I'm not sure that quite works. It's not clear in the Battlestar remake that it's supposed to take place in the same universe as the previous series (though I suppose it could). In Doctor Who, however, they're explicitly claiming that he is the same character as the previous Doctors. It's not a reboot or a remake, but it's supposed to be a continuing story.
On the other hand, yes, they are going to re-imagine and rewrite some things. They've at least made perfunctory efforts to retcon the changes in. Either way, I don't think there's reason to be snitty about it. I think my nostalgia for the old series adds something to my appreciation of the show, but it's been a good show in its own right.
Yeah, she told the tenth Doctor (Tennant) that he was "as young as I've ever seen you" (or something like that). But then later she meets him as the eleventh Doctor (Smith) who appears much younger. I think it's supposed to be that she knows him well enough that she can tell he's actually older even when he has regenerated to appear as a younger man.
I'm not just stretching to make things fit, either. I remember thinking that at the time. Like there was some hint in the episode that she can recognize him regardless of regeneration, and she can tell that the meeting the the library is his first encounter with her (from his point of view).
But it has a lot more in common with 3rd Rock from the Sun
I don't really think that's a fair comparison. I'd place Doctor Who closer to Star Trek. The science can be pretty inconsistent and you get nonsense equivalent to realigning dilitium crystals or reconfiguring the deflector array to achieve magical results. The science isn't sound, but it is used as a metaphor to pose genuine moral/ethical problems.
It is very funny sometimes, but it's not quite a comedy.
As far as being for children, I wouldn't say that it's because it's too dark. It's not gory or generally disturbing in a way that children can't handle. I'd sooner say it's not made for children because kids won't really get the jokes. But still, I think it probably is good for children. It's generally interesting and imaginative and values intelligence and cleverness (as opposed to Superman, for example, which tends to value brute strength). I watched Doctor Who as a kid, and if I had kids I'd watch the new episodes with them.
Yeah, I think 3-5 seasons for a Doctor is good. I loved Tennant and was disappointed to hear he was leaving, but when Smith took over, I was relieved to find the change refreshing. I realized that things had gotten a little stale after 5 years, and mixing things up with a new writer and cast was a good move.
Doctor who always has Christmas specials... or at least for the past several years. You just might not have realized it if you're in the US, because they tend to get played as season premieres. If you remember...
"The Christmas Invasion" - First David Tennant episode, aliens invade on Christmas
"The Runaway Bride" - Introduction to Donna Noble
"Voyage of the Damned" - Spaceship Titanic, Kylie Minogue appears
"The Next Doctor" - The Doctor runs into what appears to be a future version of himself, fights the Cybermen in the past
"The End of Time" - Last David Tennant episode
All of these were Christmas specials. Many of them explicitly took place on Christmas, though I don't remember if they all do.
Yup. A business model that's only profitable when there's a disaster (natural or man-made) isn't going to have a predictable source of income. That is, unless the company making the disaster-solution product is also put into a position where it can create disasters-- in which case, you don't actually want that.
So you have something which may be necessary but in which the "free market" will probably never invest. And after all, no one company really has enough of an interest in the Gulf of Mexico to pay for it to be cleaned up. BP didn't even have enough of an interest in the Gulf to prevent the spill from happening in the first place.
Well also just to be fair, the humble indie bundle is a bundle that was released after all the games had been on sale for a while. If anyone knew about these games ahead of time and really really wanted any of them, then they would have already bought them.
Me, for example: I'd played the demo for World of Goo a while back and thought, "well that's kind of an interesting game, but I'm not sure I want to buy it." And I didn't for a long time. I hadn't heard of the rest of the games.
So the Humble Indie Bundle got exposure for games that otherwise might have gone unnoticed. Otherwise, it took the people who knew about these games but hadn't bought them already, and it gave them the kick in the pants to buy them. If the issue was money, it let the buyers name their own price. Finally, some of us were probably only after 1 or 2 games, so that makes the purchase price a little more reasonable.
So yes, it only works out to ~$150,000 for each company, but that's probably $150,000 more than they would have made without the bundle.
I think it depends on the DLC. Some DLC is the sort of thing where they release a good full game, and then after it's released the developers create new content. Some feels more like they made a game, cut a bunch of stuff out, sold you the incomplete game for full price, and then are selling the rest of the game for additional money. And then some DLC is crap like, "Buy a slightly different skin for this character for $3!"
Some DLC is good, but some of it gives gamers good reason to be cynical.
I don't think the DRM did much to stop piracy. (not that I have data to back it up) eMusic and Amazon never had DRM, and dropping DRM doesn't seem to have hurt iTunes any.
