And where does the money people have to pay for things come from?
Do you have a money tree in your backyard?
Business... large and small generates wealth. They pay labor to assist in that generation of wealth. That generation of wealth pays for everything.
Do they pass costs on to consumers? Yes. But the money the consumers pay for things with came from business.
And before you tell me some marxist bullshit about all wealth coming from the worker, then why isn't africa rich? Because its got a lot of people in it.
Do you know what it doesn't have a lot of... ? Business. Mostly because their political and social problems cause them to shoot/rob/steal from business to the point where its toxic to any business.
And as a result... they occasionally literally starve in parts of the world that under sane administration would be bread baskets. Its like starving to death in California. But anything is possible if you screw over the very institutions required to sustain life.
I didn't say we owe them. I said they pay for everything. That is a huge difference.
Think of the farmer that pays for everything by raising a crop.
He bases his whole life around that crop. He gets up at 4 am to start work and goes to bed around 6 pm because the sun is down and his work is done for the day. His life is dominated by the seasons. Dominated by growing seasons. Its all about water, crop rotation, pests, and the harvest.
Why? Because the crop pays for everything in his life.
Does he owe the crop anything? No. But if he wants to survive he must protect and nurturer that crop. Because the crop pays for everything.
Now look to the cities... how do they eat? Well, some of them are just on food stamps. Lets ignore the welfare situation and look at the people in cities that actually pay for their food.
How do they do it? Business. It pays for everything. And you can either respect that fact and protect your crop or wither like the farmer that ignores his crop.
Businesses are great in the same way that crops are great. They produce wealth and valuable goods and services which can be used, sold, or traded for barter.
So no, you do not owe business anything. But if you're not a fucking moron you'll do everything in your power to see that they are as successful as possible because their success largely translates into the success of your society.
Might a multinational profit in your city and pass almost none of the wealth on to you? Obviously... which is why I'm talking about businesses based in your communities. Businesses that don't just have a toe hold but a whole actual foot. Their success is your success.
Fuck them and they'll leave or scale back their operations and your community will wither and increasingly go on welfare.
Native Americans were not competitive with western society. That is in large part why they were conquered.
I am not justifying that. Merely pointing out that they were not competitive... that put in the same environment they were at the mercy of such powers.
If you call that success... being weak and utterly dependent on other powers to simply respect you... then I don't know what to tell you.
Human beings being what we are.... conquest of weaker powers is largely inevitable. All it takes it time for the stars to come right.
So good job, you got indoctrinated by marxists in a country built by capitalists that beat marxists and generally humiliated their whole sick little empire.
You were scammed. I'd feel sorry for you if you weren't also a douche bag.
If I were you, I'd demand a refund on that education of yours.
Do you have any more heartbreaking confessions of misfortune and incompetence?
As an aside, I had an english teacher that tried to push marxism in his class once... this was in college by the way. I got him fired. I gathered the signatures of 40 classmates, about 20 members of the alumni, and I took it to the dean.
It was not acceptable. I was paying them to educate me. If you had brain you'd have done the same rather then sit through it for years only to come out another crypto-communist drone.
If a farmer survives by planting his fields and reaping his crops... how do the people in cities survive?
The farmer lives by the needs of his crops. He watches the weather. He remains aware of the nature of his plants. He watches for pests. He keeps track of the market for his crops. He knows his seasons.
Do you think the cities can survive while paying less attention to what keeps them alive?
Is it fascism for the farmer to be forced to harvest his entire crop on a specific day or lose everything?
No... its just reality.
Same thing for the city dwellers and the corporations. Its reality.
Denying it is childish. Pay attention to what keeps you alive and keep it healthy.
Actually they both do... The Dakota's are home to one of the biggest petro chemical booms in the country right now. There are massive mining and drilling operations happening throughout the area.
And the Carolinas are home to some of the bigger factory complexes in the country at this point.
So... you stand corrected.
*yawn*
Seriously... millions of people live in the Carolinas and you think there isn't a corporation there? All due respect, but that's fucking idiotic.
I can only assume your further comments on this point will be equally stupid... so lets just stop here... I have nothing to offer you but ridicule and abuse if that is what you're bringing to the table. And I'll feel fully justified in my scorn. Shame on you and good day, sir.
