In the end it is about where you set the safety net. Too high and you get generational welfare, too low and people will starve. We've got it just about right (after welfare reform under Clinton and the R congress).
Then it seems you've already rejected the GP's position that "nobody should be forced to... give up their money to help others". Congratulations! You aren't "calling BS" at all: we agree that the government must play a role here.
The last thing we need is any more programs for the poor. Sucks to be them. But unless we want more of them we better not subsidize it any more.
This isn't a supply and demand issue: poor people don't stop being poor if you take away their food stamps, they just starve and turn into poor skeletons. If it were as simple as choosing not to be poor, they wouldn't be in that situation in the first place.
The purpose in their lives is to serve as a bad example to others. Don't do what they did.
You're assuming (1) they did something wrong, as opposed to being the victim of misfortune (layoffs, injury, being born in the wrong city or family, etc.), and (2) they can't possibly learn from their mistake. The first assumption is incorrect more often than you might think, and the second is almost always incorrect.
Sucks to be them...the alternative is 'What you did was just fine, keep it up. Make sure your kids don't go to school ether. Knocked up again, great, hopefully this one will be an athlete.
No, the alternative is "Here's what you can do instead next time."
Maybe that means training them for a better job, maybe it means helping them move someplace where there are more jobs available, or maybe it just means helping them through their current situation and letting them try again.
But, again, we seem to agree on the fundamental issue anyway: there needs to be some safety net. I'm not saying it should be higher or lower than it already is; I'm refuting those who say it shouldn't exist at all.
Someone who makes the right choices in life (get an education, not get pregnant at 15, etc...) and becomes successful should now be forced to support those who made the poor choices?
You seem to have fallen into the libertarian fallacy of assuming that if something bad happens to you, it's because you made the wrong choices; therefore, if you're clever enough, you'll never be the victim of misfortune. (The unspoken subtext is "if you're not clever enough to make all the right choices, who cares if you starve anyway?")
That's a nice fantasy, but it's not how the world works. Often, disaster strikes -- whether it's a natural disaster, an injury/illness, massive layoffs because of some change in the market, or anything else -- and there's nothing you could've reasonably done to avoid it. What then? (Hope you have rich friends who can support you, I guess.)
There are more opportunities for the poor than ever before yet many remain perpetually poor.
Again, you're blaming people for circumstances which are often beyond their control. If you've never been poor and don't know anyone who is, it can be hard to understand the difficulty of getting out of that situation, but that doesn't mean it isn't real.
When you give more money for putting out more kids, give them subsidized housing, free food, and other freebies you're not teaching them to get a job.
When you kick them out on the street, you're not teaching them to get a job either; you're just punishing them for not having one already (or not having a good enough one), and possibly ruining their chances of getting one in the future. You aren't increasing the number or quality of available jobs, nor are you giving them the skills, experience, or connections they'll need to get a better job than they already have.
People don't stay poor because they like being poor, or because welfare pays better than working (which, considering how meager welfare benefits are, would indicate a serious problem in the job market). Until you get past those mistaken assumptions, you'll never understand the problem or be able to come up with a solution.
Unfortunately, they don't offer any solutions of their own. They want to eliminate the system that addresses the problem, without putting anything else in its place. That makes the problem worse, not better.
I can see why you troll like that, it's kind of fun to push another ideology to the extreme and then say that it's immoral. The real philosophy of libertarians is that nobody should be forced to do something, like give up their money to help others.
Heh. You do realize that you've simply restated my point, right? Sure, you used gentler words to do it, but that "real philosophy" boils down to exactly what I said earlier.
"Nobody should be forced to... give up their money to help others" implies that when no one wants to help you out of the kindness of their hearts (as is often the case), you're just screwed.
Almost anyone can get a job, even if it's just working at wal mart.
Many, many people who have jobs still don't make enough to really support themselves and their families. They're one illness or injury away from bankruptcy and destitution.
Your response to that is "you should make do with the smaller paycheck, get another job or get skills that pay more." In other words, it's just what I said: "make do with the smaller paycheck" is another way to say "sucks to be you", and getting those extra skills is often impossible when you still need to work full-time to support your family.
The point of the matter is that most libertarians I know are very kind people who give a lot to charity, they just believe in freedom of choice. If you honestly couldn't find a job that could feed your family, then they would try to give you a leg up to get that job, they just wouldn't believe that the government should force them to give it to you.
But obviously they can't help everyone themselves, so what happens next?
Libertarians would have us believe that when charity fails, it's better to let those unfortunate people starve than to require the richest among us to give up a tiny fraction of their wealth to help them. They believe that their "freedom of choice" (i.e. the freedom not to pay taxes) is more important than whether or not someone else can put food on the table or send his kids to school.
That's one reason why they don't win elections: because most people just don't share those priorities.
The difference is that government power has the force of law, and you cannot escape.
Sure you can: vote. Or move.
The trouble with putting all the power in corporate hands is that corporations only do what's profitable, and they're only accountable to their shareholders. The corporate decision making process would mean no phone service in rural areas (because they can't charge rural customers enough to pay for running the lines), and people would die on the street in front of the hospital if they couldn't pay for an ER visit.
Government intervention, on the other hand, allows We The People to step in and say "I want to live in a country where everyone has access to telecommunications and emergency care, whether it's profitable or not." And as we can see, it worked. Obviously it still has to be paid for, but without government intervention, it wouldn't have happened at all, and most people would consider that a bad thing.
And if you don't like it, you can always start your own entity.
