2 people made FTL, and that game is awesome. I'm sure making your own game counts as relevant industry experience, if you ever decide to go back to the dark side.
What difference does it make? Consoles are just specialized PCs anyway. Does the OS really matter? Does the shape and color of the box matter? If it matters to you, then you can buy a steambox and play steam games on a thing that looks like a console.
I don't think any gamer, regardless of how casual they are, will pass up the opportunity to buy a cool gaming machine they saw at their friend's house if it was really fun. Word of mouth advertising can be a lot stronger than EA carpet bomb advertising. I just got my friend addicted to FTL the other day, and he is not a big gamer.
Less choices doesn't necessarily mean cartel prices. Look at computer processors. There are only 2 big competitors for desktop processors, and maybe like 4 or 5 if we include mobile and servers. They are innovating like crazy, operating on razor thin margins, and using the benefit of economies of scale to max benefit. Would we be better off with 200 processor companies? probably not.
The key is consumer vigilance. There is a very large customer base for CPUs and they put a lot of thought into what they buy.
All the people in this forum are putting a lot of thought into which games they buy, but most gamers don't. Most gamers don't give a shit about malware on their computers. They are like middle age people who didn;t care that there was shit everywhere because they didn't realize it was the cause of the plague. Eventually things changed when people found reasons to care.
Yeah I think you are right. But I think it's totally possible for things to change.
You could have said the same thing about music 20 years ago. The labels were the gatekeepers to popularity. And we had a bunch of soulless mega stars, but not much variety. Now there is a thriving indie music scene that just sprang out of nowhere (or maybe everywhere). We are also seeing the early signs of a thriving indie gaming scene.
I don't think we need to organize a boycott (although it might help). I think a bunch of people will just get tired of playing call of duty 14. And if game creators are able to be funded by kickstarter (or similar) rather than EA, then that's what they'll do, because it removes the middle man. Word of mouth advertising on social media can be more effective than EAs carpet bomb advertising. I think it's going to happen, just not overnight.
You could have bought the game from another store, or you could have played the game (e.g. at a friend's house, or a demo version, etc) without purchasing it.
They don't need to know. If it happens enough, they will have less money to make games. Publishers that treat customers well will get more money to make more games. It's natural selection. The animals don't need to know why their strategies are working or not working for natural selection to weed them out or reward them.
In reality it's a continuum. The better your game is, the more you can charge and install shitty DRM with good sales. The better your customer service is, the more you can charge and the worse your game can be and still have good sales.
sales * price = quality * customer service
the companies who can profit survive. The companies who can't don't. Gamers could bankrupt EA if they wanted to. But they don't they want to play their games. They keep buying them with all the bad features. EA is thriving. There is only a small group of vocal people that are angry with EA. The best thing these people can do (and I am one) is to support indie games. If it works, EA will be forced to either shape up or go extinct. Either one is fine with me. If ti doesn't work, then that sucks for me, but I guess it is good for all those people out there who love EA games and don't mind DRM and paid DLC.
We already have the actual bill of rights. Living in a free-ish society means that we are free to support whichever products we wish by voting with our dollars as consumers.
What would a gamers bill of rights even do? Would it imprison or fine people or companies who violated the rights of gamers? I doubt it.
I. Gamers shall receive a full and complete game for their purchase, with no major omissions in its features or scope.
Don't buy games that are not complete. Wait for a game to become complete before buying it. It'll probably be even cheaper once it has become complete.
II. Gamers shall retain the ability to use any software they purchase in perpetuity unless the license specifically and explicitly determines a finite length of time for use.
Don't buy games that require activation servers that undermine their perpetuity. Treat every game that has such a mechanism as an implicit limit on the time the game will function, and make your purchasing decisions accordingly.
III. Any efforts to prevent unauthorized distribution of software shall be noninvasive, nonpersistent, and limited to that specific software.
Don't buy games that have invasive copy protection. Don't buy games from companies likely to release game patches which add invasive copy protection. Treat every game that requires new patches (e.g. games like those described in rule 1 and 2) as likely to acquire invasive copy protection in new patches, and make your purchasing choices accordingly.
IV. No company may search the contents of a user's local storage without specific, limited, explicit, and game-justified purpose.
Don't buy games that... same as 3.
V. No company shall limit the number of instances a customer may install and use software on any compatible hardware they own.
same
VI. Online and multiplayer features shall be optional except in genre-specific situtations where the game's fundamental structure requires multiplayer functionality due to the necessary presence of an active opponent of similar abilities and limitations to the player.