I'm not a physicist but every description I've heard of dark matter more or less boils down to "we've noticed there is more gravity in areas where we don't see mass. And since only mass can generate gravity we have missing mass. We're going to call that missing mass dark matter."
Okay... fine... but that's entirely theoretical. No one has actually found dark matter... as in put it under a microscope or touched it. So... until then, lets not come up with any halfassed theories regarding it.
Everything. And at some level, society needs to be built around facilitating and accommodating business. Again... they pay for EVERYTHING.
Should any one business get preferential treatment? No.
However, business itself should get preferential treatment.
Why? Because if business is unhappy in a given area... the area dies. Look at Detroit. That's what happens if you piss all over business for decades. And keep in mind, Detroit has had tens of billions pumped into it by the federal government to try and keep it alive. Over many years going back generations now. It doesn't matter. Piss on business and you'll wither and die.
So... getting to the issue of these private police and bus passes. Why are these companies giving the local government extra money? Because the local government is shaking them down. Google for example is having its ability to commute workers into and out of San Fransisco interfered with... that's not sustainable. Either it has to stop or Google can't maintain a workforce in the city. Google has therefore attempted to bribe the city into doing something the city should have done at no additional cost.
As to facebook... no idea why they're buying the police. But I can only assume they've had security problems and the local police were not responsive. As a result... they've felt the need to incentive assistance.
All told the whole thing is pretty sad. And before someone talks about the evil corporations, lets get something straight... look around the country in more business friendly areas. Take texas or South Dakota or either of the Carolinas... how much of this police buying are we seeing there? Not much. So California is where we're seeing this now.
That's that problem with more interpretations of people's morality. You have to remember that at base level, people are amoral. That isn't to say they are unmoral... just amoral. The natural response is a response without morality.
Now we can condition morality into people, but its just a condition. Its an artificial construct imposed on natural behavior.
And an artificial construct can be pretty much anything. If you want to talk about human nature, then you have to examine humanity WITHOUT that construct. And that humanity is opportunistic.
If you're interested in the real truth of it, then you'll see you have to strip away culture to see what people are actually like at base level.
Should we subsume our identity into something else?
What? Nationalism and patriotism? If not that then what legitimacy would that identity have?... Organized religion?
I don't think our individualism is excessive. In fact, i think many of the problems we've had lately have come from an erosion in our individualism.
You note that much of our individualism is conformist. Well, is it individualism at all then? Probably not.
Individuals don't seek conformity. They seek individual fulfillment. This strikes some as anti social. But then conformist pressure is considered "social" behavior despite being restrictive and frequently harmful to the individual.
Here is the other issue with individuals. They're individual. Once someone truly divorces themselves from conformity they cannot be grouped without misrepresentation. Thus, once that happens you can point at ONE individual and judge him. But you can't judge them all since they're all distinct.
Most of the tragedies in human history can be traced to misguided GROUP action.
Go through history and find examples of individuals that did great harm.
The most you'll find is the occasional serial killer. They're very uncommon and their harm while traumatic is relatively minor.
In fact, everyone does that... its not criminal... its human.
We are as a species... opportunists. It is our default attitude as a species.
We are not predators, herd animals, ambushers... etc... we are opportunists. We pick the low hanging fruit. It is our nature.
You put something in front of us that blocks us from getting what we want and we'll find ways around it or through it. Or we'll just do something else if that's more profitable.
In this case, they found a cheap way around the export ban. So they started doing it.
It is a little ballsy of BP though... given their recent history I'd think they'd want to stay away from that sort of thing.
I do agree they shouldn't be doing that. But don't blame all corporations for that behavior. It is human.
The rooting operation typically takes place at the firmware/bios level. At that level, iOS 7 is irrelevant. If you wipe... utterly erase storage memory on an ipad or smart phone that still tends to leave the bios/firmware memory intact. Access that, trigger the flash program... and simply overwrite. You'd need a default ipad rom to write but those can't be hard to find.
Desalination will require nuclear power to be economical.
So... you want to deal with the anti nuclear lobby? Because I assure you... they're about as much fun as a bag full of leeches.
As to water conservation, Californian agriculture has not radically increased their water usage in decades and yet we have less water now then we did then.