I think the key thing about iTunes is that they made the whole process (finding, downloading, managing music, and then copying it to your iPod) much easier than pirating. The metadata was better, the album art was better, the quality was more reliable. You didn't risk getting a virus or spending an hour finding and downloading an album only to find out that you'd downloaded the wrong thing. Plus, no fear of getting threatening letters from your ISP or getting sued by the record label.
In short, I think that iTunes provided a better service. The fact that the files had DRM may have stopped some casual copying, but mostly the people who wanted free music and wanted to be able to pass it around just downloaded unprotected infringing copies.
The amount they paid was pathetically low on average. Under $10. that works out to a couple bucks a game.
That's probably a couple bucks a game more than they would have made without the bundle, and a couple bucks a game can add up. So by running this promotion, these developers walked away with a couple of hundred thousand dollars that they probably wouldn't have made otherwise. Not much to complain about.
Well up until I bought the bundle, I had skipped them entirely. I don't really pirate anything anymore.
But I think there are people who don't buy games because they're too expensive or because of overly-restrictive DRM. In my experience, pirates often come out of this group of "people who aren't going to buy the game anyway" rather than representing lost sales.
I don't pirate, but it's not because I'm trying to "send a message". I don't think not-pirating sends much of a message. I don't pirate because I don't have time to deal with the inconveniences of pirating, and so if a game vendor makes buying the game even more difficult than pirating it, I'm certainly not going to buy it. Make a really good game, and make buying it super easy and convenient and reasonably priced. That's your best shot of getting me to buy a game. DRM? You're shooting yourself in the foot.
This ties into #2 - if you spend all your time worrying about pirates, and adding DRM and other idiocy, you end up producing more pirates.
Yes, I think that's true. The more you tighten your grip, the more pirates will slip through your fingers. There are people within the industry who recognize this.
Stop trying to punish your customers into giving you more money.
Only way to really combat piracy is to have an online element that only works with a valid CD key.
I think the best way to combat piracy is to build a relationship with your customers where they like your games, like you as a company, and many of them would feel proud to pay a reasonable price for your games, ashamed not to.
Which proves in many ways that the people who claim they don't buy games cause of DRM or that they're too expensive or just BS excuses.
Not necessarily. The Humble Indie Bundle essentially provided free downloads and worked on the honor system, and some people downloaded without paying. That proves that no matter how cheap and convenient the game is, some people will not buy that game. However, some of those people who will not buy that game will pirate it anyhow.
That doesn't mean that there aren't people who will avoid buying games because they're too expensive or have terrible DRM. I bought the Humble Indie Bundle (for higher than their average price), which I wouldn't have done if it included DRM. I think I paid $20-$30 voluntarily, but I wouldn't have paid $50 for it. If it included DRM and/or was >$30, I would have been included in the group of "people who will not buy that game", but if I found a pirated copy laying around, I may well have played those games.
Sadly, the Humble Indie Bundle proved that on the PC, there isn't much you can do to fight it...offering non-DRM games for a single cent don't even necessarily work.
At the same time, the Humble Indie Bundle also showed that there are a lot of people who are willing to pay for something that they could easily pirate. You had DRM-free games being offered in such a way that people could simply pass a link around and everyone could get free downloads, yet they still made over $1 million in sales.
And those people would wouldn't even pay a cent for those games-- do you really think they'd all rush out and buy the game if it were DRMed?
I'm not sure you're actually responding to my post, but I'll respond anyway.
Personally, I don't see any problem with the existing music business model... Firstly, I don't consider musician royalties to be any of my business as a music fan... Secondly, as a music fan, I only care about the end product..
So you don't see a problem with the music business model because you (a) don't care; and (b) don't think it's any of your business. That makes sense. I wouldn't really see a problem with someone stealing your car because I don't care and it's none of my business.
If you make a decision to try to make a living from your music then as far as I'm concerned it's a case of getting a good lawyer & negotiating your record company contract. After that, if you still feel you're being screwed by the record companies, then maybe you're not good enough to be making money from your music - so go train to do something else.
Yes, because 18 year old musicians are all really savvy businessmen. And that's the point, right? I mean, if they're not, then why the hell would I listen to their music?
my buying a music CD has not helped maintain poverty in the Third World or damaged too many trees
No, I doubt it does anything like that directly, but it is a big economic waste. Think of all the energy and materials that go into making a CD. Now think about all the energy that goes into shipping them around the world. Now think about all the resources that go into building record stores. All that stuff can be replaced with a few datacenters and the computer that's already sitting on your desk. Much more efficient.