What? Buying the game is already optional!
VII. All software not requiring a subscription fee shall remain available to gamers who purchase it in perpetuity. If software has an online component and requires a server connection, a company shall provide server software to gamers at no additional cost if it ceases to support those servers.
This is the same as 2.
VIII. All gamers have the right to a full refund if the software they purchased is unsatisfactory due to hardware requirements, connectivity requirements, feature set, or general quality.
How will this right be granted? There is already a judicial system complete with class action lawsuits to adjudicate such matters.
IX. No paid downloadable content shall be required to experience a game's story to completion of the narrative presented by the game itself.
Don't buy g....
X. No paid downloadable content shall affect multiplayer balance unless equivalent options are available to gamers who purchased only the game.
Are unbalanced games fun? No. Don't buy games that are not fun. I am surprised I even have to tell people this.
This whole thing sounds like a guys bill of rights.
1. All girls must be hot.
2. All girls must be cool to be around and not bitchy at all.
3. All girls must agree to be my girlfriend.
4. All girls can not break up with me until I am tired of them.
The consumer/producer relationship is a mutual one like romantic relationships. You can demand all this stuff if you want, but unless you change a bunch of laws nobody is obligated to follow them. Any company that decides to v
If China is making nukes, then that means they want more (i.e. they are less likely to participate in something like this). Russia on the other hand seems to have a bunch of nukes it doesn't necessarily want (like us), so we can get rid of nukes together. We aren't getting rid of all our nukes so we still have a deterrent. We can still destroy China Iran and NK in a couple hours if we wanted. China wants a similar capability. At some point having more nuclear weapons gives you no added benefit, but it still comes with more risk and expense to keep your arsenal from getting into the wrong hands.
Our reduction in nuclear weapons does not put us in more danger regardless of what NK and Iran do. We can still destroy human civilization if we needed to. Sure we'd be safer if Iran and NK reversed course on nuclear weapons, but we can't directly control that. All we can directly control is our own stockpiles.
The less nuclear weapons out there, the easier it is to control them (e.g. less chance of accidents, theft, etc). The stockpiles in the USSR are a huge danger, because they are more likely to fall into the wrong hands. If we can get Russia to dismantle a bunch of nuclear weapons if we disable a bunch of ours, that's a good thing.
We can still try to obstruct NK and Iran, but keeping our huge stockpiles doesn't provide any added benefit.
If you are going to take things that literally, I would say that buying things with a stolen debit card number is not even stealing. There is no physical money exchanging hands at all. It's all just bits on a server somewhere being manipulated.
If someone discovers your bitcoin wallet private key, your bitcoins will now be stolen and are no longer available to you.
yes you still have your bitcoin wallet private key, but now it's useless because there are no more bitcoins that can be transferred with that private key. I am not saying *all* data can be stolen. I am saying that bitcoin wallet private keys are special in that they behave like real property. They really do stop working correctly once someone else knows them, just like how your car doesn't get you places anymore once someone else has it.
If you are talking about credit cards, that is completely different. You still have to pay of your credit card somehow.
If you are talking about something linked to a bank account (e.g. like a debit card), then it is similar to paying with bitcoin.
The difference is not in how you pay but how the money is stored. If your money is stored in a US bank account, it can be taken easily be seized by anyone with enough authority. The US government freezes people's bank accounts regularly. If you bury US dollars in your back yard, the US government can just create more US dollars and devaluing your money without your consent.
Bitcoin is like the digital version of gold. The US government can't arbitrarily decide to print more gold. Gold actually requires resources to find, and it's getting harder to find every day. There is a finite amount of gold on the earth. Unlike gold, bitcoin is easy to manage, through digital transactions.
bitcoins aren't data per se. A person's private key for their bitcoin wallet that is used to transfer ownership of bitcoins is data. It's just a long number. The proof of work used to establish a bitcoin is data. The transaction history of each bitcoin is data.
A bitcoin is more than just the data underlying it. There are may thousands of copies of each bitcoin, but at any given time only one person has the authority to transfer a bitcoin to someone else.
A bitcoin itself cannot be copied. To copy a bitcoin would mean copying it's ability to be spent (allowing it to be spent twice). This would ruin any currency. And much of the design of bitcoin is prevention of double spending.
This is similar to how xeroxing your bank statement doesn't double the amount of money you have in the bank.
