Recently Ubisoft just announced their new line of “green” game cases, which use “ecoTech” recycled plastic and uses manuals accessible inside the game instead of on paper. On the surface, this is a win-win: same game resources but with less environmental impact. Sure, using fewer materials very well means less costs for Ubisoft but doesn’t necessarily translate to any savings passed on the to the customer.

However, on closer inspection, this is really Ubisoft’s way of saying they’re hip without actually being hip. Green, sure, but nearly so much concerned about the green of trees as the green of money. After all, if they really cared about the environment, wouldn’t they do away with arbitrary and completely superfluous packaging almost entirely? If platforms such as Steam or WiiWare have proven anything, it’s that electronic distribution works – that gamers not only respond positively to it, but that it cuts costs as well. It even means more face-time for smaller games by smaller companies who can’t afford to appear on every shelf in every Best Buy, but who could greatly benefit from some visibility on Steam or a likened platform.

And digital distribution is nothing new; the potential has been there for several years, leaving the only carbon footprint being the servers and the energy to power them (which exists and is expelled anyway for any game with online or community play). So saying that the old model of delivering games on an archaic medium (the DVD) via an archaic distribution method (ground transportation) and selling in an archaic fashion (brick and mortar stores) somehow equates to being green because of recycled plastic and less paper is a little like claiming that guns are a little less deadly with a smaller grain count, and doesn’t consider life without guns at all (if you’ll excuse the metaphor). The fear is that the very same model pirates have long used is actually effective. Or perhaps that gamers will be remiss to pay top dollar for completely asinine bells and whistles a la the latest “Halo” version when what really counts is the quality of the gameplay, not the packaging.

It’s the latest trend for companies proclaiming they’re “going green” to total huge sums in an attempt to look impressive. Celestial Seasonings does this by estimating how many trees are saved by not putting a label and string on their tea bags; the wholly worthless “Earth Hour” proposing that people turn out their lights for an hour is another. Sure, these summations look impressive, but not when compared to revamping the model entirely.

So while Ubisoft no doubt has spent tons of money publicly patting themselves on the back for caring about the environment, it means quite little compared with moving to digital distribution: that big elephant in the room that nobody’s talking about for fear of admitting that anything other than DRM-laden physical media could actually work.

In a bit of a blast from the past, Patent Arcade just posted some history about the Bleem! emulator and their David v Goliath case against Sony back in 2001.

It seems that Bleem! allowed users to user Playstation games on either the Sega Dreamcast or the PC. It had the same physical and digital copy protective measures as the Playstation. That is, it required the disks, and wouldn’t play backups or run without the proper disk in the drive. Certainly there were workarounds that could be exploited, but the same was true for the Playstation itself.

In case it’s news to you, console companies take a loss on each console sold. They hope to recoup that with game sales – where the real money is. This is why Dreamcast bit the dust: once everyone figured out how to bypass the simple copy-protection, no one bought the games, even though the consoles sold fine.

So, with that in mind, it might seen completely rational for Sony to do nothing at all to stop Bleem!. I mean, here’s a company ensuring that even those without the Playstation would still have cause to buy Playstation games. This would be like a burger joint selling nothing but their high profit margin items, like that 30 cent piece of cheese that costs them a penny.

Instead, Sony did what any copyright rich company would do: they litigated to the point of lunacy, losing in every possible way they could lose. However, the court costs were too much for little Bleem! and the company went bankrupt. I can hear notoriously Luddite Sony CEO Howard Stringer yelling: “That will teach you do try and sell our games!”

Once again, the gaming industry proves far more versatile than the music or movie industry in benefiting from forward thinking economics.

Covered by Slashdot, it seems the makers of the hit game World of Goo for Wii and PC have celebrated the close of their very successful year in an interesting way. They decided to make the game – which retails at $20 – available for whatever the buyer is willing to pay.

