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After having purchased Empire: Total War (review pending) I found myself on Steam quite frequently (to launch Empire). While doing this, my eye caught the logo of World of Goo, a game I have many fond memories of and which I've observed people playing that ordinarily don't play computergames. It holds a particularly good place in my heart because of its creators 2D Boy. Not only are they just 2 guys whom like making games, they also have a position of "generally yucky" about DRM. As a matter of fact, the interview with them gave me a load of new thoughts on the matter.

See, people who advocate DRM use the argument that without DRM, piracy would run rampant and nobody would pay for their games. This theory holds a few not-so-obvious flaws, the first of which going back all the way to the early days of Napster and even before then the kids sampling candy in the candy stores: does this harm or increase sales? Well, we finally have an answer, thanks to Nine Inch Nails: sales go up. As a matter of fact: although the music is free, it's a best-selling record. In other words: Nine Inch Nails made tons of money. Why?

Well, instead of viewing all the people on the planet as people, let's see them as "sales potential", just like businessmen do. Every person out there is a potential sale of whatever product you have, and all you need to do is get them to make that purchase. This is the classical view, which is patently wrong. There are many games that I will simply never buy, for a plethora of reasons, and therefore I am not an "untapped sale potential". Were I to pirate one of those games, which I would never buy anyway, I am not a lost sale. No harm has been done. As a matter of fact, all this piracy has done is turn things around and give the product a chance to convince me it's good enough to buy!

Time after time it gets proven that people do want to pay for the products they use, by and large, yet the arguments for DRM never change.

Right! World of Goo! It's a fantastic indie puzzler, in which you stack gooballs in various ways, making use of a really fun physics engine and with enormously high production value. This is definitely not a typical indie game with "unrefined quality" at all. This is pure quality, and for the $5 it's on sale for right now it's a steal. Think about it: a movie is generally around 10 - 15 bucks, and keeps you entertained for 2 hours or so. Or think of it in terms of renting a movie. Or, alternatively, you stop thinking about it and buy it now, and also purchase it for someone as a gift.

Gooballs make for a great gift.

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