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Post by Deleted on Oct 30, 2014 0:04:58 GMT -5
"I support #GamerGate. I condemn personal threats. I support women in gaming. I am against biased and corrupt game journalism" It would be preferable if we didn't talk about things that make sense in the thread about things that make sense. By the looks of it there's plenty to discuss on this matter, and there may as well be a separate thread for it. But GamerGate is misogynistic, MSNBC said it so it must be true. There were a LOT of people who considered themselves part of it that were way over the top with misogyny. Not saying that the correlation applied to the whole group but it was a very reasonable one to make. I stand by the whole event being mostly made up of complete imbeciles on both sides. I think the problem I have with the whole 'misogyny' thing is, one the term. Maybe I grew up reading a different dictionary, but I always understood misogyny as "hatred of women, especially for being female" or something to that extent. I don't see that at all, sexism definitely from some people, but I feel people don't distinguish trolls from genuine responses, it also neglects to look at the cause of why people are saying these things. That many of it is reactionary from people filling DMCAs, hacking a kickstarter-like program to actually help female developers, and then calling gamers 'dead' and just a bunch of white straight dudes. Calling for journalists to be biased and ignore objectivity, calling gamers worse than ISIS. I think over all yeah, there's a bunch of wacky guys on both sides. But when one sides is supposed to be professionals and one side is just consumers, it's hard to say "Well they're both equally retarded" When one is supposed to be held to a standard. And I get this is something that's been a problem for a long time, but this is the proverbial "hand in the cookie jar". I mean seriously EDIT: Since I didn't go over misogyny it also refers to a notable negative prejudice against women. The level of harassment quinn got was astronomical and it was centered around allegations of an affair, in addition to more women (and I guess Phil Fish) getting targeted much heavier than men involved. Also, while there may have been people who were instantly labeled misogynistic for targeting Quinn, there were also people on the other wise who were branded as SJWs for defending her. Personally I don't think that something like "sex for good review" is any different than any other bribe, but while I strongly feel that other forms of bribery would not get that level of harassment (and the industry doesn't even try to hide that it occurs) I don't exactly have proof of that beyond a gut feeling. Well I also speak as someone who is pretty much an outsider to the whole ordeal, and quite frankly, it made everyone look like fu cking retards because it had absolutely NO REASON to reach the level of hostility that it did. My first exposure to the ordeal was when the /r/Games mods had to put out a post saying that they weren't being paid off to censor shit (as if that would even f ucking do anything), but were instead removing posts because the threads were full of witch hunting and doxx attempts. Honestly it was a lot easier as an outsider to associate Gamergate with misogyny and harassment than it was the ethics of gaming journalism and I really think there should have been more of a movement for the groups to distance themselves. The problem with aligning to groups in such a manner when it comes to social issues is that the trolls and extremists of both ends practically feed the ammo to turn the entire thing into a complete pissfest (feminism and mens rights are fu cking PLAGUED with this sort of thing). However unlike more productive social groups, nothing came out of it. Everyone got mad at each other, both sides looked like f ucktards in the eyes of the general public, and things pretty quickly died down and people started forgetting about it. What surprises me is that there are still people seeking to actually remind others of it. The guy in that vid is getting absolutely shat on by the comments, but I honestly agree with a lot of what he says. I think that for someone to dock a point for what they perceive as mysogyny in a game is totally reasonable because the whole point is that it is the reviewer's opinion on the game; and anyone who trust that reviewer and shares their opinion on the game very well may want to know if such an element may negatively affect their opinion of a game. I think the people who get angry and lash out at reviewers who dare to give a lower score for a reason they dont like are fu cking childish and don't deserve an ounce of respect. I don't want pure unbridled objectivity. I want reviewers to say what they feel about the da mn game. I don't want them to be bribed with fu cking keyboards, sure, but I also don't want to force them all to assume the position of some enlightened deity from the neutral planet. This is a sentiment I'd imagine most people would agree with as long as they aren't a fu cking nazi. And it really does happen, despite what half the comments are saying. People flipping out over someone complaining about social issues can be just as if not more irritable than any SJW can be. Now, if we get into how games journalism is shady and just an extension of marketing at this point; yeah it's a problem, but it's been one for thirty fu cking years. All it means is that you have to look harder to find a journalist, reviewer, or guy on youtube who shares similar opinions on videogames as you (Something that's already difficult to begin with because they need to cross the barrier of being people who play a shitload of games connecting to people who probably dont). But I mean fu ck, after the shit hit the fan, the likes of Kotaku and polygon start making articles about the situation and get hits and make money cuz that's all that f ucking matters. I'm happy people finally realize that they aren't living in a fantasy world where companies aren't making and reviewing games out of the goodness of their heart; but when they want to do more than spam twitter about it then maybe I'll think a bit more highly of them. I'll reiterate I am speaking about this as an outsider of the situations. I don't have the whole story of either side because honestly I don't f ucking care. My impression of the whole situation is that everyone lost a lot of respect for the other side and that some very loud groups gave everyone involved a bad name. Also I know I sound like a dick by saying this, but this post alone is more than twice the attention I've ever given the situation up to this point and if anyone decides to give a detailed response, I probably won't return the favor.