This is a great idea: make what money you can from initial launch at premium price, and then accept the fact that the game will lose value as both novelty and technology motor on. Then, in lieu of griping and moaning over the resell market and trying to circumvent the first-sale doctrine with install limitations and the like, you allow users to pay what they wish. This will likely be lower than you’d like in price per unit, but you’ll likely sell more than you’d hope for, as well. With intellectual property, this pans out just fine, particularly for digital delivery data like World of Goo, where you simply don’t have the same high overhead as you would for, say, the Thighmaster or the Sham-Wow.

The result: While the average sale price was about $2, more than 57,000 people purchased it. Quite certainly, these were customers who simply wouldn’t have bought the game otherwise or who – according to a 2D Boy poll – bought it again for another platform.

The developers were more than happy, and extended the special. Hopefully, this is an idea that others will follow. Surely, there are games out there that simply do not warrant the MSRP price tag, but that would garner slews of customers if they could pay what they wished. Such schemes have worked very well in the publishing industry, as well, though the industry at large is still very weary of taking that step – somehow convinced that ebooks should sell for the same as the physical book minus a buck or two.

A story covered in Slashdot refers to the eventual judgment (naturally) for the plaintiff – Wizards of the Coast – against defendant and popular ebook site Scribd. The charge was allowing a user to upload a copyrighted Dungeons & Dragons ebook, which was downloaded 2,600 times before Scribd pulled it from the site.

Wizards was awarded $125,000, which – par for course – was exorbitant considering that Scribd made no money from the ebook.

What’s worth noting here is that companies making ebooks should use the built-in abilities to market ebooks better than regular books to advertisers. Then, the economic backlash of the book being shared is largely or completely mitigated.

For example, there are various educational reports on all manner of subjects – from using Google AdSense to writing a killer blog. They make their money off affiliate marketing embedded in the links in the PDF, not off the sale of the report. Sure, these reports bear a price tag, but they are rife on p2p sites, and have long thrived without backlash.

Why? Because the bulk of their moneymaking model is about getting eyes on the product, not on the money generated from sales.

So couldn’t PDFs of WotC content operate in the same way? Instead, they waste time and effort trying to track down and sue companies such as Scribd for a consequence they didn’t intend.That’s not to say that Scribd shouldn’t be responsible for whatever is on their servers and site; it’s just a pretty poor model when the only way you’re going to address the inevitability of piracy is to file lawsuit after lawsuit. Instead, how about coming out with more innovative ways of selling your products?

After all, it’s very arguable that whoever would download an ebook of D&D is likely not going to and never would have bought the paper product. So how do you make money off of such potential customers? Perhaps in-book adverts aren’t the only answer, but I can tell you what certainly isn’t the answer: suing everyone and making yourself look like jerks.

Slashdot just posted a story about a representative of Massive named JJ Richards vying for in-game advertisements as adding to a gamer’s experience. His argument is sound enough: if a game takes a player somewhere he should expect to see adverts (like Times Square) then it adds to the immersion to have those ads be current, realistic, and updated in real time. It would indeed be interesting to play a game you’d put down two years ago, only to find that all of the background noise like billboards, newspapers, televisions, and the like were updated to current times, but this is not without a very resounding caveat.

While in-game adverts as described above could prove valuable for game-play, they’re also making money. And anytime there’s a chance for media to make more money, there’s little stopping bad ideas from ruining good ones. In this case, my main fear is seeing in-game adverts where there shouldn’t be any at all – dated or current. After all, look at 3-D movies. Some treat 3-D technology as a twist and a draw to get you to see the film in theaters, but most of these films revolve around the technology, not a strong story, good acting, or solid directing. Films such as My Bloody Valentine are horrid movies without 3-D because that became the point of the movie, not an added feature to heighten immersion. Sound familiar? It’s the same thing that could happen with in-game adverts.

