JackKieser

I'll admit, what constitutes "shovelware" is a subjective line, although I think we can agree that the Wii has got it the worst this gen. I'm just waiting for the "quality over quantity" view to start reigning again... but that's mainly because I know that "quantity over quality" is what caused (in large part) the original game crash. Like I said earlier, over 1200 games released in a single year? That's just excessive; so many of those games were just destined to fail. We may have a a good selection of quality titles, but the ratio of good to bad games is just abysmal. I think that's the most confusing thing to me. We're always hearing publishers complain about how they "don't make back their investments", and they blame it so much on piracy, but never seem to take responsibility for just how much bad crap they put out. It's like... well, no wonder you're losing money; you're flooding the market with Imagine: Pony Dress Up #13. There's only so much crap people can buy at once, and at least we are saving up for the Mass Effects and the Red Deads. I just wish more of that shovelware money would be thrown at indie devs... THEY are the ones that deserve it more than anyone.

Well, I have to say I'm pleasantly surprised; I expected you to actually have me do your homework for you. So, are you still going to continue whining? Or do you have it out of your system now? As to the actual topic: Well, Zircon, I think you're talking more about the process of getting permission to publish games at all, not to publish each game. As it stands (if I understand the process correctly) you have to apply to get your SDK (you can't just buy it; they have to agree to LET you buy it), and that's the hard part of the process. But, once Nintendo lets you buy the SDK, you're a licensed publisher / developer, and from that point on, any games you release are implicitly allowed by Nintendo, unlike the old process, where every individual game had to be reviewed. These days, once your in, your in, and you can release as much crap as you want. Of course, this is what I've picked up from reading GamaSutra and game design articles online since the Wii came out, so if there's someone with more recent or more direct experience who can spell the process out in more detail, by all means.

(Emphasis added)You're kidding, right? Ok, so if Saddam Hussein came up to you and said that the Earth is spherical, you wouldn't believe him because he is (was) an asshole? The truth value of a statement, group of statements, or argument as a whole is totally independent of the people who believe in a particular truth value. That's why the Clergy saying the Earth was flat didn't actually make it flat. Who CARES if I believe what I'm saying? Do you know how many times I've played Devil's Advocate in an argument? I built a competitive items ruleset in Brawl that has been played in multiple countries on a bet, playing Devil's Advocate, arguing a point of view I didn't even believe in. Because, whether I agreed with it or not didn't actually affect its truth value. A statement is true or false regardless of who says the statement. How do you NOT understand that? Yeah, you're not 14, which makes it even worse that you don't understand basic logical concepts that I could explain to a high schooler. Again, I don't care what you think of me; my premises are independent of me. Well, that's a lofty claim, since in order to prove it, you'd have to innately know the opinions of every single person who has read this thread. I never asserted I was the end-all-be-all expert. Just that I was knowledgeable. And, even if I wasn't, that doesn't affect the inherent truth values of my statements; I could just be parroting someone else's thoughts, and that doesn't automatically make those thoughts false, just because I don't understand or know them myself. I do think that capitalism is based off of a viewpoint that doesn't just espouse, but depends on, taking advantage of others, yes. So? No, I treat those with contempt who aren't constructive, like you. I assure you, I do not hold Zircon or Gario with contempt, even though I disagree with them. You're the only one in here I think is a dick. And even then, that wasn't until YOU started throwing around insults because I criticized your precious Pokemon, a game I also hold near and dear to my heart (which was the whole reason I cared so much to criticize it in the first place: you criticize the things you care about because you want them to get better). Well, aren't YOU just the arbiter of an entire forum all of the sudden. EDIT@DS: (Emphasis added) Didn't say it was a perfect system; sure, bad games still happened. But, at least Ninty was checking something; they still had to OK the game at ALL. Nowadays, all you have to do is buy the SDK and get someone to print / distribute your discs, and you can make and sell Wii games. NO quality control AT ALL. This has actually been a significant criticism of Nintendo's 3rd party relations towards later consoles.

