Nah, Google will release their own social network called Friendoogle, which we'll all already be members on because of all of the data mining they do. Social networks are data mining tools; Google hardly needs that. They'd rather do it after the fact, as an after thought really, out of the goodness of their non-evil hearts.
That is, essentially, how Facebook began. The only thing that is different is greed. As college students, they might want to protect privacy. As fresh out of college students, they might look at their massive college debt and start weighing their options. Before you know it, they're paying lip service to advertisers at the expense of their user base. But hey, at least they'll have Ruralville!
They're not competitors. Wanna know why? It's literally impossible to compete with free. People will wait for 87 days for their torrent downloading at 1 kb/s to complete long before they'll take a ten minute drive to the game shop to pay $50. Forcing media companies to 'just accept' that at least 1/4 of their customer base will never pay so much as a penny for years of development work is entitlement, and is disgusting.
This isn't like what you stated at all. It's more like "Oh, automobiles aren't competing with the automobile black market. Why is that? Because they never pay us, but opened up a shop giving away our automobiles." This isn't two different products. It's the same damn product, just with one person taking it without permission and then redistributing it as they see fit.
True, they can gain more money if they move to the global market. But it is their right and their choice to do so. If they don't, it is not your right to take what they have for free. This is entitlement that really needs to be stamped out. You don't deserve the moon just because you can see it for Christ's sakes!
But your use of my analogy is wrong! You're not going to a competitor; you're staying right where you are while paying no one. So the competitor never gets a dime from you, and the company you're shafting beefs up security to try and stop you from shafting them.
I don't agree with everything the media outlets do. Forcing delays for no reason whatsoever in a connected world like the one we have is unacceptable. It still doesn't justify taking it for free, because you know what? It detracts from their profits when they do release it in your country, meaning that they see less profits there than normal. Ergo, no incentive to release earlier without first seeing if it's successful in the US.
Yeah, but regardless of what you believe...there isn't some set amount of money to be made that excuses people not paying for their copy.
As an anecdote, I once lost my Wii Fit disk; but since I registered my game with them they verified it was mine and sent me another copy, free of charge. My hard drive failed before I could de-authorize my CS2, but Adobe took all of five minutes to give me another authorization when I asked.
The point that I'm trying to make is that it is highly unlikely that every pirate tried to contact said company and was rejected. No; there's a better chance that they lost it and then decided to pirate it instead of talking to the company. What information does that give the company? If a large portion of users were losing their copy instead of just being pirates, the companies would add in extra measures to ensure they didn't lose money on incidents like that. Lack of communication with the company just means that buyers look like pirates.
Now, here's the problem with using the Humble Bundle to try and somehow justify piracy:
1. They put 0 DRM on it.
2. They made it absurdly easy to download: fill out the form, pay, done.
3. You could pay them.01. To put it in perspective, most people don't even pick up pennies they find on the ground.
4. They actually paid for some people's copies when they couldn't figure out how to use the form.
Now, let's look at your reasons for why piracy happened.
1. Someone made a direct link to the download in a forum somewhere and people are too lazy to go back and fill in the form.
That sounds about right.
2. No means of paying in your country and/or no access to a credit card.
That sounds about right, too. However, that is no justification for piracy. If you can't pay, you can't have it. It's sad that their country doesn't have paypal, but the 'no access to a credit card' bit is absurd. No parent or friend could really afford a.01 transaction? Really?
3. You already paid for it once and wants to download it again on your spare computer or monitor.
Cute. Except that they offered you infinite downloads after paying!
4. You're a thievin' moneygrubbing pirate.
Yes, yes you are.
Most people don't pirate because the price is too high. They pirate because there's too many game they want, and they can't afford them all. So, they pay for some, then pirate the rest. Or, in the case of the Humble Bundle, they pirate because they are flaming hypocrites. Humble Bundle listened to pirate complaints: DRM, difficulty of download, cost. What did they get? Piracy.
Point B is, again, not true when pointed to the Humble Bundle. Furthermore, most pirate products are inferior. Only a very small handful of games have crippling DRM, and by very small, I mean maybe ten. I tried pirating Silent Hill 4 once, and the end result was a whole slew of minor issues that weren't present in the official version. I also required ISO mount software; unless I also chose to pirate it once the demon was finished, I'd be out money on that, and there is no justification for the piracy of it!