Too, this is the sort of thing that will add too little value to garner loyalty to the store-bought version of the game. Those who would pirate the game will be more than happy to bypass updated billboards or modern songs playing on the in-game radios. In fact, pirates might very well make it a point to avoid games which “phone home” – even if it’s only to upload more adverts. For many, it could smack of a privacy issue. It would – at the very least – communicate to someone how and how often you play your games. That alone is enough to make some gamers wary.

A story on Slashdot tells of a watershed moment in the fight between athletes and game manufacturers who use their likenesses. A district court judge considered the digital representations “expressive works” comparable to paintings and photos of celebrities and athletes, which are protected and require no payment to the athlete or celebrity.

On one hand, the game company playing defense in footballer Samuel Keller’s class action lawsuit is Electronic Arts, not some one-man band just trying to eek out a living writing games. While EA didn’t use the players’ names, other features such as style of play, haircut, skin color, and facial features so closely resembles the athletes that there’s little question it was intentional. This – in the long game – could persuade gamers who want to play with famous atheletes to opt for EA Sports’ titles, even though EA paid nothing for the celebrity status.

On the other hand, we’re not talking about a group of people that otherwise makes no money. Athletes are paid to play a sport, not build star power enough to market their likeness. They already get pretty substantial payouts for acting gigs, endorsements, and special appearances, on top of what is almost universally considered inordinately large salaries and signing bonuses.

Too, let’s not forget ’90s singer Deee-Lite, who tried suing Sega over her supposed likeness in Space Channel 5 for the Dreamcast, lost, and then had to pay $600,000 in court costs. Not an easy fiscal pill for a has-been to swallow. With older players such as Jim Brown hopping on Keller’s coattails, they’d better keep in mind that any lawsuit bears a chance of not only failure, but significant losses.

The rise of video game profits, popularity, and prestige means that this is a market for celebrities and athletes alike, and not one that should be ignored so that giants like EA can make money off another’s celebrity. However, I applaud the ruling because the line has to be drawn somewhere on how ridiculous lawsuits about likeness can be. After all, if all game manufacturers caved and settled in cases like this, you’d have everyone from Miley Cyrus to PDiddy looking for any chance to sue, claiming that any singer with extensions and cut off jean skirts must be Cyrus’ likeness, or that any character with cornrows and bling must be PDiddy.

In the end, this whole affair may not matter, since the moment that gamers realize that 99% of sports games are slapped together regurgitation of last year’s code, maybe they’ll pass for a decent game instead.

Recently, an Ars Technica story spoke to GameStop’s latest tactic to up sales. They are making deals with game manufacturers to offer extended content to those who pre-order or reserve games. Pre-orders are indeed a great way for companies to test the market waters, and have increased in popularity as of late.

So what does this mean for those who would rather buy their games at a retailer such as Target or Wal-Mart, or simply don’t want to pay full price. Video games have a very short lifespan of selling at the $50 (PC) or $60 (console) price caps. Sometimes only weeks after initial release, a game will sell for two-thirds the initial retail price. This holds especially true for bad games, of which there are plenty. Inspiring pre-orders or at least sales at full price are key for pushing crummy games, where the market would quickly let gamers know if a game is not worth the cost.

The story highlights another positive in that this could bridge the rift between the gaming industry and sellers such as GameStop, which share a notoriously antipathy. The industry doesn’t like that GameStop and others can sell used games. They only receive money for the first sale, even if the game is sold, bought, and resold a hundred times. This is the real reason for DRM and limitations on how many times certain games can be installed.

What the industry needs to realize, however, is that this will do nothing to curb piracy. Pirates will be the first to enjoy the extra content, as this would provide extra prestige for any release group putting the pre-order game with extras onto file-sharing networks. The only people who will suffer are the spendthrifts and those who purchase their games elsewhere. So long as extras are confined to a magical item or an extra board, this is fine. But if and when whole portions of the game are relegated to pre-orders and pirates, there’s a real problem.

Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that, because the answer would be that more spendthrifts would opt for piracy than purchasing.

EA Games’ newest game in the C + C series only operates while connected to the Internet. What’s at play here: Anti-piracy or extra content?

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