and legions of apple fans are posting their incessant apple fan posts in open source forums like phpbb, sites like postnuke, running on apache webservers and mysql databases working on linux operating systems all around the net. doing all the promotion with their incessant rambling and linking that apple couldnt do if it spent tens of times of its all existing capital....
yea definitely os didnt provide anything useful...
the irony is that the company is named after the father of western classical (and therefore rather, contemporary) music, father Bach. but they, in lieu of his generousity, openness and productivity that ushered in a global era of music, are trying to make music closed. shameful. despicable.
and as we all very well know, your format is as good as its acceptance. if the 'internet and digital community' does not accept your format, and players and sites support it and propagate it, you can only shove a format up your ass.
A person who works on something that s/he has a burning passion.
this is the type of people who made scientific revolution, industrial age, digital age possible. this is the way it should be.
not to mention that most of those current paid developers probably went out to linux on a passion, either during or after college or without college education, knowing that they could hurt their chances of getting a job in a traditional company. ie they basically jumped into life blindfold, armed with only passion. now, through passion and perseverance, most of them have become top notch developers in linux.
and, behold, linux can pay people now. why it shouldnt ? how many of you would be courageous enough to go all out on your passion like that ? granted, now there is actually a chance that you will find a job with linux after you graduate from college, if thats your field, but it is now. most of the people who are employed for some time in linux jobs were studying in college at a time when linux was just something microsoft could laugh about. i knew some people from CS department, going all out on linux by those times. a lot of people thought they were burning their future. a lot of people couldnt muster the guts to go for their passion. those people did.
again, i emphasize ; noone else but such people deserve being paid, and being paid more.
just read TFA. it is full of accounts of how shareholder pressure, need to please greedy shareholders, big conglomerate intervention screws potential stellar game titles and through shareholder action forces iconic visioneer/pioneers like founder of atari, origin out of their companies.
really ironic.
we play the games. the games are produced for us. but the shareholders, not understanding, knowing or even caring zit about gaming, or us gamers, not only break our gaming experience, but their own potential profits.
that is nothing less than the failure of capitalism and corporatism. if some idea betrays its own ideas with the very idea itself, it shouldnt be practiced.
so, rpg elements are creeping into other genres, and ousting mods, dedicated servers etc ?
that is happening, DESPITE rpg games themselves are being made from the start to include extensive modding, and multiplayer ? like how dragon age has modding, and like how unbelievably moddable mount & blade is ? ( to the extent of some mods being entirely different games) upcoming multiplayer server (counter/starcraft style) for mount and blade ?
taxes were always there. it didnt matter zit if you converted cash into something from virtual currency or from sale of your old underwear. as soon as you have incurred income, it was taxable.
for, if they do, they will have upset us. we are the small developers, webmasters, publishers, contributors. we are adsense, we are pagerank, analytics, this that, whatever google has devised in regard to content syndication on the web.
are these people aware that it takes ages to upgrade even a tiny piece of your gear, if you already have reached a certain item level ?
unless you go changing your items for show or for leisure like a monkey, and just leave your top tier items where they are, noone will be able to make out anything about your 'habits'.
and if you are a raider who also does rp or does pvp and you routinely change armor sets, all they will be doing is knowing at what hour you raid. but then again after all there are a lot of guildies knowing that, and you people probably arrange those times on a forum which is probably open to public anyway.
after all, if some party 'redefines' open, how are you going to keep it open ?
you need some basic rules to make sure that openness persists. you need net neutrality rules. there is nothing related to innovation in this. net neutrality is basically the freedom of expression for modern humanism. its fundamental.
you will find people who would slack the hell out in real life doing unbelievable amounts of administrative work for their gaming guild in online games. they do the stuff they wouldnt do if you paid them a fortune.
and all the prices of which are again determined by the same price setting cartel groups in america. they are basically ruling you. there is no free market. they just set the price in an interval for every product and rape you with them. you are living in an artificially inflated country. this includes american rents, american salespeople, american nikes, american cereal, american shit. even disposing of shit.
So you want more powerful government because you're afraid of corporations, yet admit that you will never have as much influence over government as the lobbyists that those corporations can hire.
Makes perfect sense to me. (/s)
dont put anything in my mouth.
if you exercise YOUR own power through government and its regulations, lobbying, corporate power wont be able to get the upper hand. its about who strikes first. and, corporations do not try to rule and regulate, they try to cripple government through laws that bar it from action so you wont exercise your power.