You can absolutely steal data. If you steal someone's debit card and buy a bunch of stuff with it, you have stolen data that allowed you to gain access to their bank account. Someone else ends up losing the stolen dollars you used.
You can't steal language because nobody is trying to keep language a secret. It's public domain. It doesn't belong to anyone.
My whole point was that we don't even need parties. Parties only make sense when you don;t want to split votes between similar candidates. IRV is a step in the right direction. Some IRV systems are very primitive. Others are very advanced and completely eliminate vote splitting.
Even if the banks buy off individuals rather than parties, the result will still be better because it's harder for banks to wrangle politicians than an official party. This will make bribery more transparent or at least less effective.
Maybe banks can effectively bribe 10 parties. Can they bribe 1000 parties?
If the government is going to spend money on innovation I think they should use it for scientific grants and make the discoveries public domain. That way it is not single companies that benefit from proprietary knowledge paid for with government loans, but rather humanity benefiting from royalty free technology. You also wouldn't need to worry about loans being repaid.
For technologies where the government has no idea the direction research needs to go, this may not work. But for electric cars? It's obvious we just need better batteries. The government should just be finding research into better batteries and allow everyone access to the research. Tesla didn't even make any new battery technology. They just used existing lithium battery technology which is the primary weakness of the model S.
Rand Paul, unlike his father, cares more about pretending to be pro liberty by being overly dramatic, than actually taking consistent and thoughtful positions on issues.
Not that Ron Paul has been right about everything, but more often than not, when he was making a fuss, it was about something meaningful.
Would you be surprised if a future executive order defines political opponents or whistle blowers as "engaged in combat"?
yes.
I would be surprised if Obama (or some future president) declared John Boehner (or some future political opponent) as engaged in combat with the USA because he is a political opponent.
We can just get rid of parties altogether. The reason we have parties is because it is the optimal strategy for winning a "first past the post" election. If we get rid of this election system, we get rid of the need for political parties.
Drone use overseas involves killing people in sovereign countries we are not at war with. The drone use in America involves supporting fire departments and looking for illegals crossing the border.
The problem is not the use of drones. The problem is what the drones are doing.
In fact, there is nothing a drone can do that a plane with a pilot in it can't do.
Slashdot Mirror
Class action lawsuit?
In 99.99% of cases your dollar is your vote.
2 people made FTL, and that game is awesome. I'm sure making your own game counts as relevant industry experience, if you ever decide to go back to the dark side.
What difference does it make? Consoles are just specialized PCs anyway. Does the OS really matter? Does the shape and color of the box matter? If it matters to you, then you can buy a steambox and play steam games on a thing that looks like a console.
I don't think any gamer, regardless of how casual they are, will pass up the opportunity to buy a cool gaming machine they saw at their friend's house if it was really fun. Word of mouth advertising can be a lot stronger than EA carpet bomb advertising. I just got my friend addicted to FTL the other day, and he is not a big gamer.
Less choices doesn't necessarily mean cartel prices. Look at computer processors. There are only 2 big competitors for desktop processors, and maybe like 4 or 5 if we include mobile and servers. They are innovating like crazy, operating on razor thin margins, and using the benefit of economies of scale to max benefit. Would we be better off with 200 processor companies? probably not.
The key is consumer vigilance. There is a very large customer base for CPUs and they put a lot of thought into what they buy.
All the people in this forum are putting a lot of thought into which games they buy, but most gamers don't. Most gamers don't give a shit about malware on their computers. They are like middle age people who didn;t care that there was shit everywhere because they didn't realize it was the cause of the plague. Eventually things changed when people found reasons to care.
Yeah I think you are right. But I think it's totally possible for things to change.
You could have said the same thing about music 20 years ago. The labels were the gatekeepers to popularity. And we had a bunch of soulless mega stars, but not much variety. Now there is a thriving indie music scene that just sprang out of nowhere (or maybe everywhere). We are also seeing the early signs of a thriving indie gaming scene.
I don't think we need to organize a boycott (although it might help). I think a bunch of people will just get tired of playing call of duty 14. And if game creators are able to be funded by kickstarter (or similar) rather than EA, then that's what they'll do, because it removes the middle man. Word of mouth advertising on social media can be more effective than EAs carpet bomb advertising. I think it's going to happen, just not overnight.
You could have bought the game from another store, or you could have played the game (e.g. at a friend's house, or a demo version, etc) without purchasing it.