I don't really see how numbering them makes them exclusive to each other; I would have thought that made them sequential. See? Misunderstanding. It happens. I'll admit that I could have been a LOT clearer as to why shovelware matters to piracy. I'll give you the short version: even pirated copies of shovelware count towards piracy statistics, and shovelware is at an increased risk of piracy because the kind of people who use torrents are already predisposed to NOT want to pay money for it; tech-savvy people are NOT the market that shovelware designers are aiming at... they are aiming at dumb parents who think Carnival Games sounds like a good time for the family. I'll readily admit that I've pirated shovelware because I wanted a time-waster, but wasn't willing to pay full price for something that obviously wasn't WORTH full price, and I doubt I'm the only one. That, unfortunately but understandably, counts towards piracy statistics. Less shovelware means less games to actually pirate, and I'm ok with there being less games on the market if the ones that get taken down are the "Custer's Revenge" of the gaming world. Well, I was one of those people who LIKED Nintendo's Seal of Approval system; I liked it when companies controlled the QUALITY of their libraries, instead of just hyping the QUANTITY of games in it. Sure, there are people who don't do their research and will buy shovelware without knowing it's a buggy, poorly designed piece of shit... but just because there are stupid people out there doesn't mean we have to provide them with crappy stuff to buy. If that argument was sound, we wouldn't have consumer protection laws in the first place because, hey, it's YOUR job to know if the toy has lead-based paint in it; if people are buying lead-based toys, there is obviously a market for them. Well, I guess that's another misunderstanding; I didn't say "you won't have piracy at all", I said "you won't have RAMPANT piracy". Again, having to do with the rates, not the existence. I had intended for "rampant" to have been the operative word in that statement, not "piracy". I'm sorry for the confusion; I should have bolded or italicized or something. Well, in all honesty, if I had known that one of my posts was going to be the OP for an entire thread, I might have elaborated more or written a bit more exhaustively on the subject. Unfortunately, that was originally one off-hand post in a greater thread, not a planned OP. So... I'm sorry one of my singular posts got hacked out of a thread and turned into an OP by a moderator without my planning or knowledge? I'm glad we could at least agree on that one statement, though. See? Progress! It happens, even on the internet. ^_-

What... what? You know, there are some times when I really wish I knew Korean, and some times when I'm REALLY glad I don't... and I'm not sure which time this is. At least it's not as confusing as that Korean Intel song.

Then, why do you post nothing constructive anymore? You haven't actually quoted an argument I've made in... 7 pages. All you quote anymore is axillary stuff that has nothing to do with the topic at hand. I suppose I'm partially to blame; I really should ignore you're off-topic ranting, raving, and rambling about how I'm just such a mean poster. I'm sorry I didn't check your image properties when you posted. I assumed you were posting a .gif when you posted an animated popcorn image you said was a .gif. My bad. I've studied game design (design and production) and C/C++ programming, yes. My major is philosophy. I've studied broadly in my time in school. What? Mocking you? Hardly. I could be the most patient, respectful poster in the history of the internet, and my points would be no different (though my execution might). What you need to learn is what a bunch of 14 year-olds on SmashBoards already know: a person is separate from his argument, and trying to discredit a person doesn't actually discredit an argument; that can only be done by proving premises or conclusion false. So, say whatever you want about me or my posting style; if you can't prove the premises wrong, or prove their connection to my conclusion wrong, it doesn't matter what you say about me, as a person, because I am not my argument. Even I don't say your arguments are false because you're stupid... although I DO think you're stupid, though that's just my opinion. Feel free to disregard it. I have never "ignored" any argument in this thread; any time someone quotes me, I directly multi-quote them back with a point-by-point rebuttal of their premises, and I have NEVER once in this whole debate tried to prove an argument right by saying that "it's right because I know its right". Everything I've provided so far can be found with a simple Google search. I've never even ignored YOUR arguments; I gave you the same point-by-point treatment, even when it was obvious that the only reason you disagreed was because you misinterpreted my post (the Pkmn DLC thing, where you somehow thought I meant a GBA game had DLC or something). ...irrelevant? Great for you? I really don't care. I would like to let you know, by the way, that I respond to EVERY section of a post, no matter how banal it is, because I don't even want to RISK quoting someone out of context, much like Gario did earlier to me. If I'm going to quote someone, I'm going to quote them ENTIRELY. That's why I multi-quote everything: because even when I don't respect YOU, I still respect your posts enough to quote them in their entirety. EDIT: Sorry for the double-post. I figured someone would have posted by now. My bad.