That's a sad joke. Unless you're Bill Gates or a fictional Ayn Rand character, you can't start your own car manufacturer, phone company, or even your own school just because you don't like the options you have available. All you can really do is choose from the companies that already exist -- unless you happen to feel strongly enough about local long distance rates that you're willing to drop your existing career and devote the rest of your life to building a competitor; even then, you can only really hope to compete in one field, and you'll probably fail anyway (like most new businesses).
On the other hand, voting gives nearly everyone a say in the government's operation. It's not a huge say, but it's something, and you can increase it simply by talking to other people and convincing them to vote the same way. Folks like Markos Moulitsas and Rush Limbaugh have had far more impact on the country through political discourse than they ever would have if they'd put that effort into starting a business.
The Libertarians care about you, but they have such a minority you will probably not see a Libetarian president in your lifetime.
No, they don't care about you or anyone else; they care about abstract principles.
For example, if you can't find a job that pays well enough to feed your family, the Libertarian response is "Well, the market has spoken. You aren't needed. Sorry."
At least, that's the honest Libertarian response. Depending on who you're talking to, you might hear something else instead, like "That's impossible, the market always provides for everyone! You must not be looking hard enough!" or "Surely there are plenty of charities that can help you out!"
I like my free games and hate DRM as much as the next guy, but the reality is that I would never try to start a business producing shrink-wrapped software (such as a game) in a country with unenforced intellectual property laws. And guess what -- when you can buy any piece of software for $3 in a stand around the corner, NOBODY pays for it, and it becomes impossible to even buy the thing legitimately (meaning that if this became the case in the USA, the thing would not have been produced at all).
Er... did you even bother reading my comment?
Of course it's hard to sell copies of software when people can get them for less. That's why I said you shouldn't base your business model around selling copies! If you've been paid a fair price to write the game in the first place, it doesn't matter who gets a copy later or how much they pay for it -- you've already been compensated.
The assumption that all the content you like would be produced anyway (but with a different business model) is wrong. There are many countries in which no such content is produced. This is due not to a lack of talent, technology, customers, or desire but primarily to the lack of intellectual property laws that would allow the producers to make _any_ money.
Well, it's obviously false that they can't make any money without copyright laws. Anyone can get paid for performing a service, they don't need special government-enforced monopolies.
It seems more likely that, if there indeed are places where content is not produced, it's because the would-be producers moved on to other countries, where strict copyright laws make it easier for them to produce content on speculation (without having to find a paying customer before they start working, like nearly everyone else manages to do in nearly every other industry).
Maybe if you're lucky enough to live in an area covered by FIOS. Most of us still aren't. 8 Mbps from cable (bursting up to 12) is the best you can get in many large cities.
Try the LG Dare. Touch screen that rotates as you turn the phone, full-HTML browser with zoom and pan, music and video player, etc. just like the iPhone... but it's easier to type on, you can expand the memory, and it runs on Verizon's more reliable 3G network (and you don't have to pay $30/mo for a data plan).
Compare that with Windows where not a single line of code is OSS. If someone felt like it you could easily write a compatible Mac OS clone. Whereas with Windows about every line of code has to be reverse engineered.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but OS X is a lot more than just Darwin, WebKit, and a handful of other open source products. Reverse engineering Cocoa, Quartz, and the Core Everything frameworks is no easier than reverse engineering Win32 and DirectX.
But if you'd like to get started on that compatible Mac OS clone, be my guest. Shouldn't take you more than an afternoon, right?;)
These are all great questions, and I think the best way to answer them is to try it and let customers decide what they're willing to support.
I think it'd be totally unacceptable for developers to keep the money if they don't reach their goal, but beyond that, I don't see any pressing argument one way or the other about how the overhead should be paid for, when and how the money should be released to the developer, or whether the people who funded the game should get any extra benefit.
Atleast for the initial product since that would have to include things like engine design and things like that(sometimes you can license then engine from another company but they still have to be made and funded from time to time) and the initial cost in this case would be quite high meaning you have to charge more for the first episode, which would probably not be a price the consumers are not willing to pay for such a short game.
I think they would be willing to pay a fair price, as long as you explain to them why your costs are higher than expected. Just say "we're designing a new engine, we expect it'll take X programmers Y months, and then we'll be able to make the next episodes for less".
No matter what business model you use, you're going to have to make those costs up somehow. If developing an engine is going to cost $1 million, then your customers are going to have to pay $1 million, whether they pay you directly for development or indirectly by buying a disc in a box at Best Buy.
The consumers would also expect a lower price on the conscutive episodes because "the developer doesn't have the same costs for development costs" or we would run into the same problem with piracy again.
Sure, and they'll be right to expect a lower price when the actual development costs are lower. But piracy won't be a problem; remember, piracy doesn't even exist in this business model, because it's based around paying directly for labor, not selling copies. If people don't want to pay for development, then there won't be any game for them to copy.
You assume that in the end, consumers will miss having their great games so much that some uneasy equilibrium will be established between piracy and paying for all games. But IMHO this can easily go to either extreme - where game-makers throw up their hands, say "fuck it", and move onto industries where their work won't be ripped off en masse. In this case everyone loses.
Can you provide any examples of industries where this has happened? That is, where there's a demonstrated demand for the product (obviously, people are already willing to spend enough money on games to pay for development), and yet the market simply fails to move that money to where it's needed?
Say I get someone to design me a website, and then stiff them by refusing to pay the invoice. That's also stealing - I'm stealing the fruits of their labour without proper compensation. [...]