That questions whether we have less water now then we did then or if there is another user of water that has increased their water usage.
Its not tough to figure out. The cities grew quickly and the water infrustructure was not expanded to compensate. So now they're drinking the farmer's water.
That what is happening. In all fairness, the cities should build the desalination plants since they're the ones that expanded their usage. What is more, many of those farmers have water rights that go back over 100 years. You and invalidate those water rights by eminent domain... but that's just a fancy word for legal theft. Yes, they compensate people usually when they do that, but often the compensation falls far short of the value.
In any case, your idea will generally mean less production in Californian agriculture. Conversation typically has that effect. Or if you prefer simply higher costs. If we shift to green house growing for example that will increase costs radically.
My point was that we need produce to be cheap. Conservation makes it more expensive. So my example was not bad... it simply touched on an issue you are unwilling to be flexible upon. Which is too bad. It means you're ultimately in favor of making produce too expensive for poor people to buy. Which is sort of fucked up... but I do appreciate that isn't your intention. Its just the next effect of not paying attention to the consequences of policies.
When all is said and done, please look at the final result. Then tell me if that's desirable or not... and then see if there was something up the chain that could have been adjusted to improve the situation. Just my two cents.
With game content that's more reasonable given that you don't know if you'll actually like it.
You can try a new game at no risk. How many games do I go through and reject in a given year? Dozens at least. Imagine if I paid 60 dollars for each just to know I don't like it?
Free demos are another way around that problem but we've seen demos largely disappear from the market. And on consoles they were never really an option. The closure of the blockbuster chains was a blow to console gamers amongst other things because they can't rent a game to try it.
So how do you know if you'll like a game?
So freemium games let you do that. Again, I don't like the business model because games trend back to their arcade roots to some extent. The game becomes increasingly designed around getting you to put another quarter in the machine. And I think that's not a good direction.
My ideal would be a kickstarter/steam pre-order type system where the developer only has to make the game to satisfy their loan obligations. No need for example to sell 5 million copies which has been a target many recent AAA titles have had to hit or the game was considered a failure.
Alternatively, I am a big fan of the serialized game concept. Yes, getting the engine ready for the first installment will take a disproportionate amount of time. However, once you've got that in place you can not only make multiple installments of a given game but you can also tweak that pilot to create distinct franchises that can likewise be serialized.
Not a fan of the current business model enjoyed by the big publishing houses since the games are often so desperate to make the investment back that the content is frequently boring and stupid.
You are correct to the extent that the initial episode in an episodic game will require more work then the second episode. However, that is true in television as well. And yet, television is a much more stable business model then say movies. With television, you produce a pilot episode and release it. Often by the time of release additional episodes are either in development or completed. Through the first year of release especially the production company gets a firm idea of what kind of return and what their profits are likely to be going forward.
A show that isn't very popular will generally be canceled after either half a season or a full season. Where as a popular show can see its budget increase radically. In some cases by 100 times. And can be sustained there after for decades with a loyal and reliable fan base.
Contrast that with the summer blockbuster business model which is how most commercial movies sustain themselves. For one thing, each movie is going to cost you about 200 million to make... EACH. And that often doesn't include marketing and other associated costs. And that is before receiving a DIME in return.
That is huge risk and the only way you can pay that back is through a big success.
Okay, how do you manage that kind of risk? Well, two things have to happen. ONE the movie or AAA game has to be published by a large publisher that can survive if the game fails and it loses the 200 million dollars utterly. So only big companies like Warner Brothers or EA can make this sort of content because only they can afford to fail occasionally. TWO the content has to appeal to the majority of the market. Ideally everyone.
Most of the problems with the modern game and movie industry can be traced back to this model and the constraints it puts on development.
If you like bland, boring, dumbed down, gruel... then continue to support the existing model. Its for idiots. Why? Because its targeted at most people... and most people. And that means you're dealing with content that can be appreciated by morons.
Now, television obvious is often likewise bland boring gruel as well. But its also generally through through major networks that likewise are very expensive and thus you see something of the same problem.
Games are different. They aren't distributed through NBC in real time. But rather can be digitally downloaded from any server with payment made through paypal or any sort of business model you can imagine.
As such, games CAN attain a higher degree of quality then most movies or television shows IF they avoid the business models that force them to limit their quality.