No, it wasn't "word for word". You forgot this part: The point was twofold, which means that they go together; you can't quote half of it, and claim you're giving full context. People pirate games they don't feel are actually worth a purchase, and people pirate games they feel cost too much. Fix both of those, or even ONE of those, and you'll go a long way towards fixing the problem... but like I've said since then (because there is not infinite room to post), you'll never stop it outright. (Emphasis added)NO I'M NOT. How many times do I have to say that? If you THINK that's my argument, then it's due to me not being clear or choosing the right words, due to you misinterpreting my posts, or some combination of the two. Piracy will never be a non-factor until companies choose to ignore its effects, which is, by the way, a totally valid response to piracy: again, the HIB people ignored piracy outright, and it made them a ton of money. Hell, Blizzard gives away WoW, knowing that private servers exist. Even THEY ignore piracy, to some extent. Not when you quote half of it out of context, it's not.

So? It was pirated; piracy will happen. That's a given. But, the guys who put out the HIB understood that, and even though a lot of people didn't pay for their games, a metric shit ton DID. They made money. Dare I say, they made enough money to comfortably live off their product for at least as long as it took them to make the games in the first place, which is really all you can (and should) ask for. They'd have made more if they didn't, quite nobly, give so much of it to charity. Hell, I don't know HOW many times I've personally paid for things I liked over the internet not because I HAD to, but because I WANTED to. Well, that's because it wasn't my argument. There's NOTHING developers can do to realistically (by that, I assume you mean totally) combat piracy. Piracy already won. It will NEVER lose. You cannot beat digital pirates... the tech is on THEIR side, and always will be, unless you fundamentally change the way the computer is designed, on a physical level. Sure, it will. But, the fact that companies let an inevitable war that they cannot win affect how much they will charge for a game or how they handle content distribution shows not only how out of touch they are, but WHY they are losing SO badly. It's just like Sephfire said: they have to provide a better product more efficiently and effectively than pirates. The one flaw with digital data is that it's easy to lose forever: one power surge, and my drive is fried. A physical disc doesn't have that problem. But, they are SO stuck on charging out the ass for physical discs that they are blind to the better alternative. After all, why not sell both? Sell me a digital version of ME2 for 10$, or a disc version for 40$? If they're so worried about how much GS is marking them up, stop selling games to GameStop. Last time I checked, they have the right to refuse service to anyone... at least, that's what MY EULAs tell me.

Wait, which point are you saying is wrong? The game prices one, or the "religions don't have scientific evidence" one? Because one I can respond to, and one I should really stop responding to (in this thread, at least; I'd be happy to take it to PM or another thread).

By polling, chief. Again, people have been asked this before, and the usual answer is "it's expensive". Even Sephfire said this in his video: people cite the cost of games as a reason they pirate... which kind of means that prices affect piracy rates. Remember: unless we have PROOF to think they're lying, they must be telling the truth. All it takes is ONE instance of someone truly pirating because of cost for the piracy rate to be affected, mind you. AGAIN, you keep saying that I'm asserting that high prices CAUSE piracy. THEY. DON'T. Stop saying that like it's MY argument, because it's not. They AFFECT piracy rates. That's it. The reason piracy exists is because intellectual property is an oxymoron, and because digital media is, by definition, an infinite resource. Jesus Christ, you guys don't read. No, but correlation does furtively glance in that direction, mouthing "look over there", if you'll allow me to paraphrase Randall Munroe. Again, you keep making assumptions. My argument (that prices affect piracy rates) is already proven as soon as people state that the high price of a digital good is the reason it was pirated. That's it. Bam, proven. Even so, I never said that my argument was the only valid one, just that it's MORE valid that yours... which is what, actually? I never asked that. What do YOU think affects piracy rates? Because to the extent of my knowledge, multiple things can affect piracy rates, so if you have some other premise, it probably isn't even mutually exclusive with mine. The only reason I have beef with your counterpoints so far is because you're not even reading my conclusions properly. Well, that and because your premise requires more assumption than mine, and I tend to favor Occam's Razor. Why is that? People want things, so they get them. They can't afford digital media, so they steal it. I didn't say it was right, just that it was a reason. Theft is still wrong, but that doesn't mean you can't have a REASON for stealing, and that includes stealing vanity items. I think you misunderstood me. You said, if you don't have the money for something don't buy it. What I meant by responding was to say that people AREN'T buying what they don't think they can afford... they are stealing what they feel they can't afford. But, due to how digital media is an infinite resource, people are figuring out, slowly but surely, that the selling of an intangible is kind of stupid; it's like selling air. Unless you think people should have to go to air utility companies in the same way they go to a power or water company, at it's most base, selling digital data is really dumb, for all of the supply / demand reasons I gave before. I had plenty of cause. I always broke his "arguments" down, even his ones about Pokemon DLC. I addressed him, point by point, just like anyone else... and he responded with lots of bashing because I called him stupid for buying into Madden and mishandling his buying power. Ok, so he has plenty of right to be mad at me for calling him a name over the internet, but that doesn't mean my points were wrong (that Madden is a mishandled property and that Pokemon should be redesigned with a DLC system in place). Instead of him countering my perfectly valid and sound points, he just went "baawwwwwww" in the corner and posted .gifs. Fine; obviously there are better people for me to discuss this with.

