Last night, I made a post about Sony putting out
fake downloads of
Black Ice in an attempt to prevent piracy. It was only today that I realized the best way any company could prevent piracy of games, CDs or even movies. It won't be 100% effective, and it
will cost some money, but it will also make some would-be pirates buy the game. It might even cut down on second-hand ownership. This is also something companies have been doing for a while, but it's not something that has been done by every company or with every game.
Reward us for buying the game.
Remember, that word was reward. Not punish. Do not punish pirates or second-hand owners. That will only make your company look bad. Instead, you must be extra kind to people who bought the game new. Something as simple as throwing in a t-shirt could be the difference between $0 and $50, and since I think it'll be a while before t-shirts can be downloaded, it could prove to be damn effective. Any die-hard fan would kill for that t-shirt, and if it's only available with the game, you can bet your ass they'll buy it.
The problem is, most of the time when companies do this, it's only during the time of pre-orders. These incentives should stay with the game at least 2-3 months after release (forever is a better option for gamers, but I can understand cutting it off after 2 months. This IS a business, and since you're not charging extra for the buyers' reward - or else you're doing it wrong - you probably have to end that some time).
Remember, something as simple as that worthless coin that came with
Super Mario Galaxy pre-orders could be enough to turn some pirates into buyers. But if you keep the swag with the game for an extra 2-3 months, it could do wonders.
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That's just the way it is.
On the topic of piracy, it's going to keep happening, people will do it no matter what. It's like pot, try as hard as you want to stop it but people will continue to do it. Dunno, it sucks for game companies and probably keeps some good games from being made, but its part of the business...
There's only one bit of logic that goes against this idea, and that's one every store worries about, namely shelf and warehouse space for stock. As more games come out, the rise in their stock levels grows. Each shop only has so much space.
If you look at the Halo 3 preorders for instance, all the stuff we got with it had to be stored somewhere, until the sale date. For one game that's a lot of store space, taking up small stores. For the likes of amazon etc, that's not a problem though, which in turn says that its very possible for such incentives to prevail over dodgy cuts of games. We'll see more of this eventually, just as they do in japan, because game stores want to fight the growing threat of digital replacing their business model.
With Fallout 3 coming with cool free models and stuff, its those kind of cool gaming stuff that makes me want to buy more. Everyone loves free decent loot.
Another good method we are hopefully gonna see more of, is the use of instruction booklets, with individual printed codes on them. I recently had this with Fifa 09 and feel its a very effective idea to give out content in a reward sense for buying a game. I guess this idea is building upon the old MGS codec idea, printed on the back of the box, but cleverly being used in the game.
1) Make products that don't suck
2) Charge a reasonable price for said product
3) ???
4) Profit