Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!burl!codas!ufcsv!gatech!mcnc!xanth!kent
From: kent@xanth.cs.odu.edu (Kent Paul Dolan)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: piracy
Summary: A service games can provide.
Message-ID: <3735@xanth.cs.odu.edu>
Date: 23 Jan 88 16:33:30 GMT
References: <8801181913.AA15773@decwrl.dec.com>
Reply-To: kent@xanth.UUCP (Kent Paul Dolan)
Organization: Old Dominion University, Norfolk Va.
Lines: 55

In article <8801181913.AA15773@decwrl.dec.com> kruger@whyvax.dec.com (Desperate Drive Mounted to keep Larouche off Ballot) writes:
>Piracy is an issue to Amiga users because we want to see increasing amounts of
>software on our machines.
[...]

>While Richard Stallman (of the Free Software Foundation) is a radical
>going far beyond my limit, I would say he has the right idea in that
>piracy should be stopped by providing a service the pirate needs, such
>as support. This does not work for games though. *sigh* there is no
>answer, it seems.

>dov


Sure there is.  Many (most?  all?) games lose interest after a while
because it is the same old stuff.  Well designed, most games would be
a driver module plus a scenario data set.  Sell new scenarios cheaply
and conveniently.  Doesn't even matter much if you sell them only to
registered users, or to pirates and all, as long as they provide a
nice cash flow and are cheaper and easier to get than to pirate.  For
examples where this works, look for example at Marauder II, which is
recursive pirating software (pirates itself) but provides a great cash
flow trick through dial up access and credit card number payments.  I
think they just sell their "brainfiles" to registered users, but they
are missing a good bet ... might just as well give the software away
and make the bucks on the brainfiles.  Another, similar example is the
new power filter I got for my aquarium.  They might as well have GIVEN
me the filter device, 'cause at $1.99 per each for filtration inserts
that only last a week, and cost about $0.05 to make, they are getting
rich off my update expenses, far beyond any profit they make on the
original filter sale.

Games that would do well sold this way?  Any Infocom game (they
finished the driver in the stone age, just keep releasing new
scenarios which promptly get pirated like heck, 'cause they go for $40
a throw when they could be distributed at a great profit by wire
priced at $5); Bard's Tale, Faery Tale Adventure, Firepower (Wow!),
Apshi Trilogy, Sindbad, Defender of the Crown, Ractor (insanity
scenarios; should I patent that idea, quick?), Hacker II, any sports
game (distribute the updated stats for current players seasonally),
any text/graphics adventure (e.g., The Pawn, Mindshadow, Arazok's (sp)
Tomb), World Games and Winter Games (they didn't come close to
exhausting the list), Silent Service (more maps, enemy ship types,
different submarines for the player to try out, evolve the torpedoes
as they changed during the war, new ASW strategies of the enemy),
Little Computer People (a new house, a different pet (ferrets,
anyone?)), etc., etc., etc.

The few folks who've tried this make a steady profit selling updates.
If more people tried it, the drivers would still get pirated, but the
profits wouldn't thereby disappear.

Just my opinion, of course.

Kent, the man from xanth (up at last, up at last, oh Lord, we're up at last!)