The price they have to pay for that however is managing their own risk. Small game companies cannot invest 2 years of development time in a huge staff and have it not be a huge success. What is more, there is no way to know if a game will be a huge success. Therefore, they cannot make large AAA games in one shot and then charge one price at the end.
They can either make cheap games that can fail without destroying the company. OR they can release episodic games that won't be cheap but will be very short. If they're not popular they can cancel the series.
The problem is that making AAA games where you charge 60 dollars after 2 years of development is dangerous. Great companies have died repeatedly when they've gone to market only to not have the game sell as well as they need it to sell.
Freemium and microtransaction are a different business model that has shown itself to be successful.
I don't like it either.
I prefer a preorder/kickstarter system where the games are funded not with big bank loans but fan/customer contributions/purchases prior to release.
OR
The telltale system of serialized gaming where small games are released about once a month to once every two months. Each piece having somewhere between 1 to 2 hours of content. Then you offer customers/fans the ability to purchase games on a per episode basis or a season pass. That way rather then investing 2 years of time and waiting for a big payout at the end, you can test your market every 2 months. This keeps you from over investing in a game that might not be popular. Further, though this hasn't been done yet... this has the potential to allow a developer to produce a game with the same business model as the Simpsons... You never have to stop releasing episodes if people keep buying them. So rather then make one game you could keep releasing episodes for 20 years for the same game. Up to the customer base.
Slashdot Mirror
your point?...
And where does the money people have to pay for things come from?
Do you have a money tree in your backyard?
Business... large and small generates wealth. They pay labor to assist in that generation of wealth. That generation of wealth pays for everything.
Do they pass costs on to consumers? Yes. But the money the consumers pay for things with came from business.
And before you tell me some marxist bullshit about all wealth coming from the worker, then why isn't africa rich? Because its got a lot of people in it.
Do you know what it doesn't have a lot of... ? Business. Mostly because their political and social problems cause them to shoot/rob/steal from business to the point where its toxic to any business.
And as a result... they occasionally literally starve in parts of the world that under sane administration would be bread baskets. Its like starving to death in California. But anything is possible if you screw over the very institutions required to sustain life.
It was two cases actually... the article itself cited two.
How many would you need to feel a pattern were justifed?
Three? Thirty? Three hundred?
Give me a number.
I didn't say we owe them. I said they pay for everything. That is a huge difference.
Think of the farmer that pays for everything by raising a crop.
He bases his whole life around that crop. He gets up at 4 am to start work and goes to bed around 6 pm because the sun is down and his work is done for the day. His life is dominated by the seasons. Dominated by growing seasons. Its all about water, crop rotation, pests, and the harvest.
Why? Because the crop pays for everything in his life.
Does he owe the crop anything? No. But if he wants to survive he must protect and nurturer that crop. Because the crop pays for everything.
Now look to the cities... how do they eat? Well, some of them are just on food stamps. Lets ignore the welfare situation and look at the people in cities that actually pay for their food.
How do they do it? Business. It pays for everything. And you can either respect that fact and protect your crop or wither like the farmer that ignores his crop.
Businesses are great in the same way that crops are great. They produce wealth and valuable goods and services which can be used, sold, or traded for barter.
So no, you do not owe business anything. But if you're not a fucking moron you'll do everything in your power to see that they are as successful as possible because their success largely translates into the success of your society.
Might a multinational profit in your city and pass almost none of the wealth on to you? Obviously... which is why I'm talking about businesses based in your communities. Businesses that don't just have a toe hold but a whole actual foot. Their success is your success.
Fuck them and they'll leave or scale back their operations and your community will wither and increasingly go on welfare.
Choose... cake or death.
Native Americans were not competitive with western society. That is in large part why they were conquered.
I am not justifying that. Merely pointing out that they were not competitive... that put in the same environment they were at the mercy of such powers.
If you call that success... being weak and utterly dependent on other powers to simply respect you... then I don't know what to tell you.
Human beings being what we are.... conquest of weaker powers is largely inevitable. All it takes it time for the stars to come right.
Actually that's just marxism...
So good job, you got indoctrinated by marxists in a country built by capitalists that beat marxists and generally humiliated their whole sick little empire.
