I wrote yesterday about the difficulties of selling media content when people can get something more-or-less identical without paying. It looked a bit bleak. In this – more positive – post, I’m going to look at some of the ways media owners might persuade people to pay for their content, focusing on the good, bad and ugly methods built around the recent Electronic Arts games release Dragon Age. A hotly-anticipated title, developed by role-playing game specialists Bioware, the production cost millions of dollars and took nearly six years. I think it would be fair to say that it had to be successful.
Like other media owners, computer games publishers have a hard time with piracy and other unauthorised distribution. You know this is true because you were a teenager once yourself and you copied disks and downloaded cracks. In my case, it was copying cassette tapes of Spectrum games. It’s really quite a big problem: 2DBoy, the publishers of indie puzzle game World of Goo, had a built-in mechanism for tracking every copy of the game in circulation. They discovered that 90% of those copies were unauthorised, and that’s discounting any versions whose distributors had found a way to circumvent the tracking. While that doesn’t mean that game publishers only get 10% of the revenue they would in a world without piracy, I think we’re likely to agree that it’s probably a fair chunk.
Distribution
When Dragon Age came out, I had several options for getting hold of it.
I could go to a shop
- advantages: I get a box, a disc and a printed manual.
- disadvantages: I have to go to the shop. I might scratch or lose the disks. I have to put the disk in the machine to play. Costs £40.
Or I could buy it through a digital distribution service like Steam (it’s like iTunes for games, basically).
- advantages: I get it right now; Steam looks after the installation and any patches; can’t lose or scratch the disk.
- disadvantage: need to be connected to the Net to play; no printed manual; costs £40.
Or I could download an illegal, cracked copy through PirateBay or similar.
- advantages: I get it right now. No need to jump through copy protection hoops. Costs nothing.
- disadvantages: err… might get caught.
So, the method that earns EA no money is, in many respects, the most convenient. They should probably try to dissuade me from doing that somehow. Here’s what they’ve done and what they might have done.
Digital-Rights Management
Games publishers have traditionally responded to the threat of unauthorised copying by introducing more and more sophisticated forms of copy protection and DRM. You have to have the DVD in your drive to start the game. The game requires you to enter a unique serial number. It might check this number against an internal algorithm. More recently, it’s likely to check the number against a database on the publisher’s server – a key that’s used more than a few times will be blacklisted. It might check that key every time you play. Dragon Age employs all these methods. But it doesn’t really work very well as a means of protection.
First, it’s a pain in the neck for legitimate customers. Why should I have to go hunting through my discs every time I want to play the game? What’s with this trillion-character serial number? Hang on, my Internet connection is a bit flakey – what do you mean I can’t play? These methods aren’t just inconvenient; they are also disrespectful. They treat paying customers like potential criminals.
Second, the pirates appear to be really rather good at thwarting copy protection. Cracks to make a game playable without any of the above are easily obtained. So it turns out that the only people who are inconvenienced are genuine customers. Nice work!
Score: 1/5
Enrich the Genuine Copies
In recent years, the idea of giving ‘extras’ to paying customers has gone by the board somewhat. I recall buying games in the nineties that came with 2-3 different manuals, a map of the in-game world, a poster, occasionally novelties like a metal figurine or a sound track disk. Nowadays, games come in DVD-style boxes and so the possibilities for novelties are rather limited.
Nonetheless, EA have actually done quite well with Dragon Age on this score. Rather than physical extras, they come in a virtual form. My box came with a coupon with two extra serial numbers I could enter into the game. These added new content to the game: a couple of extra adventures and unique items and powers to make my character stronger.
I had to register my game with the publisher in order to unlock this content and so there’s no way for pirates to get hold of it. I really like this idea: the illegal copy is impoverished while legitimate buyers are rewarded. And thinking about gamer psychology, I believe it acts as a strong motivation to get the real thing. Those using unauthorised versions will know that their character isn’t as strong and hasn’t got the same resources as those belonging to users who bought it. Gamers hate having a ‘lame’ character.
Unfortunately, Bioware slightly botched the execution. Using the premium content requires the game to check in with the server every time it is run, spoiling the experience for those with a flakey internet connection or wanting to play the game on the move.
On a more positive note, the title is being actively maintained by the developers. Two patches have already been released with a third in the works. Once again, it’s unlikely pirates will be able to use these, again making their copies inferior.
Score: 3/5
Sell a Platform
But EA did more with add-on idea than simply providing bonuses for registered customers. It has built Dragon Age as a platform as well as a game. You can go onto the site and purchase Bioware points to spend on extra chunks of content, such as the Return to Ostagar expansion. Again, you need to be registered to buy and use this content, which once again devalues the pirated releases. Since the game’s launch, there’s only been one piece of additional content to purchase, with a further expansion due in March.
The developers also released a toolset for the game allowing users to create their own tweaks and content for the game that can be distributed and installed in a similar fashion to the official add-ons.
Score 4/5
Build Community
The toolkit is just a small part of the ways that the publishers have attempted to foster a community around the game. Registering the game automatically creates a MySpace-style profile page for every user which automatically records achievements within the game and your character’s progress. You can add comments and screengrabs, and the site comes with the normal tools to twitter/facebook/tell others about what you’ve managed to achieve.
While I think this is useful for games, it’s not especially so in this case. Dragon Age is a resolutely single-player game so there is no particular reason why anyone should be remotely interested in another player’s progress, unlike, say, multiplayer games like World of Warcraft or Eve Online. Oh well – I’ll still give points for good intentions.
Score 2.5/5
Conclusions
A mixed score overall, then, with overly zealous DRM casting a shadow over some more insightful ideas to make piracy a poor option for users. Nonetheless, it appears to have been relatively palatable to users, with over 3.2mn copies shipped by the beginning of February. At £40 a unit, not including any after-sales of extra content, that equals um… squillions in revenue.
The key to good practice here is giving customers more than they expected, rewarding their patronage, hooking them in as they experience the game and up-selling them with extra content to extend the experience. These sorts of ideas might easily be applied to other media forms, such as a music CD or a magazine subscription. If I pay, give me more, exclusive extras that add a lot more value to the legitimate edition than the unauthorised copies. Make it easy for me to use it as a want to. As we all know, the bits and bytes of any digital product can and will be copied by people who are determined to do so. However, if you make those ones and zeroes just a fraction of the whole product experience, then there is still a business in making media.
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