I personally look at piracy like this. Piracy is the will of the future imposing itself on the present. The game is changing, companies need to change with it. If they do not, they will be swept up in the wave of change and likely die. The change is this, people want things differently than they did before.
Some developing trends...
#1, they want easy, instant access to video games and at a reasonable price.
#2, they want free to play games where perhaps part of the content (which does not restrict play, only enhance it) as the paid part.
When more and more people play the free-to-play games and their quality subsequently improves, games that charge an admission fee will have to increasingly justify that, and likely they will fail over the long term. Its hard to beat free. Google if nothing else has proved that.
I generally agree with you, but in a grim/desperate way, not your enthusiastic outlook :) Chinese free-to-play MMOs are very different to what we call "games", and I'm not sure I'd like to spend time with them. (e.g. this piece was sobering and terrifying: http://www.worldsinmotion.biz/2009/10/vgs_09_game_designers_everythi.php) And Google (Docs) and OpenOffice has proven that free beats good.
ReplyDeleteI see a glimmer of hope for traditional, pay upfront games, in things like the Steam deals; maybe they can survive if they become cheap enough, and enough people don't mind paying 5/10/20 instead of the current 40/60 price points.