Making a large profit is, in and of itself, not bad, and was never my premise (my premise was that making profit at the expense of others is bad). What makes it bad right now is how its done (at the expense of others: to make a profit, you have to force someone to pay more than cost) and how it's a priority. You know when Blizzard can make $745 million in a quarter? When world hunger is eradicated, when AIDS is cured, when homelessness is no longer an issue, when cancer is defeated, when we have clean, efficient energy sources, when the economy isn't in shambles, and when the environment isn't fucked. THEN, make your profit. By all means. But until then, you're literally saying, "my company and the fact that I want to have 2 or 3 houses with 5 cars at each is more important than stopping blood wars over resources in Africa, scientific research, exploring the universe, and a hundred other things that benefit not just me, but all of humanity." And, that's people being dicks. Straight up. There is very little true evil in the world... but there are a lot of assholes who would rather drive 3 of the same car than solve humanity's real issues. And, I take issue with that, as a human. No, I can't. But, if more people REALLY knew what was going on, they'd be pissed and want it to change, too. The people playing WoW find those subscription fees totally reasonable. The problem is, they aren't reasonable by a long shot, and if people really knew the obscenity of how much Blizzard was making, I'm sure they'd come to the (perfectly valid) conclusion that they are getting fucked, and maybe they wouldn't pay. Maybe they would. Who can say? Doesn't mean it's the most efficient way to run the world, though.

What ABOUT voodoo? Last time I checked, it didn't have any science backing it up, either. Until it does, it's just as BS as anything else.

Personally, I don't play MMOs because of the pay structure; I'll decide to play Old Republic solely on the basis of whether it has a subscription or not. I'll directly reference Blizzard here, because WoW is simply the end-all-be-all of MMOs; yes, there are others, but come on... it's WoW. PCWorld reported back in November that Blizzard (not Activizion, but Blizzard) made over $745 million in third quarter revenue in 2010. This was, in part, due to the release of SCII (which brought up early estimates fomr only $600 million to a paltry $700 million), but as usual, the main reason for the profits was due to WoW sales from membership fees (probably up because of the impending release of Cataclysm). Blizzard is doing fine: they don't need to charge what they do for subscriptions. Even if they lower the price per month to 3$, that's 3$ times 12 mil. subscribers times 12 months: $432 million a year. That's. Too. Much. Money. Simply, Blizzard's draconian pay structure makes them FAR more in profit that it takes to maintain the game world and servers. They are, without a doubt, the most profitable dev firms on the planet. EVERY SINGLE SUBSCRIBER to WoW is being bent over a table and fucked repeatedly with WoW's subscription fees. ...and that game forms the basis for almost every paid MMO out there. Hell yeah, I disagree with it. First of all, PSN is free. PSN+ is not. So, I'm fine with PSN. As far as Microsoft is concerned, simply copypasta my above statements about Blizzard and WoW: Microsoft has more money than god, and they have the balls to say that they HAVE to raise the Live subscription fee because, oh no, now we have ESPN access, shit's getting REAL. Bull. M$ is making so much money off of console sales, Kinect (now), and subscriptions, aside from game sales, that they really don't need to charge what they do: hell, even by fourth quarter 2010, they had somehow tripled profits, despite a decrease in revenue. How the hell does that work? Read above, plox.

