested people can simply get their own opinion. Microsoft already enforces this for the XBOX and WP7, Sony and Nintendo and /PC gaming/Steam should catch up on that

2: Game- (and movies, TV series and such too for that matter) journalists should be disallowed to rate any games whatsoever, be it by grades or percentage values or something else. They should just provide a general review and point out glaring flaws followed by the personal opinion of one or more reviewers nothing more! That would put an end to the Metacritic rating craziness (some publishers pay their developers according to the metacritic rating) and make comparisons between top of the line AAA+ games and "3rd rate developer" games fair again

And lastly 3: Stop pushing graphics to no limits! I'm especially looking at companies like Epic, from what I read they are pushing hardware makers do put even more high end hardware in the next-gen consoles so they can run their precious Unreal Engine 4 and all this essentially does is rise development costs even further and make it even harder to develop games that aren't demoted to smartphones games... Or optionally push graphics all you want but stop treating graphical weak games as something unworthy...

Alright this post was long enough I'll stop here^^

(22/03/2012 02:17 PM)1-R Wrote:  Lunar's long post

You know Lunar I know wee had our differences but I actually agree with you on many things you wrote, same with you Zinga^^