zircon

Not that one, the VERY first level with the F# minor chord.

Aaaand done. Remixed the first level music from "Tails and the Music Maker" -

Don't panic, I got this.

You're making several enormous assumptions here: 1. The creative development of a society is inherently worth more than the rights of the individual (paraphrased: society has a right to all creative ideas.) 2. Aesthetic art is somehow equivalent to practical inventions. 3. Creative development and copyright are mutually exclusive. More copyright = less creative development. All three of these are not universally-accepted in the least. For example, I assert: 1. The individual has, by default, the right to anything he or she produces. You are as a human being entitled to the fruits of your own labor. As humans, we've realized that societies are necessary for us to grow and collectively evolve, so we understand the necessity to contribute a portion of the fruits of our labor to our collective development. However, and this is tied with the point below, not all things are important to our collective development. Aesthetic art is not a necessity by definition, so if society is to take away the fruits of that labor from the individual, it should do so only slowly and gently. 2. Aesthetic art is not equivalent to practical inventions. Technology is inherently far more valuable to a society than aesthetic art, as the latter is purely a luxury and cannot, for example, cure disease or improve crop yields. The law CAN and SHOULD treat these differently (and it does.) 3. If this were true, the U.S. would lag far behind other countries in terms of creative output, as our copyright laws have been significantly extended. However, this is not the case at all. The U.S. has been the prime innovator in most technological areas and still produces more patents (and patents of a higher quality) than any other country. While this has been falling somewhat lately, we haven't had any corresponding changes in patent law that you could correlate. Why is this? Because people want to profit from the fruit of their labor. I love creating music and sample libraries. If I could do it for the rest of my life, I would. But without the opportunity to profit from these things, I would be unable to output even a fraction of what I do now, as I would have to spend most of my time in a profit-producing job. Hence, lower creative output and development. Even if I weren't charging for my music at all, I would still have lower creative output because my time would have to be spent elsewhere to generate the money needed to live on a day-by-day basis. Furthermore, there are always people - a sizable number of them - who want to give out their work for free. Open source software, Creative Commons, etc. These people add significantly to creative development on both the aesthetic and practical side, and their influence absolutely cannot be ignored. You assume that copyright inevitably leads to shackling, but in reality, this factually isn't true. At all.

What I'm saying isn't that copyright law is complex and shouldn't be debated, but rather your argument would be considerably more productive if you addressed it from the perspective of WHY the original intent was good, rather than why all the changes were bad. Again, I'm going to use the example of libertarian philosophy. Libertarians disagree with the vast majority of laws, particularly ones regulating the market. But they (generally) do not sit there and say "Well, those laws don't agree with original intent, therefore you need to prove them ALL WRONG, otherwise we win." Instead, they frame their arguments to address multiple laws in a way that is actually addressable: * Governments are not efficient. Smaller governments 'waste' fewer resources (rephrasing of original point) while larger governments waste more. Thus, laws that increase the size of the government are bad, because they add waste. * People have a moral right to the fruits of their labor. The use of force is morally wrong except in self-defense. Therefore, taxes should be kept at a minimum and used only in self-defense. * Regulated businesses have to spend more resources on addressing regulations than non-regulated businesses. This means some businesses will be pushed into unprofitability due to regulations, eliminating potential competition/employers from the market. Therefore, regulation should be minimized. Keep in mind I'm not libertarian at all (I just debate with them a lot) - I'm presenting their arguments to show how you can take a position calling for the repeal of a huge amount of laws without taking the unelegant, impractical stance of "Prove every single law is right."

That's at least a logically sound answer, OK, but this puts us at an impasse. There is no way anyone here is literally going to debate with you the merits of every clause of every revision to U.S. copyright law. If your point revolves around saying "none of those extensions were necessary", then realistically no one is going to be able to argue that because the sheer volume of law involved. What if I were to present the same argument, except for taxes? This has come up in PPR before. I could say "I don't believe any of the changes to the tax code over the last 300 years were necessary. The burden is on you to prove that they were." Do you realize how ridiculous it is to ask anyone to do that? Again, yes, the position is at least not illogical, but it's impractical to expect anyone to debate you on that. My major in college was Music Industry so my specialty WAS actually things like IP law, copyright law, digital distribution etc., but we could spend literally weeks debating ONE clause of ONE revision. Not going to happen. Even the Tea Party, which believes in repealing a hell of a lot of laws, has a more elegant central argument rather than 'prove to us why all those laws were necessary' - an unregulated free market is most efficient at solving its own problems, therefore we should opt for fewer regulation where possible, and the government is inefficient, therefore it should be reduced in size, leaving more money for the people to spend and invest how they please. So, you tell me: where do we go from here?

