Yo ho ho

Obligatory pirate joke title aside, Cliff Harris has posted his findings and thoughts from a few days ago when he asked pirates why they do that thing they do. It's all very interesting and parallel to the kind of thing NIN's been pulling since their departure from "the man."

All in all it looks like people just don't like it when they are:

1. Charged too much. (overpricing)
2. Unable to get at things easily. (digital distribution)
3. Told what they can and can't do. (DRM)

You can even reduce digital distribution to a usability concern: Is the user experience of buying your games online optimized so that they feel confident about purchasing from you online? Marketing books like Call to Action (I own two copies of this) show that if there's either too much friction or insufficient forward momentum in the purchase process, people will often abandon it - in this case, possibly in favor of just sending an IM to their friend along the lines of "Hey, can you ZIP up that game and send it my way?"

I guess we're moving into a time when the user is king, and to say otherwise is to invite your own demise. I'll get into game packaging and episodic content in later posts...