I'm going on a trip tomorrow and where I go, so goes my laptop. The laptop is a pretty good game machine. Unfortunately, I can't play very many games on it when I travel. That's because most games now use rather obnoxious CD-ROM copy protection.

Copy protection on PC games is, in my opinion, not just ineffective, but stupid. I say that as a software developer and publisher of 10 years. And as time has gone one, I've become increasingly convinced that any copy protection that inconveniences customers does more harm than good.

Programs like Object Desktop have sold millions of dollars in unit sales directly over the Internet to end users. No CD. No hassles.  And on Galactic Civilizations, we insisted that our publisher, Strategy First, not put any CD copy protection on it.  When you purchase the game at the store you can literally install onto your machine and throw out the CD. Heck, you don't even need the CD in the box, you could just toss that out and keep the serial # and use Stardock Central to download the latest/greatest version of the game. Then you can put it on your main machine, put it on your laptop, whatever.

Who are the pirates?

But what about piracy?  Well, the first problem with piracy is that most people who worry about this kind of thing really don't have much experience in actually dealing with it in terms of what real world impact it has on sales.  We've been selling our stuff via the net for years and piracy, as an actual cost to business, is vastly overrated.

That's because there are really two groups of software pirates that one has to deal with:

1) "The kids". These are the guys who wouldn't buy the product anyway. The "scary" piracy stats thrown around always counts these guys as if they would have been buyers.  Many developers and publishers get really ticked off about this group. I know we did back when we got started. "These guys are stealing from us" and so all kinds of copy protections spring to the imagination to stop this group. "But what's the business objective here? These guys aren't going to buy the product anyway. If they can't crack it, they'll just not use it. And you punish legitimate customers.

2) "The casual pirate". This is where the biggest chunk of lost sales come from. For them, it's about convenience. These guys pirate not because they're cheap but because it's convenient.

To them, they'd love it if they could be reading a review at Gamespot and press a "one click buy" button and a link to an ISO CD image comes up for download.

Effectively Reducing Piracy

What we did with GalCiv was make Stardock Central in such a way so that you could play GalCiv with only a tiny percent of the game downloaded (i.e. figured out the meat vs. eye candy) so that a dial up user could just press a button and be playing the game in 30 minutes or so and get the rest electronically when they had time or wait for the CD to come in.

Our "copy protection" is three parts:

a) The serial #. Unique and virtually unbreakable since it's server generated (i.e. there's no "code" to crack).

Frequent updates.  The frequent updates are the key. Remember, because it's all about convenience for group 2, then it becomes increasingly more convenient to own the game than to pirate it if one has to hunt around warez sites for each update rather than just press a button and have the update in a minute or two.

c) Full download ability. This means that 3 years from now, when they've lost their serial #, lost their CD from moving or whatever that they can go to the site, put in their email address or some other piece of info that may not have changed and it will automatically email you all the info you need. (and if you've lost everything have a phone # that they can call so that they can find you in the database and update your info).  In Stardock's case, a user just goes to the support page, types in the email address that they registered with and they get everything (links to the full download of whatever they've purchased with serial #s). 

This is what we've done on Object Desktop and its yearly revenue direct from the Internet (right form Stardock.com) is in the millions of dollars annually. And it's what we've done with GalCiv and retail sales of GalCiv are looking to be about 3 and a half times what our publisher had estimated prior to release. Sure, there are lots of other factors involved but certainly having users see the value of being a customer has to be part of it. And we're tiny fish really. So if little guys like Stardock can do well with this kind of system, imagine how well it could work on a larger scale?

It's also relatively inexpensive to implement. It does, however, require sucking it in and making it easy for group 1 (the warez kiddies who wouldn't buy it anyway) to pirate it. But even then, some percent of group 1 is going to still buy it for various reasons (group 1 isn't a bunch of amoral robots, it gets increasingly difficult to pirate from people who are providing frequent and free updates).