This is, again, tough shit. There's a very fine type of pork only made in Spain that costs $100 an ounce; I'll never be able to taste that because of the country I live in, unless I go over there, and I damn well won't be able to take it back with me. That does not mean that I should get someone to grab me a full ounce and bring it to me so I can enjoy it. It's not some absurd God given right that we have, to be able to use everything in the world. We need to stop acting like it's our right.
And finally, tough shit. What do you ask them to do? Mail their pennies to the company selling the Humble Bundle? People would pirate it because they were too lazy to send it! Blaming a company for offering every means possible for online transaction is just plain pathetic. Suck it up and stop being so damn entitled!
I actually met with the artist on Machinarium. Very nice guy, you could tell from his voice that he put a lot of love into it...
And yet, even in the comments on that article, there are people justifying the piracy! They could have paid a single penny for the whole package, for infinite downloading rights, and yet still people are defending the piracy!
It's a general sense of entitlement, really. I'm part of the highschool/college kid demographic, but even I can see that it's bullshit to demand people give away something for free.
We wouldn't dream of telling a painter to just give their paintings away for free, would we? Yet once their art is digital, I've seen people blatantly ignore the copyright on it and the artist's protest in the name of slapping the image on a youtube video. No one wants to go in to a store and physically steal a copy of a game or steal a CD, but they have absolutely no problem with downloading the same thing without ever intending to pay the creator. There's this common belief that we need to treat digital products differently, and it's frankly based on the idea that creative works should never be sold.
I can't think of an easier way to destroy any hope of brilliant creativity, then for everyone to vote with their wallet and spend their money elsewhere. Because I can tell you this: it takes a ton of effort to make something well. Watch a SyFy original movie, then watch Bladerunner. Listen to Nsync, then listen to Gorillaz El Manana. Play a free Flash game, then play Prince of Persia: Sands of Time. The differences are massive, every nuanced part of the latter options is exponentially better than the crap that was tossed out in a fraction of the time. So people don't want to pay? Alright; we'll just take away the option that in no way can be made for $0 profit. We'll make creative works cost people money and time to do, with no promise of payment. We'll make books free, movies free, games free, music free, and all other art free.
After all, if it isn't business, it isn't worth it...
I honestly thought people cared about entertainment, I truly did. Even when I graduated, after watching the music and art classes get cut in favor of more math and science. It looks like the population has been brainwashed to treat creativity as a tinker-job; something that should never make money. Guess it sucks for people who are creative but not good at anything else...
The point I was making was that less than 1% make millions, with the rest scraping it together:P
I guess, what I'm ultimately trying to say is that a large chunk of their revenue, the part that lets them comfortably, relies on the sale of software. Demanding that they give it away for free because it suits us better would be about as silly as a game company demanding Adobe Photoshop for free because it's just software. A lot of man hours go into producing software; I'll stick to music and games for the examples.
CD: Finding the right recording studio, hiring any backup musicians needed (see: Gorillaz), all while spending months recording it just right, erasing entire songs for having so much as a single note out of tune.
Game: Finding the right company to pay for the costs of the game, hiring the artists, programmers, sound engineers, voice actors, and everyone else involved, purchasing the licenses for the equipment (some game engines cost 20 mil to make, but sell licenses to game companies for $11k per head using the software), purchasing state of the art equipment (mo cap, for example), all while spending three years from start to finish making the game itself.
The average AAA game costs 50 mil to make; if they just set that out for free and hoped they'd get a few support phonecalls, that would be a gamble to even make the stock market blush.
Entertainment industries cannot be treated the same as all other industries. Their products are used for fun only, but require immense amounts of creativity. Just look at a "game" like Second Life; the average user has about the creativity of a drooling ape, especially when compared to actual game designers. I guess I just don't understand why there's so much hostility towards paying game makers strictly on the basis of the medium they use. No one here would raise argument to paying for a tabletop game, and the production cost of that is significantly less than what goes into a video game.
It's difficult to accurately prove someone is pirating and purchasing. Most of those research papers are done by survey alone, and most people would prefer to skew the data by making themselves sound better.
Unless, of course, the research papers were actively snooping on their torrent downloads and then checking their purchase history on all of their cards, as well as examining their receipts for cash transactions.
