[INTERESTING ARTICLE; See Page 8] Discussion: Thoughts on Piracy

[Kman]

But I think, to make a casual game is not working his ass off. To make a dumbed down career mode for a casual racing game like NFS Hot Pursuit should be a work of only 1-2 weeks. To work his ass off means to make a game like The Witcher for example (because it is big and complex). Most of acual games are not hard to work, except the programming itself. But story and gameplay ideas failed the sense of a game. Most AAA developers are just working on fast cinematic action blockbuster games. This is not hard work, because there are no puzzles, no interactive mechanics etc. just the automatic engine supports. Hard work is to tell an immersing story, to make a proper game, to make something unique!

Of course, because all the set pieces and art that goes into games just makes itself, right? Seriously though saying that making a casual game takes no time or effort is ridiculous. Sure, coming up with original gameplay, story, puzzles etc. takes time and creativity, but that doesn't change the fact that there's still people that have to make all the models, textures, animations, all that jazz, and that shit takes time.

[failedALIAS]

I' actually thinking about turning to piracy. I rarely get new games, so when I do, I REALLY want that game. Guess what it feels like when you sacrifice a week of new food, for Dear Esther(I'm poor or lazy), and the game won't FUCKING START!?!?!

[palistov]

Did Googolplex say making a game isn't hard work? I think you fail to understand the complexity involved in making a video game.

[Kreekakon]

I'd imagine most of the people in here are referring to the "permanent" form of piracy, in which you just pirate a game, and never buy it regardless of whether you liked it, or not.

Like I said in my previous post, as long as people have a proper mindset, piracy can help a product. Most people, especially if they're low on money, will be very careful about what they buy, and want to make sure that it isn't a bad purchase. Without piracy, all they have will be reviews, which in my opinion is no where near motivating enough to buy a product as much as personal experience.

With the existence of piracy though, people can have a first hand chance at seeing if a product is actually worth their money, which in turn would make a person buy a product when in contrast they originally wouldn't have if it wasn't worth their money.

[Your Computer]

Like I said in my previous post, as long as people have a proper mindset, piracy can help a product. Most people, especially if they're low on money, will be very careful about what they buy, and want to make sure that it isn't a bad purchase. Without piracy, all they have will be reviews, which in my opinion is no where near motivating enough to buy a product as much as personal experience.

With the existence of piracy though, people can have a first hand chance at seeing if a product is actually worth their money, which in turn would make a person buy a product when in contrast they originally wouldn't have if it wasn't worth their money.

Most people even if what they are pirating costs them $1 otherwise, would pirate the item anyway. As i said, don't entertain possibilities that rarely, if at all, happen. Most pirated mediums are those which the "pirate" knows they will like or at least has a similar assumption (e.g. "worth their time").

Concerning reviews, for games and movies i find user reviews generally helpful (though i also rely on Youtube footage for games). For desktop applications that aren't games, it normally does not require much research before purchase, since most applications provide demos anyway. If the demo, which is normally the full program without a saving feature or with a watermark or some other minor restriction, and reviews are not enough to convince you whether or not you should purchase the product, then i would argue the "pirate for testing purposes" argument is a lie and would consider placing you within the majority of "pirates."

Let's, for the sake of argument, assume that there was no demo. Let's also go as far as to say there are no reviews. Would you say demanding for a demo is counter productive for a company and the consumer? So you pirate the software in order to provide yourself with a "demo." Behold, you have just relieved said company of risk. After all, what does a demo imply against a company? A demo implies risk. This means if they don't do a good job on the demo and therefore the finished product, they'll lose out on sales. A company without any risks is a company that doesn't care about their consumers.

And why can't you at least take on the assumption, "If no demo, then none of my time"? Both sides would be better off that way.

