Here's a Novel Idea: Let's Actually Purchase the Video Games We Play

The Best Way to Fight Video Game Piracy is Not to Participate Yourself

The implications of IW's comments are harrowing, since the article's title was "They wonder why people don't make pc games anymore." As a gamer, and more proportionately a pc gamer, this worries and upsets me greatly. The last thing I want to see is the demise of the strongest and most open platform in gaming. The death of pc gaming has been greatly exaggerated in recent years, but there's nothing to stop it from becoming a reality if the bottom falls out due to massive financial losses with the continued release of games that are immediately cracked and pirated. Consider what has happened with Spore.

Perhaps we should take a novel approach then: let's pay for games we love and play! Yes, and movies and music while we're at it. This is why we work after all, isn't it? To save up our hard-earned cash to buy things we'd like. As gamers, if we continue to desire and demand great, boundary-pushing, deeply passionate games, well, guess what - it's not a charity case out there. We need to buy them, people. This is our hobby, and it demands an investment. How would you feel if you worked 50+ hours a week on a product at your place of business for a client, who then turned around and simply took it when it was finished? Would you feel a bit jaded? Would you be surprised when, if enough clients continued to steal your finished product, your company shut down due to lack of revenue intake?

"Oh, but games are so damn expensive!" A classic, uninformed argument. Yes, games cost money, sometimes upwards of $50 dollars on PC, or $60 on console - when they're first released. Yet how often have you taken a significant other, let alone family, to an evening cinema showing? Once you plunk down two adult tickets, and say, one popcorn and soda, you're looking at a minimum of $20 - $25 dollars in cash - for a single viewing of a movie. Games, on the other hand, offer multiple hours, sometimes in the dozens or hundreds, of repeated entertainment. And this is before we discuss the increased benefits of spatial relationships, logic/puzzle-solving, interactivity, social networking aspects, and hand/eye coordination.