The problem with your second statement is that most digital stores are mind numbingly easy to use. They show a pretty picture of what you wanna purchase, you click it, you sign in, you pay. Done and done. That's a few clicks. Piracy, in the mean time, requires searching through several sites for a legitimate, working copy whilst praying someone didn't decide to be a dick and embed a trojan in it, then going out and pirating a copy of the proper iso tools to install the game, then dealing with any glitches or hiccups caused by the torrent itself, all while waiting weeks for seeds.
Let's face it: pirates aren't happy to pay for good games. I again turn to Sims 2. That was a physical store game, no digital downloads. That was before the boom of digital stores. Majorly pirated game. Hell, if you think good digital stores stop piracy, I invite you to browse the torrent sites for Left 4 Dead. Way more than 0, eh? But, that's odd; isn't/. always going on about how amazing their online store is? How they're happy to pay for it? How is it, then, that L4D is being pirated at all?
Judging from people I've spoken to, they feel entitled to get the game for free. Makes me a little sad, because the software, man hours, and sheer talent poured into every game that isn't some dinky flash game costs a whole hell of a lot more than $0.
Being available and being downloaded are two very different things. How many copies of shovelware are being downloaded instead of purchased? Their demographic for those games happens to be the sort of demographic that barely understands how e-mail works, let alone how to get a proper emulator and ROM.
They don't pirate crappy games; as I said, just check the torrents. How many seeds/leeches/downloads on those Pony DS games? How about Pokemon DS games? See a -slight- difference there?
Terrorism is the convenient excuse doled up for why we should allow citizens to become slaves to their government. As I said, this all smells mildly like V for Vendetta: they're trying to make us fear our own government.
Network play: certainly a cash cow for multiplayer games that are online, but has nothing to do with offline games.
Support:....yeah. Unless they make their games prohibitively challenging in such a way that the user is inclined to get help before just giving up, this won't rake in much cash. I've been gaming for 12 years, and I haven't called for support on any of my 500 games.
Concerts: this works for musicians. It's not exactly fair, though.
Yes, support works well...for NON entertainment. When someone wants to be entertained, they don't want to have to spend several hours trying to sort out a problem with the help of some stranger.
Since you branched out to music, I'll branch that way too.
I know an Indie band's drummer. He spent every weekend doing a concert. Well, at the end of a college year of playing every weekend, he came out....in the red. They'd needed equipment upgrades, which unfortunately clashed with what little profit they made. Whenever someone says musician, they think of the millionaires in their mansions who throw tantrums and close Napster. The sad fact is that 1% of the music market is successful in such a way; the rest break even or make a bit of a profit. If we assume that paying for music is a travesty if it isn't live, a musician would need to play live at as many venues as possible all over the country, if not the world, to even hope to achieve the profits they could have achieved if they could only sell their albums.
"After the enormous horror and tragedy of 9/11, why have the past eight years been so safe in the U.S.?"
"If you're a representative of al-Qaida trying to make a statement in the U.S., it's much harder. You just don't have the people, and you're probably going to slip up and get caught."
If you actually read his words, he said that it's much harder to make a big statement terrorist-wise, because the longer it takes you to do it the more likely you are to get caught. He didn't literally say "The US is safer because of 9/11", but he did make the comments that post-9/11 terrorism is all about scale, and that it's harder to pull off a large scale terrorist act because of the threat of being caught.
The illusion of safety is what we earned. Just because we haven't been attacked doesn't mean other countries haven't been. Furthermore, if the plan of a terrorist is to incite terror through violence, they definitely fucking achieved their mission. The average drooling moron is scared shitless of terrorists, and covers it by being excessively racist towards Arabs.
Something smells mildly like V for Vendetta around here...
Where's the money come from to pay the game programmers, the game artists, the designers? The music makers, the script writers, the voice actors? The concept artists, the factory workers, the advertisers?
Yeah, free flash games are free. But they're usually made by one person, or a small group, in their free time. And no free game is as massive as, say, Bioshock.
I mean, who's going to pay the team that makes the software? Or the team that made the software that the team used to make the software? If not the person using their software, than who? The government?
If you're anti-shovelware, then you damn well aren't considering paying for software obscene.
Because...Sims 2 wasn't exactly what the users wanted? Because Modern Warfare 2 totally sucked? Peruse the torrent sites. Go on, I'll wait.