Lol, Nekofrog. That's such a weak argument. Well, technically not even that... If you tried giving an argument like that in a debate, you'd be laughed out of the forum. A conclusion, with. No premise. Try again, my friend, and I'll respond.

Well, Gario, it's possible, but remember: assumptions are dangerous. If people SAY that's the reason, we have no choice but to assume they are telling the truth until we have FACT to back it up. For instance, if you ask someone why he pirated a movie and his answer was "because movie tickets are too expensive"... but he has a theater in his town, and the tickets are 5$ for a night showing, we have probably cause to think he's lying (unless he's also, like, making barely enough to live, but that's an extreme case). Unless we have that probable cause, though, we have no choice but to take people at face value when formulating our premises; remember, "innocent until proven guilty", and we can't charge someone with lying before we have the evidence. I'm sure there are people who do what you say; I'm not doubting their existance. But, times ARE tough, the economy IS wrecked, and worker wages ARE at a low point, only gaining a .5% increase in full time 4th quarter wages since 2009; it's not really hard to think that people ARE struggling to pay for things. Sure, you can argue that if they can't afford it, don't buy it... but then, that's exactly what they're doing, and the technology of digital media allows for people who can't afford to still have at no cost to anyone (no, "lost sales" is a bullshit term). Anyway, I just finished cleaning the house (woohoo!), so I'm off to play a little DA:O. Feel free to counter-argue; I'll respond when I get back. Oh, and the Damned... neener, neener, neener... See, I can do it, too. If I recall, I'm still waiting for some responses from you. You know, outside of witty .gifs.

I'm an atheist, simply, because atheism is the default position in the universe. You don't DISPROVE something, you PROVE it, and theists of any kind haven't presented sufficient empirical evidence to prove the existence of a god of any kind. Just wanted to point that out, since apparently all it takes is someone saying, "You're not logically sound" for it to be true on the internet, as opposed to illustrating WHY with valid deductions. Tangential, I know, but I wanted to clarify that. @Neko: Piracy doesn't exist because of high prices, and if you'd have READ my posts in their entirity, you'd know that. Why? Because piracy exists due to the nature of digital media. It is only EXACERBATED by high prices. High prices take the problem of piracy and AMPLIFY it by giving otherwise decent people a reason to want to pirate. Otherwise average people don't want to steal; they know its wrong and goes against their moral compass... but its hard to care when you see publishers posting record profits. If game prices weren't so high, the problem wouldn't be as bad. It'd still exist, but you'd be hard pressed to prove that high prices don't affect piracy rates. After all, how many people claim to pirate movies because theater tickets are 12-15$ a show?