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Post by Aphoristic on Oct 30, 2014 0:56:41 GMT -5
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Dumien
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Post by Dumien on Oct 30, 2014 4:12:46 GMT -5
Corruption is wrong. In media. In government. In general. Legitimately confirmed corruption conspiracies are rare and usually interesting.
SJWs used to do useful things like abolish slavery and stuff (everybody gets to vote and do jobs yay!). There are alot of countries where they could still do good.
Gamergate people could have gone about this in a better way...with their actions and words confirming the victim tactics of the opposition. This completely de-legitimatized their cause.
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Post by jaedrik on Oct 30, 2014 9:34:41 GMT -5
We do sort of have leadership. There's Milo, and there's Sommers. Besides, who needs leadersamirite? We've already had major victories without a clear figurehead. Spontaneous order is best order also screw John Locke Oh, and thanks for making the thread, Sweetwater
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mannon
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Post by mannon on Oct 30, 2014 9:56:21 GMT -5
Sounds a lot like Anonymous. Stated goals sound like something worth backing, but in practice some of the biggest douchebags on the internet just use it as an excuse to harass and vandalize. Frankly both Gamergate and Anonymous can fuck right off as far as I'm concerned. Zero sympathy doesn't even cover it.
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Post by ChloeB42 (Alexcalibur42) on Oct 30, 2014 17:53:50 GMT -5
I was gonna type out something, but felt this guy did a good job at looking at it in a different light. Also in response to the whole leader thing, it doesn't have leaders because it isn't a social movement, or activists, just a bunch of pissed off gamers, who got a hashtag from Adam Baldwin. kazerad.tumblr.com/post/100701290523/gamergate-alternate-theory
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Post by ChloeB42 (Alexcalibur42) on Oct 30, 2014 18:44:39 GMT -5
Well for the "How it should work" I was under the impression he was referring to the people who work for these companies that have said things that would normally get anyone fired from their job, that continue to be employed. At least that's what I hope he's referring to.
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Post by LeGitBeeSting on Oct 30, 2014 19:23:30 GMT -5
What do the gaymer g8 people even hope to do?
Make sure everyone in the media writes the unbiased truth all the time w/ no agenda?
They have no clear reasonable goal. If they do have one its not apparent enough for an outsider like derpy to support them.
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Post by jaedrik on Oct 30, 2014 21:00:09 GMT -5
We do sort of have leadership. There's Milo, and there's Sommers. Besides, who needs leadersamirite? We've already had major victories without a clear figurehead. Spontaneous order is best order also screw John Locke No meaningful leadership. Nobody outlining clear tangible goals or taking meaningful action beyond having a voice and opinion. The lack of such authority is exactly whats turned the group into a laughing stock in the first place. And what constitutes a victory? Getting a bit of advertising pulled? Getting a couple sites to say they'll be nice? That's pathetic. As far as I'm concerned the group is then considering the mere act of others siding with them in the first place to be a major victory. Here's the deal. The whole system lends itself to poor journalistic integrity and a company's word isn't going to change that. Publishers need good reviews because that gets them more money, and journalists need early reviews because that gets them more hits. When a big game comes out, journalists are flown out to a nice hotel with nice rooms, good beer, and fucking goodie bags to make them feel happy. They pump out a shitty generic review of the game thats generally favorable because if they don't then they just aren't going to be invited with the rest of their friends next time. Startup review sites with self-proclaimed "good morals" don't get anywhere because aside from a dedicated fanbase, people aren't going to look at their site because they're too late to the ball. You can't just fix this on a company's promises because the hits due to those who actually give a shit (limited to only the games they give a shit about) are dwarfed by the average gamer who's just looking shit up. The idea of encouraging legal action is difficult as well because technically none of what they're doing is illegal. You could mandate that they can't give out advance copies, but that brings hell to the reviewers and just lowers the quality of their work. You could set rules against denying people copies over bad reviews, but then you have to mandate who qualifies to begin with and it monopolizes the reviewing industry. You could force the reviewing process to be more public but that significantly hurts sales on games that don't have an immense hype train behind them. It is nothing short of a complex issue that calls for a complex solution; and you need coherent leadership to accomplish that because you can't get the masses going with anything longer than a couple sentences because nobody on social media sites reads anything beyond a fucking headline. It's especially true when anonymity has the ability to warp the goals of the group and there's no true authority to dispute it (effectively splitting the groups into several under the same name). And #GG itself has slim chance of being repaired even if they got its shit together. Even if they had some sort of authority outlining clear direction and structure for the group, a huge portion of the population that would even notice the