This doesn't eliminate piracy. But over time, it does reduce is considerably while at the same time not unduly inconveniencing customers.  The easier you make it for someone to be your customer, the more customers you'll have.

The "Stupidity" of Copy Protection

There are no good statistics yet on what percentage of people are significantly affected by CD copy protection. But the anecdotal evidence is very disturbing.

I suspect that many reading this have either personally experienced what I'm about to describe or know someone who has gone through this:

Joe Gamer goes out and buys a game from the store. They get it home and play it and enjoy it. But one day, a few months later, they go to play it and can't find the CD. Where is the CD? There are piles of CDs everywhere. Maybe the kids took it. Maybe it fell into the trash.

Frustrated, Joe Gamer goes onto the net to look for a way to play the game without a CD. They go onto Google or Yahoo or whatever search engine they use and over the course of an hour or two they finally make their way to the "warez" world where cracks, file downloads, etc. are all easily available. More than that, warez has gotten frighteningly sophisticated with seamless distribution file systems and more.  They find not just the CD crack but links to all the latest titles.

So then Joe Gamer, who normally buys games, now has to look at his options:

a) He can do "the right thing" and drive out to the store. Spend $50 on the game, bring it home and deal with the CD copy protection.

or

He can click on a link and have the game in a few hours. No CDs to mess with and no cost.

What do you think many Joe Gamers of the world are going to do? And what about the Joe Gamer whose game won't work because the CD protection doesn't work on their model of CD-ROM drive or DVD drive? Talk about motivating people to learn about warez.

In short: CD Copy Protection Creates Pirates.

Joe Gamer previously knew nothing about this stuff. The demographic info on Joe Gamer (which we at Stardock over 10 years have a pretty good idea of) is that money isn't the issue, it's convenience.  And once he's invested the time to solve his lost CD problem, he then has a harder time justifying the hassle of buying future titles. And many people find it very easy to rationalize their piracy. Joe Gamer included.

So the game publishers, in their attempt to stop the 16 year old pirate (and failing) has instead turned the 25 year old casual PC gamer into a pirate. 

The Future of copy protection

So what should we do? Implement some sort of Microsoft-like product activation system? No. I don't think that is the solution. That doesn't solve the problem of people being able to install their game on their "main PC" as well as their laptop. 

My suggestion would be to recognize the people who buy games for what they are: CUSTOMERS. Treat them as CUSTOMERS. A scary suggestion I realize but it's worked pretty well for us over the years.  Make it easier to be a customer than a pirate. That can't be repeated enough.

So what does that mean? Specifically:

a) Have each game still have a serial # to it.

Give your users a personalized account. You can then tie those serial numbers to the account. You don't require it to play the game, only when they want to utilize some of the added benefits you create for being a customer. As I type this, there are approximately 654,000 Stardock.net "accounts".

c) Provide frequent and meaningful updates after release over the product's active lifespan. Like I said, you don't want to require people to have a net connection just to play your game. But if they're on the net anyway, you can then give them accounts tied to those serial #s. Since each serial # is unique, you can reduce piracy by keeping an eye out for duplicate serial #s floating around in accounts.  Through these personalized accounts users can then get convenient access to frequent updates. These updates should address suggestions and ideas presented by users. Just assign a developer or two to keep track of the good ideas that aren't too expensive to implement and put out an update. We've found that users like to see updates every 45 days or so for a period of at least 9 months after release.  The more updates you do, the more inconvenient you make it for people who are pirating your game to "keep up to date". Each update peels some pirates off and turns them into customers. And existing customers see the support they are getting and are more likely to purchase future products.

d) Provide added benefits to customers.  Don't stop at software updates. The Internet is the key to this strategy. You want people to be your customer. So make it worthwhile to them to be your customer in every way you can. For us, we have focused on creating on-line communities where customers gain added benefits. In Galactic Civilizations' case, that mean mod libraries, medals, ranks, fan fiction, blogs, etc.  Things that add to the benefit of being a customer. Check out this thread on the GalCiv.com forum. There are all kinds of rankings, users accesses, medals, etc.  that can enhance the post-purchase experience.