Thirdly, people that justify music piracy are too stupid to realise that the music is there to be had in the first place because enough honest people like me go out and buy it the first place.
I... don't think that's quite true. It's at least an oversimplification. But whatever.
Capitalism works when market forces determine the price of something,
"Market forces" are at work in free markets. The music industry is not a free market. Copyright is an artificial monopoly, meaning no one else can compete.
not when the market creates a reason to keep the price of music high because the honest people have to constantly subsidise the dishonest people by what they pay.
They don't need a reason to keep the prices high. It's not like they keep albums at $10 on iTunes because that's the magic number that allows them to cover their costs. You aren't subsidizing pirates. If everyone stopped pirating, prices would not go down.
And of course no-one would dream of downloading the lot, putting it on a torrent, and providing a weekly update.
Yeah, because all that music isn't already available to pirates. Putting DRM on songs really keep pirates in check.
Here's the deal: First, you make a good service for a good price. A lot of piracy goes away right there. A lot of people will be willing to pay some money for the convenience of not hunting down torrents-- iTunes has proven that.
With fewer pirates out there, the risk of distributing will go up, so fewer people will be inclined to do it. It's a self-reenforcing cycle. Plus, if the service is good and convenient, them sympathy for pirates will go down. Finally, they could watermark the songs, making it possible to track the source of any leaks to bittorrent, increasing the risk even further.
Yes, that was what I was saying. In my view, the big record companies pretty much handed control over the music industry to Apple. They said, "We're not technologically savvy enough to keep running the music distribution industry. You do it instead."
Now they're like, "Oh, wait... what? Music distribution is what we get paid for?! I didn't realize that. Apple, give it back! We don't care that we're incompetent and don't understand the nature of our own business! We still need money to buy coke and hookers!"
Actually I suspect it may be more of a case of "Verizon is evil". Phone manufacturers have shown a little bit more willingness to open their phones when they're not trying to please carriers. Verizon probably wants to make sure you can't give yourself free tethering or something.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not sure that quite works. It's not clear in the Battlestar remake that it's supposed to take place in the same universe as the previous series (though I suppose it could). In Doctor Who, however, they're explicitly claiming that he is the same character as the previous Doctors. It's not a reboot or a remake, but it's supposed to be a continuing story.
On the other hand, yes, they are going to re-imagine and rewrite some things. They've at least made perfunctory efforts to retcon the changes in. Either way, I don't think there's reason to be snitty about it. I think my nostalgia for the old series adds something to my appreciation of the show, but it's been a good show in its own right.
Yeah, she told the tenth Doctor (Tennant) that he was "as young as I've ever seen you" (or something like that). But then later she meets him as the eleventh Doctor (Smith) who appears much younger. I think it's supposed to be that she knows him well enough that she can tell he's actually older even when he has regenerated to appear as a younger man.
I'm not just stretching to make things fit, either. I remember thinking that at the time. Like there was some hint in the episode that she can recognize him regardless of regeneration, and she can tell that the meeting the the library is his first encounter with her (from his point of view).
But it has a lot more in common with 3rd Rock from the Sun
I don't really think that's a fair comparison. I'd place Doctor Who closer to Star Trek. The science can be pretty inconsistent and you get nonsense equivalent to realigning dilitium crystals or reconfiguring the deflector array to achieve magical results. The science isn't sound, but it is used as a metaphor to pose genuine moral/ethical problems.
It is very funny sometimes, but it's not quite a comedy.
As far as being for children, I wouldn't say that it's because it's too dark. It's not gory or generally disturbing in a way that children can't handle. I'd sooner say it's not made for children because kids won't really get the jokes. But still, I think it probably is good for children. It's generally interesting and imaginative and values intelligence and cleverness (as opposed to Superman, for example, which tends to value brute strength). I watched Doctor Who as a kid, and if I had kids I'd watch the new episodes with them.
Yeah, I think 3-5 seasons for a Doctor is good. I loved Tennant and was disappointed to hear he was leaving, but when Smith took over, I was relieved to find the change refreshing. I realized that things had gotten a little stale after 5 years, and mixing things up with a new writer and cast was a good move.
Doctor who always has Christmas specials... or at least for the past several years. You just might not have realized it if you're in the US, because they tend to get played as season premieres. If you remember...
All of these were Christmas specials. Many of them explicitly took place on Christmas, though I don't remember if they all do.
Great, so we just need to cause regular oil spills and start holding those companies completely responsible for the damage.
Nope. Insurance companies are only profitable when there's not a disaster.