affects still associates them with aggressive manchildren. If the KKK or Westboro Baptist Church tried to start an activism movement that was completely humanistic in nature, nobody would take it seriously because of their reputations. If nothing else, they should at least be trying to start over with a new name and spend a lot less time worrying about accusations about indie devs or secret chat logs and more time worrying about things they can have a meaningful effect on. I agree, the system is poor. But, it is not a complex issue requiring a complex answer. Remove intellectual property, the great hindrance to change, and the mob's whim will be satisfied more quickly and powerfully by an entrepreneur. On the developer side, it means that poorer quality developers can't use advertising to differentiate their product as effectively, since anybody can scoop up Mario and make a better game with him. It also means that it's easier for competitors to use advertising to differentiate their product, and the increase in number of firms. Imagine Project M except legal. Hell yeah it would make Nintendo stop the shit they pulled in Brawl. It'd also probably remove the elitism that divides the community, since it legitimizes Project M and Nintendo would have to change their product quickly or lose the market. The increase in firms means that MR = MC = ATC (fancy for opportunity cost) will more often be near zero, so firms will be getting out because of the rabid competition, and others will be getting in all the time with useful innovations. On the journalist side, it means that people will see through their doo doo easier because the power base will be shifted away from only a few firms into the hands of many, because other news sites could just copy reviews, or take a half hour to modify it to be better. Since more firms will have market share, and will be locked in far deadlier competition, it's easier for followings to shift providers easily. Again, destroying brand loyalty, elitism, and crappy politics like GamerGate faster because of the looming possibility of a swift death of any given firm who strays from what people want. I learned this in my Keynes-based microeconomics class. Not explicitly, of course, they give the tired story of 'innovation incentive', which is implicitly contradictory to what they taught me. They just don't see that.
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mannon
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Post by mannon on Oct 30, 2014 21:31:44 GMT -5
Actually without any intellectual property laws why would any company invest any sizable amount of money in creating something so easy to copy as games? You're literally talking about making warez completely legal. It's already easy to warez nearly anything you want, but imagine a world where the game is out from some other source that got a leaked copy of the code before it's even released, and advertising it just like the legitimate creators? You wouldn't be able to tell who created it and who didn't, and even retailers wouldn't be under any obligation to actually pay the publishers and developers if there is no ownership of the IP. They could just say they have as much right to sell it as anybody and it would be true.
I'm sorry. There are a LOT of problems with IP laws, but simply abolishing them is apocalyptic.
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Post by jaedrik on Oct 30, 2014 21:53:33 GMT -5
Actually without any intellectual property laws why would any company invest any sizable amount of money in creating something so easy to copy as games? You're literally talking about making warez completely legal. It's already easy to warez nearly anything you want, but imagine a world where the game is out from some other source that got a leaked copy of the code before it's even released, and advertising it just like the legitimate creators? You wouldn't be able to tell who created it and who didn't, and even retailers wouldn't be under any obligation to actually pay the publishers and developers if there is no ownership of the IP. They could just say they have as much right to sell it as anybody and it would be true. I'm sorry. There are a LOT of problems with IP laws, but simply abolishing them is apocalyptic. wiki.mises.org/wiki/Without_Intellectual_PropertyWhy do any of the industries above create something so easy to copy? Empirically, this demonstrates that intellectual property furthering innovation is an economic fiction. It also shows that your example must be negligible or flawed in some way. Apocalyptic indeed, spare me the doom-saying.
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Post by ChloeB42 (Alexcalibur42) on Oct 31, 2014 0:33:03 GMT -5
What do the gaymer g8 people even hope to do? Make sure everyone in the media writes the unbiased truth all the time w/ no agenda? They have no clear reasonable goal. If they do have one its not apparent enough for an outsider like derpy to support them. From the people I've heard from like TB and the likes it's pretty simple. If you have an interest in the person, company, product you're writing about, a little "The author of this article would like you to know they have an interest (whatever it is)" People do it all the time. This was literally the same kind of shit EA was getting for the whole Ronku program, people were getting paid and there was a lot of people who were concerned that people were reviewing the game while getting paid by it. EA reworked it, people came forth with being involved and many people's trust in YouTubers declined, especially after Boogie's video.
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Post by ChloeB42 (Alexcalibur42) on Oct 31, 2014 0:35:28 GMT -5
Remove intellectual property, the great hindrance to change, and the mob's whim will be satisfied more quickly and powerfully by an entrepreneur. Are you a literal Marxist?