Now someone may point out that these suggestions only work for those with an Internet connection. True. But people without a net connection are also not likely to be hanging out on warez sites either. And for those people, being hassled by CD protection is still a big deal. In addition, people without a net connection are probably more likely to remember which companies inconvenienced them with CD-ROM protection and which ones did not which can affect future sales.

The Big Picture

Game companies just need to realize that software piracy is vastly overstated in terms of how much it affects real sales. And there are ways of reducing software piracy considerably by recognizing who their target audience is -- customers and potential customers.  Make the incentive for being a customer be greater than the incentive to pirate it and you'll see what we've seen -- piracy not having a significant affect on revenue and a lot of happy customers.

"

So tomorrow I'm heading out on a 2 day trip. Blech. I don't know why but I just hate to travel. Well actually, I do know why. I don't like the actual "Travel" portion.

If I could just beam to wherever I was going that would be great. Gotta pack up and get ready to go.

Over the past several years I've gotten packing down to a science:

2 days: light clothes. No suits. I won't wear a suit when I travel. If a suit is going to make or break a deal, then I don't want to do business with a company that concerned about dress atire. Stardock polo shirts and such work just fine.

Laptop bag with ThinkPad T40, USB cable for my SprintPCS phone so that I can be on the net with my laptop anywhere via the cell phone's 3G network. Plug and Svideo cable and 1 DVD just in case I get stuck in an airport.

1 tube of Sudefed in case I'm stuffed up (traveling when congested is not a good thing). 1 tube of Tylonal. 1 tube of Dramamine. (you can tell I'm not typing this blog from front page, all the typos!). 1 pack of Orbit gum.

I'm almost out of business cards but I have enough in my wallet for now.

What I don't have: I have no PDA. I gave up on Palm, too primitive for what I would want in a device. Haven't decided on the PocketPC yet.

On longer flights I bring noise canceling headphones so I can listen to a DVD on the plane. Highly recommend getting these to anyone who travels long distances.

On short flights I go coach. On longer flights (>3 hours consecutive flying time) I will go first class. Makes a big difference in terms of how much energy I have when I get there. It's not about the food or anything, you can't justify the cost that way. If I got on a trip to say California from Michigan via coach I'm basically out of energy when I get there. But if I go first class, I can make appointments that day when I get there. I can also get real work done when I'm in first class which is hard to do in coach (I always sit behind the person who leans back as far as possible it seems).

Tomorrow's a relatively short flight to the east cost so I'll be going coach. I'll be bringing a book ("A short history on nearly everything").

If I write on Monday or Tuesday, I'll be posting via my cell phone!

The current internal version of SkinStudio Pro not only will let you create Windows Media Player Skins, WindowBlinds skins, Universal Skin Formatted skins but now can create icons of every known Windows icon format.

It can handle both individual and batch processing of images created in .PNG, .TGA, .BMP and other formats and automatically transform them into icons of various sizes.

I tried this out last night on a .PNG file I downloaded from the ObjectDock library last night and it worked great.

http://draginol.stardock.com/writings/skinni8.jpg (screenshot of final icon in various sizes).

SkinStudio comes in 3 forms: The free version which just creates WindowBlinds visual styles.  The enhanced version which is $19.95 that adds widget, colorizing, and skin importing into skin creation.  And the pro version which will have an introductory price of $29.95 and has Media Player skin support and icon creation.  SkinStudio (all forms) is part of Object Desktop: http://www.objectdesktop.com

This new version should be up on ODNT next week.

CHIP INFO.......... Chipinfo displays comprehensive information from the mainboard chipset, as well as the corresponding devices and the PCI bus. The DOS version, which was integrated into PC Analyser originally, was optimized and developed further to a Windows version. During the development of the program special attention was paid to keep the original descriptions as well as the completeness of the data. The supported operating systems are Windows 9xFrogboy as well as Windows NT/2000/XP/2003. Learn exactly which chipsets work in your system and which options the chipsets have.....(free).....

