But how do we change people into buying things that are good and that deserve to bought instead of copying them ?
Do you have any idea on that ?
Well, I already named quite a few within this thread. Just to give you another one - I think it's always great to add something to a game that you cannot copy so easily, for example, a big printed manual, a comic book, or even a novel. Of course you could say that all these are things that actually CAN be copied since it's not problem to transfer these analogue pieces of media into a digital form. Nonetheless, we know that most people don't like to read printed material on their screen and we know that special editions, which usually contain that kind of stuff, sell fairly well. And now look at what the games industry did over the last years - just the opposite. Ten, fifteen years ago every game had a big manual, if you were lucky it had a cloth map, sometimes a manual, and other stuff - think about the Ultima series which is really famous for that. Nowadays only special editions have such things, and they usually cost a lot more. The normal editions have a bunch of advertisement in it, and if you're lucky a very thin manual. So we should go back to more physical content.
The best method however is to forge a name for yourself - just like Blizzard did. You know, a lot of people are saying things like, "Blizzard has no problem with piracy because all their games have a multiplayer component," and that's true. But it's also true that Blizzard managed to become so popular with their games that they can sell stuff like card games, board games, t-shirts, coffee cups, you name it. People are willing to buy for all this kind of stuff that you cannot copy. Blizzard managed to build a community and now they are greatly profiting from this loyalty component. Or look at Bioware/Obsidian. When NWN2 was released it was a mixed bag. On the one hand it was anticipated by the fans, but on the other the engine was a bit crappy, because requirements were too high, the story really wasn't the best, lots of problems with the toolset, etc. It got ok scores, but if you looked at the player base then you had the impression that everyone had expected more from NWN2. Now, Obsidian could have said, "let's not support the game, let's do something else, this is a lost battle". But they didn't do it, and I think in the end it paid out for them. If you had asked me after its release if this game will see two official expansions I'd have said, "no way," but as you can see, in the end that’s what happened. I really think the loyalty bonus and the image gain that developers get from long term support of their games should not be underestimated. It might not be something that kicks in instantly, but sooner or later it will.
Of course you can say, that games from such developers will still see piracy, and I'm sure they will, but let's face it - if you sell three million copies or more you can just say, "screw piracy!"
The question is also if we really should or can stop all piracy... if that really makes sense or is even possible. In the end it all comes down to the impact that piracy has on sales and if that impact weighs heavier than the "advantages" that piracy has. I mean, in this thread we already talked a lot about the impact. Some people said it's really big and destroys the market, others said it hurts the market, but PC gaming won't die because of it. Personally I'm very sceptical about the "piracy is killing the market" argument. If you look at the statistics that the ESA releases each year you'll see that this trend to produce more games for consoles and less for the PC has begun long before the next generation consoles like PS3 or Xbox 360 which have very low piracy rates due to high DRMS. And if you look at statements like the one from Microsoft that they basically have no interest to turn Windows into a major gaming platform because they'd like to sell more Xboxes it's becoming fairly clear that there are factors at work here that do not necessarily have something with piracy. I recently read an interview with Erik Simons, a member of the German game developer Thalion. They made really great games for the Amiga like Amberstar and Ambermoon (which I think are even today some of the best RPGs ever made). Well, anyway... in that Interview Simons says that one of the main reasons why Thalion failed was the widespread piracy on the Amiga. At the end of the interview he admits they might have survived if they had been better businessmen, but nonetheless he thinks, that people were simply no longer willing to buy high quality games for the Amiga. What Simons does not mention is that at some point the Amiga had to face a big competitor: the PC. Ambermoon was the last game I bought for the Amiga, after that I bought an Intel 486, and I was one of the people who got their PC really late. I think this is a striking example that even developers sometimes fail to recognize that there might be factors that have a way greater impact than piracy.
If we look at our society, we see one that's deeply rooted in piracy. Look at cameras, look at tape recorders, look at video recorders, look at mp3 players... in all these cases the industry cried that it would violate their copyright and in the end kill the market. In fact however, it helped the market to grow, although the core idea behind all these things IS piracy. If we look at file sharing and see only the rampart piracy that comes along with it, then we're missing an important point. P2P, just like the tape recorder or mp3 player is a new form of distribution, a new technology. Innovation is almost always a bit piracy, because hardly anyone comes up with something truly new. We really shouldn’t block innovation just for the sake of giving an already rich industry even more money.
The problem that the PC gaming market is facing is certainly special, there are a lot of factors involved that make piracy particularly bad for PC game developers. But honestly, if I hear Crytek saying, “Sorry guys, piracy is so widespread on the PC – we HAVE to go multiplatform,” I have to smile a bit. Who keeps them from doing exactly that? They’re pretending as if they are forced to develop exclusively for the PC. But who does that? Today you can port almost every game to a console and vice versa. I also think that PC gamers are a bit strange when it comes to this particular point. Many have a deep antipathy against consoles and console games, but I think that the times in which a console port necessarily meant a decrease in quality, are over. I don’t own a console myself, but I’m often playing with friends and what I’ve seen so far comes pretty close to what you can sell for the PC nowadays. There are certainly fewer traditional RPGs, I admit that, but there are few traditional RPGs anyway and often they are developed exclusively for the PC. I’m pretty sure they’d sell on consoles as well. We really shouldn’t cry, “This is the end,” if there is no reason to do so.