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Post by jaedrik on Oct 31, 2014 0:45:04 GMT -5
Remove intellectual property, the great hindrance to change, and the mob's whim will be satisfied more quickly and powerfully by an entrepreneur. Are you a literal Marxist? My use of words is silly, though. By the 'mob', I don't mean the mob, I mean the consumer, in a mutually beneficial relationship with the entrepreneur. But I'm literally as far from a Marxist as possible. Economic calculation is not possible where the means of production are publicly owned (AKA, where there is one firm), thus making the existence of economy in socialism of any sort literally impossible. This is another reason as to why the 'natural monopoly' is a fiction, and attempted centralized calculation is silly. Any utopia in general, any perfect world, is utterly unattainable, no matter what policies we adopt, I just know that it's generally better if we're over in a certain direction of economic liberty. Not to mention I'm a Catholic, so I have major problems with dialectic materialism. pls dun hate me :( I'm honestly insulted that you're asking anyone here to explain why the videogame industry is more heavily reliant on IP laws than the likes of the Foxtroting cookbook or furniture industry. "Open source software. Jokes." Aside from that, no market is fundamentally different than any other. All are subject to the same economic laws. So, no, I'm not asking that, either explicitly or implicitly. Edit 3: There's a section titled "Computer Software Many claim that if software could be copied freely, then software developers would have no incentive to create it. Note, however, that hardware manufacturers would have an incentive to support software development (and perhaps even give it away), since the availability of more and better software increases the demand for hardware. In few industries has there been such extensive innovation as in the software industry – and virtually none of the innovations in this industry took place with the protection of intellectual monopoly. Prior to the 1981 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Diamond vs Diehr, it was not possible to patent software at all and the current burst of patent lawsuits originates in the subsequent extension of patents to software products in the 1994 Federal Circuit Court ruling In re Alapat. Not only did patents play no role in software innovation, copyrights played only a limited role. While computer programs were often copyrighted, in the early years of the PC industry, copyright was seldom respected or enforced. Microsoft made little effort either legal or technical to protect their "intellectual property" in their early creative days. It is in the 21st century that they invest their time and energy in the prevention of copying. The best evidence that copyright and patents are not needed and that competition leads to thriving innovation in the software industry, is its thriving and innovative portion developing open source software. Some computer game creators choose to release their games for free and still earn money." They have citations on the page.
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Post by Aphoristic on Oct 31, 2014 1:42:16 GMT -5
Many claim that if software could be copied freely, then software developers would have no incentive to create it. Note, however, that hardware manufacturers would have an incentive to support software development (and perhaps even give it away), since the availability of more and better software increases the demand for hardware. So you think that Video Games should be freeware funded by NVida, AMD, and Intel? I mean there is absolutely nobody else who would have a reason to fund it, as nobody else makes graphics cards to run games. Oh and what about consoles? Do you expect to buy an Xbox and have access to the entire library of games instantly? What about movies? I bought a Blu-Ray player, now I get to watch every single movie in existence! Even smart phones, I could expect to download every app made by anyone for free, right? What a wonderful world to be a developer where your work means nothing unless you are being funded by the platform you develop on, because fuck indie developers. That's also ignoring the price the hardware would need to be to fund development. But who cares about that, now my modified Smash Bros game is validated.
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Post by jaedrik on Oct 31, 2014 11:04:17 GMT -5
Many claim that if software could be copied freely, then software developers would have no incentive to create it. Note, however, that hardware manufacturers would have an incentive to support software development (and perhaps even give it away), since the availability of more and better software increases the demand for hardware. So you think that Video Games should be freeware funded by NVida, AMD, and Intel? I mean there is absolutely nobody else who would have a reason to fund it, as nobody else makes graphics cards to run games. Oh and what about consoles? Do you expect to buy an Xbox and have access to the entire library of games instantly? What about movies? I bought a Blu-Ray player, now I get to watch every single movie in existence! Even smart phones, I could expect to download every app made by anyone for free, right? What a wonderful world to be a developer where your work means nothing unless you are being funded by the platform you develop on, because Foxtrot indie developers. That's also ignoring the price the hardware would need to be to fund development. But who cares about that, now my modified Smash Bros game is validated. They are not the only ones. Everyone down the line (think of vertical monopolies) has incentive to fund them. Including the consumer. The consumer knows, for example, that it can't have its games unless the developers are funded. It's not hard to see that they will find a way if and only if the developer merits it. And meriting it will be much harder. It might be the death of huge businesses, it will be the tightening of developers, I know, but the overall quality of games will improve, and many games that are crap will simply never have been made. I don't really care about jobs or employment or number or whatever, nor should anyone, for we should not forget the broken window fallacy, as any excess or inefficiency impoverishes society as a whole where those resources could have been used elsewhere. Government enforced monopolies such as IP insulate firms from being efficient, and from actually trying to satisfy demand. Not to mention the page I linked had plenty of other viable monetization schemes. I also don't understand your examples. How would buying an Xbox give access to the whole library in a world without IP? Presumably, Microsoft would act like a publisher in that it thinks a given game would increase the value of an Xbox enough that it would merit funding. This would result in a tighter library, probably more consoles catering to different tastes, and again better games, because everyone has a higher mutual stake, including the end consumer. If you're talking about systems already in place that would be opened wide, then I say good, it will destroy malinvestment and kick the developers that stay into high gear. There would be an inevitable bust. Good, we'd be treating the root cause and not the symptom instead. And indie developers would not be 'thrown under the bus', just because IP doesn't exist doesn't mean that people can't get in trouble for stealing the stuff the code is on just like any other crime, except now the compensation would be for the exclusivity that the hardware warranted to the developer because of its software. That's a risk people can't take. Not only that, but again no IP means more firms, who's to say that more firms doesn't mean more indie devs?
