Now I realize that I am not the sampling size for the population. I realize that what I do does not entail the norm for folks. So with those two pieces of information in mind let me posit a few questions for you folks.
I personally use piracy as a way to demo a game before I buy it. If the game is good I always buy it. If it is good but not as good as the price tag I wait for a bit till it is a reasonable price and I buy it. However in all cases any game I pirate that I like I now own.
In the past the way I pirated was through friends. They would buy basically any game that was released and I would play their copy. Again if I liked it I would buy it (occasionally from them). Some folks call this borrowing but the mechanics are the same. Someone bought the product and provided it to me free of charge. I realize in this case they can't play it at the same time but there is nothing saying that the people doing the digital version are either. I digress...
Before I had either of these options I nearly never bought games. I also have found that if a game does not have a proper demo and I can't pirate it that I don't even give it the light of day. However I will admit that now my 'friend with all the games' is Gamefly. So in the console world I am currently blasting through 5-6 games a month for 15 dollars which feels fantastic.
Alright I'm terrible at this but I'm getting there. My point to the wonderful folks of the escapist (and perhaps even the a-holes that roam about but mostly the wonderful folks) if you had no means of piracy would you purchase games that you are not certain the quality of? If you would purchase them would you purchase them at their full price or wait till they are bargain bin? Heck do you even think the Demo's you have experienced lately were accurate of the experience the game you demo'd actually provided?
This is mainly a PC question, I realize you can pirate for consoles (and I've done it before, again unnecessary now that gamefly exists for me) but I think this is a more important question for a realm of gaming that has no version of gamefly.
Also a bonus question: Do you think that Piracy will be defeated by brute force or by providing services like gamefly that outweigh the gamble of game purchasing?
My personal answer to these is that if I had no means for demoing games I'd stop buying them all together. I find that when there is a dry spell for video games I just read books or watch films. DnD is always a surefire hit and MTG is an alternative. Regardless I see nothing that makes games necessary (which I believe is the common misconception for CEO's of companies like activision), it isn't like water where if you couldn't get it in cheap you'd HAVE to deal with the high prices and sketchy quality.
I'm curious to see the results of the poll. My current theory is that defeating Piracy through DRM at least will result in negligible sales gains and plenty of bad PR. None of the games I own would have been purchased had I not pirated them first (at least on PC). Minus SPORE and that was the biggest shoppers guilt I've had (personally hated the game).
I personally use piracy as a way to demo a game before I buy it. If the game is good I always buy it. If it is good but not as good as the price tag I wait for a bit till it is a reasonable price and I buy it. However in all cases any game I pirate that I like I now own.
In the past the way I pirated was through friends. They would buy basically any game that was released and I would play their copy. Again if I liked it I would buy it (occasionally from them). Some folks call this borrowing but the mechanics are the same. Someone bought the product and provided it to me free of charge. I realize in this case they can't play it at the same time but there is nothing saying that the people doing the digital version are either. I digress...
Before I had either of these options I nearly never bought games. I also have found that if a game does not have a proper demo and I can't pirate it that I don't even give it the light of day. However I will admit that now my 'friend with all the games' is Gamefly. So in the console world I am currently blasting through 5-6 games a month for 15 dollars which feels fantastic.
Alright I'm terrible at this but I'm getting there. My point to the wonderful folks of the escapist (and perhaps even the a-holes that roam about but mostly the wonderful folks) if you had no means of piracy would you purchase games that you are not certain the quality of? If you would purchase them would you purchase them at their full price or wait till they are bargain bin? Heck do you even think the Demo's you have experienced lately were accurate of the experience the game you demo'd actually provided?
This is mainly a PC question, I realize you can pirate for consoles (and I've done it before, again unnecessary now that gamefly exists for me) but I think this is a more important question for a realm of gaming that has no version of gamefly.
Also a bonus question: Do you think that Piracy will be defeated by brute force or by providing services like gamefly that outweigh the gamble of game purchasing?
My personal answer to these is that if I had no means for demoing games I'd stop buying them all together. I find that when there is a dry spell for video games I just read books or watch films. DnD is always a surefire hit and MTG is an alternative. Regardless I see nothing that makes games necessary (which I believe is the common misconception for CEO's of companies like activision), it isn't like water where if you couldn't get it in cheap you'd HAVE to deal with the high prices and sketchy quality.
I'm curious to see the results of the poll. My current theory is that defeating Piracy through DRM at least will result in negligible sales gains and plenty of bad PR. None of the games I own would have been purchased had I not pirated them first (at least on PC). Minus SPORE and that was the biggest shoppers guilt I've had (personally hated the game).
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