Source: http://www.shellcity.net (Shellcity.net)

QuickTime Alternative will allow you to play QuickTime (.mov .qt) files. This way there is no need to install the offical QuickTime Player. As a bonus, Internet Explorer will play all QuickTime movies that are embedded in a webpage. You do need a player that is capable of handling QuickTime movies. The included Media Player Classic works very well with QuickTime.

Source: http://www.betanews.com (Betanews)

Lot of cool stuff going on with SkinStudio. The newest internal builds allow you to create your own icons.  Now, I haven't created a serious icon since the OS/2 days. Awhile back I started looking into icon editors and it turns out these icon editors are incredibly expensive. Why? Well because they include a whole load of image editing features.

But why? Why try to compete with Photoshop and Corel Draw? If I'm going to create a modern icon, I'm not going to use some icon editor's graphics tools. I'm going to use a real image editor.

So I asked our SkinStudio team to look into adding the ability to take say a .PNG file and create an icon out of it. I know how to make PNG files with Corel Draw and Photoshop. What I want to do is be able to take that PNG file and turn it into an icon.

For my first try at this internal preview, I downloaded a neat PNG file uploaded today in the ObjectDock section at Wincustomize created by "DockZone".

So I Opened that file and here I am. So now what? Well only 4 options so I clicked on "Cut Image".

Oh sweet. It automatically took care of the various icon formats.

Even has a ton of options for trying to find the one that does the downsizing the best.

So here I am with my various icons set up in all the various formats I could possibly ever want.

And here is the finished .ico.  So cool. Now even I can create icons.  Paul Boyer, Ed Deans, look out, here I come!

Welcome to the skinning blog group! If you already have a blog on JoeUser and are interested in sharing your thoughts and ideas on the world of skinning, click here to join this blog group. If you don't already have a blog, get one, it's free and fun! Just create an account if you haven't already done so and then in the account tab at the top you can do it there.

So today I decided to try out two new DesktopX "ability extensions" (plugins). The first one makes it a snap to get some basic info on your computer and display it as text. In my build, I have to manually make the DX object a text object but I'm told tomorrow's beta will automatically set the object as text which is nice.

I can easily find out things like system up time, what kind of CPU I have, my IP address and all that good stuff.  Very handy.

The next one I tried out was the new Performance Meter 2 plugin. Furan made this and it's quite incredible. Basically any performance related thing on your system you ever wanted can be done with this.  In addition, you can create skinnable bars and such.

Here I'm choosing between various types of visual displays for my data. This could be a CPU meter, disk space meter, memory monitor, network performance, or a ton of other things.  In fact, it hooks into MS's performance monitoring API so you can graph things that are well...incredibly unimportant for most people too.  

So here's my first quickie graph.  Of course, it's afar cry from having something fancy.  I'll need to put together some .PNG backgrounds and such.  I'll try to do that soon.

Unfortunately I can't find my Corel Draw CD here to start making the graphics so I'm a bit bummed. I'll mess with this more soon.  For other DesktopX users, these goodies should be available by the week of 9/22/2003.

 

http://skinning.joeuser.com

I have a blog at JoeUser.com now at draginol.joeuser.com. I created a blog group called Skinning.

A blog group is where multiple people can write articles and put them together onto a single page. It's still a work in progress.

But if anyone here is interested in a) Getting their own blog going and Joining the skinning blog group please visit the link at the top of this post and we'll get things going.

I'm not aware of any skinning blogs on the net so this could be highly cool.

To me, removing Saddam from the board seems like a pretty clear cut "smart" thing for the US to do for so many different reasons. 
 
