Limiting Piracy of Cricket Games

[barmyarmy]

I think that EA's strategy... (apart from the bit about fixing it)

 

[SibiNaayagam]

First things first, I'm from India and piracy is common to many here. But there are some (easy) ways to promote original content sales.

1)Affordability:
Yes, a Rs.499 price will work, but recently prices of new releases jumped from Rs.999 to Rs.1499(atleast w.r.t EA games). Still people do buy original copies, esp. FIFA series. Infact, the most number of sales(original copies) are for FIFA, GTA, Call Of Duty, Counter Strike and Medal of Honor.
Im given a decent amount of pocket money, but I would still find it hard to buy a game priced so highly unless its my favorite series or if the game's worth it. I say start low, maybe Rs.699 then move up.

2)Availability:
Origin is a waste of time here. We don't have fast internet connections. It could take a week to download the whole game once we buy it.
Sites like Flipkart are a success though. But its still in its infancy. Its very early for India, the trust has just started to grow and maybe in another 2-3 years we could see the benefit.
On the other hand, I still remember waiting 2 weeks for Ashes 09(PC) to reach one of the biggest stores in Chennai. I used to call them up every day. Once i even called up the distributor to argue about the same.

3)Accessibility:
India is one of the biggest market for cricket oriented business. Almost everyone owns a PC. But what they don't own is a cricket game that 'runs' on it. Yeah the specs are low, but only for the common man. The majority buys laptops with the i5s and i7s, the students and youth have got it, but there is a section of mid 30s who love to play the game too, but are unfortunately lacking the machine to run it. I would like to quote EA Cricket 07 here. It was a beauty of a game, it ran even without a graphic card. Finally, my point is, have a broad range of specs.

4)Publicity:
Almost 30% of the TV adverts contain a cricket star. Mostly MS Dhoni followed by Sachin Tendulkar and Virat Kohli. Cricket is almost an unofficial religion in India. The players are like our family. You get one of them to advertise, you will realize its worth in the following months. Seriously, when AC09 released hardly any of my friends knew. Please make sure you take that seriously and work on advertising more.

5)Demo: [MOST IMPORTANT]
A test drive for a car, a site seeing for land, a trailer for a movie and a demo for a game. If I don't know what I'm buying, its unlikely I would buy it.

A solution to these would escalate the sales of original copies.
*Now to prevent piracy, the black market dwells on the copies that come on the internet. And the cost is Rs.30 per DVD. It takes about 3 weeks for the copies to hit the black market. If I'm not wrong, many big games took more that period. The people are left to choose whether to buy a Rs.30 per DVD game that is devoid of multiplayer or to wait for the same game worth Rs.1499 that would add very little to the same.

 

[Biggs]

I think that EA's strategy... (apart from the bit about fixing it)

...EA remind of this speech from Tomorrow Never Dies

 

[sahilnatu]

@SibiNayagam
Totally agree with your 4th point. Something must be done. Some sort of a commercial or maybe a big advert in a national daily (like TOI or HT). The game could gain popularity in a matter of days.

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Many ppl in Mumbai got to know about AC09 because of a review of the game in a local newspaper "Mumbai Mirror". That was a couple of days or almost a week after its release. Just saying.

 

[duberryboy1]

I don't agree, there's been some really unique and innovative suggestions that don't involve DRM at all (See the first page) The "Pre-Order Bonus" option that many companies use these days doesn't affect legal-purchases at all - in fact - it enhances them.

One other option might be to link the single-player "Rosters" to an online editable portal, so you update your roster via the internet (with a legal copy of the game) that is kept up to date by the fan community. Lots of rosters to chose from, that sort of thing. You can only connect to it, if you have a legal copy...

Doesn't affect playing the game offline, just means if you want updated rosters, player stats without doing it manually yourself offline, you must own a legal copy of the game.

Pre order bonus's are essentially day one dlc which is one of the worst things to come this gen. cutting out parts of the game and pretending its added content. Some people like to actually wait for reviews and feedback before laying money down on it why should the miss out on content because they did not buy it day one?