It is the same way with game developers. Sure, they have no physically *lost* anything via piracy, but you are enjoying the fruits of their labour without compensating them.
No, it's not really the same. In one case, you've deceived someone into doing work for you. You told him "make me a web site and I'll give you some money", and then you failed to hold up your end of the bargain. If you hadn't been there in the first place, lying to him, he would've spent that time doing something else, so you have taken that time away from him.
In the other case, the developer freely chose to work on a game, hoping (but with no guarantee or promise) that he'd make some money from it. You didn't ask him to do it, and in fact he isn't aware that you even exist. Whether you buy a copy, download a copy for free, or never play the game at all, he's done exactly the same amount of work. You haven't taken anything away from him.
Essentially gamers would have to pay someone who SAYS they will make a game. Assuming they aren't scamming, it will take years and might suck.
If you look around at other industries, you'll see that this isn't very unusual at all. People don't really have a problem paying for services.
For example, when you hire a contractor to build a house for you, you have to "pay someone who SAYS they will make a house. Assuming they aren't scamming, it will take years and might suck."
How do you deal with that risk? Well, first, you know who you gave your money to, and you have a contract with him, so if he doesn't actually deliver on the house, you can take his ass to court.
Second, you agree beforehand what you want out of the house, to a reasonable level of detail (e.g. you probably don't care what kind of bolts go in the walls, but you do care how big the rooms are), so that when the house is done, you can both see that it was built to spec.
How is this better than paying AFTER the fact to reward someone whose work ALREADY pleases you and encourage them to make more? AKA "the current system?"
Well, for one thing, it's immune to piracy. You don't need DRM, license keys, massive legal departments, or even copyright laws for this business model to work.
It also gives the developer a guaranteed revenue stream. Under the current system, developers write something, and then they roll the dice: will they lose money, break even, or turn a profit? They won't know until the game is released, so in many cases, they'll end up wasting millions of dollars and years of their lives on a product no one wants. On the other hand, under the model I've proposed, they know exactly what their customers are willing to pay, and if it isn't enough, they can do something else instead.
Essentially you'd be promoting a sponsorship model which would destroy the risk taking and innovation of game developers. The sponsor would already have something in mind when they hire a developer. In the current model a developer has freedom to create something different then shop it around - sometimes their ideas hit, other times they miss, but what's important is they have incentive to take risks.
That wouldn't go away. Developers would still have the freedom to come up with an idea and shop it around -- possibly to a single "sponsor", but more likely to thousands of individual customers. If there's sufficient interest, the project will be funded; if not, hopefully they'll get some good feedback to allow them to shape their idea into something that people will fund.
We have seen the non-box business model, software as a service. You never own a copy of the game, you pay to access it while it runs on some big mainframe.
Er, that's one non-box business model, but it's not the only one, and it's not the one I was talking about.
What I'm talking about is closer to another non-box business model that already exists today: custom development. BigCorp wants an application developed that they'll use internally, so they hire a team of developers to write it. They're not paying per copy, and they're not "sponsoring" the software out of the goodness of their hearts; they're paying for a service, the service of writing that application, because they know they'll receive a benefit.
Now, there's nothing inherent to this model that says it has to be one entity paying for the service: it could just as easily be hundreds or thousands of individuals, all meeting through some web site that connects the folks with money to the folks with development skill. Sites like Sellaband and political campaigns have already proved that you can collect massive amounts of money through lots of small transactions.
And there's nothing that says the design has to be dictated by the customers, either: the developers could just as easily come up with an idea first and then look for customers, instead of the other way around. All they really need is a place for customers and developers to connect.
Without computer games there would still be a market for computers but without computers computer games wouldn't exist so actually it's the other way around.
Not really. The big profits come from early adopters buying cutting-edge gear, not offices and soccer moms buying cheap PCs made with two year old parts. Without a supply of new games, the market for things like 1 GB graphics cards and quad-core CPUs would be much, much smaller, and the technology's evolution would be that much slower.
Indeed, if games hadn't been driving GPU development for so many years, we'd probably have no eye candy in Vista or OS X because 3D accelerators would still be rare. Instead, they're so common that you can't even buy a 2D-only card anymore.
No it's not that easy, if people pay for a product they expect to get it within a resonable timeframe and computer games takes years to produce
As I wrote in another response, development cycles don't have to be that long. Episodic content and casual games are becoming more prevalent already.
I'm sorry, but when I pay MY money for a service, for ME, I don't see why other people should benefit from it for free.
Er, why shouldn't they? They're not stopping you from enjoying the game. The developers get paid the same either way, so what justification is there for limiting who can play the game once it's released (especially since any system of licensing or DRM would raise development costs)?
What matters is whether you believe you're getting a good value for your money. If you think you'll get $X worth of enjoyment out of the game, then you'll be willing to pay $X. But if simply knowing that someone else also gets to play the game is enough to reduce your own enjoyment of it, well, maybe you have deeper problems.
Or if they do, why can't I benefit from someone elses money?
Indeed, who says you can't?
If you hear about a project that sounds a little interesting, but not enough to open your wallet, then you can sit back and wait for other people to fund it. Maybe they'll come up with enough funding without you, and you'll get to use it for free.
Or maybe they won't, and it'll never be released. But that won't bother you, because we already established that you don't really care about the project anyway, right?
Again, it DOESN'T WORK if you take it to "but what if everyone did it" extremes.
Sure it does. If there's enough overall demand to pay for development, the project gets made; otherwise it doesn't. That's how a market is supposed to work.
