Piracy and R18+ Games

So another game has been banned from Australia (Aliens vs Predator), and this time the developers are refusing to censor the content.

And I don’t blame them.

Why spend years developing and testing a game, finally deeming it ready for production only to have some narrow minded Government on the opposite side of the world tell you It needs to be re-edited so a 14 year old can buy it. I know what id tell them.

It actually surprises me how many developers comply with this.   The most recent of course being the game Left 4 Dead 2, which was banned from Australia until it met an MA15+ censorship rating,  the problem this time was that the developers cut it down so much , its more likely to fit into a an G Rated 8+ rating.

They actually removed almost all of the violence.  Putting a shot gun to a zombies head and pulling the trigger does little more than knock him over now,  no blood, no exploding body parts , no fun.

They went well below the recommended violence level and now the out dated Counter Strike:Source seems like a horror movie in comparison..

As a result, many fans of the original, did not buy the new version, and they wont ever, which is sad for the developers and sad for gaming in general.

I am a 26 year old Sydney born male, who works in IT, owns his own apartment and enjoys blowing up zombies in the little spare time I have between keeping my girlfriend happy and paying bills.

Despite what the government may think, iv been playing shoot-em-up violent video games all my life, and im not a serial killer.

I don’t wear black or recite verses from the book of revelations, and the closest iv come to a gun in real life is shooting spiders off my balcony with a $5 Indonesian BB gun that curves to the left.

My parents loved me and I have friends, albeit some of them may be closet alcoholics.

I physically can not watch horror movies, and never have been able to.  Even mainstream thriller/horror movies like SAW, I cannot stomach, yet im able to pay $12 for a ticket … $20 for a stale bucket of popcorn , and $9 for a bad choc top that ill be wearing before I leave the cinema at my local shopping mall and watch a real person being tortured, decapitated, sliced, diced and stabbed, and that’s ok with authorities.

In fact, who doesn’t remember as a young kid sleeping over at your friends place and watching some horrific horror movie, like Hell Raiser, or Texas Chainsaw Massacre?

Were they hard to obtain?  Nope.   Did you turn out to be a homicidal maniac? Nope.   I might still walk into a dark room at night swinging punches just incase, but In general I turned out fine.

So why am I not allowed to play a game with computer generated graphics and fake pixilated blood now, at the age of 26?

The sad thing is,  the majority of people who went to see SAW paid for it, so the producers are rewarded, and so are the local cinemas,  yet the people who want to play the violent games that are banned, will still play the games, although nobody will be rewarded for it, the game will be pirated and downloaded from the internet.

In some cases it may just be ordered from overseas ,  in which case our local economy misses out.

Banning the game from our shelves in an attempt to stop it getting into peoples hands is retarded, and I doubt there isn’t a 13 year old out there that hasn’t heard of Bit Torrent or P2P.

“So we’ll filter all the internet traffic, and ban Bit Torrent at the ISP level” says the government

“Fine.. We’ll just proxy to the US , or use a proxy network like TOR, and then spread the files locally” we say

You cant stop it , and you never will.   For the billions of dollars it costs to implement and enforce a nation wide filtering policy ,  it just takes 1 teenager to figure out a way around it and post it on twitter and you’ve wasted all that money.  The difference is , it cost the teenager nothing and took  maybe a day, on his home PC his mum bought him for Christmas ,  yet a nation wide filtering policy took over a year to implement and several billion dollars.  No prizes for guessing who won that battle.

When permitted, I buy my software.  I also buy my music.

Have I pirated music?  Yes

Have I pirated video games?  Yes

BUT I buy what I like.   I buy the latest albums from my favorite artist, I also buy and pre-order games that im looking forward to.

This is largely due to the fact that 90% of the artists I listen to, I only know of because I downloaded one of their albums previously, and concluded that I liked their music.  A friend’s recommendation isn’t enough for me to fork out $30 on a band iv never heard of, and even more so a video game that costs $100 or more.

A short Bit Torrent download later, and 30 minutes into it and im now a fan.  I will now pay $70 to see them in concert,  I will now buy their albums,  I will now recommend them to my friends who may also torrent their music and possibly also become a fan.   Its viral.

Worrying about the lost $5 revenue from that initial album is stupid because the cost of a fan is priceless.

So the question is, if a record company could purchase fans, for $5 each, and in return , they would fill up gigs, sell future albums and merchandise would that not be a good purchase?   The return on investment on that is well over $5.

The same rule applies to video games and game studios,  I like many, I pirated the original Call Of Duty and Medal Of Honor games,  yet as a result of this,  I pretty much will buy any Infinity Ward game off the shelf without even reading a review of it.  I don’t feel I need to, they’ve already proven them selves to me and I didn’t ever get burned paying $100 for a game that was absolute rubbish.

I believe this applies to many people , piracy is not all bad,  it gets your product into more hands, and if your product is good then you secure future profits and fans.

Yes, there are the few out there that will probably never pay for your game or music and download it instead,  but guess what?  They probably would of never bought it anyway, but at least they might talk about it to friends, or on forums or spread the word about your product,  consider it passive advertising.

Bands like Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead are realizing this and have begun releasing albums for free.   Everyone will download their album, even non-fans, as a result their brand gets bigger,  they reach more people, they sell out more shows and for those existing fans that don’t like the new album, they don’t feel ripped off.  Its win-win.

We need to stop thinking like it’s the 90’s,  realize the power of free media and that there’s other ways to make money, because until that happens mega multi million dollar film studios are going to keep getting away with suing teenagers and parents for millions of dollars over a downloaded movie that sucked anyway.