Jakob Nielsen's column last year mentioned web wallets - "easier than credit card" way to pay over the web.
Flexible online payment methods make it easier for small players to operate on the marketplace - whether your talking about content providers asking for tips, or super specialized vendors providing better service than their mammoth competitors.
Involuntary micropayments are NOT the way to go, we need something like PayPal, but with universal access and ease-of-use that is comparable/superior to live cash money.
In Tribes, players are a bunch of cavemen trying to grow a lot of healthy children. Even though there is a winner (the player with most healthy adult offspring in the end!), the game is hardly zero-sum as all players are pitted against nature in a fight for survival.
Limited resources in this game primarily means the members of opposing sex in the tribe, and food. So there can be some zero-sum aspects to it as well.
Civilization by Avalon Hill
The original Civilization that existed before computer version
is pretty competitive, but alongside the limited resources (=land) there is also the unlimited resource of cultural/technological advancement.
These two are combined by trading (land gives you goods -> trading goods wisely generates points -> you can "buy" cultural advancement)
BTW, even though the game mechanics are not zero-sum, the game can still be competitive. The goals set to players (or ones that the players set to themselves) determine the competitiveness, for example: are you aiming to suppress your adversaries with maximum efficiency, or are you just trying to build a esthetically pleasing game for yourself.
"Our cells rely on the delicate balance of communications signals to grow normally and produce blood cells. However, when a signal cannot be stopped, the cells overgrow and we run into trouble. We have discovered that it is CD45 that sends the 'ceasefire' signal to cells."
Yep, the "delicate balance" of human body has certainly been affected, why else would so many suffer from heart attacks, cancer, arithitis, allergies and so on?
We are fighting against this "imbalance" in our bodies with precision drugs. Medical science has been going fast forward for some time now, but how many degenerative diseases have been cured?
Take a look at how our environment (foods eaten, exercise, air quality, intake of various chemicals, stress level) has changed from the time we evolved.
Since by definition an unknown artist is, well, unknown, who the hell is ever going to find their songs?
How about live shows, word-of-mouth, media exposure.. ?
For an artist to be TOTALLY unknown, he/she would have to live in a cave, as far as I'm concerned..
You can't even get signed to a major without doing your grassroots promotion first - unless there's some producer who has come up with some "marketable concept", like a so-called boy band and your hired to be part of that..
E-mail and web sites are making it easier to globally promote and distribute your product on a low budget (as we all knew already).
A piece of music has to reward its listeners, though, for this networked word-of-mouth promotion to get flying. On the other hand, if you just want to give many people a piece of *ish nobody really likes, then - well - you do need a corporate marketing budget.
Remember Mahir, a global celebrity? He didn't need a corporate funding to get rep.. I'm not saying artists should try to be more like him, but his case demonstrates the of the power of e-mail and web site.
Slashdot Mirror
Flexible online payment methods make it easier for small players to operate on the marketplace - whether your talking about content providers asking for tips, or super specialized vendors providing better service than their mammoth competitors.
Involuntary micropayments are NOT the way to go, we need something like PayPal, but with universal access and ease-of-use that is comparable/superior to live cash money.
Transaction costs keep mankind down!
TRIBES (aka DARWINOPOLY) by Steve Jackson Games
In Tribes, players are a bunch of cavemen trying to grow a lot of healthy children. Even though there is a winner (the player with most healthy adult offspring in the end!), the game is hardly zero-sum as all players are pitted against nature in a fight for survival.
Limited resources in this game primarily means the members of opposing sex in the tribe, and food. So there can be some zero-sum aspects to it as well.
Civilization by Avalon Hill
The original Civilization that existed before computer version is pretty competitive, but alongside the limited resources (=land) there is also the unlimited resource of cultural/technological advancement. These two are combined by trading (land gives you goods -> trading goods wisely generates points -> you can "buy" cultural advancement)
BTW, even though the game mechanics are not zero-sum, the game can still be competitive. The goals set to players (or ones that the players set to themselves) determine the competitiveness, for example: are you aiming to suppress your adversaries with maximum efficiency, or are you just trying to build a esthetically pleasing game for yourself.
Yep, the "delicate balance" of human body has certainly been affected, why else would so many suffer from heart attacks, cancer, arithitis, allergies and so on?
We are fighting against this "imbalance" in our bodies with precision drugs. Medical science has been going fast forward for some time now, but how many degenerative diseases have been cured?
Take a look at how our environment (foods eaten, exercise, air quality, intake of various chemicals, stress level) has changed from the time we evolved.
Do you see a system incompability issue?
Good luck debugging!
Since by definition an unknown artist is, well, unknown, who the hell is ever going to find their songs?
How about live shows, word-of-mouth, media exposure.. ?
For an artist to be TOTALLY unknown, he/she would have to live in a cave, as far as I'm concerned..
You can't even get signed to a major without doing your grassroots promotion first - unless there's some producer who has come up with some "marketable concept", like a so-called boy band and your hired to be part of that..
E-mail and web sites are making it easier to globally promote and distribute your product on a low budget (as we all knew already).
A piece of music has to reward its listeners, though, for this networked word-of-mouth promotion to get flying. On the other hand, if you just want to give many people a piece of *ish nobody really likes, then - well - you do need a corporate marketing budget.
Remember Mahir, a global celebrity? He didn't need a corporate funding to get rep.. I'm not saying artists should try to be more like him, but his case demonstrates the of the power of e-mail and web site.