Slashdot Mirror
How Videogames Help Fund the Arms Industry
FhnuZoag writes "Eurogamer has an expose of the shady world of games developers licensing guns. From the article: '"We must be paid a royalty fee — either a one-time payment or a percentage of sales, all negotiable. Typically, a licensee pays between 5 per cent to 10 per cent retail price for the agreement. [...] We want to know explicitly how the rifle is to be used, ensuring that we are shown in a positive light... Such as the 'good guys' using the rifle," says [Barett Rifles'] Vaughn.'"
by demanding shallow `realism,' you've ensured an overall bias in favor of the gunrunners you're accidentally supporting.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
Why would you bother calling it by its real world name?
Just call it something else and don't pay.
Some do, and they put changes into the models used for the guns so they can't get them on design patents/trademarks, either. That's not even mentioning games where you just have the generic "Pistol", "Shotgun", "SMG", "Sniper Rifle", etc.
But, you're underestimating the potential profit margin to be had on gun nuts with an apparent fetish for realistic armaments but can't afford them. All they need to do is get over the initial investment of licensing, and those lunatics will buy anything with increasingly accurate representations of their precious, precious surrogate manhoods.
But the fact that it's the gun industry is the whole point. I, and many people despise the gun industry. I play these games expecting them to be meaningless catharsis, not channeling my money directly to them, and getting back propaganda. The games companies hide their licensing arrangements because they know it would hurt sales. You may find it hard to empathise because you are of the proportion of people who think gun companies are all hunky dory, but imagine if this was happening with an industry you personally hate.
Say, for example, DRM. Imagine that you just found out that Slashdot licenses the Your Rights Online logo from StarForce and channels 10% of advertising revenues to them. If I sit here and say this is no big deal, would you accept that?
What have you ever done of value in your life, to post criticism of such men? You embarass only yourself.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Why do you think every person that uses a laptop in a movie is always using a MacBook when IRL that is less than 10% of the population? Product placement.
Cool people are enlightened and therefore use Macs. Stars are, by definition, "cool," so it only follows that a greater proportion of important characters would use Apple products.