If you want to see how this really works, check out the toy testing legislation that killed small companies and secondary markets (even the Good Will stores). Mattel wrote that legislation. How's that for protection for the little guy?
guy, your country has been at the hands of corporations for over decades. half a century or more actually. dont expect things to come up roses when you just attempt preventing abuse by corporations through regulations. it takes time.
take a look at europe. take a look at what european union did. see how well it worked out for them. despite they had pitiful population (compared to usa, china, russia), pitiful natural resources (compared to many countries) and little market to exploit (compared to how china was using southeast asia satellites as market and how usa has been using cold war satellites and petty dictatorships as markets), they have come up on the top of the world in regard to living standards, liberties and democracy.
its surprising to see how arrogant the intel people in america are, despite the fact that their company has been fined already in other countries like korea for wrongdoing and antitrust. and big time too.
one would think that they would at least have a little bit shame and dignity when facing public this time in an antitrust case. but, they behave totally to the opposite.
it seems you americans tolerate corporate greed and arrogance way too much. now they are devoid of shame too at last. even not faking it.
Unfortunately, the only way to do that is to get rid Washington's power to select winners and losers in the marketplace
this delusion is precisely why you are being screwed over by corporate interests.
for fuck's sakes, what power does government have in the market to choose anything ? all the power they have is handing out defense contracts. apart from that almost all sectors of american business have gone unregulated in majority of last 30 years because republicans had occupied the power in those decades in general. what happened in the end ? global investment scam.
man.
...........
this is not something related to taxes and whatnot as the fucking private interests are brainwashing you with their political arm. tax has nothing to do with corporate power. leave that aside, tax reductions only increase corporate power. your country is already fucked in terms of income and wealth distribution. 15% of the population owns 80% of income and wealth, and thats a statistic of 5 years ago. it probably have grown to a bigger gap by now.
all taxes does is increase these people's power by giving them more disposable income. a tax break which totals to some $150 for an ordinary person wont do squat to change his/her life. yet, a tax break which totals to $150 million for the wealthy means that they have $150 million to spend expanding their influence. and they do.
look at this practically - a corporation, any private interest, is a group of people who hold more power than individuals because, well, not only they are a group of people, but also they have more money than similar size citizen groups combined. and because private interest groups tend to be tied to each other by bonds of not serious mutual interests, but also shady deals and dealings, their cohesion goes beyond any citizen grassroots groups.
therefore in a neutral environment, private interest groups will always be more powerful to pass their interests over the people's interests, by both using their connections and their monetary wealth.
you cannot reason with a self serving interest. they dont care what you think either. because they are more powerful, you are just an insignificant sheeple that wont make your voice heard or will passed over them at any point.
ONLY thing that can undo a greater power, is another greater power. if you cant mount revolutions every few years, and you cant, then there remains only one tool that is more powerful by definition in social structure to use against those powerful groups : the government.
if you dont use that tool, or let that tool crippled in accordance with private interest propaganda, you will end up naked against private interests. its as simple as that. and that is precisely why they are SO against anything regarding government, because it is a tool that they cant directly control, and have to spend countless billions and effort to control it through lobbying. despite that they know that it is a tool that can be wrested to become a tool in the hands of 'the people' anytime. anytime. that is why they are so keen on 'no government'.
as long as there are people in america which have your mindset, ie, letting go of your only weapon against groups more powerful than you because those groups, ironically, identify it with 'freedom', you will continue to suffer.
and one more thing - dont give me crap about competition. this very day is the day riaa got its antitrust case. any logical individual who read the charges in it and the evidence would not talk about 'competition' in america. for, it does not exist.
average quality in regard to i.t. crowd. american average quality coders are not so high in regard to common i.t. standard in regard to programming on the web. you people are for some reason exaggerating your own nation for god knows why.
people are telecommuting. they dont need to go abroad. there are many indians working out of india doing jobs for other countries as well as americans moving abroad to europe to work from there because cost of living is cheaper. its a digital age with freedoms.
who never fucking cut their costs even if they get stuff produced for cents in china. moreover, prices of each class of goods appear to be fixed around their respective price margins for decades. despite costs have fallen down to tenth or lower from before, they havent budged to cut down costs. there was supposed to be competition. where is it ? why isnt a fucking single company cutting costs to get more market reach ?
all these show that there has been a fucking unsigned, unwritten cartel established in each walk of american consumer life, and they are practically price fixing like the LCD producers did a few years ago.
or, just like how riaa members has been charged with price fixing just today.
no, dont blame anyone else. the problems of america lies in its unbridled corporate structure. corporations are free to do anything, under the pretense of free market, yet the consumer doesnt appear to be making use of any of that freedom.
as a result, your cost of living is insanely high. nike produces shoes for a few bucks in pakistan, sells them for $20-30 in turkey, sells same shoes for $80-100 in usa. they are practically raping the shit out of you.