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mannon
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Post by mannon on Oct 31, 2014 11:33:37 GMT -5
It would end retail sales. Retailers won't bother selling games if you can just go to any one of a thousand websites and legally download the games and burn them to a disk. And what is the incentive to innovate when as soon as you do everybody else in the market just copies your code and art assets? The only way any developer makes money in this alternate reality is to be paid up front, because there's no money to be made selling games anymore... that is unless you're one of the thousands of leaches who do nothing but copy other people's work and sell it for practically no expense of your own. Those people will be all over the place selling games for pennies and competing with each other on price alone since they will all be selling all the same games.
The only way for consumers to fund development would be via things like kickstarter, which are already fraught with risk and disappointment, and simply don't work for every model. You're talking about a communism vs capitalism scale change to the entire industry. There is not iterative path to get there from here, you'd have to tear everything down and start over.
I'll be blunt.
It won't happen. Period... that's it. It won't. You live in a fantasy land if you think it's even possible to get the industry to somehow rise up and call for it to change and you live in alternate fantasy dimension I can't even picture if you believe that the entire game industry all united as one would even be able to get IP laws repealed with the kind of opposition that would be thrown up by... well... EVERYONE ELSE. Not happening.
So well... we're really only debating fiction here so it's kinda pointless. Might as well argue over whether Han Solo shot first.
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Post by jaedrik on Oct 31, 2014 13:47:50 GMT -5
It would end retail sales. Retailers won't bother selling games if you can just go to any one of a thousand websites and legally download the games and burn them to a disk. And what is the incentive to innovate when as soon as you do everybody else in the market just copies your code and art assets? The only way any developer makes money in this alternate reality is to be paid up front, because there's no money to be made selling games anymore... that is unless you're one of the thousands of leaches who do nothing but copy other people's work and sell it for practically no expense of your own. Those people will be all over the place selling games for pennies and competing with each other on price alone since they will all be selling all the same games. The only way for consumers to fund development would be via things like kickstarter, which are already fraught with risk and disappointment, and simply don't work for every model. You're talking about a communism vs capitalism scale change to the entire industry. There is not iterative path to get there from here, you'd have to tear everything down and start over. I'll be blunt. It won't happen. Period... that's it. It won't. You live in a fantasy land if you think it's even possible to get the industry to somehow rise up and call for it to change and you live in alternate fantasy dimension I can't even picture if you believe that the entire game industry all united as one would even be able to get IP laws repealed with the kind of opposition that would be thrown up by... well... EVERYONE ELSE. Not happening. So well... we're really only debating fiction here so it's kinda pointless. Might as well argue over whether Han Solo shot first. It wouldn't end retail sales. There are a few sites already that are pretty stable and allow you to download games illegally. It's a black market but a very effective one that's already straight up better and easier than going retail. Companies rarely, if ever, get into the court system over individuals who just pirate games and play them. It's too expensive for just one person with a few games pirated. So, apparently they'll all just magically disappear and people will magically stop going out to buy games? No. Just because something is legal doesn't mean people won't do it. People still want novelty and physical permanence. Besides, if people stop going to retail then foxtrot retail. The whole point of efficiency is society benefits majorly due to resources being shifted to what the market has more use for. Again, there's plenty incentive to innovate. First of all, you're assuming everyone would magically have a copy of the code once it's written. Not true. The people who wrote it together could be under a mutually binding contract not to reveal the code. As I posted earlier, this can easily lead to a 'collective purchase' scheme, were patrons pay x amount of money for the group to release it to society at large, or this could be done by the publisher who in turn has some other monetization scheme after paying off the developers. Since the goods are tied to a physical object (hard-drive), anyone who tampers with the integrity of the device can easily be pursued for all compensatory damages, since they would lose the aforementioned monetization schemes granted by said physical object. Again, just take a look at the industries with low-IP and see how they work. Obviously, games and production of games would be much cheaper in the world without IP, such things as kickstarter would be cheaper, the monetization schemes would be easier to accept the risk for, and most of all there would be a much higher turnover rate due to the changes in the advertising industry listed above, that is, if someone's product sucks, then he's gonna get like zero dollars, and if someone's product is rad, then he's gonna get loadsamoney due to more effective advertising and much easier production. The rise of middleware due to the world without IP would be one of the many factors contributing to ease of production. And, there are plenty of ways to monetize your product without IP. I'll just copy paste it here since none of you read the page. "When copying is free[edit] The internet is a copy machine. Our digital communication network has been engineered so that copies flow with as little friction as possible. If reproductions of our best efforts are free, how can we keep going? To put it simply, how does one make money selling free copies? In his article "Better than free", Kevin Kelly answers: When copies are free, you need to sell things which cannot be copied. He specifies eight "generatives" that cannot be copied, cloned, faked, replicated, counterfeited, or reproduced. A generative value is a quality or attribute that must be generated, grown, cultivated, nurtured. In the digital arena, generative qualities add value to free copies, and