Somone has to pay for the software ahead of time yes, because the programmers won't accept to go without pay until the game is released but it won't ever be the end users because they don't have the patience to pay for something and then wait 2 years for the product to be produced.
Who says game development has to take two years? Maybe we'll see a greater focus on things with a shorter development cycle, like episodic content or casual games.
So, how do you propose dealing with 200,000 gamers who each have their own ideal FPS/MMORPG/RTS/RPG in mind and will just move on if they don't get their way?
I don't think it'll be the problem you make it out to be: keep in mind that we're not talking about huge sums from each person. There's real-world evidence that people will pay in the double digits for games that aren't exactly their ideal.
At some point, you have to draw the line and say "this is what we're offering; if you want something else, find someone else to make it". Chances are, a lot of them will accept your offer.
But who's going to pay someone to create a product they can't sell?
Mostly, the people who want a product they can play.
(Also, the people who benefit in some other way from the existence of new games. NVIDIA, AMD, and Intel would have an incentive to fund game development, for example, since new games drive the sales of new graphics cards and processors.)
Doesn't the current system already fund this development?
Not well enough, it seems. Why would they be worried about piracy if the current system is doing such a great job?
Piracy is a threat because the current business model requires the developer to be the sole source of copies. The reality, however, is that anyone can make and distribute their own copies: after over 20 years of game development, they're still trying fruitlessly to stop it. Copying is only getting easier.
You can't change the nature of information to make it uncopyable, but you can switch to a business model that isn't threatened by copying.
How is that going to work? Hmmmm. I fancy playing WoW tonight, I'll shop around for some programmers to write it for me?
How strange. You have a link to Sellaband in your signature, so I'd expect you to understand this model easily.
As I'm sure you know, at Sellaband, every band has the same $50,000 goal (which they can raise from any number of people, as long as it totals $50k), and the money is always used to rent a studio to record a CD. But imagine if bands could set whatever price they wanted, and spend the money however they wanted (including keeping it for themselves), as long as they still managed to record an album. And imagine that instead of selling CDs, the album was just released for anyone to download and share freely.
That is what I'm proposing. A model where developers present their ideas to customers, convince them to fund it, and then release the game and move on to the next project. The developers and their customers agree on a price for the work, and the developers are paid directly for doing the work -- no matter how many people end up downloading copies later.
More likely is the development of a model whereby the public can pay developers directly for the service they provide.
Yes, exactly. It would require middlemen to make such a model work on a large scale; however, those middlemen wouldn't really be doing anything the game companies aren't doing already. They'd just be doing it in a different order (and not wasting effort on DRM and other license enforcement).
Perhaps the cost of the development service of each game could be broken up into many shares, and each person who plays the game could pay one share. That way only the direct benefactors would pay for the service, which seems fair.
If it were possible to ensure that each person who played the game had paid for his share of the development, then we wouldn't be talking about piracy, would we?
There's nothing inherently unfair about benefiting from the service without paying for it. If I hire someone to write a game, and you enjoy playing it even though you didn't pay for half of it, so what? The developer gets paid the same amount either way, and I still believe I'm getting a good value for my money (otherwise I wouldn't have paid in the first place).
Pirating games is like dining and dashing. "Why pay for this dinner? I'm already full." People say, "Why pay for games? I can already get a perfect copy for free." But the very first copy does not just appear out of thin air.
Of course not. Someone has to make it, and that person deserves to be paid.
But think a little more about your restaurant analogy. When was the last time you heard about a dine and dash at a fast food restaurant, where people pay before receiving their food? It doesn't happen, because that business model makes it impossible. If you don't want to pay, they simply don't cook for you. They don't lose any money, time, or food.
Dine and dash is only possible when you feed people before they've paid... just like piracy is only possible when you write software before you've been paid for writing it. If you charge directly for your labor, instead of selling copies afterward, then the problem goes away.
Um... what exactly kind of service market is there for GAMES? Games aren't some mission-critical thing that you need support for. They're entertainment. There is virtually 0 market for post-sale support.
Er, I didn't say anything about post-sale support. You don't need an ongoing relationship to sell a service; you just need to charge enough to compensate you for the time you spend performing that service.
Suppose you hire a team of workers to build a house. You pay them $X and then after the house is finished, you never see them again. Do they go hungry? Not if $X is enough to pay for their supplies, feed their families, and sustain them until they're hired to build something else.
Now suppose it's not just you who wants to live in that house - it's you and a bunch of your friends. You all pay a share of the money, it adds up to $X, and you never see the workers again (until you get tired of this house and want a different one). Nothing wrong with that, right?
Well, there's nothing magical about houses; replace "house" with "game" and it works just as well.
The programming skill/labor is paid for when you purchase the product. What do you think you are paying for? With digital distribution becoming more popular, you should KNOW that you aren't paying for the disc. You're paying for the work that went into creating the game.
But a lot of people aren't paying, and that's the problem. Developers are writing games and not being compensated for it, because this business model works poorly in a world where anyone can make their own copies instead of buying them through authorized channels.
So, you can move on to a business model that doesn't depend on stopping people from making their own copies (since we all know DRM doesn't work), or you can... do what? Pray for the problem to just go away?
However, what prevents the game that X number of gamers funded from being pirated?
The point is that "piracy" only matters when your business model is based around selling copies. If you treat your work as a service, and only write code when you're being paid a fair price for your time, it doesn't matter if anyone pays for a copy or not -- you're already being compensated.
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In the end it is about where you set the safety net. Too high and you get generational welfare, too low and people will starve. We've got it just about right (after welfare reform under Clinton and the R congress).
