KibaBase

Developer Jeff Vogel of the Geneforce 5 fame and spiderweb software fame, talked about the slow evolution of the gaming market in his “We’re all Charity Case Now” article.  He knew that “piracy” was the nature of reality so he couldn’t do much about it. In any case, he felt that when people buy, it is a “virtuous act” when they can just “steal” the game for free. In turn, he knew that waging a moral campaign could be disastrous to his business and his small fanbase.

He is moving in the right direction. Still, for a 15 years+ and still running entrepreneur, he completely miss the boat on how to deal with the “pirates”. He doesn’t know how to deal with the new reality except by asking people to buy his game along with adding a little bit of DRM(Remember the old serial code?). I supposed that’s understandable. He does have fifteen years of experience about which business models work and which doesn’t.

What do I know? I have a 2 years old encyclopedia that is purposely at a disadvantage in copyright power. So far it earned me 70 bucks! I once got paid to write a graphical engine for a small programming RPG.(Still waiting for the original author to merge my featureset in) 50 Bucks! Not even a grant of “intellectual property” either!  Clearly, I don’t have the record and the reputation to shows that I am successful in term of making enough for myself.  The miniscule amounts of money that I made so far were all earned in a less day by Jeff, who started his business when I was still a 3 years old.

Still, his attitude is skewed. I mean, still really skewed.

As a student of economic history and observer of the effect of free market on digital goods, I knew that all things seen are just the surface of things unseen. Copyright and patents just happen to be something I was interested in. When you’re a free software developer, you tend to worry about copyright a lot. You’re scared shit of patents.  Naturally, you wanted to know more about the forces that affect you in your livelihood and your pet project, everyday.

“Pirates” both legal and illegal in the copyright world is old. Very old. The first pirates are people who skirt censorship laws, printing books that were in huge demand. Later, they became the people who illegally printed poetry or music sheets in England. In the early history of the American publishing industry, they were effectively pirates of foreign(British) authors.

But no matter what age you live in, pirates are a beneficial force in society. In ages past, they help made British authors filthy rich and books really cheap. In more recent times, they are users of new recording technologies. These new technologies eventually brought untold profit to record labels, the very labels that resisted the advent of the CD, tapes, and other technologies. Today, they are the unconscious mean by which young people, my generation, resists the oppressive regime of crony capitalism and their statist enforcer.

You can kick and scream about how evil they are. You can scream how much money that they have stolen from you, money that you deserve. You can call them scumbags. But never forget that they contributed to their fair share to our society as well.  Respect the pirates, for they are the hidden forces beneath the pink economy that bring changes and market correction.  You don’t have to like them. At the very least, you should  have a healthy respect for them. That will give you the tool to approach this as a rational entrepreneur,  and maybe make lot of money off of it.

Look. You don’t want to be there when the free market finally breaks through and starts massacring all the people in the pink market. (Pink market is the opposite of black market) It has already happen to music sheet producers once. They thought they could crack down on music sheet piracy. Unfortunately, the police decided that they have enough of this shit and they stop helping them. Before that, music sheets were expensive. After that, the pirates, who were previously black market entrepreneurs, made music sheets cheap. Expensive and ridiculously overpriced music sheet never return to the marketplace.

Don’t think of your business as charity that depend on the goodwill of the consumers, the ultimate sovereign. Adapt your business model so that they can fit today’s and tomorrow’s reality. Last but not least, think of pirates as indicators, not plunders of wealth.  When you’re a developer who got his business shut down, nobody is going to cry for you, except maybe your wife.

You all, who have survived the rigor of the pink markets(Even the pink market is hard!) and made money, can still beat and banish the pirates today. You jut gotta stop sneering at them and analyze the economic causes beneath it. RedHat, IBM, and countless companies have already beat them.

You indies have vastly more experience in building businesses and enterprises than most free gaming developers, even when you put all my kins together. You could show your freedom loving breathens on how to make a living in a post-copyright world. You could be cool.

And who wouldn’t want to be the Alpha-geek?

Happy hacking, indies.

~Kiba

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