Slashdot Mirror
Piracy Forced id's Hand To Multiplatform Gaming
CVG is reporting on comments from a GDC talk last week by id CEO Todd Hollenshead on the necessity of multiplatform development. Essentially, said Hollenshead, id was forced to start developing for consoles because of the rampant piracy of PC games. "Enemy Territory: Quake Wars was given as an example of id's multiplatform direction. Originally in development for PC at the hands of Splash Damage and id Software, the multiplayer-focussed action game is now additionally heading to Xbox 360 and PS3."
Thank god nobody pirates console games! . . . oh, wait . . .
Speaking of which, I wish they would stop lumping some guy at home who burns a game from his buddy to play on his machine in with some guy in china who produces and sells tens of thousands of copies of a game.
Anyway, I can't remember the last time I played a truly great id game, so I would say the real reason they had to start developing for consoles was to pick from a larger and less discerning player base.
It's not about dorks, it's about casual piracy. Anybody can download Quake 4 for th PC from piratebay and be playing. XBox 360 piracy involves modding your DVD firmware (and unless your console is old removing the epoxy from the firmware to do so), burning DL-DVDrs in just the right way, etc.
Many people who own consoles don't even think of piracy, know it's possible, or care. They just want something they can turn on and play.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
It isn't that nobody pirates games, it's just that there's less people pirating games. When pirating requires that I solder some chip into my system, there's a good bet that I won't be doing it, especially with the more expensive systems. Playing pirated games was easiest with the PS1/Dreamcast where you could pirate games without modifying the hardware (PS1 required external dongle). Most systems now require that you physically alter the machine, which most people aren't willing to do. Also, players of PC games tend to be much more savvy, and therefore know where to go to get the pirated games. There's a lot of people on consoles who wouldn't know the first thing about where to get pirated games.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
I don't know Mr. Hollenshead personally, so all I have to go on are his public remarks. And it seems every time I see his name in the press, he's bleating about how much money he's "losing" to unsanctioned copies all over the net.
Let me clue in the business types at id Software on why they "lost" a sale to yours truly.
Doom III was widely anticipated, yes. And it looked like it was going to be a visually amazing piece of work. However, it was also widely reported that, unless you had the absolutely latest and greatest PC hardware at the time, it was going to run very poorly. Well, at the time, I didn't have the latest and greatest PC hardware. All I had was a paltry dual-CPU Pentium-III running at 1GHz (and 100MHz memory bus) with 256MiB of RAM and a GeForce FX5900. It was apparent from the press that Doom III would run like crap on this rig. So I didn't buy it. I didn't buy Quake 4 for the same reason.
It wasn't until last year that I finally bought a completely new machine (AMD Athlon X2 4400+, 2GiB RAM, GeForce 7900GT) which would run Doom III well. But after downloading the free demo and playing it, I decided against it. I just didn't find stumbling around in the dark to be terribly fun, and I'm not really into horror for its own sake.
Quake 4, on the other hand, seemed like it might be fun. However, every time I visited the shelf at Fry's, it either A) wasn't there, or B) was priced at $40.00. So I waited. And waited. Eventually, Fry's started selling them for $20.00 a copy, and that's when I bought it.
So there you have it: id Software "lost" money to me, but somehow it had nothing whatsoever to do with unsanctioned copying (imagine that!). The Executive Summary you should take away from this is, to make good sales, you should release games that are:
The importance of point #1 cannot be overstated. If you hit #1, you can kind of fudge on #2. I've grabbed all the Serious Sam games, despite their uneven game play, because they're reasonably priced. OTOH, there's absolutely no way I'm going to buy a copy of "Sonic and the Secret Rings" for the XBox 360 until it drops from the preposterously stratospheric $60.00 they're charging for it.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
You're putting words into the grandparent poster's mouth.
The grandparent poster didn't say it is was all right, they said that there is a difference. Which there is. A gas station would rather you shoplifted a single pack of cigarettes instead of hijacking their next shipment of cigarettes. Both are still wrong, but they warrant entirely different responses.
Of course, it's a sillier comparison because you're comparing traditional theft (which deprives the legal owner of a scarce commodity) with copyright infringement (which reduces the artificial scarcity copyright creates). They're different problems with different economics to consider. Indeed...
I haven't been a teen for a bit over a decade now, but I'll try to explain anyway.
Theft of property and copyright infringement are different crimes. They have different victims and different economic effects. If a thief breaks in Best Buy and steals a $50 (retail price) Sony TV, Best Buy suffers because they no longer has a TV. Best Buy has lost $40 (or whatever wholesale is). Sony has lost nothing. If the thief breaks into my house and steals my TV, neither Best Buy nor Sony have lost anything, but I've lost $50.
Conversely, (for the sake of argument) if an infringer breaks into Best Buy and makes an infringing copy of a $50 (retail price) game, Best Buy still has the original. The value of that original is slightly reduced because the artificial scarcity has dropped. This is potentially a "lost sale." This lost revenue from potential sale impacts both Sony and Best Buy. How much? Definitely not $50. The reality is that some portion of copyright infringers, if infringement was not an option, would not purchase the game. It's hard guess what the percentage is, but let's guess only 10%. Now on average over multiple illegal copies, Sony has lost $36 (90% of the $40 they'd expect) and Best Buy $9. Total loss to "the world": $45.
By any stretch of the imagination, clearly individual copyright infringement cases are slightly less harmful than individual cases of theft. The total economic loss for the above hypothetical example is $45 to $50. Both are bad, but given the choice I'd prefer losing $45 to $50. The situation because even more clear if you believe the "can't or won't pay for it" percentage is higher, or if the thefts involve damage to other property (breaking a window to get in).
The situation gets even weirder when I buy the game. So when I bought my $50 Sony TV, I also bought this $50 game. Our hypothetical and slightly insane thief breaks in, steals my TV and makes a copy of the game. I'm out $50 for the TV, but for the game I've lost... nothing. Perhaps a very small amount of value from potential resale value on the game, but nothing significant. Despite the thief having broken into my house the real economic damage is done to Best Buy and Sony. That's a heck of a trick, to have a thief break into my house, "steal" my copy of the game, but have third parties suffer financially.
This is not to suggest that copyright infringement is "okay." Indeed, copyright infringement has a definite detrimental impact on society. But it's a different impact from theft. The steps to defend against these crimes are different.
Search 2010 Gen Con events