No really, check them and come back.
Oh, what's that? The crappy games aren't being pirated to the extent that the amazing ones are? What are the user reviews on the most popular pirated games? 7/10 or higher, usually. What about My Little Pony: The Farm 19? That being torrented AT ALL? No?
Sorry, but pirates aren't pirating games that are 'total crap'. Why the hell would they waste their time on a game that sucked? No; they're pirating the fun games that they want to play, not that boring games they hate.
Usually I am on the side of piracy, but this is not justifiable. Plain and simple: they don't want people playing their game that they spent 50 million making for free. When they see that a large quantity of people are pirating their game, they'll balance their options: lose money on a blockbuster, or gain money on shovelware. The only gamers losing out are the ones that complain when you can't see the nose hairs on the guy you shot through a scope; and if their asses didn't pirate in the first place they wouldn't be losing.
While I'm on the subject, I may as well go all out.
Pirates don't pirate lousy games. Why? Because no one wants to play that game. The games being pirated the most are fun games. So, what message are you really sending the game companies? They see a heavy amount of pirating on their top games, and not as high revenues as there should be to offset it. Greed or not, would you exactly be happy if someone trimmed off even a few dollars from your paycheck? Hell, the average adult bitched when their taxes go up 7%; how would you feel if you saw that several thousand people weren't paying you $60?
But wait, they can't count piracy as a lost sale! Maybe not. There's no way to tell if that person downloaded it and then immediately deleted it. However, if they pirate a game and then play it for 60-70 hours, I'd sure as hell consider that a loss. Stores like Target offer full refund returns if you come back in 30 days with the receipt. If pirates bought the game and returned it, they wouldn't technically be paying. Yet they pirate.
Are they pirating out of protest? What a ridiculous notion. Don't play the game if you don't like it! If you're complaining about a companies evil tactics, you prove nothing by continuing to use their product! That'd be like bitching about McDonalds whilst stealing burgers from them.
They spent several years working on a game, based on reactions from the gaming community. Trends and the like. They spent millions on the tech needed to make it look cool enough for people to buy, because regardless of what the/. community says, the bulk of gamers do want insanely good graphics on top of good gameplay. At the end, they spend millions on advertisements to pump up the hype for a game. But wait! They notice that their previous game had a high piracy rate. So, they spend millions more on DRM in hopes that it will stop piracy.
Well, the gamers see the DRM and freak out! Clearly they must boycott this game! So, they "boycott"; as soon as it's released, the legit players buy it while the pirates crack it and play it. The game companies lose money, and determine stronger DRM is needed.
So, yeah...wow, I had a good karma run. I think I just defended game companies for installing DRM. Pretty sure that means I'm doomed.
Disclaimer: my first posts are made when I first wake up and tend to equate to morning after word vomit.
That being said...
The argument being laid out on the table is that there is a huge difference between shooting at paper targets and simulating shooting at digital targets that look like people. The overall tone of their post was that shooting at paper targets is inherently better for you.
Or, to throw it into your comparison:
"There's a huge difference between going camping and going to see a movie about campers that get eaten by bears. Personally, I'd rather have the scouts go camping then go to see that movie, because what's that movie teaching them?"
Someone doesn't have to use a word to mean that word, for that matter. The insinuation is that video games offer no moral repercussion for mowing down innocent pixels, which teaches bad morals to kids and therefore makes them into mass murderers. Or something.
Yeah, I agree. It's far more dangerous to teach a kid how to virtually fire a weapon at aliens that speak English than it is to teach a kid how to operate a firearm.
Suppose that I sell my neighbor a slip and slide. It's really decked out; it glides faster then any other slip and slide, it has tons of customizable parts, but it's a little pricey. My neighbor is most impressed by the fact that I allow him to change the mechanism that deploys water, so he can have a ridiculously fast and powerful slide.
Well, one day I figure out that someone else I sold one of these slip and slides to was using his modified slip and slide to break windows. I didn't want to be held liable, so I then go to every single person I ever sold one to and install a lock on the water mechanism. But before I do that, I modify how the entire system works. If you tried to change the water mechanism, I installed a fail safe that prevented you from being able to use your slip and slide with anyone besides your family, and cut off your support.
