Software Developer Realizes That Pirates Are Giving Him Market Feedback

from the about-time dept

One of the more important points made in Matt Mason's book, The Pirate's Dilemma is that piracy almost always is a leading indicator for what the market wants, but isn't being delivered. This is a point that's extremely difficult for those whose content is being pirated to grasp -- because their natural reaction is to feel like a victim, rather than the recipient of useful market data. So, it's great to see that's not always the case. A couple people have sent in a story about a pair of small time iPhone developers who recently discovered that their iPhone game had been cracked and a ton of people were downloading it for free. Rather than freak out about it, the guy had an open conversation with the cracker who explained why he did it. Basically, he said he was disappointed with the fact that many games did not live up to the quality level promised, and a cracked version let them try before they bought. The developer actually felt that was a good point, and is now looking into alternative business models for his app, including a try-before-you-buy option, or an ad supported version. It's also worth pointing out, by the way, that the day that the app was getting pirated a ton, it also brought in more sales than usual...

Filed Under: feedback, piracy, video games

Despite Whining About Piracy, Secondhand Sales, Video Game Sales At All Time Highs

from the well,-look-at-that... dept

We've been noting how both the movie industry and the music industry had terrific years in 2008, despite the public perception being passed around by certain legacy companies in both industries that they were being decimated by "pirates." Apparently the same is true in the video game industry as well. Dan writes in to let us know that, at least in the UK, video games sales were at a record high, despite all hand wringing about the need for DRM and how piracy and secondhand sales have been destroying the industry. Once again, it seems like if you just put out a good product and give people a reason to buy, they're more than willing to do so. Still, how long will it be until we hear UK cultural secretary Andy Burnham declaring that the video game industry needs special protection against the scourge of piracy?

Filed Under: competing with free, piracy, uk, video games

Innovation And Invention In Virtual Rock Band Video Games

from the timing-matters dept

Reader David Kopp writes in to point us to a story in the Boston Globe that yet again highlights the difference between innovation and invention -- this time in the virtual musician video game space. While we've already seen that Konami has sued over the video game Rock Band, claiming that it had patented the concept of virtual musician games, the Globe story highlights a Massachusetts startup that appears to have come up with a similar idea much earlier. The game was slightly different, but had many of the same elements -- including a virtual guitar (that had actual strings in this case) and involved playing along with music on the screen. The band Aerosmith played a big part in the game, predating all the bands suddenly jumping on the Guitar Hero and Rock Band bandwagons of today.

The game was moderately successful, but was clearly ahead of its time in a variety of ways. The game was way too expensive, first of all, as the virtual guitar added an extra $100 to the $50 game price. The company also had trouble figuring out how to properly market the game, especially with the extra guitar. Also, since it was a PC game, it was less convenient than today's console games, which are mostly played around a big television. These were all issues that were later worked out, but not in time for the folks at Virtual Music Entertainment, who had already sold out for a decent, but not enormous, payout in 2000. Still, it's nice to see they're not bitter or threatening to sue:

"Whether they stole it or not, it was a good idea. They were at the right place at the right time, and they executed it really well."

And that's exactly the point. Executing and getting it right is difficult, but that's what the market is designed to reward, and that's what really drives innovation.

Filed Under: guitar hero, innovation, invention, music, rock band, video games

Yes, Being In Rock Band Or Guitar Hero Helps Bands Sell More Music

from the among-other-things dept

Last week, we mentioned that it was silly for musicians (and labels) to complain about their music being in the video games Guitar Hero or Rock Band -- which some folks challenged in the comments. Yet, just in time, the Associated Press comes out with an article detailing how being in any of those games significantly increases sales of music, sometimes more than triple what they were prior to their inclusion in the games. Some musicians are also making a lot more due to image and likeness deals, but on the whole being in those games is a boost to traditional sales.

The article does note that the labels are upset that they don't think they're getting enough, because the labels, in their typical short-sighted view, only focus on how much they get directly from the game makers, whining that it's less than they would get from selling a bunch of albums. Well, duh. But, they conveniently leave out that being in the games increases sales of the albums too. It also notes that Edgar Bronfman's earlier whining is a bunch of meaningless fluff -- because if Bronfman ever stopped allowing Warner Music songs in those video games, a significant number of musicians would look to switch labels, since they actually recognize how valuable the games are. Bronfman's mistake is to think that it's the music that's valuable, but basically everyone else realizes he's got the equation backwards.

Filed Under: guitar hero, music, rock band, video games

Pennsylvania Actually Realizes That Video Game Legislation Is A Bad Idea

from the well,-that's-a-first dept

We've seen so many states with grandstanding politicians trying to ban the sale of certain video games to kids -- despite the fact that every single law that's been passed along those lines in the US has been thrown out as unconstitutional. In the end, politicians know this -- yet they still keep pushing for such laws, so that, come election time, they can make a false claim in their campaign ads about how they "protected the children." The truth is, all they really did, was waste taxpayer money on a lawsuit that was a clear loss from the beginning. That's why it's great to finally see one state at least investigate the issue a bit, with a Pennsylvania task force quite clearly telling state legislators that such a video game sales law is a bad idea. Instead, the task force suggests that, if the legislature really wants to do something, it could fund more research into the impact of video games on kids, or more reasonably, it could fund more educational programs, to discuss the impact of video games. So, now the question is whether or not politicians in Pennsylvania will heed this advice... or if they'll still push forward on a plan to waste taxpayer money?