Then it seems you've already rejected the GP's position that "nobody should be forced to ... give up their money to help others". Congratulations! You aren't "calling BS" at all: we agree that the government must play a role here.
The last thing we need is any more programs for the poor. Sucks to be them. But unless we want more of them we better not subsidize it any more.
This isn't a supply and demand issue: poor people don't stop being poor if you take away their food stamps, they just starve and turn into poor skeletons. If it were as simple as choosing not to be poor, they wouldn't be in that situation in the first place.
The purpose in their lives is to serve as a bad example to others. Don't do what they did.
You're assuming (1) they did something wrong, as opposed to being the victim of misfortune (layoffs, injury, being born in the wrong city or family, etc.), and (2) they can't possibly learn from their mistake. The first assumption is incorrect more often than you might think, and the second is almost always incorrect.
Sucks to be them...the alternative is 'What you did was just fine, keep it up. Make sure your kids don't go to school ether. Knocked up again, great, hopefully this one will be an athlete.
No, the alternative is "Here's what you can do instead next time."
Maybe that means training them for a better job, maybe it means helping them move someplace where there are more jobs available, or maybe it just means helping them through their current situation and letting them try again.
But, again, we seem to agree on the fundamental issue anyway: there needs to be some safety net. I'm not saying it should be higher or lower than it already is; I'm refuting those who say it shouldn't exist at all.
Someone who makes the right choices in life (get an education, not get pregnant at 15, etc...) and becomes successful should now be forced to support those who made the poor choices?
You seem to have fallen into the libertarian fallacy of assuming that if something bad happens to you, it's because you made the wrong choices; therefore, if you're clever enough, you'll never be the victim of misfortune. (The unspoken subtext is "if you're not clever enough to make all the right choices, who cares if you starve anyway?")
That's a nice fantasy, but it's not how the world works. Often, disaster strikes -- whether it's a natural disaster, an injury/illness, massive layoffs because of some change in the market, or anything else -- and there's nothing you could've reasonably done to avoid it. What then? (Hope you have rich friends who can support you, I guess.)
There are more opportunities for the poor than ever before yet many remain perpetually poor.
Again, you're blaming people for circumstances which are often beyond their control. If you've never been poor and don't know anyone who is, it can be hard to understand the difficulty of getting out of that situation, but that doesn't mean it isn't real.
When you give more money for putting out more kids, give them subsidized housing, free food, and other freebies you're not teaching them to get a job.
When you kick them out on the street, you're not teaching them to get a job either; you're just punishing them for not having one already (or not having a good enough one), and possibly ruining their chances of getting one in the future. You aren't increasing the number or quality of available jobs, nor are you giving them the skills, experience, or connections they'll need to get a better job than they already have.
People don't stay poor because they like being poor, or because welfare pays better than working (which, considering how meager welfare benefits are, would indicate a serious problem in the job market). Until you get past those mistaken assumptions, you'll never understand the problem or be able to come up with a solution.
Unfortunately, they don't offer any solutions of their own. They want to eliminate the system that addresses the problem, without putting anything else in its place. That makes the problem worse, not better.
I can see why you troll like that, it's kind of fun to push another ideology to the extreme and then say that it's immoral. The real philosophy of libertarians is that nobody should be forced to do something, like give up their money to help others.
Heh. You do realize that you've simply restated my point, right? Sure, you used gentler words to do it, but that "real philosophy" boils down to exactly what I said earlier.
"Nobody should be forced to ... give up their money to help others" implies that when no one wants to help you out of the kindness of their hearts (as is often the case), you're just screwed.
Almost anyone can get a job, even if it's just working at wal mart.
Many, many people who have jobs still don't make enough to really support themselves and their families. They're one illness or injury away from bankruptcy and destitution.
Your response to that is "you should make do with the smaller paycheck, get another job or get skills that pay more." In other words, it's just what I said: "make do with the smaller paycheck" is another way to say "sucks to be you", and getting those extra skills is often impossible when you still need to work full-time to support your family.
The point of the matter is that most libertarians I know are very kind people who give a lot to charity, they just believe in freedom of choice. If you honestly couldn't find a job that could feed your family, then they would try to give you a leg up to get that job, they just wouldn't believe that the government should force them to give it to you.
But obviously they can't help everyone themselves, so what happens next?
Libertarians would have us believe that when charity fails, it's better to let those unfortunate people starve than to require the richest among us to give up a tiny fraction of their wealth to help them. They believe that their "freedom of choice" (i.e. the freedom not to pay taxes) is more important than whether or not someone else can put food on the table or send his kids to school.
That's one reason why they don't win elections: because most people just don't share those priorities.
The difference is that government power has the force of law, and you cannot escape.
Sure you can: vote. Or move.
The trouble with putting all the power in corporate hands is that corporations only do what's profitable, and they're only accountable to their shareholders. The corporate decision making process would mean no phone service in rural areas (because they can't charge rural customers enough to pay for running the lines), and people would die on the street in front of the hospital if they couldn't pay for an ER visit.
Government intervention, on the other hand, allows We The People to step in and say "I want to live in a country where everyone has access to telecommunications and emergency care, whether it's profitable or not." And as we can see, it worked. Obviously it still has to be paid for, but without government intervention, it wouldn't have happened at all, and most people would consider that a bad thing.
And if you don't like it, you can always start your own entity.
