Dialogue And Effects
SCENE XVII
Twitter.
Enter Jim “Pro Gamer” Perry.
Jim. Very disappointed in this - when will developers get it through their heads that DRM for games sucks and doesn't work - http://bit.ly/74A8zg [Ed. ain’t developers as much as their publishers, no?]
Join Andy “Anti Gamer” Dunn.
Andy. Probably when gamers start paying for the games http://tinyurl.com/c3qn5h not having DRM doesn't work either
Jim. there's going to be piracy, DRM doesn't stop it and ends up hurting the people that pay, not the pirates. What's the solution? 
Andy. DRM isn't about stopping piracy - its about limiting it.
Jim. but what good does limiting it do if it only hurts the legit players? 2D Boy's comments are interesting - http://bit.ly/5271js
Andy. My guess is that if it prevents 10% of the piracy and annoys 1% of legit enough that they don't buy then its a profit!
Andy. Remember that gamers usually just complain on the forums and then go buy the game anyway… http://tinyurl.com/y8mcggj
Jim. but are the complainers the pirates? Usually not I think
Jim. how is it a profit if the pirates wouldn't have bought the game anyway, which is usually the case? They've actually lost money.
Andy. My guess is that they assume SOME folk will buy it if pirating is harder... copying a DVD is less risky than torrenting
Jim. you know what happens when you assume, right? 
Andy. The same as when you assume all pirates would never buy the game…
Andy. … but I guess tht the folk who decide these things have more info than me, you or anyone out there who complains
Jim. if (numPiratesWhoWouldBuy < numLegitTickedOffPlayers) fail = true; How to test this though? 
Jim. did they poll the pirates? 
Is such a poll accurate?
Exeunt.
SCENE XVIII
Enter Promit “Slim Ghost” Roy.
Promit on Secondary Effects of iTunes Game Pricing. Every so often, someone complains about the overall price depression on the iTunes App Store to rock bottom. It’s a theme that recurs fairly often, and I’m generally a little dubious about the people who are upset about it. It seems mostly to be a product of an actual free market — you may think your game is worth five dollars, but if someone is producing similar quality for one, well tough shit.
Highlight some of the secondary effects he has observed.
Promit. The upside of all this is that, like everything else, the Ghost SDK will be stupid cheap. I’m hopeful that it will be available shortly after GDC, which is not long at all.
Exit.
January 21st, 2010 - 13:19
I’m hardly “Pro Gamer”, but I guess “Evil MVP” didn’t work here, huh?!
Since 2K is both the developer and publisher in this case it’s their fault either way.
January 22nd, 2010 - 04:54
Well, you cannot decalre yourself the “Evil MVP”, we (that’s the community we) do
And in the context of the quoted dialogue you clearly took the side of the gamers, while The Zman tried to revive his evilness 
January 26th, 2010 - 22:50
I’m not anti gamer, and in fact I detest DRM – won’t buy music with it on. But its a fact of life that a large perentage of the population think free is better than pay.. for all the whining and threats gamers still buy the DRM stuff too.
January 27th, 2010 - 13:34
It is interesting to witness that these two description – which are as much as tongue-in-cheek as any of the others – cause you guys to comment