[Kreekakon]

Concerning reviews, for games and movies i find user reviews generally helpful (though i also rely on Youtube footage for games). For desktop applications that aren't games, it normally does not require much research before purchase, since most applications provide demos anyway. If the demo, which is normally the full program without a saving feature or with a watermark or some other minor restriction, and reviews are not enough to convince you whether or not you should purchase the product, then i would argue the "pirate for testing purposes" argument is a lie and would consider placing you within the majority of "pirates."

Ok, I agree that demos usually should be more than enough to convince you to buy a game/product if they exist.

Here's something else somewhat different that this post brought to my mind though: What if the said software has great learning value to it, but is too expensive? I'm mainly talking about the Adobe suite products. Many of them will play fundamental roles in future in jobs of people who wish to pursue such careers. The price tag however for each of the products is absurd, and definitely not aimed at your average consumer.

Here's what one of my friends, who is a very talented animator/artist in areas of Flash had to say on the matter:

Programs on the other hand are often hard to actually pay for, simply because they are aimed at companies and are way too expensive for a regular person that's just curious to learn. Though, I think the makers of the programs realize this though, and secretly encourages piracy in that aspect. The persons that have the software learns the products, making the companies with the money pay for the licences further down the road.

Let's, for the sake of argument, assume that there was no demo. Let's also go as far as to say there are no reviews. Would you say demanding for a demo is counter productive for a company and the consumer? So you pirate the software in order to provide yourself with a "demo." Behold, you have just relieved said company of risk. After all, what does a demo imply against a company? A demo implies risk. This means if they don't do a good job on the demo and therefore the finished product, they'll lose out on sales. A company without any risks is a company that doesn't care about their consumers.

Even if a company doesn't care for its consumers, and has the silliest policies, it doesn't mean that their games fall into the same class of not deserving your approval. It might not even have been the developer's call. Let's make another assumption: Say Visceral Games developed a new Dead Space game, it's very good, and they have perfect confidence in a demo. EA however is scared that releasing demo might scare off potential consumers after they try the demo, and discover they don't like it, so they shut down the option, even though a demo would've worked fine. Now the only way for consumers to first-handedly know if the game is good is to pirate it. If that hadn't existed either, then the only people who would buy the game confidently knowing that it's a good purchase would've have been people who were already familiar with the game developer's quality, and their friends. Newcomers would be far less because of the lack of being able to try.

Now I know that one may argue that that was the company's fault for losing sales for not having included a demo. But think about this: This fault would've meant many people would've missed out on what they had not yet discovered to be a good product. This shame could easily be averted with piracy in moderate levels, and would raise the general awareness of the existence, and quality of such a product.

In a more personal case, I know a few friends who would not have bought Elder Scrolls: Skyrim, despite it's great reviews, had they not pirated it in the first place. It didn't have a demo, does that mean Skyrim is not worth your time? I wouldn't say so.

[Your Computer]

Here's something else somewhat different that this post brought to my mind though: What if the said software has great learning value to it, but is too expensive? I'm mainly talking about the Adobe suite products. Many of them will play fundamental roles in future in jobs of people who wish to pursue such careers. The price tag however for each of the products is absurd, and definitely not aimed at your average consumer.

Here's what one of my friends, who is a very talented animator/artist in areas of Flash had to say on the matter:

Programs on the other hand are often hard to actually pay for, simply because they are aimed at companies and are way too expensive for a regular person that's just curious to learn. Though, I think the makers of the programs realize this though, and secretly encourages piracy in that aspect. The persons that have the software learns the products, making the companies with the money pay for the licences further down the road.

If a company wishes to stick with a product that they require their employees to know but is too expensive for the average employee, said company should therefore be forced to teach their employees how to use said program, or simply shutdown their company. If there is no legal way for employees to learn the required tools, then the company should either fail (which would therefore hurt, e.g., Adobe as well), or find some other solution to get the job done that is affordable to the average employee, if they choose not to teach their employees for the more expensive products. In either case, a company like Adobe would be forced to bring down their prices or fail along with their clients or fail due to competition.

