A Pirates Approach to Game Design
Over on ArsTech there is a great look at Brad Wardell, CEO of Stardock, and his approach to game design and distribution.
“The way to make money in the world of PC gaming, according to Wardell, is to make sure many systems can play your games, while continuing to make them attractive. Find a market where people want to buy and support the games, and don’t go by what the magazines and the blogs seem to think are the big name titles. Don’t let people who aren’t your audience control the titles you make, and ignore piracy. This is much like Trent Reznor’s strategy, although the execution is different. Instead of worrying about pirates, just leave the content out in the open. The market Reznor plays to will still buy the music; he’s simply stopped worrying about the pirates. He came to the same conclusion: they weren’t customers, they might never be customers, so spending money to try to stop them serves no purpose.”
Although I don’t spend a lot of time in the gaming world it is clearly one of the big areas dealing with issues of copyright, copy-protection and pirates. It’s cool to see that one man’s approach is taking it all into account and finding success with the open model.
March 21, 2008 2:45 pm 
Subscribe