Yup. A business model that's only profitable when there's a disaster (natural or man-made) isn't going to have a predictable source of income. That is, unless the company making the disaster-solution product is also put into a position where it can create disasters-- in which case, you don't actually want that.
So you have something which may be necessary but in which the "free market" will probably never invest. And after all, no one company really has enough of an interest in the Gulf of Mexico to pay for it to be cleaned up. BP didn't even have enough of an interest in the Gulf to prevent the spill from happening in the first place.
Well also just to be fair, the humble indie bundle is a bundle that was released after all the games had been on sale for a while. If anyone knew about these games ahead of time and really really wanted any of them, then they would have already bought them.
Me, for example: I'd played the demo for World of Goo a while back and thought, "well that's kind of an interesting game, but I'm not sure I want to buy it." And I didn't for a long time. I hadn't heard of the rest of the games.
So the Humble Indie Bundle got exposure for games that otherwise might have gone unnoticed. Otherwise, it took the people who knew about these games but hadn't bought them already, and it gave them the kick in the pants to buy them. If the issue was money, it let the buyers name their own price. Finally, some of us were probably only after 1 or 2 games, so that makes the purchase price a little more reasonable.
So yes, it only works out to ~$150,000 for each company, but that's probably $150,000 more than they would have made without the bundle.
I think it depends on the DLC. Some DLC is the sort of thing where they release a good full game, and then after it's released the developers create new content. Some feels more like they made a game, cut a bunch of stuff out, sold you the incomplete game for full price, and then are selling the rest of the game for additional money. And then some DLC is crap like, "Buy a slightly different skin for this character for $3!"
Some DLC is good, but some of it gives gamers good reason to be cynical.
I don't think the DRM did much to stop piracy. (not that I have data to back it up) eMusic and Amazon never had DRM, and dropping DRM doesn't seem to have hurt iTunes any.
I think the key thing about iTunes is that they made the whole process (finding, downloading, managing music, and then copying it to your iPod) much easier than pirating. The metadata was better, the album art was better, the quality was more reliable. You didn't risk getting a virus or spending an hour finding and downloading an album only to find out that you'd downloaded the wrong thing. Plus, no fear of getting threatening letters from your ISP or getting sued by the record label.
In short, I think that iTunes provided a better service. The fact that the files had DRM may have stopped some casual copying, but mostly the people who wanted free music and wanted to be able to pass it around just downloaded unprotected infringing copies.
Explain, in light of this logic, the success of retailers like eMusic, Amazon's mp3 store, and iTunes then?
Are you saying that their success was because DRM succeeded in making it a lot harder for the freeloaders to hand around their free copies?
I'll try to give you an explanation, but you'll have to be more clear about what you want explained.
The amount they paid was pathetically low on average. Under $10. that works out to a couple bucks a game.
That's probably a couple bucks a game more than they would have made without the bundle, and a couple bucks a game can add up. So by running this promotion, these developers walked away with a couple of hundred thousand dollars that they probably wouldn't have made otherwise. Not much to complain about.
Well up until I bought the bundle, I had skipped them entirely. I don't really pirate anything anymore.
But I think there are people who don't buy games because they're too expensive or because of overly-restrictive DRM. In my experience, pirates often come out of this group of "people who aren't going to buy the game anyway" rather than representing lost sales.
I don't pirate, but it's not because I'm trying to "send a message". I don't think not-pirating sends much of a message. I don't pirate because I don't have time to deal with the inconveniences of pirating, and so if a game vendor makes buying the game even more difficult than pirating it, I'm certainly not going to buy it. Make a really good game, and make buying it super easy and convenient and reasonably priced. That's your best shot of getting me to buy a game. DRM? You're shooting yourself in the foot.
This ties into #2 - if you spend all your time worrying about pirates, and adding DRM and other idiocy, you end up producing more pirates.
Yes, I think that's true. The more you tighten your grip, the more pirates will slip through your fingers. There are people within the industry who recognize this.
Stop trying to punish your customers into giving you more money.
Not much harder. Not enough harder to stop people.
Only way to really combat piracy is to have an online element that only works with a valid CD key.
I think the best way to combat piracy is to build a relationship with your customers where they like your games, like you as a company, and many of them would feel proud to pay a reasonable price for your games, ashamed not to.
Why is it that none of these solutions involve making a product that people are happy/willing to pay for to begin with?
Because that's hard, and requires you do a really good job. Most people aren't willing to bet their paycheck on whether they do a good job.
Which proves in many ways that the people who claim they don't buy games cause of DRM or that they're too expensive or just BS excuses.
