Portrait of a videogame pirate dissected

IN OUR PIECE on the "Portrait of a videogame pirate", here we asked some rather direct questions of the figures which the survey came out with, such as "84 per cent of 15-18 year olds pirated videogames".

If taken out of context, such statistics can be bent almost any which way you like and so it is with great interest that the man behind the survey, Mr. Alex Dodge of Brunel University, unmuddied the waters somewhat with regards to the figures, and told us:

"To answer your question on how I reached these figures, I undertook the study for my final year dissertation whilst studying Business and Management at Brunel University. 217 gamers answered an online questionnaire which was made available through various gaming forums.

"The stats from my survey are presented very carefully, making it clear that all the figures relate to the survey respondents, rather than the world in general. For example, the press release from which this story is taken stated that '84% of 15-18 year olds surveyed pirate videogames.' As you rightly pointed out, this is quite different to saying 84 per cnet of all [Italics INQ's] 15 - 18 year olds. "The ESA, here, states global piracy cost the US Entertainment Software Industry over $3 billion in 2004, not including losses attributable to Internet piracy. With a little research, it is possible to see how the global figure can reach $5 billion if other regions, i.e. Europe and Japan, as well as internet piracy, are taken into account.

"Finally, I'm glad you agree with the idea of worldwide launches. Another solution might be to lower prices, (which I think could possibly be achieved by in-game advertising) as many respondents agreed videogames are overpriced.

"Very best regards,

"Alex Dodge"

Well, that clears up a lot of that then. So the survey is not scientific and cannot be taken as a general overview of the gaming community as a whole, and we'd still debate the figures released by the US Entertainment Software Industry considering the less than precise nature of toting up such figures and the tendency to over exaggerate the figures, for example by counting each download as a lost sale. µ