>Loki deserves great success for taking the huge >risk of porting the games -- 16 this year?!
What risk would that be? Loki gets paid by the publisher 5 to 6 figures of money. If the game doesn't sell, publisher loses money paid to Loki, money for duplication, money for advertizing and money for distrubution. Loki wins whether or not the game sells.
You should be thanking the publishers for taking the risk.
Think about what you just said before you pass so much judgement. In your example the record company spent $200,000. What did you spend? As far as they are concerned you spent $0. That is why you sign over the rights and it is also why you have to pay them back. You had to risk nothing. If your CD doesn't sell you haven't lost a penny. They on the otherhand they are out $200,000.
The truth is that MOST CD's LOSE MONEY! From the publisher's point of view, until you have a hit (most CD's don't) you are a huge risk. They are risking $200,000 on you. Turn it around, if you had $200,000 in the bank would you be willing to risk it all on the next band that asked you for it?
Sure, the industry as a whole posted record profits and I'm NOT arguing that CD's aren't too expensive. They are. The point is those profits were generated by a few big hit CDs. Garth Brooks, Backstreet Boys, etc.
The same is true in the PC game industry. Everybody sees companies like Id with John Carmack in his Ferrari from which people belive there's lots of money to be made and they assume that all publishers are evil and stealing from the developers since developers tell the same stories as above (repaying advances against royalies, signing over rights etc.) The truth is that most developers are stealing from the publishers. The publisher risks $500,000 to $2 million on development and the developer either fails to actually make a product or the product doesn't sell. In this case it's even worse for the publisher. Devleoper loses nothing. In fact they got a $500,000 to $2 million advances. The publisher lost all the money.
The problem is, is that every music artist assumes their CD is going to be a huge hit just as every game developer assumes they are going to write the next Quake or next Half Life or next C&C. From that point of view, it appears that you are getting ripped off. The problem is more likely than not your product/CD is not going to be a hit in which case only the publisher lost money. Only about 10 development groups manage to make huge hits a year. Another 20 make games that just barely make their money back and the other 4000 lose the publisher's money.
Note: 4000 is not an exaggeration. Entertainment titles shipped in 97 were around 5000. I'm going to guess that they are the same or more this year.
I think I saw this suggested before but what the USPS should do is allow everybody to have a Personal address and every Company a personal address as well. Basically I could send mail to Transmeta trs-123-55323-5921123 or something like that and the post office would lookup the CURRENT address of 'trs-123-55323-5921123' and deliver the mail/package to them. This would mean that from birth you could be assigned an personal address and then people could always send stuff to you and you'd never have to tell them a new address. You'd only have to tell the USPS where your current actual address is (or the address you want stuff delivered.) In fact they could probably offer several things like this. They could: * Have multiple address * Letter delivery address * Package delivery address * They could expand to other info for example * home phone * work phone Yes I know some of that might be scary but generally most people want this stuff available. Maybe you could make it *private* but then when you sign up for a service (for example a Credit Card), just like you sign a contract that says you'll pay the bill the same contract would include giving them permission to access your "personal address" info. That way maybe you could kind of keep your information private (if you wanted to) Kind of like having an unlisted phone number. They should organize this database, have a website where you can update your 'actual' address, and distribute (or make accessable) that datebase so that UPS and FedEx etc and access it too. For example we just moved into a new office. We are still getting tons of mail for the old residence. If the system mentioned above was in place no mail would have been wrongly delivered. This would not only be convenient for everybody involved it would save the USPS tons of money because it would solve the problem of forwarded / return to sender type of mail. Maybe not all of it but probably most of it. It seems to me that really only the USPS is in a position to make this happen. If they sat down with some smart people and designed it I'm sure they could come up with something. -g
Whether or not Nintendo can win if you were the UltraHLE guys would you want to spend the money to defend yourself. Would you have it?
I just read on MSNBC (sorry) about the gun case that was just won by some people. In that article some spokesman said a bunch of states are going to hit the gun companies with a ton of lawsuits. He specifically said something that implied that the cost of defending all those lawsuits would be what would make the gun companies cave in (Implying that they the gun companies might be able to win but won't fight if it costs too much)
The idea here is that instead of "donating" money to a developer you "donate" the money to some company/organization and that company/organization HIRES/CONTRACTS with some programmers to make a product. That way
1) The programmer does not get paid unless he completes the work
2) The equipment and info (like the IrDA documentation) become property of the organization so that if a particular programmer doesn't get the job done the organization can collect the loaned equipment and documentation and give them to another developer
3) The organization owns it all (under similar conditions that the GPL says that the FSF owns everything that is GPLed)
Of course the organization would still be chartered with spending the money where the donators desire.
