Even though you know you could do a really excellent job with a game, would you ever decide not to make it, because you know the demographic that it is aimed at has been shown to be the most likely to pirate software?

Or is that too cynical?

Just to be clear, this is a hypothetical question which resulted from a discussion I had with someone else. My position was that (forget about all other factors for a moment) creating a really good game aimed at the 14-24 Male audience, with strong incentives to purchase and a reasonable price, was do-able. His opinion was that quality, price, etc. would be irrelevant since they would just download pirate copies.

since I have no data to back up my argument, I wondered what everyone here thought.

hehe...yep it is !!!!!! :p ;)

My first question is what do you want to achieve? If you aren't after money, then definitely make the game. However, I suspect you already knew this, and you would like to make money from this game and thats why you were asking. In that case:

What do you mean by "most likely"? Do you mean they are more likely to pirate than any other group, or that it is more than likely the majority of people in the target group will pirate? If the former, then I wouldn't let this factor alone stop me. But if the latter, I wouldn't bother.

Of course there are other factors you need to take into consideration (is there a large enough audience, is there lots of quality competitors, etc).

There's a ton of competition for that audience. All the AAA games are made for that age group. So whether or not those people might pirate games probably won't matter as much as the fact that they probably won't even want to play your game in the first place. Even if they did, you're going up against a lot of big titles.

That's how I understand it anyway, if someone has better knowledge of this feel free to refute my claim.

Make the game really good and reasonably priced and give great tech support, and likely your piracy effects may lessen. Many pirates justify there action beacuse they think the games suck, they cost too much or the companies that make them are dorks with no respect for their customers.
Take uplink, I reckon the piracy effects on that game are minimal, because its perceived to be a genuinely good game from a small company with a good website and community. Compare that with cash-in franchise games made by EA. People have little respect for EA and don't feel anyone suffers if they pirate an EA game. With smaller companies who provide a good service, some people (not all) realise that they have no justification for stealing these guys work, and are more likely to register the game.
Releasing patches and add-on pack helps too. The original monopoly tycoon game was hacked, but they released a patch which added a ton of features. of course, the patch breaks any hacks you already have, which is a cunning way of encouraging pirates to go legit on that game. as i recall, Age of empries did the same thing.

think of the pluses of piracy:

- cracking a software copy protection takes alot of time. no one
will spend time on cracking it unless its med-high quality. so if
you find your game pirated (providing that your spend enough
time/money on copy protection) you should also recieve it as a
compliment that your game is good enough to hack into.

- once the product is pirated, people who uses it identify the
name behind the product. ive seen not once that people go in
the game's website if they had enough fun, and considering
on buying the next game coz they believe its good enough as
the pirated game they own. also ive seen people that played
a pirated version and then bought the registered one from a
sense of ownership and identification with the game.

to sum things up,
pirated copies gives the player an impression on the game quality,
it publicize your name for people who usualy use pirated copies
as one in the market, and may bring new customers.

not that i justify piracy, but you have to see that even if u lose
profits, you earn publicity.

Originally posted by cliffski
Many pirates justify there action beacuse they think the games suck, they cost too much or the companies that make them are dorks with no respect for their customers.

Sure thats how they justify it, but thats not why they do it. They do it because that want it, don't want to pay for it, and since they can download it they don't have to. Take away all the reasons for their justification, and more than likely they would just find more reasons. Your expansion packs aren't free. Your tools/editors aren't free. You didn't open source it. It crashes occasionally with certain buggy video card drivers. Something will provide their justification. Granted, this isn't true for everyone, but it is for a lot.

There are a lot of pirates out there, but I would bet there are a lot more non-pirates.

I think most people are selective pirates. For example, I have pirated an mp3 program because I wanted to burn a cd. The demo only allowed 5 songs - which wasn't enough. So I pirated it, made the cd, then deleted the program. To me it was justified because I needed a one-time app, and the one time didn't justify me spending $30.

By the same token I have licensed programs that I use every day. I have a conscience that will not allow me to pirate software I will actually use.

I think most people have a value system. If they beleive the product has enough value to warrent the cost, they will buy it. If the cost is more than the "perceived" value, they will pirate it.

My thoughts for you are to make your game as valueable as possible, and make the price low enough that people will automatically percieve the "value" is greater than the price.

Shareware would not exist if every person pirated software. Since it's been around for 20 years or so, I'd say there are enough non-pirates out there to keep developers in business.

Originally posted by shaft
Shareware would not exist if every person pirated software. Since it's been around for 20 years or so, I'd say there are enough non-pirates out there to keep developers in business.
Yes, but remember we're talking about a game that would appeal mostly to the 14-24 male. Whether or not other demographics are honest would be fairly irrelevant since they would most likely not be interested in the game anyway.

Has anyone here made a game that targets this particular age/gender?

"Yes, but remember we're talking about a game that would appeal mostly to the 14-24 male." I would say that maybe 75% of all other games have the same target audience :)

Shaft, pirating a one time application is as bad as people that use it constantly. What will you do when you need to rip another CD? And there are more than enough alternatives to any program to rip and encode CDs. What you did is exactly what most pirates say "I only wanted to test the full game | I wouldn't buy it anyway".

"Many pirates justify there action beacuse they think the games suck, they cost too much or the companies that make them are dorks with no respect for their customers." Yeah, maybe they do, but as Kronos say, they do it cause is a good way to save money for crack. If games suck, don't play them. They can say whatever they want, put all the political reasons they want, in the end, its just about saving a buck.

Ohh, and as the original topic, go for it, if the demographics say that more people will pirate your game, then its almost sure they also say they will buy more copies (unless the only target country is something like China or related).

You may call me a pirate because I used a program once illegally (Now it wouldn't be a problem because there are many mp3 programs now have that have demos with unlimited use within a time limit. This was when mp3s first started and I was curious about the technology)

But you miss my point. I would bet 95% of computer users are pirates of some form another. I wonder how many illegal MP3s you have on your computer?

Drawing a hard line saying anyone who does anything against the rules is a pirate is a silly statement. People break rules - we drive fast on empty roads, we drank alcohol when we were under age, etc.

But just because people break some rules that to them "don't make sense at the time" doesn't mean they will break all rules all the time. You just need to make sure it makes sense NOT to break the rules (i.e. pirate the software).

That's where demos, reasonable prices, great support, fantastic manuals, and lots of extras come in.

Ages 14-18 may be a tougher market because these kids have never had to pay for anything in their lives (parents) so why should they pay for this game. But above 18, they have jobs and responsibilities, and are much more likely to pay for things they deem valuable.

If you want no piracy, your best bet is ages 50-100. However you have a pretty small market. Ages 12-30 will have some piracy but the size of the market should more than make up for the few pirates.

My thought on this is that, if you're going to be marketing/selling the game on the web, the 14 to 18 yr. old is a bad person to target, but not becuase of piracy.

Perhaps with the Internet it's changed, but when I was 14 I was buying games for my commodore 64 with saved-up allowance and lunch money (yeah I went hungry for a month to get Ultima IV). I was buying them, but it was by scraping up anything I could. Even at 16, when I had a job, I was buying them with cash.

With selling online you pretty much need a credit card. I don't think too many 14 to 18 yr olds are going to have access to that. I certainly didn't.

If you're determined to go that route, perhaps you can use PayPal and encourage kids to get their parents to put some credit into their paypal account.

Just my thought.

Hanford