Those are two separate questions. To the first question: sure, they would have reached a greater audience, or rather, the marketing would have. There are no guarantees that it would have sold better. To the second: Zircon's people might have gotten a greater profit. Or, they might have gotten the SAME profit, and the PUBLISHER would have gotten a greater profit. Because, what you're not realizing is that, as part of the contract publisher's MAKE dev teams sign before getting capital, the dev team agrees to a pre-set amount of payment BEFORE the game ships. And, many times, they get paid on a milestone schedule, which means that greater sales can NEVER equal greater profit for the dev team. Which, I guarantee you, would have happened to Zircon's guys. Let me ask you a question: is it possible that you have this backwards? Could it be that good games get overlooked not because they don't have ENOUGH marketing, but because poorly made games backed by publishers get TOO MUCH marketing? It's akin to the hyperbolic rhetoric in politics: everyone is made out to be evil, so when REAL evil happens, it gets overlooked. Well, EVERYTHING is hyped as the best game ever, so when a TRULY GOOD game comes out, it gets overlooked. Maybe... maybe we just need LESS game marketing in general. HOPES to. Not is guaranteed to. Which is how it is now. Publishers get first cut of sales, remember? They make back their investment first, not the dev team. There's nothing wrong with getting paid for a service, but there IS something wrong with a system designed to take advantage of the perceived "necessity" of having a publisher. Tell that to the closing game studios. Publishers rarely fail, even when making bad decision after bad decision. ONE bad game can close a dev studio. Well, sales SHOULD come with reputation, but it shouldn't be impossible to make sales from your first game, IF THAT GAME IS AWESOME. You said in the beginning of your post that Zircon's game didn't sell well. Well, Braid DID. Minecraft DID. This is going to piss people off (especially those who like Zircon's game), but is it just possible that his game isn't good? Or that it's good, but not GREAT? I haven't played it, but if I did, would I consider it revolutionary? Game changing (if you'll pardon the pun)? Is Return All Robots so new, fresh, inventive, and well-designed that there is no other game like it? Because there ISN'T another game like Braid, and there ISN'T another game like Minecraft. Maybe... Zircon's game didn't sell well because it's just not that amazing. It would have sold better if a publisher was TELLING us that it was a good game, though. I think that might be an argument AGAINST publishers, not FOR them.

No, piracy can't be beaten; digital media, by definition, RELIES on free copying to work, so piracy will always, in some form, exist. Example: in order to access OCRemix, my computer has to make a COPY of the site onto my hard drive / memory. Assume for the sake of argument that OCRemix begins charging a fee at the door to access music; don't pay the fee, the site won't load. All a pirate has to do is either: * pay once and make copies of all the songs while he has access, or * crack the encryption and get in the backdoor ...meanwhile, if OCRemix adds DRM to all of the songs, all the pirate has to do is make a copy of the song in memory, and RAM dump only the audio of the song, re-encode it if necessary, and BAM. Free music. Why would a pirate do this? Well, the most logical reason is because HE wants the music legitimately, but doesn't want music he paid for to have DRM, so he removes it... and afterwards, why NOT make a torrent? It's not like it costs you anything but bandwidth, and more people get to hear the music. Win / win for the pirate. THERE you go. Piracy will NEVER be beaten, but it still shouldn't be tolerated. I don't know... companies have a right to their DRM, and if we tell them that they don't, that might come off as socialist. Seriously, though, DRM shouldn't be legal. If you pay for a product, you should own it, not own a license to use it. Buy something or don't buy something. True.

