Exclusive Denis Dyack Interview: Part 2
Denis Dyack, President of development studio Silicon Knights, spoke recently at DIG London 2009, and GamingUnion.net caught up with the industry veteran for an interview. We presented Part 1 of our two part interview with Dyack yesterday, where the conversation went from changing publishers and digital distribution to used game sales. In Part 2 Dyack speaks to how used game sales are actually exploiting video game developers.
GamingUnion.net: When gamers buy a game, don't they own that disc, and they can do with it as they please, including reselling it, just like they would a car? How's that wrong when a store is involved?
Denis Dyack: It's not about the disc, we're not actually selling a disc. Silicon Knights has never made a disc, Silicon Knights has only made software, we're selling that game. So regardless of the media, we've created this Intellectual Property, and at the end of the day, if this was something where you bought a game, and you sold it to a friend for $5, or your traded or something like that, that is different than a corporation making substantial revenue off of selling used games where we [developers] get no cut because it's cheaper for them. They try to turn [games] around and they actually promote that you turn in your game quicker to get more money, and what that does is just drastically reduces our revenue stream, and these are companies that are publicly traded, and that's a very big difference.
The other thing about a car is as soon as you drive it off the lot, it gets scratches, it gets nicks, okay, digital media is not like that. Digital media is the media, so there's no degrading of any kind, so in some ways the traditional manufactured industries are protected. For the casual consumer, there's not really a strong understanding of what's happening, even to the licensed practitioner or even attorneys its very difficult to understand the concept, but once you start seeing all the processes, you just look at it an go "well wait a minute, someone's making a whole lot of money off someone else, and the person that they're making money off is not getting anything," and that's the definition of exploitation. I think that's wrong and it needs to stop.
GamingUnion.net: So, plain and simple, you're not selling software that's outlined as a lifetime or more worth of experiencing that software?
Dyack: I think the problem is the shelve lives are very short, and it's not like something is being traded in six months later or eight months later or a couple years later, these are things that are traded and turned around within two or three days, and they're promoted in that way. Then what happens, instead of selling say 200,000 copies your first day, you end selling 50,000, but then Company X will sell that eight more times and they'll make - even though it's at a discounted price - instead of paying a royalty to the people that actually made it, they'll make 100% of that even at the discounted price, and they'll make more money. I think that's wrong, I think that's the problem. It's not the consumer level, it's at the corporate level. This is not rights of the consumer, this is businesses vs. businesses, and any time you want to try and track it down to the consumer, its like that famous Bruce Lee quote, "It's like the finger pointing to the moon. If you concentrate on that finger you're missing the whole heavenly body of the argument," and the argument is, people are making money off someone else's product, and not sharing in that revenue whatsoever, and that's the issue.
GamingUnion.net: So if Ford or Toyota came out and said a similar argument, but in the case of used cars, what would you tell them?
Dyack: It's different altogether because, I don't know if you know this, but the auto manufacturers own the retailers. So when they sell a used car, they're making money from that anyway. That's something that's not a commonly known fact, so it's apples and oranges. If I owned a part of the retailer, then I would be getting a cut, so it wouldn't matter.
Check out Part 1 of GamingUnion.net's interview with Denis Dyack if you missed it.
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