I have been posting a lot on the recent Understanding Digital Youth conference over on the citizenbay blog.

At the conference, there were a panel of young people who were bombarded by questions from the conference attendees. Not exactly a true insight into youth culture and thinking, but of more worht than a staged focus group in my opinion.

The group were asked about their views on music piracy. The general feeling was that if they could copy a friend’s CD they would. If they could get music for free they would. Nothing new here.

However, Matthew mentioned that for him the need to own something is stronger when it comes to Gaming. If he was to choose between owning a Game and owning a CD, he would choose the Game every time. For him and for others he knows, a video game has value amongst his peers. They can be swapped, traded like cards. With CDs he see no long term value, he just sees them as something that loses value over time. So what does a Game have that a CD doesn’t? Something in that for more exploration…