But if you try hard enough, you can make any foreign policy decision look foolish.  Why, in June 1944 did the why did the US invade northwest Europe? Hundreds of thousands of Americans died in Europe.  Why? The USSR would have defeated Germany on its own. That was pretty obvious by June 1944 so we don't have the excuse of not knowing.  Heck, we could have waited until August 1945 to decide whether we needed to use ground forces. If the atom bombs worked, we let them do the work. If not, then we could decide whether to invade or not. And if we did, we could have "softened" up things with a couple of atomic bombs which would have, in the long term, saved a lot more lives.

Seriously. Let's revisit the events of World War II:

D-Day: June 6, 1944.  A bloody invasion of the French coast. Goal? To liberate France and conquer Germany.

But why? The majority of the official governments of Europe in 1944 did not want the US to invade.  What about respecting their sovereignty? The position of the official government of France was that the US should not invade. Those damn Americans, Brits, Australians, and Canadians were acting pretty unilaterally weren't they? 

If we had not invaded in 1944, odds are the Soviet Union would have conquered Germany and set up France as a puppet socialist country. Then what? The Soviet Union would still have almost certainly crashed. It might have even crashed faster since it would have cost a lot more to keep western Europe pacified as well.

Now, some 380 or so Americans have died in Iraq I believe.  380,000 Americans died in World War II. I don't recall reading of any politicians of the day arguing that invading Europe was a failed policy. It would seem that we lived in a much less cynical world in those days. People recognized the difference between right and wrong and put politics aside to a greater degree than today to roll up their sleeves and do the job that needed done.

Now fast forward 60 years. Iraq, led by a fascist dictator had already invaded 2 of his neighbors. One neighbor was freed thanks to, you guessed it, mainly the US and UK. Iraq flagrantly violated the terms of the cease fire countless times, took pot shots at US planes, funneled money to Palestinian terrorists, brutalized his people, had a history of intent to develop WMD, and is geographically located in the center of an area where the world's most brutal terrorists seem to originate from.  And if that's not enough, it's also positioned right in the middle of where the majority of the world's oil reserves exist.  And yet there are people who still argue that we shouldn't have invaded to remove this guy? Huh?

I think those who oppose US policy should really take a step back and try to look at things from a fresh perspective.  Regardless of whether weapons of mass destruction are ever found (they were never the driving force anyway)., the removal of a dictator guilty of the things I just mentioned certainly rank up there with the reasons for expending so much blood and treasure to liberate France, Belgium, The Netherlands, Luxemburg, etc.

And consider this - one could put together a clear headed argument (with a lot of hindsight to help) that the US invasion of northwest Europe was unnecessary or at least could have waited until the atomic bombs arrived in 1945 to make that decision.  "Why the rush?" could have just as easily been asked in June 1944 as today.  Why were we in such a hurry to send our young men into harm's way when the Russians were doing a splendid job grinding down the Nazi's in the East?

My view is pretty clear: We did the right thing in 1944 and we did the right thing in 2003.

In an article asking whether Europe liking the US should be a campaign issue or not, I pointed out some of the questionable international actions of France in the past century.  Admittedly, the article had its share of French bashing.

My point wasn't just to bash France though. It was to point out the absurdity of listening to France's advice on foreign policy.

I got a lot of email on this as well as comments on it. Here's one that asked specific questions that I'd like to address.

1. What nation helped america become independent from the british monarch?

Sure, France helped the United States a couple hundred years ago. How many Frenchman perished in that? A few hundred?  That debt was paid back countless times in World War I.

2. Does france actually do anything to america other than do as the people/voters want and freely oppose their policies?

My point is that there is something wrong with the French culture when it comes to foreign policy. Perhaps they should take notice that they keep losing internationally. It may sometimes be expedient to be against something but in the long haul, you need to stand for something to have long term influence.

3. Has France helped america in the war on terror? The first gulf war? Somalia? Kosavo?

Sure. France has helped. So has Mexico. It's a matter of degree. The French also helped the Germans exterminate its Jewish population in WW2. I realize that sounds harsh but let's keep these actions in perspective.