Yes, I know it's not the best comparison in the world, but the basic point is this: If any human being came back to a buyer post-sale and changed the purchased product without consent from the buyer, because someone else did something the seller didn't like, we sure as fuck wouldn't get off free.
If we're gonna treat companies as humans, they can't be allowed special company rights. Plain and simple. Right now, they appear to be blameless, no matter if they rape their customers with hot sauce or purposefully lose billions of dollars.
Because the best way to prepare the next generation to take over is to refuse them for not having a college degree, then refuse them for having the college degree but not the experience...seriously, does someone's skill even matter anymore?
Nobody reads instructions. As noted in older/. articles, nobody even reads Terms of Service, even if they end up surrendering their soul. Instructions are always included in the game itself, and if they aren't, are fairly easy to figure out. I've never used instruction manuals, except for when I'm looking at character bios not included in the game, or artwork.
...RTFP. Halfway through my own post I said it was a pipe dream because of the exact reason that the majority just don't care. It's sad, but it's true. I've tried explaining this to people, and they usually just say "well, I don't feel like thinking about it". People would prefer to not have better because good enough is easier. It's unfortunate, but we're a minority in this country.
Slashdot Mirror
Nah, Google will release their own social network called Friendoogle, which we'll all already be members on because of all of the data mining they do. Social networks are data mining tools; Google hardly needs that. They'd rather do it after the fact, as an after thought really, out of the goodness of their non-evil hearts.
That is, essentially, how Facebook began. The only thing that is different is greed. As college students, they might want to protect privacy. As fresh out of college students, they might look at their massive college debt and start weighing their options. Before you know it, they're paying lip service to advertisers at the expense of their user base. But hey, at least they'll have Ruralville!
This isn't like what you stated at all. It's more like "Oh, automobiles aren't competing with the automobile black market. Why is that? Because they never pay us, but opened up a shop giving away our automobiles." This isn't two different products. It's the same damn product, just with one person taking it without permission and then redistributing it as they see fit.
True, they can gain more money if they move to the global market. But it is their right and their choice to do so. If they don't, it is not your right to take what they have for free. This is entitlement that really needs to be stamped out. You don't deserve the moon just because you can see it for Christ's sakes!
I don't agree with everything the media outlets do. Forcing delays for no reason whatsoever in a connected world like the one we have is unacceptable. It still doesn't justify taking it for free, because you know what? It detracts from their profits when they do release it in your country, meaning that they see less profits there than normal. Ergo, no incentive to release earlier without first seeing if it's successful in the US.
As an anecdote, I once lost my Wii Fit disk; but since I registered my game with them they verified it was mine and sent me another copy, free of charge. My hard drive failed before I could de-authorize my CS2, but Adobe took all of five minutes to give me another authorization when I asked.
The point that I'm trying to make is that it is highly unlikely that every pirate tried to contact said company and was rejected. No; there's a better chance that they lost it and then decided to pirate it instead of talking to the company. What information does that give the company? If a large portion of users were losing their copy instead of just being pirates, the companies would add in extra measures to ensure they didn't lose money on incidents like that. Lack of communication with the company just means that buyers look like pirates.
Now, here's the problem with using the Humble Bundle to try and somehow justify piracy:
1. They put 0 DRM on it. .01. To put it in perspective, most people don't even pick up pennies they find on the ground.
2. They made it absurdly easy to download: fill out the form, pay, done.
3. You could pay them
4. They actually paid for some people's copies when they couldn't figure out how to use the form.
Now, let's look at your reasons for why piracy happened.
1. Someone made a direct link to the download in a forum somewhere and people are too lazy to go back and fill in the form.
That sounds about right.
2. No means of paying in your country and/or no access to a credit card.
That sounds about right, too. However, that is no justification for piracy. If you can't pay, you can't have it. It's sad that their country doesn't have paypal, but the 'no access to a credit card' bit is absurd. No parent or friend could really afford a .01 transaction? Really?
3. You already paid for it once and wants to download it again on your spare computer or monitor.
Cute. Except that they offered you infinite downloads after paying!
4. You're a thievin' moneygrubbing pirate.
Yes, yes you are.
Most people don't pirate because the price is too high. They pirate because there's too many game they want, and they can't afford them all. So, they pay for some, then pirate the rest. Or, in the case of the Humble Bundle, they pirate because they are flaming hypocrites. Humble Bundle listened to pirate complaints: DRM, difficulty of download, cost. What did they get? Piracy.