Bring piracy into the equation, and the prices will remain high--and may even raise--and competition would be that much less. Companies like Autodesk took a reasonable approach by giving away student licenses for free. This gives them a somewhat safe position in the market place. Other companies don't have to follow suit, but if they wish to stay in business, they'd better have a similar solution to offer to potential employees of their clients. You could argue that piracy helped keep the business in business. But why should we assume that they would not have been able to stay in business without piracy?

Take piracy out of the equation, and the premises lead to better conclusions than what piracy would have lead to.

Even if a company doesn't care for its consumers, and has the silliest policies, it doesn't mean that their games fall into the same class of not deserving your approval. It might not even have been the developer's call. Let's make another assumption: Say Visceral Games developed a new Dead Space game, it's very good, and they have perfect confidence in a demo. EA however is scared that releasing demo might scare off potential consumers after they try the demo, and discover they don't like it, so they shut down the option, even though a demo would've worked fine. Now the only way for consumers to first-handedly know if the game is good is to pirate it. If that hadn't existed either, then the only people who would buy the game confidently knowing that it's a good purchase would've have been people who were already familiar with the game developer's quality, and their friends. Newcomers would be far less because of the lack of being able to try.

Now I know that one may argue that that was the company's fault for losing sales for not having included a demo. But think about this: This fault would've meant many people would've missed out on what they had not yet discovered to be a good product. This shame could easily be averted with piracy in moderate levels, and would raise the general awareness of the existence, and quality of such a product.

In a more personal case, I know a few friends who would not have bought Elder Scrolls: Skyrim, despite it's great reviews, had they not pirated it in the first place. It didn't have a demo, does that mean Skyrim is not worth your time? I wouldn't say so.

I accept that a company, after releasing an epic game, may (and therefore does) decide to change their policy for their upcoming game for whatever reason. The aforementioned epic game brought in lots of income due to its entertainment value and the impression it gave and left with the consumer. This implies that they may very well be able to get away with not providing a demo and just rely on advertisements to promote demand. Though i find it odd for a company to attempt to reduce risk by increasing risk, this hypothetical company already has market presence within the gaming community, and so the outcome is questionable and consumers don't have to assume "If no demo, then not worth my time." In my previous post i was under the impression of a company that had little to no market presence, and therefore the company and its products are more of a risk to the consumer than the current scenario you bring up.

If the consumer believes that a "want" is a "need" though knowing of potential risks, then that is to their own foolishness. It's a digital product; supplies aren't going anywhere. The game company has a market presence, which means there's going to be plenty of information out there to substitute for a demo, since there will be plenty of others that it won't be a risk for. Piracy can be safely left out of the equation. I would find it amazing and absurd that a user is too incompetent to find general information about a game yet somehow manages to obtain a "pirated" copy of the game.

While there was no demo for Skyrim, there was enough information out there to substitute a demo. Ignoring information is not the same as there being no information.

[Kreekakon]

If a company wishes to stick with a product that they require their employees to know but is too expensive for the average employee, said company should therefore be forced to teach their employees how to use said program, or simply shutdown their company. If there is no legal way for employees to learn the required tools, then the company should either fail (which would therefore hurt, e.g., Adobe as well), or find some other solution to get the job done that is affordable to the average employee, if they choose not to teach their employees for the more expensive products. In either case, a company like Adobe would be forced to bring down their prices or fail along with their clients or fail due to competition.

Yes, companies should do such a thing if they are to keep a talented count of employees. However that wasn't entirely the focus of my point.

Read what my friend said again, and he says, "curious to learn", as opposed to "required to learn". Sometimes people/students just want to get a product, and dissect the whole thing by themselves without any sort of organized class, or instruction. They simply want to prepare themselves for their future, or just have fun. Look at deviantArt, and Newgrounds. Now I have no idea about the actual statistics, but I would say there should be at least a considerable amount of people there who created their work, and learned how to do it with pirated software.