You were scammed. I'd feel sorry for you if you weren't also a douche bag.
If I were you, I'd demand a refund on that education of yours.
Do you have any more heartbreaking confessions of misfortune and incompetence?
As an aside, I had an english teacher that tried to push marxism in his class once... this was in college by the way. I got him fired. I gathered the signatures of 40 classmates, about 20 members of the alumni, and I took it to the dean.
It was not acceptable. I was paying them to educate me. If you had brain you'd have done the same rather then sit through it for years only to come out another crypto-communist drone.
nor does saying that invalidate a point...
Neither actually.
If a farmer survives by planting his fields and reaping his crops... how do the people in cities survive?
The farmer lives by the needs of his crops. He watches the weather. He remains aware of the nature of his plants. He watches for pests. He keeps track of the market for his crops. He knows his seasons.
Do you think the cities can survive while paying less attention to what keeps them alive?
Is it fascism for the farmer to be forced to harvest his entire crop on a specific day or lose everything?
No... its just reality.
Same thing for the city dwellers and the corporations. Its reality.
Denying it is childish. Pay attention to what keeps you alive and keep it healthy.
Or die.
Your choice.
They didn't make shitty cars because the companies didn't know how to make higher quality cars.
They made shitty cars because they couldn't afford to make higher quality cars.
Where was all the money going?
Exactly.
Actually they both do... The Dakota's are home to one of the biggest petro chemical booms in the country right now. There are massive mining and drilling operations happening throughout the area.
And the Carolinas are home to some of the bigger factory complexes in the country at this point.
So... you stand corrected.
*yawn*
Seriously... millions of people live in the Carolinas and you think there isn't a corporation there? All due respect, but that's fucking idiotic.
I can only assume your further comments on this point will be equally stupid... so lets just stop here... I have nothing to offer you but ridicule and abuse if that is what you're bringing to the table. And I'll feel fully justified in my scorn. Shame on you and good day, sir.
... But concerning theories with a lot of evidence supporting them, you had better present a comprehensive argument.
I'm not a physicist but every description I've heard of dark matter more or less boils down to "we've noticed there is more gravity in areas where we don't see mass. And since only mass can generate gravity we have missing mass. We're going to call that missing mass dark matter."
Okay... fine... but that's entirely theoretical. No one has actually found dark matter... as in put it under a microscope or touched it. So... until then, lets not come up with any halfassed theories regarding it.
Everything. And at some level, society needs to be built around facilitating and accommodating business. Again... they pay for EVERYTHING.
Should any one business get preferential treatment? No.
However, business itself should get preferential treatment.
Why? Because if business is unhappy in a given area... the area dies. Look at Detroit. That's what happens if you piss all over business for decades. And keep in mind, Detroit has had tens of billions pumped into it by the federal government to try and keep it alive. Over many years going back generations now. It doesn't matter. Piss on business and you'll wither and die.
So... getting to the issue of these private police and bus passes. Why are these companies giving the local government extra money? Because the local government is shaking them down. Google for example is having its ability to commute workers into and out of San Fransisco interfered with... that's not sustainable. Either it has to stop or Google can't maintain a workforce in the city. Google has therefore attempted to bribe the city into doing something the city should have done at no additional cost.
As to facebook... no idea why they're buying the police. But I can only assume they've had security problems and the local police were not responsive. As a result... they've felt the need to incentive assistance.
All told the whole thing is pretty sad. And before someone talks about the evil corporations, lets get something straight... look around the country in more business friendly areas. Take texas or South Dakota or either of the Carolinas... how much of this police buying are we seeing there? Not much. So California is where we're seeing this now.
Why of why would that be?
Opportunism isn't evil though.
That's that problem with more interpretations of people's morality. You have to remember that at base level, people are amoral. That isn't to say they are unmoral... just amoral. The natural response is a response without morality.
Now we can condition morality into people, but its just a condition. Its an artificial construct imposed on natural behavior.
And an artificial construct can be pretty much anything. If you want to talk about human nature, then you have to examine humanity WITHOUT that construct. And that humanity is opportunistic.
If you're interested in the real truth of it, then you'll see you have to strip away culture to see what people are actually like at base level.
In what way is our individualism excessive?
Should we subsume our identity into something else?