4000/year is too low for getting even an average quality indian coder. i have to compete with indians in web development, i know how ridiculously low rates they pull sometimes, but these rates generally are placed in projects that can be somehow gobbled up from premade code. i dont think with 400/month you are going to get quality ppl. youll probably get some college kids in a high turnover sweat shop.
You are partially right, bureaucrats have been the pillar of government for centuries, almost always to the detriment of freedom. There is at least one country in the world run the way you would like things: China. If that is the sort of government you want, fine. I don't.
oh is it. the whole history of u.s.a belies your comment. it is one of the two countries with bureaucratic tradition, and up till last decade it was the most free place on earth.
china is not bureaucratic. it doesnt have bureaucratic tradition. a bureaucrat cant resist any unreasonable order from the elected officials there. china is a totalitarian dictatorship. dont mix these two concepts together.
BTW, my understanding of human nature leads me to believe that if what you are proposing was implemented, China is the best you could hope for.
your understanding is wrong. for, it has been to the opposite.
european union is the current climax of humanist progress mankind was ever able to make. leave aside that, it is also the social evolution pinnacle in all other respects of human social understanding too. you should do some research on how life in european union is, how free are the people there, and how the bureaucracy there works.
Please do some extensive reading of history. The Society of Cincinatti was an attempt to create a fuedal ruling class in the U.S.: membership is by inheritance or because of noteworthy accomplishment (like the noble classes of the Middle Ages). The Society of Cincinatti has done many good things in the history of the U.S., however, if it had any real power, it would have become evil.
something being inherited doesnt directly make it feudal. for feudal, noble system to be realized, power needs to be inherited. not a membership in a society.
and anything can be abused. society of cincinnati wasnt exempt from human corruption.
yet as you have noticed, it did a lot of good things in the history of u.s., and it also had a lot of power too, through its members who eventually took up government positions. yet, it didnt turn evil, and usa didnt turn to a kingdom.
One other thing, you keep making comments about not being able to wait "until the legislature convenes" to take action. Are you trying to tell me that there is anything that can't wait a month (the longest recess the U.S. Congress takes is from early August to early September-usually a couple days more than a month)? My experience is that any "law" put into place in less than 6 months is a bad law.
yea, there are stuff that cant wait a month. when you have an organize private interest acting in unison, a month is a huge period.
you apparently forgot how did they suddenly come up out of nowhere with 100 million advertising budget, and god knows how many million spent in lobbying and tried to kill network neutrality a few years ago. not only that they also had 'grassroots' sites suddenly popping with tens of thousands of members and thousands of comments present too. it didnt take a month for them to fire all these at internet, including ted stevens. it was a close call. we were probably saved only because the backlash was strong enough, and congress changed hands right around that time.
no. there are some stuff for which a month is WAY too long.
they even changed the fucking pandemic definition they had for decades, just to be able to call this a pandemic. what's there to investigate. its like nixon saying 'im not a crook' after the tapes have been discovered.
the creators are a husband and wife from turkey, who left their daytime job some years ago to chase this dream. they didnt have any capital, they didnt have any investors. instead, they made their prototype, gave it as shareware, and asked people to support/contribute. a few years later, you have the game. at no point any investment got involved, and they only sit down with a publisher (paradox) after the game was complete.
the game much less rivals pirates in the hybrid/open ended scope, but passes in a medieval feudal world, with unprecedented (common consensus of all gamers and critics) mounted combat. turns out they also have been able to incorporate strategic, roleplay, and rts elements too.
they got high reviews last year in all prominent online gaming magazines.
this alone proves fun, vision beats the hell out of investment and the 50 million dollar budgets you are talking about there.
gaming died when wall street entered into it. it will reincarnate when enough number of players realize gamers and wall street dont mix well together.