Ok, the tangential stuff first: 1 ) Never said anyone was "evil". Just that publishers extort... which is a prime tenant of capitalism, so it's not surprising. 2 ) The religion comment was an anecdote to compare how fanatically the people in this thread cling to capitalism and its economic principles, even in the face of counterargument: you guys protect selling an mp3 for 100$ or a publisher screwing over a dev team the same way religious devotees get pissed at Ricky Gervais for making a comment about God. And the comparison to Catholics was an anecdotal argument to how bad capitalism (and thus, the current business practices in game publishing) must be if a group of people that defends something that is provably wrong (raping kids) says that capitalism is bad... capitalism must be REALLY bad. Like I said, it was an anecdotal inductive argument; if you'd like, I can restructure it in a way that will make it easier for those without formal logic training to read. Also, the definition that you gave for "religion" is "accurate", but meaningless, since that definition can include, literally, anything; that makes it a bad definition. Mine is not only the one taught in Major World Religion classes (ones I've also taken), but it is more useful because it describes how religions operate, instead of what they are (everything, ultimately). 3 ) I haven't ignored any "argument" passed to me once so far; meanwhile, I can't count the number of times I've heard "(economic principle A) is true because economists say it is / that's how economics works"; I've given concrete examples as to why digital media breaks supply / demand models, and no one has given me a legitimate counterpoint yet. So, who is "ignoring" whom? 4 ) If you'd like me to prove I was at Video Games Live, I can show you a pic of my Tallarico/O'Donnell/Salvatore-signed DSi, for the "pics or it didn't happen" crowd. Now, onto the substance. Yet, songs are still .99$, and THAT'S what's important. You know why? Because even though Apple takes a cut (still) of song sales, the fact that they don't have to print a physical disc reduces cost DRAMATICALLY, which is all I'm arguing. Furthermore, artists like Girl Talk make an obscene amount of money, even without iTunes. Digital distribution IS the future of digital content distribution; anyone who thinks otherwise is delusional / stuck in the past. First of all, Blizzard is a dev studio, not a publisher; if they're running their own digital content store, they should be getting MORE than a 20% cut for THEIR OWN WORK. If Activision is really taking an 80% cut from BLIZZARD'S store, there's a problem. That is all technically correct, but, again, without the dev team, there is no game to sell at all. Meanwhile, without the publisher, the dev team COULD still produce a quality, well designed title, complete with high-end production values and a WELL-DESIGNED system of gameplay, AND they'd be able to sell it... it'd just take longer, probably wouldn't have high-end, PS3-straining graphics, and wouldn't sell as well. ...but it could still be done. That means, by default, that the dev team is a necessary resource, while the publisher is simply a resource of convenience (a TON of convenience, but convenience none the less). As such, it logically follows that, the NECESSARY resource gets a higher cut than the resource of CONVENIENCE; if the game sells well, the publisher will make back investment AFTER the dev team gets paid their cut. How does that NOT make sense? Again, tell that to the guys who made the Humble Indie Bundle. Over a million dollars in sales. In less than a month. They didn't have Steam. What you're missing is that, while you are TECHNICALLY accurate, again, what you're saying isn't NECESSARY to do to make sales in the 21st century, by evidence of other people doing just that. I wonder what the publisher's cut of Minecraft is, for instance? They WERE virtually necessary. Not anymore. They are still so, but that's because, like Sephfire said earlier, the infrastructure still needs to grow over time. We will continue to have publishers for the next few years, but if the industry grows PROPERLY, in 5-10 years, we won't have publishers anymore. Investors will invest DIRECTLY in dev studios (like Bioware), and dev teams will sell their own product online at no additional cost, AND take their cut first. The ONLY people who don't benefit from this are the publishers, who lose their job. But, that's ok! We won't need them anymore, so why have them? Ok, we'll have a few big ones for the few remaining brick-and-mortar stores, catering to those unfortunate few who live in rural Kansas and don't have a constant broadband connection, but for the rest of us living in the future? We won't need publishers, so the cost of our games will go down. I'm surprised at how many people seemingly argue against the lowering of prices... For now. What I'm arguing is that this is a concept that is changing, and furthermore, as consumers, it is in our best interest to facilitate that change through our purchasing decisions. We only get benefits from this.

Just got back from Video Games Live, so I'm about to crash and will put off posting a proper response until tomorrow. Until then, I'll say this: 1 ) being "salty" essentially means being bitter; it's a term I picked up from posting on Smashboards. Sorry if you didn't know what that meant. 2 ) Religion is not an off-topic... topic. Religion can be criticized, and is, BY DEFINITION, belief in something despite, or sometimes in spite of, the evidence. That's why it's a "belief" and not a "fact" or a "thought". Me criticizing religion does not make me a bad person... it makes me someone who is treating people equally; I'm not going to put those who believe on a pedestal, higher than those who don't. Religion is not immune from criticism. 3 ) Glad you're getting lulz. I've grown accustomed to having people take "discourse" and make it "personal vendetta", so it doesn't affect me anymore. Posting legitimate counterargument =/= "I hate OCRemixers". So, think what you want; I don't care what you think. I'm going to continue to post what I think to be the most accurate statements about the real world, backed up by legitimate fact and observation, as long as I feel the topic at hand has discussion value. See you guys tomorrow.