That's a sad joke. Unless you're Bill Gates or a fictional Ayn Rand character, you can't start your own car manufacturer, phone company, or even your own school just because you don't like the options you have available. All you can really do is choose from the companies that already exist -- unless you happen to feel strongly enough about local long distance rates that you're willing to drop your existing career and devote the rest of your life to building a competitor; even then, you can only really hope to compete in one field, and you'll probably fail anyway (like most new businesses).
On the other hand, voting gives nearly everyone a say in the government's operation. It's not a huge say, but it's something, and you can increase it simply by talking to other people and convincing them to vote the same way. Folks like Markos Moulitsas and Rush Limbaugh have had far more impact on the country through political discourse than they ever would have if they'd put that effort into starting a business.
The Libertarians care about you, but they have such a minority you will probably not see a Libetarian president in your lifetime.
No, they don't care about you or anyone else; they care about abstract principles.
For example, if you can't find a job that pays well enough to feed your family, the Libertarian response is "Well, the market has spoken. You aren't needed. Sorry."
At least, that's the honest Libertarian response. Depending on who you're talking to, you might hear something else instead, like "That's impossible, the market always provides for everyone! You must not be looking hard enough!" or "Surely there are plenty of charities that can help you out!"
I like my free games and hate DRM as much as the next guy, but the reality is that I would never try to start a business producing shrink-wrapped software (such as a game) in a country with unenforced intellectual property laws. And guess what -- when you can buy any piece of software for $3 in a stand around the corner, NOBODY pays for it, and it becomes impossible to even buy the thing legitimately (meaning that if this became the case in the USA, the thing would not have been produced at all).
Er... did you even bother reading my comment?
Of course it's hard to sell copies of software when people can get them for less. That's why I said you shouldn't base your business model around selling copies! If you've been paid a fair price to write the game in the first place, it doesn't matter who gets a copy later or how much they pay for it -- you've already been compensated.
The assumption that all the content you like would be produced anyway (but with a different business model) is wrong. There are many countries in which no such content is produced. This is due not to a lack of talent, technology, customers, or desire but primarily to the lack of intellectual property laws that would allow the producers to make _any_ money.
Well, it's obviously false that they can't make any money without copyright laws. Anyone can get paid for performing a service, they don't need special government-enforced monopolies.
It seems more likely that, if there indeed are places where content is not produced, it's because the would-be producers moved on to other countries, where strict copyright laws make it easier for them to produce content on speculation (without having to find a paying customer before they start working, like nearly everyone else manages to do in nearly every other industry).
16 Mbps is "commonly available"?
Maybe if you're lucky enough to live in an area covered by FIOS. Most of us still aren't. 8 Mbps from cable (bursting up to 12) is the best you can get in many large cities.
Try the LG Dare. Touch screen that rotates as you turn the phone, full-HTML browser with zoom and pan, music and video player, etc. just like the iPhone... but it's easier to type on, you can expand the memory, and it runs on Verizon's more reliable 3G network (and you don't have to pay $30/mo for a data plan).
Compare that with Windows where not a single line of code is OSS. If someone felt like it you could easily write a compatible Mac OS clone. Whereas with Windows about every line of code has to be reverse engineered.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but OS X is a lot more than just Darwin, WebKit, and a handful of other open source products. Reverse engineering Cocoa, Quartz, and the Core Everything frameworks is no easier than reverse engineering Win32 and DirectX.
But if you'd like to get started on that compatible Mac OS clone, be my guest. Shouldn't take you more than an afternoon, right? ;)
EVERY... DIFFERENCE... IS... AN... ILLUSION... TO... DISTRACT... YOU!
That's exactly what THEY want you to think! You're playing right into THE MAN's hands. Don't you see THE TRUTH right in front of you?
These are all great questions, and I think the best way to answer them is to try it and let customers decide what they're willing to support.
I think it'd be totally unacceptable for developers to keep the money if they don't reach their goal, but beyond that, I don't see any pressing argument one way or the other about how the overhead should be paid for, when and how the money should be released to the developer, or whether the people who funded the game should get any extra benefit.
Atleast for the initial product since that would have to include things like engine design and things like that(sometimes you can license then engine from another company but they still have to be made and funded from time to time) and the initial cost in this case would be quite high meaning you have to charge more for the first episode, which would probably not be a price the consumers are not willing to pay for such a short game.
I think they would be willing to pay a fair price, as long as you explain to them why your costs are higher than expected. Just say "we're designing a new engine, we expect it'll take X programmers Y months, and then we'll be able to make the next episodes for less".
No matter what business model you use, you're going to have to make those costs up somehow. If developing an engine is going to cost $1 million, then your customers are going to have to pay $1 million, whether they pay you directly for development or indirectly by buying a disc in a box at Best Buy.
The consumers would also expect a lower price on the conscutive episodes because "the developer doesn't have the same costs for development costs" or we would run into the same problem with piracy again.
Sure, and they'll be right to expect a lower price when the actual development costs are lower. But piracy won't be a problem; remember, piracy doesn't even exist in this business model, because it's based around paying directly for labor, not selling copies. If people don't want to pay for development, then there won't be any game for them to copy.
You assume that in the end, consumers will miss having their great games so much that some uneasy equilibrium will be established between piracy and paying for all games. But IMHO this can easily go to either extreme - where game-makers throw up their hands, say "fuck it", and move onto industries where their work won't be ripped off en masse. In this case everyone loses.
Can you provide any examples of industries where this has happened? That is, where there's a demonstrated demand for the product (obviously, people are already willing to spend enough money on games to pay for development), and yet the market simply fails to move that money to where it's needed?