If piracy was completely halted, these people would not be able to create their own artistic work, and Adobe doesn't really need to care, because the majority of these people would be doing it on their free time on their own computers, and would very rarely have a large impact on the actual commercial market. Without piracy, we could be very well denied these works.

Bring piracy into the equation, and the prices will remain high--and may even raise--and competition would be that much less. Companies like Autodesk took a reasonable approach by giving away student licenses for free. This gives them a somewhat safe position in the market place. Other companies don't have to follow suit, but if they wish to stay in business, they'd better have a similar solution to offer to potential employees of their clients. You could argue that piracy helped keep the business in business. But why should we assume that they would not have been able to stay in business without piracy?

Take piracy out of the equation, and the premises lead to better conclusions than what piracy would have lead to.

Yes, if more companies were able to do what Autodesk did with their software, I believe it would've been better for everyone who wanted a learning chance.

I'm pulling this following statement out of thin air just so you know, but I think Adobe may be secretly not considering to follow Autodesk's example because of piracy. If they open up their software, they would have to deal with a considerable amount of "freeloaders", as opposed to people pirating it who are not tied to their company.

^This may seem contradictory to my previous statement up under the first quote, but actually it's not. If piracy is stopped Adobe could still very well STILL not provide a free version of the software, as the main buyers will still be companies, and the official schools that teach it. Most of these facilities will typically buy a whole suite of the software for their computers which are then in turn used by the students/employees. The average consumer never did contribute a substantial amount to their earnings because of the price.

If the consumer believes that a "want" is a "need" though knowing of potential risks, then that is to their own foolishness. It's a digital product; supplies aren't going anywhere. The game company has a market presence, which means there's going to be plenty of information out there to substitute for a demo, since there will be plenty of others that it won't be a risk for. Piracy can be safely left out of the equation. I would find it amazing and absurd that a user is too incompetent to find general information about a game yet somehow manages to obtain a "pirated" copy of the game.

Your statement brings me a bit back to what I said before. I won't deny that information can very well substitute a demo, but I still stand by what I say of first-hand trying out a product to be the most effective at convincing a consumer to buy a product.

[Googolplex]

Did Googolplex say making a game isn't hard work? I think you fail to understand the complexity involved in making a video game.

Let me explain how I think so.

1. Most of video games will be created by 60+ people, where everyone has his own part of work.
2. It's their job. Other jobs are also hard.
3. It is hard to create an engine, but to make a crappy casual game out of it will be just for fast money, most games will be produced in mass! Of course, you need to understand the programming, mathematics etc, but the true hard work is to tell a story and make a "good" game, instead of just a simply new ego-shooter.
4. I won't say it is not hard to make a game, but most games are not worth to call it hard work.
5. It is not hard for people who know how to make a game. I think, Thomas would be able to make a game alone. But nobody can build a 50km tunnel alone.

So, the programming of a game is of course hard work, but the hardest part is to tell an immersiong story, to fill the game up with interesting stuff and understand basic principles what a game "is".

[the dark side]

Googolplex,. DO NOT insult ego shooters. the modern shooter is exactly that, a modern shooter, a cod clone,, an EGO shooter is duke 3d, half life, Classic Quake, Classic Doom, Nolf, Nightfire, Agent Under Fire, GE64, PD 64, Contract Jack, Serious Sam , Wolfenstein 3d, Wolfenstein IOS and RTCW, etc, something that is 100 times HARDER than any modern shooter on its hardest when the ego shooter is on "tourist" (v-easy). you hate shooters, fine, just remember, there is a Big difference between a modern shooter and an ego shooter. dont tarnish them with the same brush, or you will be asking to be flamed, beleive me.

although, you do have a point, ive been looking a lot at stuff from "ex devs", companies that have been shut becuase there IP didnt sell well enough to satisfy the bean counters, or they have just shut up shop in disgust.

im going to show you by comparing the Modern Shooter, and the EGO shooter.