Slashdot Mirror
and legions of apple fans are posting their incessant apple fan posts in open source forums like phpbb, sites like postnuke, running on apache webservers and mysql databases working on linux operating systems all around the net. doing all the promotion with their incessant rambling and linking that apple couldnt do if it spent tens of times of its all existing capital ....
yea definitely os didnt provide anything useful ...
the irony is that the company is named after the father of western classical (and therefore rather, contemporary) music, father Bach. but they, in lieu of his generousity, openness and productivity that ushered in a global era of music, are trying to make music closed. shameful. despicable.
and as we all very well know, your format is as good as its acceptance. if the 'internet and digital community' does not accept your format, and players and sites support it and propagate it, you can only shove a format up your ass.
and thats what going to happen.
doesnt monopolizing entire national market through usage of patents and copyrights or cartel practice kinda defy the point of having one ?
A person who works on something that s/he has a burning passion.
this is the type of people who made scientific revolution, industrial age, digital age possible. this is the way it should be.
not to mention that most of those current paid developers probably went out to linux on a passion, either during or after college or without college education, knowing that they could hurt their chances of getting a job in a traditional company. ie they basically jumped into life blindfold, armed with only passion. now, through passion and perseverance, most of them have become top notch developers in linux.
and, behold, linux can pay people now. why it shouldnt ? how many of you would be courageous enough to go all out on your passion like that ? granted, now there is actually a chance that you will find a job with linux after you graduate from college, if thats your field, but it is now. most of the people who are employed for some time in linux jobs were studying in college at a time when linux was just something microsoft could laugh about. i knew some people from CS department, going all out on linux by those times. a lot of people thought they were burning their future. a lot of people couldnt muster the guts to go for their passion. those people did.
again, i emphasize ; noone else but such people deserve being paid, and being paid more.
killing gaming.
just read TFA. it is full of accounts of how shareholder pressure, need to please greedy shareholders, big conglomerate intervention screws potential stellar game titles and through shareholder action forces iconic visioneer/pioneers like founder of atari, origin out of their companies.
really ironic.
we play the games. the games are produced for us. but the shareholders, not understanding, knowing or even caring zit about gaming, or us gamers, not only break our gaming experience, but their own potential profits.
that is nothing less than the failure of capitalism and corporatism. if some idea betrays its own ideas with the very idea itself, it shouldnt be practiced.
who will be able to come up and say microsoft is not in bed with corporations that are enemies of the new digital era, after this incident.
so, rpg elements are creeping into other genres, and ousting mods, dedicated servers etc ?
that is happening, DESPITE rpg games themselves are being made from the start to include extensive modding, and multiplayer ? like how dragon age has modding, and like how unbelievably moddable mount & blade is ? ( to the extent of some mods being entirely different games) upcoming multiplayer server (counter/starcraft style) for mount and blade ?
taxes were always there. it didnt matter zit if you converted cash into something from virtual currency or from sale of your old underwear. as soon as you have incurred income, it was taxable.
for, if they do, they will have upset us. we are the small developers, webmasters, publishers, contributors. we are adsense, we are pagerank, analytics, this that, whatever google has devised in regard to content syndication on the web.
if they do, we will upset google.
are these people aware that it takes ages to upgrade even a tiny piece of your gear, if you already have reached a certain item level ?
unless you go changing your items for show or for leisure like a monkey, and just leave your top tier items where they are, noone will be able to make out anything about your 'habits'.
and if you are a raider who also does rp or does pvp and you routinely change armor sets, all they will be doing is knowing at what hour you raid. but then again after all there are a lot of guildies knowing that, and you people probably arrange those times on a forum which is probably open to public anyway.
then whats the ruckus ...
after all, if some party 'redefines' open, how are you going to keep it open ?
you need some basic rules to make sure that openness persists. you need net neutrality rules. there is nothing related to innovation in this. net neutrality is basically the freedom of expression for modern humanism. its fundamental.
you will find people who would slack the hell out in real life doing unbelievable amounts of administrative work for their gaming guild in online games. they do the stuff they wouldnt do if you paid them a fortune.
digital drive, texting, sms, there is no goddam paypal link to donate for many of us. hey. red cross. catch up with the times.
and all the prices of which are again determined by the same price setting cartel groups in america. they are basically ruling you. there is no free market. they just set the price in an interval for every product and rape you with them. you are living in an artificially inflated country. this includes american rents, american salespeople, american nikes, american cereal, american shit. even disposing of shit.
So you want more powerful government because you're afraid of corporations, yet admit that you will never have as much influence over government as the lobbyists that those corporations can hire.
Makes perfect sense to me. (/s)
dont put anything in my mouth.
if you exercise YOUR own power through government and its regulations, lobbying, corporate power wont be able to get the upper hand. its about who strikes first. and, corporations do not try to rule and regulate, they try to cripple government through laws that bar it from action so you wont exercise your power.