What? Nationalism and patriotism? If not that then what legitimacy would that identity have?... Organized religion?
I don't think our individualism is excessive. In fact, i think many of the problems we've had lately have come from an erosion in our individualism.
You note that much of our individualism is conformist. Well, is it individualism at all then? Probably not.
Individuals don't seek conformity. They seek individual fulfillment. This strikes some as anti social. But then conformist pressure is considered "social" behavior despite being restrictive and frequently harmful to the individual.
Here is the other issue with individuals. They're individual. Once someone truly divorces themselves from conformity they cannot be grouped without misrepresentation. Thus, once that happens you can point at ONE individual and judge him. But you can't judge them all since they're all distinct.
Most of the tragedies in human history can be traced to misguided GROUP action.
Go through history and find examples of individuals that did great harm.
The most you'll find is the occasional serial killer. They're very uncommon and their harm while traumatic is relatively minor.
Politicians do the same thing.
In fact, everyone does that... its not criminal... its human.
We are as a species... opportunists. It is our default attitude as a species.
We are not predators, herd animals, ambushers... etc... we are opportunists. We pick the low hanging fruit. It is our nature.
You put something in front of us that blocks us from getting what we want and we'll find ways around it or through it. Or we'll just do something else if that's more profitable.
In this case, they found a cheap way around the export ban. So they started doing it.
It is a little ballsy of BP though... given their recent history I'd think they'd want to stay away from that sort of thing.
I do agree they shouldn't be doing that. But don't blame all corporations for that behavior. It is human.
The rooting operation typically takes place at the firmware/bios level. At that level, iOS 7 is irrelevant. If you wipe... utterly erase storage memory on an ipad or smart phone that still tends to leave the bios/firmware memory intact. Access that, trigger the flash program... and simply overwrite. You'd need a default ipad rom to write but those can't be hard to find.
I'd be surprised if there were no way to bypass that.
You know apple has a backdoor. If you gave them a locked machine they could unlock it. Which means there is a backdoor...
I haven't looked into it recently so you could be entirely correct. But I'd be very surprised if you can't root a locked ipad.
The tools for resetting the firmware on an ipad can be found with a simple search. Worst case, jail break it.
And after that who cares what apple says.
Desalination will require nuclear power to be economical.
So... you want to deal with the anti nuclear lobby? Because I assure you... they're about as much fun as a bag full of leeches.
As to water conservation, Californian agriculture has not radically increased their water usage in decades and yet we have less water now then we did then.
That questions whether we have less water now then we did then or if there is another user of water that has increased their water usage.
Its not tough to figure out. The cities grew quickly and the water infrustructure was not expanded to compensate. So now they're drinking the farmer's water.
That what is happening. In all fairness, the cities should build the desalination plants since they're the ones that expanded their usage. What is more, many of those farmers have water rights that go back over 100 years. You and invalidate those water rights by eminent domain... but that's just a fancy word for legal theft. Yes, they compensate people usually when they do that, but often the compensation falls far short of the value.
In any case, your idea will generally mean less production in Californian agriculture. Conversation typically has that effect. Or if you prefer simply higher costs. If we shift to green house growing for example that will increase costs radically.
My point was that we need produce to be cheap. Conservation makes it more expensive. So my example was not bad... it simply touched on an issue you are unwilling to be flexible upon. Which is too bad. It means you're ultimately in favor of making produce too expensive for poor people to buy. Which is sort of fucked up... but I do appreciate that isn't your intention. Its just the next effect of not paying attention to the consequences of policies.
When all is said and done, please look at the final result. Then tell me if that's desirable or not... and then see if there was something up the chain that could have been adjusted to improve the situation. Just my two cents.
With game content that's more reasonable given that you don't know if you'll actually like it.
You can try a new game at no risk. How many games do I go through and reject in a given year? Dozens at least. Imagine if I paid 60 dollars for each just to know I don't like it?
Free demos are another way around that problem but we've seen demos largely disappear from the market. And on consoles they were never really an option. The closure of the blockbuster chains was a blow to console gamers amongst other things because they can't rent a game to try it.
So how do you know if you'll like a game?
So freemium games let you do that. Again, I don't like the business model because games trend back to their arcade roots to some extent. The game becomes increasingly designed around getting you to put another quarter in the machine. And I think that's not a good direction.