Point B is, again, not true when pointed to the Humble Bundle. Furthermore, most pirate products are inferior. Only a very small handful of games have crippling DRM, and by very small, I mean maybe ten. I tried pirating Silent Hill 4 once, and the end result was a whole slew of minor issues that weren't present in the official version. I also required ISO mount software; unless I also chose to pirate it once the demon was finished, I'd be out money on that, and there is no justification for the piracy of it!
This is, again, tough shit. There's a very fine type of pork only made in Spain that costs $100 an ounce; I'll never be able to taste that because of the country I live in, unless I go over there, and I damn well won't be able to take it back with me. That does not mean that I should get someone to grab me a full ounce and bring it to me so I can enjoy it. It's not some absurd God given right that we have, to be able to use everything in the world. We need to stop acting like it's our right.
And finally, tough shit. What do you ask them to do? Mail their pennies to the company selling the Humble Bundle? People would pirate it because they were too lazy to send it! Blaming a company for offering every means possible for online transaction is just plain pathetic. Suck it up and stop being so damn entitled!
I actually met with the artist on Machinarium. Very nice guy, you could tell from his voice that he put a lot of love into it...
And yet, even in the comments on that article, there are people justifying the piracy! They could have paid a single penny for the whole package, for infinite downloading rights, and yet still people are defending the piracy!
We wouldn't dream of telling a painter to just give their paintings away for free, would we? Yet once their art is digital, I've seen people blatantly ignore the copyright on it and the artist's protest in the name of slapping the image on a youtube video. No one wants to go in to a store and physically steal a copy of a game or steal a CD, but they have absolutely no problem with downloading the same thing without ever intending to pay the creator. There's this common belief that we need to treat digital products differently, and it's frankly based on the idea that creative works should never be sold.
I can't think of an easier way to destroy any hope of brilliant creativity, then for everyone to vote with their wallet and spend their money elsewhere. Because I can tell you this: it takes a ton of effort to make something well. Watch a SyFy original movie, then watch Bladerunner. Listen to Nsync, then listen to Gorillaz El Manana. Play a free Flash game, then play Prince of Persia: Sands of Time. The differences are massive, every nuanced part of the latter options is exponentially better than the crap that was tossed out in a fraction of the time. So people don't want to pay? Alright; we'll just take away the option that in no way can be made for $0 profit. We'll make creative works cost people money and time to do, with no promise of payment. We'll make books free, movies free, games free, music free, and all other art free.
After all, if it isn't business, it isn't worth it...
I honestly thought people cared about entertainment, I truly did. Even when I graduated, after watching the music and art classes get cut in favor of more math and science. It looks like the population has been brainwashed to treat creativity as a tinker-job; something that should never make money. Guess it sucks for people who are creative but not good at anything else...
I guess, what I'm ultimately trying to say is that a large chunk of their revenue, the part that lets them comfortably, relies on the sale of software. Demanding that they give it away for free because it suits us better would be about as silly as a game company demanding Adobe Photoshop for free because it's just software. A lot of man hours go into producing software; I'll stick to music and games for the examples.
CD: Finding the right recording studio, hiring any backup musicians needed (see: Gorillaz), all while spending months recording it just right, erasing entire songs for having so much as a single note out of tune.
Game: Finding the right company to pay for the costs of the game, hiring the artists, programmers, sound engineers, voice actors, and everyone else involved, purchasing the licenses for the equipment (some game engines cost 20 mil to make, but sell licenses to game companies for $11k per head using the software), purchasing state of the art equipment (mo cap, for example), all while spending three years from start to finish making the game itself.
The average AAA game costs 50 mil to make; if they just set that out for free and hoped they'd get a few support phonecalls, that would be a gamble to even make the stock market blush.
Entertainment industries cannot be treated the same as all other industries. Their products are used for fun only, but require immense amounts of creativity. Just look at a "game" like Second Life; the average user has about the creativity of a drooling ape, especially when compared to actual game designers. I guess I just don't understand why there's so much hostility towards paying game makers strictly on the basis of the medium they use. No one here would raise argument to paying for a tabletop game, and the production cost of that is significantly less than what goes into a video game.
Unless, of course, the research papers were actively snooping on their torrent downloads and then checking their purchase history on all of their cards, as well as examining their receipts for cash transactions.