 

[wrick3000]

We have to firstly get the fact straight. Stopping or Demolishing Piracy is not the goal because that is impractical and not possible. What we need to do is promote the game in such a way that people will want to have a legit copy in their hand in no time.
Here are some Ideas :-

1. Promotion/Publicity :- You have to promote ASHES CRICKET 2013 such a way that people from different Class will wanna a have a hand on it. One of the major fact is, in Cricket Crazy Nations like India where people are eager to play new cricket game for a long time, a good Promotion will surely Hike the Sell. So TV Commercial, Adds in Ad board in Real Life cricket, Pop up ads via internet will do.
2. Pricing :- Now I don't know as this Ashes is not released by CODIES so what will be the price range. So I will suggest the price should be as nominal as possible. As per business view If you sell 30k copies at INR 500/piece and make a profit of INR 200/ piece as an example. Then cut the price to INR 400 and make a profit of INR 100 /piece then you will see the sell will get tripled in no time. And if you do the math the profit will be better than Before.
3. Online / Retail Stores :- Now as I will say people in India (majority) are pretty reluctant about buying things online. So you will have to deal with Big Retail Stores like PLANET M, MUSIC WORLD etc.
4. Online Features/DRM :- Make a system which will deal with CD -key if not a complicated UBI soft like DRM. If you enter the CD key which is unique for every account then you can access online features. That way your server will be free of pirates.
5. Attractive mode for Online :- Make some attractive modes like Mathup Day (as in FIFA) which will only be available online and only who bought them can play it.
6. Extra Features:- Provide some extra features like Booklet, Free gifts, Lucky Draw etc for those who will buy the games SOFT or HARD copy.

If anyone can think of any other features. Feel free to add.

 

[shubham1]

All those folks in India , Flipkart.com has added Ashes Cricket 2013 (PC,X-Box, PS3) on their site as 'coming soon'
So now at least you know that it is coming to Inida and where to but it from

 

[Chief]

We have to firstly get the fact straight. Stopping or Demolishing Piracy is not the goal because that is impractical and not possible. What we need to do is promote the game in such a way that people will want to have a legit copy in their hand in no time.
Here are some Ideas :-

1. Promotion/Publicity :- You have to promote ASHES CRICKET 2013 such a way that people from different Class will wanna a have a hand on it. One of the major fact is, in Cricket Crazy Nations like India where people are eager to play new cricket game for a long time, a good Promotion will surely Hike the Sell. So TV Commercial, Adds in Ad board in Real Life cricket, Pop up ads via internet will do.
2. Pricing :- Now I don't know as this Ashes is not released by CODIES so what will be the price range. So I will suggest the price should be as nominal as possible. As per business view If you sell 30k copies at INR 500/piece and make a profit of INR 200/ piece as an example. Then cut the price to INR 400 and make a profit of INR 100 /piece then you will see the sell will get tripled in no time. And if you do the math the profit will be better than Before.
3. Online / Retail Stores :- Now as I will say people in India (majority) are pretty reluctant about buying things online. So you will have to deal with Big Retail Stores like PLANET M, MUSIC WORLD etc.
4. Online Features/DRM :- Make a system which will deal with CD -key if not a complicated UBI soft like DRM. If you enter the CD key which is unique for every account then you can access online features. That way your server will be free of pirates.
5. Attractive mode for Online :- Make some attractive modes like Mathup Day (as in FIFA) which will only be available online and only who bought them can play it.
6. Extra Features:- Provide some extra features like Booklet, Free gifts, Lucky Draw etc for those who will buy the games SOFT or HARD copy.

If anyone can think of any other features. Feel free to add.

OK: Imagining for a second that there IS no piracy...

On points 2-3, if you use the estimates in THIS article, you can work out (by my maths anyway!) that the raw costs of actually getting a game into a store would be approximately 165 rupees.
Whatever price you charge above that, taxes and the retailers profit will be around 40%-50% - based on a 500 INR price, that means that of that 500 INR, the publisher get back at most 201INR per copy sold (That's ?2.45, or $3.60).

On point 1, a TV advert costs a lot. Using THIS as a guide, let's ignore the highest rate (even though we probably WOULD be targetting the very most peak advertising time) and assume we're spending 250000 INR each time we broadcast a 10 second advert. (And let's not forget we'll have to spend money MAKING the advert, but let's assume that I'm willing to make it for free this time out of the goodness of my heart).
So for ONE test match - Let's say we run our 10 second ad once an hour... 8 a day for 5 days = 40*250000 = 10,000,000 INR. Convert that to our recouped money, and we'd need to sell 50k copies just to fund that one-test-match TV ad.
Billboards and Internet pop-ups - the cheaper end of estimated costs in THIS suggest that if we assume advertising in India is 20% of the cost it is in England, and we do a campaign only 20% as big, that will cost us 1.6m INR. So we need to sell 10k copies to pay for that.