therefore are something that can be sold. Immediacy: Sooner or later you can find a free copy of whatever you want, but getting a copy delivered to your inbox the moment it is released - or even better, produced - by its creators is a generative asset. Many people go to movie theaters to see films on the opening night, where they will pay a hefty price to see a film that later will be available for free, or almost free, via rental or download. Hardcover books command a premium for their immediacy, disguised as a harder cover. First in line often commands an extra price for the same good. As a sellable quality, immediacy has many levels, including access to beta versions. Fans are brought into the generative process itself. Beta versions are often de-valued because they are incomplete, but they also possess generative qualities that can be sold. Immediacy is a relative term, which is why it is generative. It has to fit with the product and the audience. A blog has a different sense of time than a movie, or a car. But immediacy can be found in any media. Personalization: A generic version of a concert recording may be free, but if you want a copy that has been tweaked to sound perfect in your particular living room - as if it were preformed in your room - you may be willing to pay a lot. The free copy of a book can be custom edited by the publishers to reflect your own previous reading background. A free movie you buy may be cut to reflect the rating you desire (no violence, dirty language okay). Aspirin is free, but aspirin tailored to your DNA is very expensive. As many have noted, personalization requires an ongoing conversation between the creator and consumer, artist and fan, producer and user. It is deeply generative because it is iterative and time consuming. You can't copy the personalization that a relationship represents. Marketers call that "stickiness" because it means both sides of the relationship are stuck (invested) in this generative asset, and will be reluctant to switch and start over. Interpretation: As the old joke goes: software, free. The manual, $10,000. But it's no joke. A couple of high profile companies, like Red Hat, Apache, and others make their living doing exactly that. They provide paid support for free software. The copy of code, being mere bits, is free -- and becomes valuable to you only through the support and guidance. Right now getting your copy of your DNA is very expensive, but soon it won't be. In fact, soon pharmaceutical companies will PAY you to get your genes sequence. So the copy of your sequence will be free, but the interpretation of what it means, what you can do about it, and how to use it - the manual for your genes so to speak - will be expensive. Authenticity: You might be able to grab a key software application for free, but even if you don't need a manual, you might like to be sure it is bug free, reliable, and warranted. You'll pay for authenticity. There are nearly an infinite number of variations of the Grateful Dead jams around; buying an authentic version from the band itself will ensure you get the one you wanted. Or that it was indeed actually performed by the Dead. Artists have dealt with this problem for a long time. Graphic reproductions such as photographs and lithographs often come with the artist's stamp of authenticity - a signature - to raise the price of the copy. Digital watermarks and other signature technology will not work as copy-protection schemes but they can serve up the generative quality of authenticity for those who care. Accessibility: As an owner, you have to keep your things tidy, up-to-date, and in the case of digital material, backed up. And in this mobile world, you have to carry it along with you. Many people will be happy to have others tend our "possessions" by subscribing to them. We'll pay Acme Digital Warehouse to serve us any musical tune in the world, when and where we want it, as well as any movie, photo (ours or other photographers). Ditto for books and blogs. Acme backs everything up, pays the creators, and delivers us our desires. We can sip it from our phones, PDAs, laptops, big screens from where-ever. The fact that most of this material will be available free, if we want to tend it, back it up, keep adding to it, and organize it, will be less and less appealing as time goes on. Embodiment: At its core the digital copy is without a body. You can take a free copy of a work and throw it on a screen. But perhaps you'd like to see it in hi-res on a huge screen? Maybe in 3D? PDFs are fine, but sometimes it is delicious to have the same words printed on bright white cottony paper, bound in leather. What about dwelling in your favorite (free) game with 35 others in the same room? There is no end to greater embodiment. Sure, the hi-res of today - which may draw ticket holders to a big theater - may migrate to your home theater tomorrow, but there will always be new insanely great display technology that consumers won't have. Laser projection, holographic display, the holodeck itself! And nothing gets embodied as much as music in a live performance, with real bodies. The music is free; the bodily performance expensive. This formula is quickly becoming a common one for not only musicians, but even authors. The book is free; the bodily talk is expensive. Patronage: It is Kelly's belief that audiences WANT to pay creators. Fans like to reward artists, musicians, authors and the like with the tokens of their appreciation, because it allows them to connect. But they will only pay if it is very easy to do, a reasonable amount, and they feel certain the money will directly benefit the creators. Radiohead's recent high-profile experiment in letting fans pay them whatever they wished for a free copy is an excellent illustration of the power of patronage. The elusive, intangible connection that flows between appreciative fans and the artist is worth something. In Radiohead's case it was about $5 per download. There are many other examples of the audience paying simply because it feels good. Findability: Where as the previous generative qualities reside within creative digital works, findability is an asset that occurs at a higher level in the aggregate of many works. No matter what its price, a work has no value unless it is seen; unfound masterpieces are worthless. When there are millions of books, millions of songs, millions of films, millions of applications, millions of everything requesting our attention - and most of it free - being found is valuable. The giant aggregators such as Amazon and Netflix make their living in part by helping the audience find works they love. This is why publishers, studios, and labels will never disappear. They are not needed for distribution of the copies (the internet does that). Rather they are needed for the distribution of the users' attention back to the works. Like other intermediates such as critics and reviewers, from an ocean of possibilities they find, nurture and refine the work of creators that they believe fans will connect with. For many years the paper publication TV Guide made more money than all of the 3 major TV networks it "guided" combined. The magazine guided and pointed viewers to the good stuff on the tube that week. Stuff, it is worth noting, that was free to the viewers. In short, the money in this networked economy does not follow the path of the copies. Rather it follows the path of attention, and attention has its own circuits.