Game pirates' response could have lessons for music biz

A couple weeks ago, game developer Cliff Harris asked a simple question on his blog: why do you pirate my games? Then, he broke the responses down into several categories. Subtracting out the folks who view all intellectual property as theft or who admitted they're too broke or cheap to buy games--two groups which will never be convinced to pay--he found that most respondents thought his games are too expensive and not good enough, and that the demos were too short for them to feel confident they were going to get a reasonable value for the buck. Adding DRM to games also alienated a small but very vocal portion of the gaming community.

Did you buy this album? If so, how many times did you listen past the first song?

His response: better games, longer demos, no DRM, and (if the economics make sense) possibly lowering prices.

Reading this, I couldn't help but think of the music business. Imagine the kid who heard a one-hit-wonder's single on the radio, then shelled out $18 for the full CD, only to find that the rest of the tracks are disappointing filler. Add DRM, which makes downloads unplayable on certain devices and under certain circumstances, and no wonder piracy is rampant.

While the industry's taken a long time to get around to a response, it seems to be following a similar path as Harris: lowering prices (in the form of single-song downloads and big discounts on CDs through Amazon.com and other outlets), increasing the content available in free "demos" (MP3 downloads and streams), and eliminating DRM. As far as music quality goes, that's a subjective debate, but at least there's a larger selection than there was 10 years ago.

[k2dave]

For computer games, I usually find them wanting too much $ for them. When I play one for a while and look into registering it , I am often shocked at the price that they want. There is simply too many games for free or demo to consider paying that much for a simple game.

Music is a bit different, if you like a song you just can't get one just like it. Even if it's just a remix of the song, I still want the one I heard before.

[AndrewRich]

"Did you buy this album? If so, how many times did you listen past the first song?" -- Yes. Maybe twice. Not good.

[pol;0987]

Matt, so the answer to deal with piracy is to give the pirates what they want? This would seem to be foolish, idiocy at best. Here's why, Halo 3, Metal Gear Solid, et al, all new gen games, all sold well, ya cant pirate PS3 Games, and H3 last i checked, but then again, pirate I am not.

If you sold cookies, and someone found your recipe and shared it online, do you stop baking cookies or make your cookies cheaper? No you protect your cookie IP, or change the recipe up making it better. There are a sect of people that the Internet hath borne that feel somehow that they are entitled to everything free since they pay a broadband bill. They say albums suck, so buy the single, but how many times have we seen an album come back to life because the single was featured in some other media form (movie, game, tv show, etc.) Its a vocal minority of friendless (real world human contact type friends, not the 5k you have on myspace as a measuring stick of your popularity) that have unfortunately been allowed to drive the digital economy.

From the music point of view, if I'm a new artist and i get a label deal, guess what i have to pay for a thing called studio time, and the people that run the studio and produce my music and do my album cover and print my cds, all need to get paid, so rather than ensure that my music is protected and i can recoup to cover my costs, to make some whiner happy my music is drm free? So the whiner can copy it to as many devices as they want and "share" with as many people as possible? and please dont use the tape trading argument from back in the day, cuz the sound quality was so horrible, people went out and bought the album anyway.

[sextondmd]

The ethics behind this situation are obvious and have changed little over the years even though the general consensus has changed. If an individual or a company creates a painting, a piece of music, or a video game, they should have a right to sell and distribute it as they please. To ignore this is theft. It is quite simply taking something that does not belong to you.

What concerns me is, there is a large portion of the population that has no regard for intellectual property rights any longer. I would bet many of these individuals are in careers that are very heavily dependent on the sale of intellectual property. Here is a bigger question . . . . what do we do as a society when the modern currency is the "idea" and the wholesale theft of ideas is acceptable?

[neo_granas]

pol:

While I agree it can't Matt's argument is not bullet proof or has been thought out for a while, but I agree with him, and he makes a valid point in my opinion. You say so much goes into making an album, and I agree that there is so much time, effort, and energy put into it, but I highly doubt that it still costs $18 for any label/artist to make a reasonable profit. As he said, there has been times that I would hear a song on the radio, like it enough that I consider buying the album, but I am unable to hear any other song on the album, or at minimum hear more than a 20 or 30 second demo. So I gamble, buy the disc, and am disappointed when only 1 song is what I like. So either I'm forced to pay the $15 (if on sale, and I'm at the right place at the right time) to $20 for the one song I like. Yes downloading it is becoming easier and more cooperative for needs, but I think if someone really has about 2 to 4 devices (phone and mp3 player for you and say a wife/girlfriend/husband/boyfriend) the artist/label would demand you pay for it 4 times so you can have it on each device? If I buy the song, I can put it on as many devices as I please that I own, and no one should tell me what to do with it. And yes, that hypothetical situation would work, I pay for a phone for my wife and myself, and we each have mp3 players even though we never use them. If the producer of media wants to charge, in my opinion, unreasonably high prices for a product, I don't see why they are surprised they get pirated so much. When a CD costs $17 to buy but a DVD is the same price (and there are a ton more people involved in a much longer process for movies over music), it's not a hard concept to grasp. I'm not saying give pirates what they want, but make it at least reasonable to buy the content without feeling like you paid double what you should have.

[Darkwend]

Um... I've listened all the way through that album numerous times. The only song I don't enjoy is tubthumping.

I don't mind buying entire albums and finding out that only the single off of it was worth my money. It just means I won't ever buy another album by that artist/band. To minimize how often this happens I research an album and any available free samples of the artists work as well as reading reviews of the album before purchasing it. It really comes down to smart consumerism. Attempting to justify the theft of a 10-20 entertainment product is pathetic. If gamers aren't happy paying the full price for a game that may or may not be good waiting a month will result in used copies of the game selling for half the price (except for a select few extremely popular games) on e-bay. Purchasing a game used doesn't help the developers, but it is legal and still makes the point that you don't feel the game is worth what is being charged for it.

[jamie.p.walsh]

I would like to talk more about the gaming industry.

How about offering subscription gaming on a latest gen platform akin to netflix. You pay so much per month based on whether or not you have 1,2, 3...n games you can play at any one time