Filed Under: bans, pennsylvania, video games

Dealing Virtual Drugs On The iPhone Seems Unlikely To Get People To Do Real Drugs

from the just-saying... dept

For many, many, many years there has been a very popular application called Dope Wars. I used to have a copy of it on my Palm Pilot a decade ago, and it was a fantastic way to kill time (that and Rally 1000 were great time wasters). Over the years, Dope Wars has shown up on many different platforms and many different versions. I just looked around, and it appears there are a variety of downloadable versions, some web-based versions, both a MySpace and Facebook app and many other things. There have also been a ton of derivative games, some taking the drug theme further, and some changing the theme of the game completely.

That's because, in actuality, Dope Wars has relatively little to do with drugs. It's really a classic trading game. You borrow money that you need to pay back (with interest) and then you go buy and sell goods at different location. The goal is simple: buy low, sell high, don't run into any catastrophe (police) and make back enough to pay back whoever you borrowed the money from. You could easily apply that to any sort of "commodity" -- and I've seen versions based on stock trading, middle ages commodity trading, space travel and a few other such things. The "drug" connection is pretty weak, and basically just gives a framework for what it is you're buying and selling.

Either way, back when I had that Palm Pilot, I played the game for many, many hours, and never had the slightest interest in following that up by taking or dealing any drugs. If someone's going to get interested in drugs, it's not going to be from playing such a game... but that hasn't stopped one woman from demanding that a version of the game created for the iPhone, called Underworld, be banned. Now, the woman's situation is tragic. She has a daughter who fell into a coma after taking heroin. That's clearly an awful situation. But it's difficult to think that the reason she took heroin was because she played a dopey trading game on a mobile phone somewhere.

Besides, why target just this iPhone version? This game, in some form or another, is found on pretty much every platform around (including TI calculators), often with multiple versions from different programmers -- and we've yet to see any evidence that playing the game leads anyone to be even slightly more disposed to taking drugs.

Filed Under: dope wars, iphone, underworld, video games

PlayStation Hurts Ronaldinho's Performance Once More

from the goooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooool dept

During the 2006 World Cup, Brazilian soccer star Ronaldinho made some headlines after his poor performance in the quarterfinal, when Brazil lost to France, was blamed on all-night sessions of sex and PS2 games. Supposedly his game of choice was EA Sports' FIFA 2006 soccer game, so it's slightly amusing to see an opposing goalkeeper credit a save he made on a Ronaldinho free kick last weekend to playing soccer games on his PlayStation. The goalie says that the game features a solid replication of Ronaldinho's penalty-taking style, giving him an idea of how to react in real life. As games become more and more realistic, more and more athletes and teams might start using them as scouting tools. Indeed, another soccer team recently signed a deal with the developer of a management simulation game to get exclusive access to its full database in order to help it identify new talent from around the world.

Filed Under: playstation, ronaldinho, video games

Music Games Drive Kids' Interest In Real Instruments

from the school-of-rock dept

A report from the UK says that 20 percent of the kids there that have played music video games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band have picked up real instruments because of the games. The author of the report says it shows that when music is presented to kids in new and compelling ways, it can get them interested in creating their own music. We'll note it's nice to see that kids getting excited by video games can have some positive effects and not only translate into violence, as one recent study said. It's also interesting to note that Gibson says it's getting a sales bump from the games, particularly for its iconic Les Paul guitar, after which one of the plastic axes in Guitar Hero is modeled. This is a little ironic, after Gibson wanted to extract some money from Activision by waving an unrelated patent in its face and trying to get the company to license it. This further illustrates to record companies how these games can add value to their content and serve to promote it, but sadly, you know that somehow that lesson will still be lost on the labels.

Filed Under: guitar hero, music, rock band, video games
Companies: activision, gibson

Spore's DRM So Effective It Was The Most Downloaded Game Of The Year

from the nice-work,-EA dept

It never really made sense for EA to be so insistent on having draconian DRM on games. Before the company even launched Spore people made it quite clear the plan would backfire, but EA went forward with it anyway, creating a PR nightmare. And all for what? Turns out (not surprisingly) the DRM didn't do squat to stop unauthorized file sharing. Spore has now been declared the most downloaded video game of the year. And, even though the year's not over, no other game is going to catch up. And, it's worth noting, the game only launched in October, so this is only over a couple of months. In other words, EA's "antipiracy strategy" backfired almost completely. The company got a huge PR blackeye which probably only encouraged more people to download the game via file sharing. Can someone explain, again, why any company thinks DRM works?

Filed Under: downloads, drm, piracy, securom, spore, video games
Companies: ea

Video Game Addiction Center Realizes That Compulsive Gamers Aren't Addicts

from the well,-duh dept

We've discussed in the past how ridiculous it is to call video gaming an "addiction" when almost all of the evidence suggests that compulsive video gamers are usually retreating to video games as a result of some other issue. In other words, rather than an addiction, compulsive video gaming is often a symptom of something else, and the treatment should focus on that other thing, rather than trying to "detox" someone from video games. It seemed like almost everyone who was screaming for video games to be declared an official addiction stood to benefit from such a classification (thankfully, the AMA refused to make it an official addiction).

Now, even those who would benefit from it being called an addiction are admitting that it's not. A clinic in Europe that was designed to treat video game addicts is now admitting that compulsive video gamers are not addicts, and shouldn't be treated with traditional "abstinence-based treatments" that are commonly used in dealing with various addictions. Instead, just as plenty of others have noted in the past, the trick is not to worry about the video gaming, but to actually figure out the root causes that made the person retreat to video games. Not surprisingly, it's often social issues, where kids feel isolated and haven't learned to communicate socially with their peers, leading to trouble at school. It's great to see that even those who were making money off of the false "addiction" claim are finally admitting that it's time to rethink how compulsive video gaming is diagnosed and treated.

Filed Under: addiction, video games