4. america's track history for "rebuilding" nations has been...well, somewhat poor. Most of the nations that you have helped liberate and rebuilt have turned against you (france has turned against you as much as israel has now). Many of your rebuilding efforts have led to more war, chaos and anarchy and less american involvement. I cite the examples of: Nicuragua, Afganistan (the first time lol), Iraq (the first time as well lol), Argetina, Vietnam, Cambodia (a million died in this one....), Somalia, Kosavo, and a few others in South America. Many of these new leaders turned against america, committed huge genocides, mass sterilization, fund terror and as a smaller crime, steal from international charities.

Let's see, rebuilding of countries.  There was all of Western Europe. Does Western Europe "hate" the United States?

Then there was Japan. They seem to like us too.  And South Korea as another.

Does everyone there like us? Of course not. But they're not hijacking airplanes and crashing them into our buildings either. With any luck, in 50 years the Democratic government of Iraq will be confident enough in its freedom to disagree with US policies in a peaceful way.

But the track record the US has in rebuilding countries is actually remarkably good. Now, do you have a list of countries France has rebuilt? Any?

5. What is wrong with asking for evidence before entering a long, controversial and unpopular (to them) war.

There was plenty of evidence. Remember the whole UN inspections thing? Which gets into another issue that I've seen thrown out lately: That if we had just waited a few more weeks then we might have gotten France's support. No way. There was no indication that things were progressing.  "Why the rush?" Because starting in March the temperatures in Iraq start climbing very high.  By April the temps reach over 100 degrees F.

You want to know my theory as to why things started off disorganized after victory? No one anticipated such a rapid victory. The whole thing was over in a few weeks.  If they had known that Iraq would be so easy to defeat in war, maybe they would have given another couple weeks of time. But they didn't. All they knew is that each day they waited raised the specter of higher casualties because of heat related issues.  Heck, France has already lost over 40 times as many people due to heat in their own country. So certainly, no one in France is in a position to argue against the seriousness of heat to health.

6. I don't feel that the liberation of the people in Iraq is valid for justification for a war. Where was america when 40mil died in China? There are other oppressed areas of the world today that have attacked america, but they still stand and fund terror like Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia, China. If you insist that it was the caring efforts that brought the war to depose of Saddam, then why were the Iraqi people left in his hands twice? Once was after the first gulf war.

Luckily for France, the United States has considered liberation a justifiable reason to spend blood and treasure.

But I don't consider liberation a major reason for taking out Saddam. It was a nice side effect, but the reason had more to do with putting direct pressure on Syria, Iran, and Saudi Arabia.  Being in Iraq allows the United States infinitely more flexibility with dealing with those countries which, surprise surprise, Iraq has a border with.

The question isn't whether the United States is an angel. It's not.  But France's behavior has been vastly worse in the past century than the United States. Which is particularly remarkable considering its limited ability scope of abilities.

Which dovetails nicely into the karma article. If bad karma were a "root cause" of 9/11, the Eiffel Tower would have been toast long ago. The fact is, there are very very bad people out there. Not every villain is a Star Trek villain where it's not evil as the motive but misunderstanding as the cause. No, really there are just some very very bad people out there who hate things so much they're willing to give their lives in an effort to harm the things they hate. And the United States, representing western culture, is the biggest target.

9/11 wasn't caused by any specific foreign policy decisions. It was the result of a general hatred of western civilization and its gradual encroachment into the Islamic world. One could point out that 9/11 may not have happened if the US wasn't stationing troops in Saudi Arabia. But eventually the Islamonaziklan would have been "provoked" to do what they did. Better that they did it now before they acquired WMD than later so that we can deal with it now rather than later.

But one thing we should know, the US is going to have to follow its own path. It has the most at stake in this and it can't be taking cues from countries like France who have demonstrated time and time again their ineptness in foreign policy.