Not necessarily. The Humble Indie Bundle essentially provided free downloads and worked on the honor system, and some people downloaded without paying. That proves that no matter how cheap and convenient the game is, some people will not buy that game. However, some of those people who will not buy that game will pirate it anyhow.
That doesn't mean that there aren't people who will avoid buying games because they're too expensive or have terrible DRM. I bought the Humble Indie Bundle (for higher than their average price), which I wouldn't have done if it included DRM. I think I paid $20-$30 voluntarily, but I wouldn't have paid $50 for it. If it included DRM and/or was >$30, I would have been included in the group of "people who will not buy that game", but if I found a pirated copy laying around, I may well have played those games.
Sadly, the Humble Indie Bundle proved that on the PC, there isn't much you can do to fight it...offering non-DRM games for a single cent don't even necessarily work.
At the same time, the Humble Indie Bundle also showed that there are a lot of people who are willing to pay for something that they could easily pirate. You had DRM-free games being offered in such a way that people could simply pass a link around and everyone could get free downloads, yet they still made over $1 million in sales.
And those people would wouldn't even pay a cent for those games-- do you really think they'd all rush out and buy the game if it were DRMed?
I'm not sure you're actually responding to my post, but I'll respond anyway.
Personally, I don't see any problem with the existing music business model... Firstly, I don't consider musician royalties to be any of my business as a music fan... Secondly, as a music fan, I only care about the end product..
So you don't see a problem with the music business model because you (a) don't care; and (b) don't think it's any of your business. That makes sense. I wouldn't really see a problem with someone stealing your car because I don't care and it's none of my business.
If you make a decision to try to make a living from your music then as far as I'm concerned it's a case of getting a good lawyer & negotiating your record company contract. After that, if you still feel you're being screwed by the record companies, then maybe you're not good enough to be making money from your music - so go train to do something else.
Yes, because 18 year old musicians are all really savvy businessmen. And that's the point, right? I mean, if they're not, then why the hell would I listen to their music?
my buying a music CD has not helped maintain poverty in the Third World or damaged too many trees
No, I doubt it does anything like that directly, but it is a big economic waste. Think of all the energy and materials that go into making a CD. Now think about all the energy that goes into shipping them around the world. Now think about all the resources that go into building record stores. All that stuff can be replaced with a few datacenters and the computer that's already sitting on your desk. Much more efficient.
Thirdly, people that justify music piracy are too stupid to realise that the music is there to be had in the first place because enough honest people like me go out and buy it the first place.
I... don't think that's quite true. It's at least an oversimplification. But whatever.
Capitalism works when market forces determine the price of something,
"Market forces" are at work in free markets. The music industry is not a free market. Copyright is an artificial monopoly, meaning no one else can compete.
not when the market creates a reason to keep the price of music high because the honest people have to constantly subsidise the dishonest people by what they pay.
They don't need a reason to keep the prices high. It's not like they keep albums at $10 on iTunes because that's the magic number that allows them to cover their costs. You aren't subsidizing pirates. If everyone stopped pirating, prices would not go down.
And of course no-one would dream of downloading the lot, putting it on a torrent, and providing a weekly update.
Yeah, because all that music isn't already available to pirates. Putting DRM on songs really keep pirates in check.
Here's the deal: First, you make a good service for a good price. A lot of piracy goes away right there. A lot of people will be willing to pay some money for the convenience of not hunting down torrents-- iTunes has proven that.
With fewer pirates out there, the risk of distributing will go up, so fewer people will be inclined to do it. It's a self-reenforcing cycle. Plus, if the service is good and convenient, them sympathy for pirates will go down. Finally, they could watermark the songs, making it possible to track the source of any leaks to bittorrent, increasing the risk even further.
Yes, that was what I was saying. In my view, the big record companies pretty much handed control over the music industry to Apple. They said, "We're not technologically savvy enough to keep running the music distribution industry. You do it instead."
Now they're like, "Oh, wait... what? Music distribution is what we get paid for?! I didn't realize that. Apple, give it back! We don't care that we're incompetent and don't understand the nature of our own business! We still need money to buy coke and hookers!"
In this case it's more a case of "Motorola Evil"
Actually I suspect it may be more of a case of "Verizon is evil". Phone manufacturers have shown a little bit more willingness to open their phones when they're not trying to please carriers. Verizon probably wants to make sure you can't give yourself free tethering or something.
HTC makes the most robust and moddable phones on the planet, and do not try to stop the modding in any way
Tell that to my Droid Incredible.
I think the problem here is the carriers, and not the hardware manufacturers.