Good Morning, That's a Nice Tnetennba

In series four episode two of The IT Crowd Moss goes on the game show Countdown. During one of the anagram sections of the show the randomly selected letters come out as T, N, E, T, E, N, N, B, and A. Moss informs the host that that already is a word and when asked to use it in a sentence replies "Good morning, that's a nice tnetennba". After the show aired a large number of people went on Google to find out what the word meant. The word was made up but several websites predicting that people would want to learn more about the word included it in their updates, and as a result a casual definition of the word emerged.

Tnetennba
n. (tuh.net.un.bar)
A word whose function is to attract attention to a website; a gratuitously used keyword whose presence is aimed at attracting the search engines attention and improving the website's placement in search results.

So what does this have to do with gaming? Well, with digital distribution now being common place the ease with which an independent developer can sell their game has greatly improved. The PC version of Minecraft has sold 4,732,580 copies without even using digital distribution clients such as Steam or Desura, reigniting the dreams of many small scale game developers. However, these developers still need to get attention. I have previously talked about Indie Royale and the Humble Bundle, which are both great ways for developers to get noticed and for gamers who are short on cash to grab a bargain. I find the Humble Bundle's pay what you want and DRM free model to be extremely interesting as you would think it prone to exploitation, however, the average price paid for bundle number 4 was $5.45, although a $1 minimum did have to be imposed after people started using the bundle to get extra steam keys and exploit Steam's Christmas promotion.

When I look at promotions such as these it reassures me that most people are not interested in pirating games, so why did the industry feel the need to initially support the SOPA bill, at least until such a position became a PR nightmare? I firmly believe that what we have here is large companies who don't want to have to change their business model. They claim that piracy is crippling the industry, despite companies such as activision managing to triple their profit during a recession. When a fan asked Notch, the creator of Minecraft, for a free account as they currently didn't have the spare cash to buy it he replied "Just pirate it. If you still like it when you can afford it in the future, buy it then.. Also don't forget to feel bad. ;)"

Just as the music industry had to change and adapt to the internet, in the form of iTunes, so too will the movie and game industries. To be perfectly honest I believe that the gaming companies who put money and support into the SOPA bill would have been better served putting those resources into developing new distribution models. People who can be innovative with their games and sales models, will be the success stories of the future (this is why so many MMO's are changing to free to play models), and of cause it never hurts to bring a tnetennba.