[5]" Oh, and let's look at the Soviet Union's transition from Communism to Capitalism, shall we? Yes, they went slowly with a lot of in-between steps, and it was fraught with corruption, inefficiency, and normally the destruction of what little wealth there was being created. The analogy still stands that a sick person is better cured by treating the root cause, not the symptom. The problem is IP in itself. Lack of IP laws as a whole make it legal for someone to buy a product and then re-release it for free. Intellectual property rights include copyright, trademarks, trade secrets, patents and other things. Code absolutely falls under this umbrella. Even open source software uses copyright laws to enforce certain things (such as crediting the author or redistribution limitations). The only profitable games become ones on consoles or services where a publisher can force the games to be always online and played over a network (so that nobody can just copy the file and share it). This also gives the publisher the opportunity to republish the game in their name at the expense of cutting ties with the dev in the future (perfect for when you dont think the dev is going to make another good one!). Open source games funded by consumers would be scarce as hell. Crowdfunding games already exist and typically still require further funding after release and still do not reach the level of quality for AAA games. Further money would be put into loss protection because they can't rely on the law for that basic security. Consumers who contribute get lower quality games for more money. Indies get thrown under the bus because only those large enough to gain a following will afford to pay for their games through croudsourcing or by saving their allowance for years (because no investor in their right mind would back them). The broken window fallacy doesnt apply here because it only applies when an inefficiency is creating a job for its own sake rather than laying in a gray area like IP laws do. Its meant to highlight that spending, on its own, doesnt necessarily yield economic growth. The reality of the situation is that several thousand people will lose their jobs and be unable to find more because every relevant industry becomes exclusive and has a horrible work environment....all in the name of creativity. And if you think thats a good thing, or hell, even a risk anyone should be willing to take, then I think you're a horrible person. The problem with your suggestions here is that it requires EVERY COG IN THE WHEEL to cooperate entirely out of good faith; something which, if it were the case, there wouldnt be people "using IP laws to stifle creativity" in the first place. Many of the questions are answered above. I'll get the ones not done there here. Authenticity is a market in itself. To have a stamp of approval or legitimacy or quality is a valuable asset, since people will take advantage of the ability to remove watermarks and signatures to claim it as their own. They can easily be proven false by forensics, and the 'real' producers can be widely advertised easily. This would stabilize crediting the people who did the hard work (programmers), since there will be companies which vouch for them based on reputation. If people realize that a given seal is crap then good producers under that label will get out and seek out a better one. And there inevitably will be, with the increase in firms, and the changes outlined in journalism with no IP can easily be applied here. What you say about publishers seems to be incongruous with what's been stated earlier. Didn't you say that publishers would stop existing, since they'd have no way to profit? Even if not, this just means that devs won't make DRM or always online games because it means publishers can 'steal' it in this way. I call that a win for everyone. But, again, something like this is unlikely, since publishers can be tied to reputation and authenticity, and if they do something underhanded like this then they (the people who made it happen) will not be supported thereafter, and damages can be sought for stuff like slander or whatever. Simple forensics that the reputation companies would have major incentive to know tthe truth and tell it, since their competitors will shut them down if they don't. The broken window fallacy applies, because the monopoly of IP means that true opportunity cost is incalculable and efficiency is destroyed. Sure, we don't know to what extent the window is being broken in this case, but we know that IP necessarily breaks windows of some sort due to, again, inefficiency from lack of competing firms. The reality is that there are unnecessary and unviable games being made due to this ambiguity, since they are not being properly measured against their competition, and can't be since IP provides said cushion. What you're exhibiting is immediacy bias. It is true that many might be forced out of the market since they're inefficient dunderheads compared to their competition, but society will benefit because human capital will be freed up, and inefficiencies will be corrected. On the other hand, since we don't know either way if we're being inefficient in either direction, it could happen that even more developers would be demanded by the market. You don't know, and I don't know, because IP is both a ceiling and a floor where equilibrium and efficiency cannot be expressed properly. Any result that happens where they can't get a job is a fault of bad policy affecting other markets, such as (we've had this discussion before) minimum wage (which can also effect their own market). Also, they would be hired based (moreso, I don't mean to imply that they don't already) on their merits far more than anything else, for the increased competition would make dev teams scrutinize their ability even more. Again, we would have better games. It isn't certain whether we would have more or less games or people producing games, all that is assured is a general increase in the number of firms and efficiency. This system relies less on good faith than than you think. There are many monetization schemes and plenty of natural incentives. I've already answered this point.