The problem with your second statement is that most digital stores are mind numbingly easy to use. They show a pretty picture of what you wanna purchase, you click it, you sign in, you pay. Done and done. That's a few clicks. Piracy, in the mean time, requires searching through several sites for a legitimate, working copy whilst praying someone didn't decide to be a dick and embed a trojan in it, then going out and pirating a copy of the proper iso tools to install the game, then dealing with any glitches or hiccups caused by the torrent itself, all while waiting weeks for seeds.
Let's face it: pirates aren't happy to pay for good games. I again turn to Sims 2. That was a physical store game, no digital downloads. That was before the boom of digital stores. Majorly pirated game. Hell, if you think good digital stores stop piracy, I invite you to browse the torrent sites for Left 4 Dead. Way more than 0, eh? But, that's odd; isn't /. always going on about how amazing their online store is? How they're happy to pay for it? How is it, then, that L4D is being pirated at all?
Judging from people I've spoken to, they feel entitled to get the game for free. Makes me a little sad, because the software, man hours, and sheer talent poured into every game that isn't some dinky flash game costs a whole hell of a lot more than $0.
They don't pirate crappy games; as I said, just check the torrents. How many seeds/leeches/downloads on those Pony DS games? How about Pokemon DS games? See a -slight- difference there?
Terrorism is the convenient excuse doled up for why we should allow citizens to become slaves to their government. As I said, this all smells mildly like V for Vendetta: they're trying to make us fear our own government.
Support:
Concerts: this works for musicians. It's not exactly fair, though.
Yes, support works well...for NON entertainment. When someone wants to be entertained, they don't want to have to spend several hours trying to sort out a problem with the help of some stranger.
Since you branched out to music, I'll branch that way too.
I know an Indie band's drummer. He spent every weekend doing a concert. Well, at the end of a college year of playing every weekend, he came out....in the red. They'd needed equipment upgrades, which unfortunately clashed with what little profit they made. Whenever someone says musician, they think of the millionaires in their mansions who throw tantrums and close Napster. The sad fact is that 1% of the music market is successful in such a way; the rest break even or make a bit of a profit. If we assume that paying for music is a travesty if it isn't live, a musician would need to play live at as many venues as possible all over the country, if not the world, to even hope to achieve the profits they could have achieved if they could only sell their albums.
"If you're a representative of al-Qaida trying to make a statement in the U.S., it's much harder. You just don't have the people, and you're probably going to slip up and get caught."
If you actually read his words, he said that it's much harder to make a big statement terrorist-wise, because the longer it takes you to do it the more likely you are to get caught. He didn't literally say "The US is safer because of 9/11", but he did make the comments that post-9/11 terrorism is all about scale, and that it's harder to pull off a large scale terrorist act because of the threat of being caught.
Something smells mildly like V for Vendetta around here...
Yeah, free flash games are free. But they're usually made by one person, or a small group, in their free time. And no free game is as massive as, say, Bioshock.
I mean, who's going to pay the team that makes the software? Or the team that made the software that the team used to make the software? If not the person using their software, than who? The government?
If you're anti-shovelware, then you damn well aren't considering paying for software obscene.
No really, check them and come back.
Oh, what's that? The crappy games aren't being pirated to the extent that the amazing ones are? What are the user reviews on the most popular pirated games? 7/10 or higher, usually. What about My Little Pony: The Farm 19? That being torrented AT ALL? No?
Sorry, but pirates aren't pirating games that are 'total crap'. Why the hell would they waste their time on a game that sucked? No; they're pirating the fun games that they want to play, not that boring games they hate.
Usually I am on the side of piracy, but this is not justifiable. Plain and simple: they don't want people playing their game that they spent 50 million making for free. When they see that a large quantity of people are pirating their game, they'll balance their options: lose money on a blockbuster, or gain money on shovelware. The only gamers losing out are the ones that complain when you can't see the nose hairs on the guy you shot through a scope; and if their asses didn't pirate in the first place they wouldn't be losing.
While I'm on the subject, I may as well go all out.
Pirates don't pirate lousy games. Why? Because no one wants to play that game. The games being pirated the most are fun games. So, what message are you really sending the game companies? They see a heavy amount of pirating on their top games, and not as high revenues as there should be to offset it. Greed or not, would you exactly be happy if someone trimmed off even a few dollars from your paycheck? Hell, the average adult bitched when their taxes go up 7%; how would you feel if you saw that several thousand people weren't paying you $60?