They don't need to know. If it happens enough, they will have less money to make games. Publishers that treat customers well will get more money to make more games. It's natural selection. The animals don't need to know why their strategies are working or not working for natural selection to weed them out or reward them.
In reality it's a continuum. The better your game is, the more you can charge and install shitty DRM with good sales. The better your customer service is, the more you can charge and the worse your game can be and still have good sales.
sales * price = quality * customer service
the companies who can profit survive. The companies who can't don't. Gamers could bankrupt EA if they wanted to. But they don't they want to play their games. They keep buying them with all the bad features. EA is thriving. There is only a small group of vocal people that are angry with EA. The best thing these people can do (and I am one) is to support indie games. If it works, EA will be forced to either shape up or go extinct. Either one is fine with me. If ti doesn't work, then that sucks for me, but I guess it is good for all those people out there who love EA games and don't mind DRM and paid DLC.
We already have the actual bill of rights. Living in a free-ish society means that we are free to support whichever products we wish by voting with our dollars as consumers.
What would a gamers bill of rights even do? Would it imprison or fine people or companies who violated the rights of gamers? I doubt it.
I. Gamers shall receive a full and complete game for their purchase, with no major omissions in its features or scope.
Don't buy games that are not complete. Wait for a game to become complete before buying it. It'll probably be even cheaper once it has become complete.
II. Gamers shall retain the ability to use any software they purchase in perpetuity unless the license specifically and explicitly determines a finite length of time for use.
Don't buy games that require activation servers that undermine their perpetuity. Treat every game that has such a mechanism as an implicit limit on the time the game will function, and make your purchasing decisions accordingly.
III. Any efforts to prevent unauthorized distribution of software shall be noninvasive, nonpersistent, and limited to that specific software.
Don't buy games that have invasive copy protection. Don't buy games from companies likely to release game patches which add invasive copy protection. Treat every game that requires new patches (e.g. games like those described in rule 1 and 2) as likely to acquire invasive copy protection in new patches, and make your purchasing choices accordingly.
IV. No company may search the contents of a user's local storage without specific, limited, explicit, and game-justified purpose.
Don't buy games that ... same as 3.
V. No company shall limit the number of instances a customer may install and use software on any compatible hardware they own.
same
VI. Online and multiplayer features shall be optional except in genre-specific situtations where the game's fundamental structure requires multiplayer functionality due to the necessary presence of an active opponent of similar abilities and limitations to the player.
What? Buying the game is already optional!
VII. All software not requiring a subscription fee shall remain available to gamers who purchase it in perpetuity. If software has an online component and requires a server connection, a company shall provide server software to gamers at no additional cost if it ceases to support those servers.
This is the same as 2.
VIII. All gamers have the right to a full refund if the software they purchased is unsatisfactory due to hardware requirements, connectivity requirements, feature set, or general quality.
How will this right be granted? There is already a judicial system complete with class action lawsuits to adjudicate such matters.
IX. No paid downloadable content shall be required to experience a game's story to completion of the narrative presented by the game itself.
Don't buy g....
X. No paid downloadable content shall affect multiplayer balance unless equivalent options are available to gamers who purchased only the game.
Are unbalanced games fun? No. Don't buy games that are not fun. I am surprised I even have to tell people this.
This whole thing sounds like a guys bill of rights.
1. All girls must be hot.
2. All girls must be cool to be around and not bitchy at all.
3. All girls must agree to be my girlfriend.
4. All girls can not break up with me until I am tired of them.
The consumer/producer relationship is a mutual one like romantic relationships. You can demand all this stuff if you want, but unless you change a bunch of laws nobody is obligated to follow them. Any company that decides to v
I guess I should have said reversed course *towards* nuclear weapons.
If China is making nukes, then that means they want more (i.e. they are less likely to participate in something like this). Russia on the other hand seems to have a bunch of nukes it doesn't necessarily want (like us), so we can get rid of nukes together. We aren't getting rid of all our nukes so we still have a deterrent. We can still destroy China Iran and NK in a couple hours if we wanted. China wants a similar capability. At some point having more nuclear weapons gives you no added benefit, but it still comes with more risk and expense to keep your arsenal from getting into the wrong hands.
Our reduction in nuclear weapons does not put us in more danger regardless of what NK and Iran do. We can still destroy human civilization if we needed to. Sure we'd be safer if Iran and NK reversed course on nuclear weapons, but we can't directly control that. All we can directly control is our own stockpiles.