On points 4, 5, and 6. These are all extra development costs to add to the cost of making the game in the first place which, by the way, we've not yet addressed.

Ooh, and an endorsement/promotion from a particular player? Imagine the actual total cost of that.
And we haven't yet paid the licensors of course: How much of our 200 INR do we need to pay them? Bearing in mind that Air Sahara pay the BCCI 960m INR per year to be the sponsor of the kit? Even if you ended up paying just 0.1% of that figure, that's 1m INR (Again, 10k copies needing to be sold to pay for it).


See when you actually start looking at some of these things in depth, with black and white numbers... It's a lot harder than it appears on the surface...

 

[Chief]

Q) Wow. Did I really just spend the whole of my Saturday morning painstakingly composing/researching that post?
A) Yep. Yep, looks like I did.

That's why I always ask people not to make lazy guesses and speculate - there's lots of information out there if you go looking for it...

 

[79cricket]

Q) Wow. Did I really just spend the whole of my Saturday morning painstakingly composing/researching that post?
A) Yep. Yep, looks like I did.

That's why I always ask people not to make lazy guesses and speculate - there's lots of information out there if you go looking for it...

Ok guys lets all go hunting for information on the
Net. 1. How to make money in India without a huge
Budget.
2. Where is the best markets in India, all the cities
Or school, any ideas guys.
I have never been to India, so please indian members.
Help chief out and the future of cricket games.

 

[MattW]

Yep. Yep, looks like I did.

Which means you clearly should have taken the approach of other posters and just guessed.

I feel the need to again point out the major issue with low prices to reduce piracy - reverse importation. Even with companies taking a massive profit margin, they can still send an 1000 INR game back to the UK or Australian market at half the cost of the standard retail games

Plenty of Australians import games from the UK over a $10-20 difference in new games - having a territory where the games would be $10-20 total in price just totally destroys the financials on it.

A delayed release at a lower price perhaps is the best balance - though obviously pirated copies will be out day one - making sure you've passed the break even point before attempting releases in less viable regions is logical. It would then mean that the retail price in major markets will have begun to fall before the drag on prices that imports from India could be.

Region based online activation of 'retail' copies would be about the only counter - I would say it is a reasonable assumption that most computers capable of running the game would be connected online - but then you run up against the barrier argument - if DRM is intrusive then pirating is a better experience regardless of your desire to be 'legal'.

I would then come back to the main argument against regional pricing - while salaries are lower in some regions - and thus market expectations for goods different - the console or PC used to play the games is not different by anywhere near the order of magnitude that people seem to expect the games to be. Someone who manages to afford to purchase what is a comparatively luxury good - a new console or gaming PC - is not the same class of consumer who could genuinely only afford 20 INR for a game.

If volume alone was a counter to pricing - all the console titles would be 99 cent apps - I'd hate to see general gaming go down the terrible freemium model that the expectation of low upfront pricing brings with it.

 

[cricket_online]

@Chief,

No point going for the TV adverts etc. Keep it simple and target online presence. There are cricketing websites from sub-continent for Indian cricket fans, Pak cricket fans and SL cricket fans. Have a thread there promoting the game. Also, have a thread and info available on top 3-4 Indian video gaming web sites. That should raise enough awareness for the target audience you have in mind - cricket fans and hard core video gamers.

 

[angad]

All those folks in India , Flipkart.com has added Ashes Cricket 2013 (PC,X-Box, PS3) on their site as 'coming soon'
So now at least you know that it is coming to Inida and where to but it from

People who are on this forum already know from where to buy.....its the general public out there that needs to know....and only way is to promote through ads atleast a month before the game release.

----------

OK: Imagining for a second that there IS no piracy...

On points 2-3, if you use the estimates in THIS article, you can work out (by my maths anyway!) that the raw costs of actually getting a game into a store would be approximately 165 rupees.
Whatever price you charge above that, taxes and the retailers profit will be around 40%-50% - based on a 500 INR price, that means that of that 500 INR, the publisher get back at most 201INR per copy sold (That's ?2.45, or $3.60).