Say I get someone to design me a website, and then stiff them by refusing to pay the invoice. That's also stealing - I'm stealing the fruits of their labour without proper compensation. [...]
It is the same way with game developers. Sure, they have no physically *lost* anything via piracy, but you are enjoying the fruits of their labour without compensating them.
No, it's not really the same. In one case, you've deceived someone into doing work for you. You told him "make me a web site and I'll give you some money", and then you failed to hold up your end of the bargain. If you hadn't been there in the first place, lying to him, he would've spent that time doing something else, so you have taken that time away from him.
In the other case, the developer freely chose to work on a game, hoping (but with no guarantee or promise) that he'd make some money from it. You didn't ask him to do it, and in fact he isn't aware that you even exist. Whether you buy a copy, download a copy for free, or never play the game at all, he's done exactly the same amount of work. You haven't taken anything away from him.
Essentially gamers would have to pay someone who SAYS they will make a game. Assuming they aren't scamming, it will take years and might suck.
If you look around at other industries, you'll see that this isn't very unusual at all. People don't really have a problem paying for services.
For example, when you hire a contractor to build a house for you, you have to "pay someone who SAYS they will make a house. Assuming they aren't scamming, it will take years and might suck."
How do you deal with that risk? Well, first, you know who you gave your money to, and you have a contract with him, so if he doesn't actually deliver on the house, you can take his ass to court.
Second, you agree beforehand what you want out of the house, to a reasonable level of detail (e.g. you probably don't care what kind of bolts go in the walls, but you do care how big the rooms are), so that when the house is done, you can both see that it was built to spec.
How is this better than paying AFTER the fact to reward someone whose work ALREADY pleases you and encourage them to make more? AKA "the current system?"
Well, for one thing, it's immune to piracy. You don't need DRM, license keys, massive legal departments, or even copyright laws for this business model to work.
It also gives the developer a guaranteed revenue stream. Under the current system, developers write something, and then they roll the dice: will they lose money, break even, or turn a profit? They won't know until the game is released, so in many cases, they'll end up wasting millions of dollars and years of their lives on a product no one wants. On the other hand, under the model I've proposed, they know exactly what their customers are willing to pay, and if it isn't enough, they can do something else instead.
Essentially you'd be promoting a sponsorship model which would destroy the risk taking and innovation of game developers. The sponsor would already have something in mind when they hire a developer. In the current model a developer has freedom to create something different then shop it around - sometimes their ideas hit, other times they miss, but what's important is they have incentive to take risks.
That wouldn't go away. Developers would still have the freedom to come up with an idea and shop it around -- possibly to a single "sponsor", but more likely to thousands of individual customers. If there's sufficient interest, the project will be funded; if not, hopefully they'll get some good feedback to allow them to shape their idea into something that people will fund.
We have seen the non-box business model, software as a service. You never own a copy of the game, you pay to access it while it runs on some big mainframe.
Er, that's one non-box business model, but it's not the only one, and it's not the one I was talking about.
What I'm talking about is closer to another non-box business model that already exists today: custom development. BigCorp wants an application developed that they'll use internally, so they hire a team of developers to write it. They're not paying per copy, and they're not "sponsoring" the software out of the goodness of their hearts; they're paying for a service, the service of writing that application, because they know they'll receive a benefit.
Now, there's nothing inherent to this model that says it has to be one entity paying for the service: it could just as easily be hundreds or thousands of individuals, all meeting through some web site that connects the folks with money to the folks with development skill. Sites like Sellaband and political campaigns have already proved that you can collect massive amounts of money through lots of small transactions.
And there's nothing that says the design has to be dictated by the customers, either: the developers could just as easily come up with an idea first and then look for customers, instead of the other way around. All they really need is a place for customers and developers to connect.
Without computer games there would still be a market for computers but without computers computer games wouldn't exist so actually it's the other way around.
Not really. The big profits come from early adopters buying cutting-edge gear, not offices and soccer moms buying cheap PCs made with two year old parts. Without a supply of new games, the market for things like 1 GB graphics cards and quad-core CPUs would be much, much smaller, and the technology's evolution would be that much slower.
Indeed, if games hadn't been driving GPU development for so many years, we'd probably have no eye candy in Vista or OS X because 3D accelerators would still be rare. Instead, they're so common that you can't even buy a 2D-only card anymore.
No it's not that easy, if people pay for a product they expect to get it within a resonable timeframe and computer games takes years to produce
As I wrote in another response, development cycles don't have to be that long. Episodic content and casual games are becoming more prevalent already.
I'm sorry, but when I pay MY money for a service, for ME, I don't see why other people should benefit from it for free.
Er, why shouldn't they? They're not stopping you from enjoying the game. The developers get paid the same either way, so what justification is there for limiting who can play the game once it's released (especially since any system of licensing or DRM would raise development costs)?
What matters is whether you believe you're getting a good value for your money. If you think you'll get $X worth of enjoyment out of the game, then you'll be willing to pay $X. But if simply knowing that someone else also gets to play the game is enough to reduce your own enjoyment of it, well, maybe you have deeper problems.
Or if they do, why can't I benefit from someone elses money?
Indeed, who says you can't?
If you hear about a project that sounds a little interesting, but not enough to open your wallet, then you can sit back and wait for other people to fund it. Maybe they'll come up with enough funding without you, and you'll get to use it for free.
Or maybe they won't, and it'll never be released. But that won't bother you, because we already established that you don't really care about the project anyway, right?
Again, it DOESN'T WORK if you take it to "but what if everyone did it" extremes.
