Piracy & PC Gaming
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So even though Galactic Civilizations II sold 300,000 copies making 8 digits in revenue on a budget of less than $1 million, it's still largely off the radar. I practically have to agree to mow editors lawns to get coverage. And you should see Jeff Green's (Games for Windows) yard. I still can't find my hedge trimmers.I spotted this via Rock Paper Shotgun, who also have an interesting bit of discussion on the topic.
Another game that has been off the radar until recently was Sins of a Solar Empire. With a small budget, it has already sold about 200,000 copies in the first month of release. It's the highest rated PC game of 2008 and probably the best selling 2008 PC title. Neither of these titles have CD copy protection.
And yet we don't get nearly the attention of other PC games. Lack of marketing on our part? We bang on the doors for coverage as next as the next shop. Lack of advertising? Open up your favorite PC game publication for the past few months and take note of all the 2 page spreads for Sins of a Solar Empire. So we certainly try.
But we still don't get the editorial buzz that some of the big name titles do because our genre isn't considered as "cool" as other genres. Imagine what our sales would be if our games had gotten game magazine covers and just massive editorial coverage like some of the big name games get. I don't want to suggest we get treated poorly by game magazine and web sites (not just because I fear them -- which I do), we got good preview coverage on Sins, just not the same level as one of the "mega" titles would get. Hard core gamers have different tastes in games than the mainstream PC gaming market of game buyers. Remember Roller Coaster Tycoon? Heck, how much buzz does The Sims get in terms of editorial when compared to its popularity. Those things just aren't that cool to the hard core gaming crowd that everything seems geared toward despite the fact that they're not the ones buying most of the games.
I won't even mention some of the big name PC titles that GalCiv and Sins have outsold. There's plenty of PC games that have gotten dedicated covers that haven't sold as well. So why is that?
Our games sell well for three reasons. First, they're good games which is a pre-requisite. But there's lots of great games that don't sell well.
The other two reasons are:
* Our games work on a very wide variety of hardware configurations.
* Our games target genres with the largest customer bases per cost to produce for.
By following this, he reaches Stardock's position of trying to be as convenient to those who'll buy their games by avoiding DRM and similar approaches rather than trying to stop the people who pirate the game. Because the Pirates don't count. They have no direct financial impact. There's a second side of this too, however.
It's the (cool) factor he describes. That is, what gets hardcore gamers and journalists excited, and they give coverage to. With magazines and websites, I don't think it's actually anything to do with (cool) - it's about what's perceived as cool by the people who read them. As in, what will make them read. Regarding websites, there's a nasty truth which no-one really has spoke aloud: Pirate's clicks are as good as anyone else's. Websites earn money from people who have no interest in paying for the game. If there's several million pirate-only FPS fans, they'll swell the page-impression count too. If there's four million people who want to read about Call of Duty 4, even if only 400,000 want to pay for it, a website will earn more money by writing about it, rather than trying to do something for the 400,000 people who actually want to read about Sins of the Solar Empire, even if every single one of them buy the game. Until web advertising becomes less about pure number of page impressions, this is going to be an issue.