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Post by Aphoristic on Oct 31, 2014 14:18:24 GMT -5
Why the fuck would anyone buy games if it were legal to download them for free?
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Post by jaedrik on Oct 31, 2014 14:29:23 GMT -5
Why the fuck would anyone buy games if it were legal to download them for free? What the heck, bro? I'm giving you due consideration. Please do so for me. I've already answered this, or would you care to clarify why I haven't?
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Post by LeGitBeeSting on Oct 31, 2014 14:47:14 GMT -5
Why the fu ck would anyone buy games if it were legal to download them for free? Because they're dumb. Free games on the pinkie-pie rat bay for years. Next to no reinforcement and perfectly legal peerblock.
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Post by jaedrik on Oct 31, 2014 15:28:56 GMT -5
Why the Foxtrot would anyone buy games if it were legal to download them for free? Because they're dumb. Free games on the pinkie-pie rat bay for years. Next to no reinforcement and perfectly legal peerblock. Or, if they're not dumb, they just like giving money to people. :D Edit: Unfortunately, I gotta go to my sister's. I hope to answer Moose later even tho Moose block me :(
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Post by Aphoristic on Oct 31, 2014 17:46:48 GMT -5
I'm suspicious that the only reason you believe in this is because you really, really want Project M to be validated, whatever that means.
Nothing is stopping them from making a new fighter with the same mechanics and different characters. The only things actually copy written is the code and the characters.
Nothing prevents people from competing.
Also, you did a spectacular job derailing this thread. None of this has anything to do with why the games journalism industry sucks. Hell, it doesn't even have anything to do with sexism either.
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Post by ChloeB42 (Alexcalibur42) on Oct 31, 2014 19:01:28 GMT -5
Jaedrik
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Dumien
True Bro
Black Market Trader
No engrams. Only disappointment.
Posts: 3,292
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Post by Dumien on Nov 1, 2014 1:46:08 GMT -5
woah. I leave you people alone for 24 hours....man
"what exactly do you mean by YOU PEOPLE"
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Post by jaedrik on Nov 1, 2014 10:44:40 GMT -5
I'm suspicious that the only reason you believe in this is because you really, really want Project M to be validated, whatever that means. Nothing is stopping them from making a new fighter with the same mechanics and different characters. The only things actually copy written is the code and the characters. Nothing prevents people from competing. Also, you did a spectacular job derailing this thread. None of this has anything to do with why the games journalism industry sucks. Hell, it doesn't even have anything to do with sexism either. Subconsciously, maybe? But I didn't think of the Project M example until when I needed one after typing. Frankly, it's already 'validated' by Nintendo of America at least; D1 and Prog have said that they know about it and that they are 'intrigued' by it, so they're not going to shut it down, but they don't want to publicly acknowledge it either otherwise they said they'd have to shut it down. My belief in a system without IP is honest, not for any agenda or specific game. I really do think that removing IP is a solution to making Journalism as a whole better. I outlined that, and the ideas were criticized. It just happened that it wasn't so much the journalism portion that was criticized. pls dun hate me
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Post by Aphoristic on Nov 1, 2014 11:58:51 GMT -5
I really do think that removing IP is a solution to making Journalism as a whole better. Oh it sure does fix Journalism. Now any journalist can copy and paste articles from others and its totally fine.
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probaddie
True Bro
You're triggering my intelligence
Posts: 11,043
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Post by probaddie on Nov 1, 2014 14:57:33 GMT -5
This thread: not even once.
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n1gh7
True Bro
Black Market Dealer
Posts: 11,718
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Post by n1gh7 on Nov 1, 2014 20:18:31 GMT -5
This thread: not even once. This thread: only click on it to get rid of the "New".
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Post by LeGitBeeSting on Nov 1, 2014 21:58:15 GMT -5
le reddit le in le nutshell.
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