• Gamasutra: Lars Doucet’s Blog – Piracy and the four currencies
  Worth reading:

  So, let’s start with my favorite example, Dragon Age II. On release, the game cost:

  $M 60
  $T 5
  $P 100
  $I 0

  This game was expensive, it took forever to install and deal with the invasive DRM, which was only slightly more fun than getting groped by the TSA in the comfort of your own home. The only thing that was cheap about the game was that buying it was “the right thing to do,” wasn’t illegal, and it didn’t make the player feel guilty. The only way this service competed with piracy was in the $I cost.

  By comparison, pirate sites were offering the game for the low, low price of :

  $M 0
  $T 0.5
  $P 5
  $I 10

  It cost no money, and the only time spent was downloading the game file. There was some pain-in-the-butt, ie, the player could accidentally download malware, needed to know how to use bittorent (easy for us geeks, not so for average joe/jane), and was constantly being hassled by lurid ads and pop-ups. Finally, there was the integrity cost that piracy is illegal, and in some sense, “morally wrong.”

  Spending one costs a tiny part of your soul.

  What if Dragon Age II had this price instead?

  $M 60
  $T 0.5
  $P 0.5
  $I 0

  Ie, what if buying Dragon Age II was as easy as entering payment information, downloading the game, and running it? Now the game looks pretty competitive – it’s actually less of a pain-in-the-butt than pirating it, and it doesn’t “cost” any moral integrity or ask you to break any laws, either!

• Da Chip
  “Two Daft Punk Albums Remixed as 8-Bit Nintendo Songs”

  too good.

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