But wait, they can't count piracy as a lost sale! Maybe not. There's no way to tell if that person downloaded it and then immediately deleted it. However, if they pirate a game and then play it for 60-70 hours, I'd sure as hell consider that a loss. Stores like Target offer full refund returns if you come back in 30 days with the receipt. If pirates bought the game and returned it, they wouldn't technically be paying. Yet they pirate.
Are they pirating out of protest? What a ridiculous notion. Don't play the game if you don't like it! If you're complaining about a companies evil tactics, you prove nothing by continuing to use their product! That'd be like bitching about McDonalds whilst stealing burgers from them.
They spent several years working on a game, based on reactions from the gaming community. Trends and the like. They spent millions on the tech needed to make it look cool enough for people to buy, because regardless of what the /. community says, the bulk of gamers do want insanely good graphics on top of good gameplay. At the end, they spend millions on advertisements to pump up the hype for a game. But wait! They notice that their previous game had a high piracy rate. So, they spend millions more on DRM in hopes that it will stop piracy.
Well, the gamers see the DRM and freak out! Clearly they must boycott this game! So, they "boycott"; as soon as it's released, the legit players buy it while the pirates crack it and play it. The game companies lose money, and determine stronger DRM is needed.
So, yeah...wow, I had a good karma run. I think I just defended game companies for installing DRM. Pretty sure that means I'm doomed.
Because Apple isn't tracking down individuals who got a copy of their friend's itunes purchases and then suing them for 3 million dollars >.>
That being said...
The argument being laid out on the table is that there is a huge difference between shooting at paper targets and simulating shooting at digital targets that look like people. The overall tone of their post was that shooting at paper targets is inherently better for you.
Or, to throw it into your comparison:
"There's a huge difference between going camping and going to see a movie about campers that get eaten by bears. Personally, I'd rather have the scouts go camping then go to see that movie, because what's that movie teaching them?"
Someone doesn't have to use a word to mean that word, for that matter. The insinuation is that video games offer no moral repercussion for mowing down innocent pixels, which teaches bad morals to kids and therefore makes them into mass murderers. Or something.
I'm just gonna lie down.
Wait, what?
I sure wish I could just tell people that I won't fix my mistakes, no matter what they do to try and force me to.
Let's go down anecdote lane, shall we?
Suppose that I sell my neighbor a slip and slide. It's really decked out; it glides faster then any other slip and slide, it has tons of customizable parts, but it's a little pricey. My neighbor is most impressed by the fact that I allow him to change the mechanism that deploys water, so he can have a ridiculously fast and powerful slide.
Well, one day I figure out that someone else I sold one of these slip and slides to was using his modified slip and slide to break windows. I didn't want to be held liable, so I then go to every single person I ever sold one to and install a lock on the water mechanism. But before I do that, I modify how the entire system works. If you tried to change the water mechanism, I installed a fail safe that prevented you from being able to use your slip and slide with anyone besides your family, and cut off your support.
Yes, I know it's not the best comparison in the world, but the basic point is this: If any human being came back to a buyer post-sale and changed the purchased product without consent from the buyer, because someone else did something the seller didn't like, we sure as fuck wouldn't get off free.
If we're gonna treat companies as humans, they can't be allowed special company rights. Plain and simple. Right now, they appear to be blameless, no matter if they rape their customers with hot sauce or purposefully lose billions of dollars.
Because the best way to prepare the next generation to take over is to refuse them for not having a college degree, then refuse them for having the college degree but not the experience...seriously, does someone's skill even matter anymore?
Nobody reads instructions. As noted in older /. articles, nobody even reads Terms of Service, even if they end up surrendering their soul. Instructions are always included in the game itself, and if they aren't, are fairly easy to figure out. I've never used instruction manuals, except for when I'm looking at character bios not included in the game, or artwork.
...RTFP. Halfway through my own post I said it was a pipe dream because of the exact reason that the majority just don't care. It's sad, but it's true. I've tried explaining this to people, and they usually just say "well, I don't feel like thinking about it". People would prefer to not have better because good enough is easier. It's unfortunate, but we're a minority in this country.