My ideal would be a kickstarter/steam pre-order type system where the developer only has to make the game to satisfy their loan obligations. No need for example to sell 5 million copies which has been a target many recent AAA titles have had to hit or the game was considered a failure.
Alternatively, I am a big fan of the serialized game concept. Yes, getting the engine ready for the first installment will take a disproportionate amount of time. However, once you've got that in place you can not only make multiple installments of a given game but you can also tweak that pilot to create distinct franchises that can likewise be serialized.
Not a fan of the current business model enjoyed by the big publishing houses since the games are often so desperate to make the investment back that the content is frequently boring and stupid.
Your harvard professor's argument didn't address serialization which has hundreds of years of commercial success in publishing.
So no, you have no case.
Good day, sir.
You are correct to the extent that the initial episode in an episodic game will require more work then the second episode. However, that is true in television as well. And yet, television is a much more stable business model then say movies. With television, you produce a pilot episode and release it. Often by the time of release additional episodes are either in development or completed. Through the first year of release especially the production company gets a firm idea of what kind of return and what their profits are likely to be going forward.
A show that isn't very popular will generally be canceled after either half a season or a full season. Where as a popular show can see its budget increase radically. In some cases by 100 times. And can be sustained there after for decades with a loyal and reliable fan base.
Contrast that with the summer blockbuster business model which is how most commercial movies sustain themselves. For one thing, each movie is going to cost you about 200 million to make... EACH. And that often doesn't include marketing and other associated costs. And that is before receiving a DIME in return.
That is huge risk and the only way you can pay that back is through a big success.
Okay, how do you manage that kind of risk? Well, two things have to happen. ONE the movie or AAA game has to be published by a large publisher that can survive if the game fails and it loses the 200 million dollars utterly. So only big companies like Warner Brothers or EA can make this sort of content because only they can afford to fail occasionally. TWO the content has to appeal to the majority of the market. Ideally everyone.
Most of the problems with the modern game and movie industry can be traced back to this model and the constraints it puts on development.
If you like bland, boring, dumbed down, gruel... then continue to support the existing model. Its for idiots. Why? Because its targeted at most people... and most people. And that means you're dealing with content that can be appreciated by morons.
Now, television obvious is often likewise bland boring gruel as well. But its also generally through through major networks that likewise are very expensive and thus you see something of the same problem.
Games are different. They aren't distributed through NBC in real time. But rather can be digitally downloaded from any server with payment made through paypal or any sort of business model you can imagine.
As such, games CAN attain a higher degree of quality then most movies or television shows IF they avoid the business models that force them to limit their quality.
The price they have to pay for that however is managing their own risk. Small game companies cannot invest 2 years of development time in a huge staff and have it not be a huge success. What is more, there is no way to know if a game will be a huge success. Therefore, they cannot make large AAA games in one shot and then charge one price at the end.
They can either make cheap games that can fail without destroying the company. OR they can release episodic games that won't be cheap but will be very short. If they're not popular they can cancel the series.
Actually putting all your eggs in one basket and waiting 2 years before you know whether it will sell any copies is a much greater risk.
That isn't an opinion. That's math.
Please don't argue 2+2=5... it annoys people that can do basic math. No offense.
The problem is that making AAA games where you charge 60 dollars after 2 years of development is dangerous. Great companies have died repeatedly when they've gone to market only to not have the game sell as well as they need it to sell.
Freemium and microtransaction are a different business model that has shown itself to be successful.
I don't like it either.
I prefer a preorder/kickstarter system where the games are funded not with big bank loans but fan/customer contributions/purchases prior to release.
OR
The telltale system of serialized gaming where small games are released about once a month to once every two months. Each piece having somewhere between 1 to 2 hours of content. Then you offer customers/fans the ability to purchase games on a per episode basis or a season pass. That way rather then investing 2 years of time and waiting for a big payout at the end, you can test your market every 2 months. This keeps you from over investing in a game that might not be popular. Further, though this hasn't been done yet... this has the potential to allow a developer to produce a game with the same business model as the Simpsons... You never have to stop releasing episodes if people keep buying them. So rather then make one game you could keep releasing episodes for 20 years for the same game. Up to the customer base.