If you want to see how this really works, check out the toy testing legislation that killed small companies and secondary markets (even the Good Will stores). Mattel wrote that legislation. How's that for protection for the little guy?
guy, your country has been at the hands of corporations for over decades. half a century or more actually. dont expect things to come up roses when you just attempt preventing abuse by corporations through regulations. it takes time.
take a look at europe. take a look at what european union did. see how well it worked out for them. despite they had pitiful population (compared to usa, china, russia), pitiful natural resources (compared to many countries) and little market to exploit (compared to how china was using southeast asia satellites as market and how usa has been using cold war satellites and petty dictatorships as markets), they have come up on the top of the world in regard to living standards, liberties and democracy.
its surprising to see how arrogant the intel people in america are, despite the fact that their company has been fined already in other countries like korea for wrongdoing and antitrust. and big time too.
one would think that they would at least have a little bit shame and dignity when facing public this time in an antitrust case. but, they behave totally to the opposite.
it seems you americans tolerate corporate greed and arrogance way too much. now they are devoid of shame too at last. even not faking it.
no company ever attempts to get ahead of their competition by cutting prices seriously. isnt it fishy ?
jesus.
Unfortunately, the only way to do that is to get rid Washington's power to select winners and losers in the marketplace
this delusion is precisely why you are being screwed over by corporate interests.
for fuck's sakes, what power does government have in the market to choose anything ? all the power they have is handing out defense contracts. apart from that almost all sectors of american business have gone unregulated in majority of last 30 years because republicans had occupied the power in those decades in general. what happened in the end ? global investment scam.
man.
this is not something related to taxes and whatnot as the fucking private interests are brainwashing you with their political arm. tax has nothing to do with corporate power. leave that aside, tax reductions only increase corporate power. your country is already fucked in terms of income and wealth distribution. 15% of the population owns 80% of income and wealth, and thats a statistic of 5 years ago. it probably have grown to a bigger gap by now.
all taxes does is increase these people's power by giving them more disposable income. a tax break which totals to some $150 for an ordinary person wont do squat to change his/her life. yet, a tax break which totals to $150 million for the wealthy means that they have $150 million to spend expanding their influence. and they do.
look at this practically - a corporation, any private interest, is a group of people who hold more power than individuals because, well, not only they are a group of people, but also they have more money than similar size citizen groups combined. and because private interest groups tend to be tied to each other by bonds of not serious mutual interests, but also shady deals and dealings, their cohesion goes beyond any citizen grassroots groups.
therefore in a neutral environment, private interest groups will always be more powerful to pass their interests over the people's interests, by both using their connections and their monetary wealth.
you cannot reason with a self serving interest. they dont care what you think either. because they are more powerful, you are just an insignificant sheeple that wont make your voice heard or will passed over them at any point.
ONLY thing that can undo a greater power, is another greater power. if you cant mount revolutions every few years, and you cant, then there remains only one tool that is more powerful by definition in social structure to use against those powerful groups : the government.
if you dont use that tool, or let that tool crippled in accordance with private interest propaganda, you will end up naked against private interests. its as simple as that. and that is precisely why they are SO against anything regarding government, because it is a tool that they cant directly control, and have to spend countless billions and effort to control it through lobbying. despite that they know that it is a tool that can be wrested to become a tool in the hands of 'the people' anytime. anytime. that is why they are so keen on 'no government'.
as long as there are people in america which have your mindset, ie, letting go of your only weapon against groups more powerful than you because those groups, ironically, identify it with 'freedom', you will continue to suffer.
and one more thing - dont give me crap about competition. this very day is the day riaa got its antitrust case. any logical individual who read the charges in it and the evidence would not talk about 'competition' in america. for, it does not exist.
average quality in regard to i.t. crowd. american average quality coders are not so high in regard to common i.t. standard in regard to programming on the web. you people are for some reason exaggerating your own nation for god knows why.
people are telecommuting. they dont need to go abroad. there are many indians working out of india doing jobs for other countries as well as americans moving abroad to europe to work from there because cost of living is cheaper. its a digital age with freedoms.
who never fucking cut their costs even if they get stuff produced for cents in china. moreover, prices of each class of goods appear to be fixed around their respective price margins for decades. despite costs have fallen down to tenth or lower from before, they havent budged to cut down costs. there was supposed to be competition. where is it ? why isnt a fucking single company cutting costs to get more market reach ?
all these show that there has been a fucking unsigned, unwritten cartel established in each walk of american consumer life, and they are practically price fixing like the LCD producers did a few years ago.
or, just like how riaa members has been charged with price fixing just today.
no, dont blame anyone else. the problems of america lies in its unbridled corporate structure. corporations are free to do anything, under the pretense of free market, yet the consumer doesnt appear to be making use of any of that freedom.
as a result, your cost of living is insanely high. nike produces shoes for a few bucks in pakistan, sells them for $20-30 in turkey, sells same shoes for $80-100 in usa. they are practically raping the shit out of you.
or script kiddies.