The less nuclear weapons out there, the easier it is to control them (e.g. less chance of accidents, theft, etc). The stockpiles in the USSR are a huge danger, because they are more likely to fall into the wrong hands. If we can get Russia to dismantle a bunch of nuclear weapons if we disable a bunch of ours, that's a good thing.
We can still try to obstruct NK and Iran, but keeping our huge stockpiles doesn't provide any added benefit.
If you are going to take things that literally, I would say that buying things with a stolen debit card number is not even stealing. There is no physical money exchanging hands at all. It's all just bits on a server somewhere being manipulated.
If someone discovers your bitcoin wallet private key, your bitcoins will now be stolen and are no longer available to you.
yes you still have your bitcoin wallet private key, but now it's useless because there are no more bitcoins that can be transferred with that private key. I am not saying *all* data can be stolen. I am saying that bitcoin wallet private keys are special in that they behave like real property. They really do stop working correctly once someone else knows them, just like how your car doesn't get you places anymore once someone else has it.
If you are talking about credit cards, that is completely different. You still have to pay of your credit card somehow.
If you are talking about something linked to a bank account (e.g. like a debit card), then it is similar to paying with bitcoin.
The difference is not in how you pay but how the money is stored. If your money is stored in a US bank account, it can be taken easily be seized by anyone with enough authority. The US government freezes people's bank accounts regularly. If you bury US dollars in your back yard, the US government can just create more US dollars and devaluing your money without your consent.
Bitcoin is like the digital version of gold. The US government can't arbitrarily decide to print more gold. Gold actually requires resources to find, and it's getting harder to find every day. There is a finite amount of gold on the earth. Unlike gold, bitcoin is easy to manage, through digital transactions.
bitcoins aren't data per se. A person's private key for their bitcoin wallet that is used to transfer ownership of bitcoins is data. It's just a long number. The proof of work used to establish a bitcoin is data. The transaction history of each bitcoin is data.
A bitcoin is more than just the data underlying it. There are may thousands of copies of each bitcoin, but at any given time only one person has the authority to transfer a bitcoin to someone else.
A bitcoin itself cannot be copied. To copy a bitcoin would mean copying it's ability to be spent (allowing it to be spent twice). This would ruin any currency. And much of the design of bitcoin is prevention of double spending.
This is similar to how xeroxing your bank statement doesn't double the amount of money you have in the bank.
You can't steal language because nobody is trying to keep language a secret. It's public domain. It doesn't belong to anyone.
My whole point was that we don't even need parties. Parties only make sense when you don;t want to split votes between similar candidates. IRV is a step in the right direction. Some IRV systems are very primitive. Others are very advanced and completely eliminate vote splitting.
Even if the banks buy off individuals rather than parties, the result will still be better because it's harder for banks to wrangle politicians than an official party. This will make bribery more transparent or at least less effective.
Maybe banks can effectively bribe 10 parties. Can they bribe 1000 parties?
If the government is going to spend money on innovation I think they should use it for scientific grants and make the discoveries public domain. That way it is not single companies that benefit from proprietary knowledge paid for with government loans, but rather humanity benefiting from royalty free technology. You also wouldn't need to worry about loans being repaid.
For technologies where the government has no idea the direction research needs to go, this may not work. But for electric cars? It's obvious we just need better batteries. The government should just be finding research into better batteries and allow everyone access to the research. Tesla didn't even make any new battery technology. They just used existing lithium battery technology which is the primary weakness of the model S.
s/Use/Deployment/
Rand Paul, unlike his father, cares more about pretending to be pro liberty by being overly dramatic, than actually taking consistent and thoughtful positions on issues.
Not that Ron Paul has been right about everything, but more often than not, when he was making a fuss, it was about something meaningful.
Would you be surprised if a future executive order defines political opponents or whistle blowers as "engaged in combat"?
yes. I would be surprised if Obama (or some future president) declared John Boehner (or some future political opponent) as engaged in combat with the USA because he is a political opponent.
Or they could ban spying and murdering of US citizens. Why does it matter if they use a UAV?
Or they could ban spying and murdering altogether.
We can just get rid of parties altogether. The reason we have parties is because it is the optimal strategy for winning a "first past the post" election. If we get rid of this election system, we get rid of the need for political parties.
Drone use overseas involves killing people in sovereign countries we are not at war with. The drone use in America involves supporting fire departments and looking for illegals crossing the border.
The problem is not the use of drones. The problem is what the drones are doing.
In fact, there is nothing a drone can do that a plane with a pilot in it can't do.