The big 3 love to protect themselves to much these days. Trent Petronaitis does some investigating into the industry’s pack down attitude to the bad 3.

Ask anyone who is a gamer if they pirate or have played hacked or fan made games based on companies ip’s and it will no doubt turn out that the video game companies biggest source of income the customers is betraying them more than their own workers.

At least that is what it is in the companies eyes, as they battle to protect their ip’s using unconventional ways to the new generation. Not keeping up with the forcing change in business strategies – almost as bad as the music industry. But as the changes are more and more forced onto the video game industry , the change seems less and less noticeable to them, as they shift it away and start the battle – when it is unwanted and needed.

For those people playing at home, an ip is for the most part the reason why video game companies are often forced into this battle. The rules relating to copyright and ip protection in most countries been very dodgy and uncertain. But the rule seems to be the dollar figure more and more.

For this article my company which I will pick on will be Nintendo. As Nintendo for the most part right now is the most active in destroying the homebrew scene, taking with it the pirates. For Nintendo stomping down the flash card makers (they always seem to pick on the card which is going out of fashion?) and releasing patches for their Wii console to block homebrew and piracy (only to be broken a day later).

Well that sounds all super dupa donkey dory – now doesn’t it? So let’s recap like a stupid education video you watch in school. So far we have said that no matter what the above mentioned things will always exist and what more be one step ahead of the companies who want to stop. We also mentioned that the copyright system as well as keeping trademarks etc. Suck balls in most countries.

This moves onto our next subject (leaving the piracy talk behind for a bit) the great creative field of young naive gamers who think they can create a better (why we are using Nintendo as an example) – Zelda Game.

Nintendo DS flash card – R4 – Nintendo’s prime target

No doubt that most Nintendo fans at one stage have pictured the perfect Zelda or even better a kick ass story line for a Zelda game. For example with me, I’d make a Majora’s Mask sequel with the announcement trailer been Link riding his horse on the beach and then noticing a mask on the ground. Then he picks it up. Yeah epic – you get the idea, people have these ideas and then go ahead and learn something like Game Marker and proceed to make their own Zelda game.

So they get themselves a site, join a few communities then push the shit out of their game. Doing more face to face with the fans advertising then Nintendo would. Sometimes these people come up with the best idea ever or finish their idea to an awesome standard. But always these good remakes, fan games – whatever, developed by fans end up at one place.

Well it isn’t a place as such, but most of the time these people get hit with a nice big fat legal document which basically says to the person to stop developing it or they will be eaten up by giant pacman creatures.

Now for a small bit about hacks and patches, basically those things which seem to be on the border but at the same time they want to shut them down. So hacks manipulate the code to do awesome things, but patches can do other awesome things like translation patches (Mother 3) so they are pretty awesome.

But those awesome patches come at a even bigger cost – to a degree – it seems that the industry has double stands with the simple fact that people who will use these patches NEED THE ROM in the case of Mother 3 – every man and his fucking dog wants to play it. Even if they are in the industry, who gives a shit, oh they are pirating? Well screw that because they are pirating someone else’s property not been rapped by those evil pirates touching their shit.

What’s more is something like NOA won’t shut down the project for now. Why? Well form what I just said I think you can picture it in your head. It’s because they technically don’t own the ip in America, meaning that technically they have no right to stop it because they have no urge to release it state side.

Let’s move off that subject and enter the big party, the big bitch. For now lets go back to those slimy little insects, the termites (ad references – really gay and retarded – in Australia for some steal company – seriously fucking gay ad).

Now piracy, form what I have read around the main factors (I did some research into this guys – lots of people have this opion) that people pirate (you will still get ones which do it because they can) come down to this in Australia it’s all about the money.

But NAL doesn’t think it is – they believe that their lesser quality games should be still at the $100 price tag if not more. But the worst offender who believes this in Australia seems to be the IEA chief executive Ron Curry who had this to say:

“This is not a price-related debate,” he said. “This is about the future protection of overall intellectual rights.”

See this issue in Australia is aurally current – especially with our possible Great Fire Wall of Australia coming and Nintendo of Australia tracking down DS pirates with the help of the Federal Police.

The homebrew channel – can be used for priacy, but holds more value to the average user

So let’s recap this for a minute, they are trying to attack piracy head on? Good for them, to bad it isn’t a good tactic, while it looked like they won when Nintendo o f Japan did it. It comes down to this – for the Nintendo DS they picked the wrong fucking card. Who the fuck uses the R4? And it was also just consecrated on the R4.

So instead of making measures and doing research and other shit like that on why people pirate etc. And then with that research trying to make smart business decisions in Australia to stop or slow down piracy (like $70+ RRP for a game? You got to be fucking kidding me) – how about this NAL, stop been stupid, lower the prices, improve the quality of your games and tell Nintendo of Japan to start making the Nintendo Seal of Quality worth something – instead of the jack shit it worth now. Then maybe your money instead of flogging a dead horse – will start to become something more.

I’m still in a bitching mood, let’s start talking about those fucking WiiWare and VC games and now the Nintendo DS Ware shit. First thing is first NINTENDO YOU FUCKED UP. With NWC been a pile of shit did anyone really expect Nintendo to come through and make a worth while business decision for the customers for once? I don’t think so – it seems they like printing money by the masses and with their new found success they don’t want to be more successful by lowering their product price in return getting more sales.

Let’s bitch about the market in Australia a bit – from what I have heard and read up this downloadable system isn’t really doing too crash hot here. Gee, I wonder why? Is it because its $30 for a fucking 2000 Nintendo Point card?

I’ve think I’ve gone on way to much about bitching about their shitty decisions – because it seems why everyone else is doing it – they really don’t give a shit who is bitching as long as they are getting money.

Speaking about money, let’s say this piracy will probably if not killed be better for Nintendo if its the right people pirating shit. That really came out bad, but say Billy has a flashcard or something, shows Bob an awesome new game, Bob is going to buy that game if he plays it – is he not? But if it wasn’t awesome or not suspected of been awesome Bob wouldn’t buy that game because Bob doesn’t want to buy shit he doesn’t know fuck all about. – Basically MORE FUCKING DEMOS PLEASE

I chose Nintendo today to bitch about them as business styles – basically Nintendo is going the wrong way for this and needs some fresh new ideas to change the way people think and get people to start buying games. They can start today by lowering the RRP.