Slashdot Mirror
>Loki deserves great success for taking the huge
>risk of porting the games -- 16 this year?!
What risk would that be? Loki gets paid by the publisher 5 to 6 figures of money. If the game doesn't sell, publisher loses money paid to Loki, money for duplication, money for advertizing and money for distrubution. Loki wins whether or not the game sells.
You should be thanking the publishers for taking the risk.
-g
Think about what you just said before you pass so much judgement. In your example the record company spent $200,000. What did you spend? As far as they are concerned you spent $0. That is why you sign over the rights and it is also why you have to pay them back. You had to risk nothing. If your CD doesn't sell you haven't lost a penny. They on the otherhand they are out $200,000.
The truth is that MOST CD's LOSE MONEY! From the publisher's point of view, until you have a hit (most CD's don't) you are a huge risk. They are risking $200,000 on you. Turn it around, if you had $200,000 in the bank would you be willing to risk it all on the next band that asked you for it?
Sure, the industry as a whole posted record profits and I'm NOT arguing that CD's aren't too expensive. They are. The point is those profits were generated by a few big hit CDs. Garth Brooks, Backstreet Boys, etc.
The same is true in the PC game industry. Everybody sees companies like Id with John Carmack in his Ferrari from which people belive there's lots of money to be made and they assume that all publishers are evil and stealing from the developers since developers tell the same stories as above (repaying advances against royalies, signing over rights etc.) The truth is that most developers are stealing from the publishers. The publisher risks $500,000 to $2 million on development and the developer either fails to actually make a product or the product doesn't sell. In this case it's even worse for the publisher. Devleoper loses nothing. In fact they got a $500,000 to $2 million advances. The publisher lost all the money.
The problem is, is that every music artist assumes their CD is going to be a huge hit just as every game developer assumes they are going to write the next Quake or next Half Life or next C&C. From that point of view, it appears that you are getting ripped off. The problem is more likely than not your product/CD is not going to be a hit in which case only the publisher lost money. Only about 10 development groups manage to make huge hits a year. Another 20 make games that just barely make their money back and the other 4000 lose the publisher's money.
Note: 4000 is not an exaggeration. Entertainment titles shipped in 97 were around 5000. I'm going to guess that they are the same or more this year.
-gregg
I think I saw this suggested before but what the USPS should do is allow everybody to have a Personal address and every Company a personal address as well. Basically I could send mail to Transmeta trs-123-55323-5921123 or something like that and the post office would lookup the CURRENT address of 'trs-123-55323-5921123' and deliver the mail/package to them. This would mean that from birth you could be assigned an personal address and then people could always send stuff to you and you'd never have to tell them a new address. You'd only have to tell the USPS where your current actual address is (or the address you want stuff delivered.) In fact they could probably offer several things like this. They could: * Have multiple address * Letter delivery address * Package delivery address * They could expand to other info for example * home phone * work phone Yes I know some of that might be scary but generally most people want this stuff available. Maybe you could make it *private* but then when you sign up for a service (for example a Credit Card), just like you sign a contract that says you'll pay the bill the same contract would include giving them permission to access your "personal address" info. That way maybe you could kind of keep your information private (if you wanted to) Kind of like having an unlisted phone number. They should organize this database, have a website where you can update your 'actual' address, and distribute (or make accessable) that datebase so that UPS and FedEx etc and access it too. For example we just moved into a new office. We are still getting tons of mail for the old residence. If the system mentioned above was in place no mail would have been wrongly delivered. This would not only be convenient for everybody involved it would save the USPS tons of money because it would solve the problem of forwarded / return to sender type of mail. Maybe not all of it but probably most of it. It seems to me that really only the USPS is in a position to make this happen. If they sat down with some smart people and designed it I'm sure they could come up with something. -g
Whether or not Nintendo can win if you were the UltraHLE guys would you want to spend the money to defend yourself. Would you have it?
I just read on MSNBC (sorry) about the gun case that was just won by some people. In that article some spokesman said a bunch of states are going to hit the gun companies with a ton of lawsuits. He specifically said something that implied that the cost of defending all those lawsuits would be what would make the gun companies cave in (Implying that they the gun companies might be able to win but won't fight if it costs too much)
The idea here is that instead of "donating" money to a developer you "donate" the money to some company/organization and that company/organization HIRES/CONTRACTS with some programmers to make a product. That way
1) The programmer does not get paid unless he completes the work
2) The equipment and info (like the IrDA documentation) become property of the organization so that if a particular programmer doesn't get the job done the organization can collect the loaned equipment and documentation and give them to another developer
3) The organization owns it all (under similar conditions that the GPL says that the FSF owns everything that is GPLed)
Of course the organization would still be chartered with spending the money where the donators desire.
-g