For my presentation regarding change in the industry, I have decided to focus my efforts on Piracy and how it has affected both the players and the industries mindsets and their forms tackling one another problems.
In my presentation I will talk about how Piracy in video games has grown and changed over the years and how peoples mindsets have changed with them, such as the players now being one of the main contributors to piracy, while Video game developers come up with riskier methods (such as DRM/Digital rights management) to prevent the pirating of games.
For my research I shall look at both sides of the board, how the industry regards piracy and their methods to control it and Players attitude to said methods and their own justifications towards pirating a game.
I am very well aware from the get go that this will be a VERY morally, ethically and lawfully uneasy subject to discuss as it is such a open grey area in the video game world that there is no real right or wrong, good or bad, black or white. There is only the problem on both sides of the board, each with their own justification for reasons.
I plan to also look at people who make compelling arguments on behalf of both sides, such as Extra Credits.
As a open example of one of the most common problems, which creates piracy is that the consumer does not have access to something they wish to have access to and so goes in search of it, usually finding on the internet or a pirated online.
This is then countered by the industry by attempting to prevent the consumer accessing this illegally, such as cutting off all connections to what the consumer wanted. Here lies the problem, as the industry is cutting off the connection they are NOT providing the consumer with what they wanted and thus instead of making a solution, they have only created a temporary challenge for the consumer and pirate to overcome to access each other.
A good way around this is simply for the industry to give the consumer what they want in a more accessible fashion to which they already have.
Example...
Company A has placed DRM in their game to prevent it from being pirated, but this DRM prevents new players who have bought the game second hand to no be able to enjoy it fully.
Thus these players go online to look for the game with DRM removed and download for free. The company revolts by preventing players who have a hacked copy of the game from playing the game all together.