So what? No one else cares? That doesn't mean that the business practice is right. That's the thing about argumentum ad popululm: it doesn't matter how many people agree on a conclusion, the conclusion can still be wrong. Example: religion. I don't care if 1 million people buy Pkmn B&W. I don't care if 2 million people do. I don't care if 15 million do. If Nintendo is engaging in exploitative business practices (and I have argued that they are), if EA is (like they are with the Madden franchise), if publishers do (by not embracing digital distribution and by hiking prices and shorting developers), then they are wrong and should change. ([tangent]The great thing about me is that I'm not trying to convince the Damned of anything. He's just (and I'm going to be blunt here) a tool to be used, a guy to argue against. My GF asks me all the time, "why do you argue with these people? They won't change." Well, because I'm not trying to convince HIM. I'm trying to convince at least one of the people lurking or reading the tread, who potentially will change his mind and give that idea to someone HE knows, who will spread that idea to a few friends... and so on. I am more interested in gradual social change through education than changing one stubborn dude's mind over the internet. So, post away. But, I've been arguing about this topic for far longer than I'm sure you think I have. Copyright law, pricing structures, exploitative business practices... these have been philosophical passions for at least a decade now. So, give me counter arguments. I want them. I want to see other viewpoints because it just gives me more data I can use to make better arguments. ...besides, excluding random outbursts, I don't get trolled easily (the EC thread was, I admit, a low point, and I do apologize for that post). The Damned, though, gets salty pretty easily, and it makes his arguments weaker. I don't want that. I want strong counterpoints, something I can work with.[/tangent])

So, basically, "You'll never change anything, so don't try." Yeah, no. Bioware is a dev firm, not a publisher. I'm not asserting that dev companies are dicks (although I'm sure some are quite draconian), I'm asserting that PUBLISHERS are. You're missing the point. Awesome. Also, totally irrelevant. Like I said, not a publisher. So, it's not a valid comparison. You might have a point if you compared Activision to EA, but both companies use business practices that are corrupted at their core. So... yeah. Nintendo treats most of their teams well, but I'm sure has their faults, and as a publisher, they act just like EA or Activision (see: the problem with Pokemon). MS is MS; they treat indy devs badly, and lock their system out just like everyone else. Blizzard also ISN'T A PUBLISHER (Activision publishes their games), so moot comparison. I'm sure there are. Are they the big ones that shape the industry, though? If not, it still doesn't help all that much. Valve is a great place to work; ALL companies need to be like Valve, and if they aren't, they should strive to be and WE, as consumers, should strive to make them be like Valve. By purposefully ignoring tech like DLC in favor of selling a full price retail product just because it will make them more money. Again, it's their "right"(?), but that just means we need better market regulations. I have. You ignore all my examples (like the Pokemon-as-DLC argument) because you don't like them, yet can't actually provide counter-points beyond "well, there's no point to changing it because we aren't powerful enough to".

Wait, what? Why? Why can't I just buy a server, make a website, and distribute downloads myself? Why do I need Steam? I agree, for console games, you're screwed into using XBL or PSN for now, but on PC? You don't even need a publisher at ALL.

Ignoring the Damned's ranting, I really do think that piracy is going to be an unwinnable fight because of the nature of digital media. Digital media, by definition, breaks all existing supply / demand models. The only reason supply / demand works as an economic principle is because for any given PHYSICAL resource, there is a finite supply... ...except with digital media. A game CAN be copied infinitely, at NO additional cost. It costs NOTHING to copy a game. At all. It costs money to print a disc, but to digitally distribute? Nada. That's why pirates are so successful; they, by definition, have an infinite supply to distribute. People are figuring that out now. Sephfire does make a point that, just because you aren't stealing a physical copy doesn't mean you aren't stealing at all... but you still aren't actually stealing a thing. You're stealing data, which is intangible and by definition can't be controlled. It's the fundamental flaw with intellectual property law, too: "intellectual property" is an oxymoron, because you can't own an idea, physically. Once someone else knows your idea, it propagates automatically and freely. The only way to control an idea (and thus a movie, song, game, or digital data) is to never make it concrete in the first place (i.e.: never write the song, never film the movie, never make the game, never write down or verbalize the idea). Games can never be fully controlled because digital data can never be fully controlled. So, piracy wins simply by definition.

And, it's "good business sense" that blatantly takes advantage of consumers, so we shouldn't support it with our money. Again, that's why I don't buy Pkmn games anymore: because I want to force the Pokemon Company to make and sell their games differently. Wasn't that a point in Sephfire's video? If you don't like it, don't pirate... just try to change the system? I fundamentally disagree with Nintendo's business practices on Pokemon, and with the major publishers for almost ANY game. They screw the dev teams, they screw the consumer, they screw indy game devs. It's good business... that should be changed. What's wrong with that?