a typical level, for a game like Call of Duty (modern shooter), takes about 2 weeks for 60 guys to make, thats all the setpeices, Scripting, ruddy first Person Cutscenes, QTE's the works. as they are just a simple Singular corridor between invisible walls, following a linear path, you see all those hills and buildings, they are just Static RENDERS, they are not part of the map, they are basically a pre rendered "wallbox", like a skybox but at ground level. above all, the game can only follow that path at moments when the SCRIPT allows it, if you try and "jump the script" and move on in the level, it will actually, after about 20 seconds, LOCK the script and crash the game, hence the "return to combat zone" and 10 second timer, its not to keep the player in an "exiting replication of a military gunfight" (look, if i wanted a "realistic" military gunfight, i'd join the Marines, when i play a game, i want FUN!) its to protect the game from having a total script breakdown.

a typical level for something like Serious Sam III (EGO shooter) took the same number of guys, over a MONTH, and that is without the Setpeices, or special effects, just the basic level map, secret placements and AI placements. as these levels are cobwebs of multiple interlinking pathways, secret rooms, huge arenas, Multiple layers stacked on top of each other, loop arounds, dead ends with traps, and the whole level is there, if you can see it, you can go there, nothing is blocked off with an invisible wall, if its rendered in the graphics engine, you can go there, just like you could in games like QUAKE and DOOm and Duke Nukem 3d,. the places you cant go, are rendered in skybox. you can go were you want in a level, see a massive great scrapjack? your not funnelled into a direct face to face, you can jink down one of several hundred allies, take down a few headless grunts (and maybe the odd kamikaze) on the way, flank the swine, and let him have 30 rounds of HPMX4000 heatseakers right up the poophole. no scripting, you are rewarded for exploring.

now remember, COD levels take about 2 weeks to make, and there are only a pathetic 13-15 of them, some COD clones can have as low as 6. now the average is 14, my maths isnt great but, thas 14X2,. 28 weeks. thats 2 and a half months.

SSII (the cartoony one most people dont like, but i still think is great) maps took a month, and there is about 40 of them! even with my bad maths, that equates to nearly... 3 ...years!

and you tell me casual games are not easy to make and effortless compared to a proper game.

also, remember, the average modern game doesnt have AI, it has a script, its why it doesnt react to you until you enter its "zone". its also actually why you get rubberbanding in racing games, because the script says you need to overtake it here- here- and here, and the game will teleport the Artifact, to ensure it matches its script. if the it doesnt match, the script "jumps" and the game will crash.

its why you dont get a boss anymore in shooters, because, since Half Life, a BOSS needs to transform its tactics in response to the players actions, that means it needs AI, its much easier to just create a QTE, wich takes about 3 days.

scripting the impression of an AI takes about 18 months, to create an actual reactive, logical AI engine, and to test it in all levels, conditions, circumstances and permutations can take nearly 2 years.

then we come to cutscenes, these satellite cutscenes, they can all be done, rendered, in ONE DAY. same for first person cutscenes, as you are using the ingame artifacts and rendering, you can create one, via scripting, in about 2 weeks.

to create a third person cutscene, you need to create specialised hi poly, hi def charachter models, as youll be seeing them a lot closer than you would in FP view. you need to programme special "camara placements" in the map, and you need to run "dress" rehersals with real actors, or just the studio staff if your on a budget, to ensure it will look right in game. you need to script movement for artifacts in the scene, you need to create high quality facial expression animation, again, because you are seeing the face up close and personal, you need a special, seperate Lighting engine, and you need to script the camara to Pan with movement, this takes time as it needs to be scripted to match the movement EXACTLY or the cutscene is going to look odd and the reviewers will massacre it. these can take over a month to make, and that is just for a little 4 minuite vignette, you start getting into the sort of cutscenese Kojima makes, and we are talking hollywood timescales!

todays games need a lot less work than classic games, there is less to make, they need less programming. so yes, they are easy to make and require no effort, compared to the games of yesteryear and the few "proper" Non AAA games that are still being made by the indies or the 3 big publishers that still have some guts and are willing to take a risk!