4000/year is too low for getting even an average quality indian coder. i have to compete with indians in web development, i know how ridiculously low rates they pull sometimes, but these rates generally are placed in projects that can be somehow gobbled up from premade code. i dont think with 400/month you are going to get quality ppl. youll probably get some college kids in a high turnover sweat shop.
You are partially right, bureaucrats have been the pillar of government for centuries, almost always to the detriment of freedom. There is at least one country in the world run the way you would like things: China. If that is the sort of government you want, fine. I don't.
oh is it. the whole history of u.s.a belies your comment. it is one of the two countries with bureaucratic tradition, and up till last decade it was the most free place on earth.
china is not bureaucratic. it doesnt have bureaucratic tradition. a bureaucrat cant resist any unreasonable order from the elected officials there. china is a totalitarian dictatorship. dont mix these two concepts together.
BTW, my understanding of human nature leads me to believe that if what you are proposing was implemented, China is the best you could hope for.
your understanding is wrong. for, it has been to the opposite.
european union is the current climax of humanist progress mankind was ever able to make. leave aside that, it is also the social evolution pinnacle in all other respects of human social understanding too. you should do some research on how life in european union is, how free are the people there, and how the bureaucracy there works.
Please do some extensive reading of history. The Society of Cincinatti was an attempt to create a fuedal ruling class in the U.S.: membership is by inheritance or because of noteworthy accomplishment (like the noble classes of the Middle Ages). The Society of Cincinatti has done many good things in the history of the U.S., however, if it had any real power, it would have become evil.
something being inherited doesnt directly make it feudal. for feudal, noble system to be realized, power needs to be inherited. not a membership in a society.
and anything can be abused. society of cincinnati wasnt exempt from human corruption.
yet as you have noticed, it did a lot of good things in the history of u.s., and it also had a lot of power too, through its members who eventually took up government positions. yet, it didnt turn evil, and usa didnt turn to a kingdom.
One other thing, you keep making comments about not being able to wait "until the legislature convenes" to take action. Are you trying to tell me that there is anything that can't wait a month (the longest recess the U.S. Congress takes is from early August to early September-usually a couple days more than a month)? My experience is that any "law" put into place in less than 6 months is a bad law.
yea, there are stuff that cant wait a month. when you have an organize private interest acting in unison, a month is a huge period.
you apparently forgot how did they suddenly come up out of nowhere with 100 million advertising budget, and god knows how many million spent in lobbying and tried to kill network neutrality a few years ago. not only that they also had 'grassroots' sites suddenly popping with tens of thousands of members and thousands of comments present too. it didnt take a month for them to fire all these at internet, including ted stevens. it was a close call. we were probably saved only because the backlash was strong enough, and congress changed hands right around that time.
no. there are some stuff for which a month is WAY too long.
they even changed the fucking pandemic definition they had for decades, just to be able to call this a pandemic. what's there to investigate. its like nixon saying 'im not a crook' after the tapes have been discovered.
behold mount and blade, one of the last year's stars http://www.taleworlds.com/
the creators are a husband and wife from turkey, who left their daytime job some years ago to chase this dream. they didnt have any capital, they didnt have any investors. instead, they made their prototype, gave it as shareware, and asked people to support/contribute. a few years later, you have the game. at no point any investment got involved, and they only sit down with a publisher (paradox) after the game was complete.
the game much less rivals pirates in the hybrid/open ended scope, but passes in a medieval feudal world, with unprecedented (common consensus of all gamers and critics) mounted combat. turns out they also have been able to incorporate strategic, roleplay, and rts elements too.
they got high reviews last year in all prominent online gaming magazines.
this alone proves fun, vision beats the hell out of investment and the 50 million dollar budgets you are talking about there.
gaming died when wall street entered into it. it will reincarnate when enough number of players realize gamers and wall street dont mix well together.