On point 1, a TV advert costs a lot. Using THIS as a guide, let's ignore the highest rate (even though we probably WOULD be targetting the very most peak advertising time) and assume we're spending 250000 INR each time we broadcast a 10 second advert. (And let's not forget we'll have to spend money MAKING the advert, but let's assume that I'm willing to make it for free this time out of the goodness of my heart).
So for ONE test match - Let's say we run our 10 second ad once an hour... 8 a day for 5 days = 40*250000 = 10,000,000 INR. Convert that to our recouped money, and we'd need to sell 50k copies just to fund that one-test-match TV ad.
Billboards and Internet pop-ups - the cheaper end of estimated costs in THIS suggest that if we assume advertising in India is 20% of the cost it is in England, and we do a campaign only 20% as big, that will cost us 1.6m INR. So we need to sell 10k copies to pay for that.

On points 4, 5, and 6. These are all extra development costs to add to the cost of making the game in the first place which, by the way, we've not yet addressed.

Ooh, and an endorsement/promotion from a particular player? Imagine the actual total cost of that.
And we haven't yet paid the licensors of course: How much of our 200 INR do we need to pay them? Bearing in mind that Air Sahara pay the BCCI 960m INR per year to be the sponsor of the kit? Even if you ended up paying just 0.1% of that figure, that's 1m INR (Again, 10k copies needing to be sold to pay for it).


See when you actually start looking at some of these things in depth, with black and white numbers... It's a lot harder than it appears on the surface...

Thats the risk and reward analysis you need to obviously carry out. However, if you want a cheaper way out....make AC13 the best cricket game ever, that will take care of the publicity part for you . There are two ways to sell a product:

a) Make a product that a buyer will feel its worth spending that much money on.
b) Make a shitty product...and then....advertise the hell out of it.

Since point 'b' is not much of an option for you, make sure you atleast fulfill point 'a'.

 

[Chief]

Thats the risk and reward analysis you need to obviously carry out. However, if you want a cheaper way out....make AC13 the best cricket game ever, that will take care of the publicity part for you . There are two ways to sell a product:

a) Make a product that a buyer will feel its worth spending that much money on.
b) Make a shitty product...and then....advertise the hell out of it.

Since point 'b' is not much of an option for you, make sure you atleast fulfill point 'a'.

Well, no: it's an analysis I've carried out many times, and always come back to the same conclusion - on the information I have to work with there is just no justification. This thread is about trying to unearth ways we CAN.
And "make it the best cricket game ever" is (for a large part) directly proportional to how many you can sell - no-one is going to give me a ?20m budget for a game that I think can only make back ?3m (example numbers!)... That's just the way of it. So it's all connected: "Yuvraj Singh Cricket 2007" had a headline player AND a good marketing campaign, but although I don't have sales numbers for it, I don't think I've EVER seen it mentioned anywhere...

 

[wrick3000]

OK: Imagining for a second that there IS no piracy...

On points 2-3, if you use the estimates in THIS article, you can work out (by my maths anyway!) that the raw costs of actually getting a game into a store would be approximately 165 rupees.
Whatever price you charge above that, taxes and the retailers profit will be around 40%-50% - based on a 500 INR price, that means that of that 500 INR, the publisher get back at most 201INR per copy sold (That's ?2.45, or $3.60).

On point 1, a TV advert costs a lot. Using THIS as a guide, let's ignore the highest rate (even though we probably WOULD be targetting the very most peak advertising time) and assume we're spending 250000 INR each time we broadcast a 10 second advert. (And let's not forget we'll have to spend money MAKING the advert, but let's assume that I'm willing to make it for free this time out of the goodness of my heart).
So for ONE test match - Let's say we run our 10 second ad once an hour... 8 a day for 5 days = 40*250000 = 10,000,000 INR. Convert that to our recouped money, and we'd need to sell 50k copies just to fund that one-test-match TV ad.
Billboards and Internet pop-ups - the cheaper end of estimated costs in THIS suggest that if we assume advertising in India is 20% of the cost it is in England, and we do a campaign only 20% as big, that will cost us 1.6m INR. So we need to sell 10k copies to pay for that.

On points 4, 5, and 6. These are all extra development costs to add to the cost of making the game in the first place which, by the way, we've not yet addressed.

Ooh, and an endorsement/promotion from a particular player? Imagine the actual total cost of that.
And we haven't yet paid the licensors of course: How much of our 200 INR do we need to pay them? Bearing in mind that Air Sahara pay the BCCI 960m INR per year to be the sponsor of the kit? Even if you ended up paying just 0.1% of that figure, that's 1m INR (Again, 10k copies needing to be sold to pay for it).


See when you actually start looking at some of these things in depth, with black and white numbers... It's a lot harder than it appears on the surface...

Got you perfectly .. That was some hell of an explanation . That makes perfect sense why game costs in thousands....