Sure it does. If there's enough overall demand to pay for development, the project gets made; otherwise it doesn't. That's how a market is supposed to work.
Somone has to pay for the software ahead of time yes, because the programmers won't accept to go without pay until the game is released but it won't ever be the end users because they don't have the patience to pay for something and then wait 2 years for the product to be produced.
Who says game development has to take two years? Maybe we'll see a greater focus on things with a shorter development cycle, like episodic content or casual games.
So, how do you propose dealing with 200,000 gamers who each have their own ideal FPS/MMORPG/RTS/RPG in mind and will just move on if they don't get their way?
I don't think it'll be the problem you make it out to be: keep in mind that we're not talking about huge sums from each person. There's real-world evidence that people will pay in the double digits for games that aren't exactly their ideal.
At some point, you have to draw the line and say "this is what we're offering; if you want something else, find someone else to make it". Chances are, a lot of them will accept your offer.
But who's going to pay someone to create a product they can't sell?
Mostly, the people who want a product they can play.
(Also, the people who benefit in some other way from the existence of new games. NVIDIA, AMD, and Intel would have an incentive to fund game development, for example, since new games drive the sales of new graphics cards and processors.)
Doesn't the current system already fund this development?
Not well enough, it seems. Why would they be worried about piracy if the current system is doing such a great job?
Piracy is a threat because the current business model requires the developer to be the sole source of copies. The reality, however, is that anyone can make and distribute their own copies: after over 20 years of game development, they're still trying fruitlessly to stop it. Copying is only getting easier.
You can't change the nature of information to make it uncopyable, but you can switch to a business model that isn't threatened by copying.
How is that going to work? Hmmmm. I fancy playing WoW tonight, I'll shop around for some programmers to write it for me?
How strange. You have a link to Sellaband in your signature, so I'd expect you to understand this model easily.
As I'm sure you know, at Sellaband, every band has the same $50,000 goal (which they can raise from any number of people, as long as it totals $50k), and the money is always used to rent a studio to record a CD. But imagine if bands could set whatever price they wanted, and spend the money however they wanted (including keeping it for themselves), as long as they still managed to record an album. And imagine that instead of selling CDs, the album was just released for anyone to download and share freely.
That is what I'm proposing. A model where developers present their ideas to customers, convince them to fund it, and then release the game and move on to the next project. The developers and their customers agree on a price for the work, and the developers are paid directly for doing the work -- no matter how many people end up downloading copies later.
More likely is the development of a model whereby the public can pay developers directly for the service they provide.
Yes, exactly. It would require middlemen to make such a model work on a large scale; however, those middlemen wouldn't really be doing anything the game companies aren't doing already. They'd just be doing it in a different order (and not wasting effort on DRM and other license enforcement).
Perhaps the cost of the development service of each game could be broken up into many shares, and each person who plays the game could pay one share. That way only the direct benefactors would pay for the service, which seems fair.
If it were possible to ensure that each person who played the game had paid for his share of the development, then we wouldn't be talking about piracy, would we?
There's nothing inherently unfair about benefiting from the service without paying for it. If I hire someone to write a game, and you enjoy playing it even though you didn't pay for half of it, so what? The developer gets paid the same amount either way, and I still believe I'm getting a good value for my money (otherwise I wouldn't have paid in the first place).
Pirating games is like dining and dashing. "Why pay for this dinner? I'm already full." People say, "Why pay for games? I can already get a perfect copy for free." But the very first copy does not just appear out of thin air.
Of course not. Someone has to make it, and that person deserves to be paid.
But think a little more about your restaurant analogy. When was the last time you heard about a dine and dash at a fast food restaurant, where people pay before receiving their food? It doesn't happen, because that business model makes it impossible. If you don't want to pay, they simply don't cook for you. They don't lose any money, time, or food.
Dine and dash is only possible when you feed people before they've paid... just like piracy is only possible when you write software before you've been paid for writing it. If you charge directly for your labor, instead of selling copies afterward, then the problem goes away.
Um... what exactly kind of service market is there for GAMES? Games aren't some mission-critical thing that you need support for. They're entertainment. There is virtually 0 market for post-sale support.
Er, I didn't say anything about post-sale support. You don't need an ongoing relationship to sell a service; you just need to charge enough to compensate you for the time you spend performing that service.
Suppose you hire a team of workers to build a house. You pay them $X and then after the house is finished, you never see them again. Do they go hungry? Not if $X is enough to pay for their supplies, feed their families, and sustain them until they're hired to build something else.
Now suppose it's not just you who wants to live in that house - it's you and a bunch of your friends. You all pay a share of the money, it adds up to $X, and you never see the workers again (until you get tired of this house and want a different one). Nothing wrong with that, right?
Well, there's nothing magical about houses; replace "house" with "game" and it works just as well.
The programming skill/labor is paid for when you purchase the product. What do you think you are paying for? With digital distribution becoming more popular, you should KNOW that you aren't paying for the disc. You're paying for the work that went into creating the game.
But a lot of people aren't paying, and that's the problem. Developers are writing games and not being compensated for it, because this business model works poorly in a world where anyone can make their own copies instead of buying them through authorized channels.
So, you can move on to a business model that doesn't depend on stopping people from making their own copies (since we all know DRM doesn't work), or you can... do what? Pray for the problem to just go away?
However, what prevents the game that X number of gamers funded from being pirated?
The point is that "piracy" only matters when your business model is based around selling copies. If you treat your work as a service, and only write code when you're being paid a fair price for your time, it doesn't matter if anyone pays for a copy or not -- you're already being compensated.