OK, so essentially you're arguing from the historical perspective. The original intent is all that matters, similar to the arguments made by most conservatives/libertarians with regards to our constitution. The real question is WHY you think all the changes to copyright law are 'wrong' and should be reverted or removed. Simply saying "That's not what was originally intended" is not in and of itself a valid argument. Keeping in mind the earliest copyright laws started with the Statute of Anne over 300 years ago in a foreign country. So again, baby steps... answer this question without a wall of text and maybe we will get somewhere. WHY is it important to honor the original intent or wording of copyright law, given that such law was created centuries ago in a completely different time?

At this point it's difficult to tell what you are even arguing, Jack. Your points are incoherent and change from post to post. Are you trying to argue what IS, or what OUGHT to be? Are you trying to argue against the idea of copyright at all? Are you trying to argue constitutional law? Are What is your central argument, summarized in 2-3 sentences? It's so muddled that it's no wonder you're having an impossible time communicating with anyone. I've been only dipping my toes in here to respond to specific inaccuracies but you change your point and position so often that I can't tell what's going on here overall. So for the benefit of everyone, please state in 2-3 sentences what is at the ROOT of your argument. We started at game prices, went to piracy, then economics, then bartering and now constitutional law. What is it that you are trying to say?

Excellent stuff, everyone should be getting this ASAP.

Again I think there is a fundamental disagreement here. As Darkesword said, creators have rights. When we talk about NECESSITIES like food, shelter and healthcare, that's a different story. But all forms of entertainment are luxuries, and as such, regulation should be minimal at best. But you're also wrong about copyright being so restrictive. Here are some examples. 1. Game concepts cannot be trademarked, patented or copyrighted. If you like the gameplay of, say, Mario, you can make a Mario clone yourself. 2. There are fair use exceptions to copyright. While these definitely don't cover commercial uses, this is how OCReMix can exist, among other things. 3. Copyrighted music has something called "compulsory mechanical licensing". If you like a song I wrote, you have, by law, the right to take my song and record it yourself. You can even sell it and make lots of money, as long as I get a small statutory royalty. These are just a few examples. The point is that you are NOT, by default, entitled to the artistic work of any given creator, be this games, music, sculpture or other forms of expression. Nor should you be. These things are luxuries, and as intellectual property is not a scarce resource (by your own admission) there is nothing preventing anyone from making their own art to enjoy. But even with these things considered, there are legal ways you can utilize or derive from existing art that you like.

Try loading the soundfonts in directwave player.

If a consumer doesn't like the price of a specific product, there are the following options in a (generally) free market economy like ours: 1. Look for the same product being sold cheaper elsewhere (eg. one store has the same product for $10 less, I'll buy it there.) 2. Look for a product that is interchangeable or similar (eg. chocolate ice cream is more expensive than vanilla, and I like both, so I'll get vanilla.) 3. Don't buy anything at all (eg. this product and products like it are not worth the money.) You're overcomplicating things. The consumer does not care about profit margins, business models, etc. It's totally irrelevant. A poorly-run company could offer a product at an unreasonable price while losing tons of money per sale. A well-run company could offer a product at an insanely low price with huge margins. All the consumer cares about is how much they want that product; how much they are willing to pay. If you, for whatever reason, believe that the cost of a game is too high, then don't buy it. If enough people agree with you, there is no need to complain, or write letters, or anything else. The drop in demand (= drop in sales) will be readily apparent to the company who will drop their prices accordingly. This is how economic works. You "speak with your wallet". To go back to your potato example, you don't need to write a letter to "force" the potato company to sell you cheaper potatoes. You just don't buy their potatoes. ANY system of commerce runs into this at some point, even one without currency. Roll the clock back 50,000 years (or whatever.) I have in my possession 3 shiny rocks. You have 10 logs, and want my 3 shiny rocks. I say that you have to give me 5 logs for 1 shiny rock. You complain, saying that it's not a fair trade, that it is very easy for me to get shiny rocks, while it is very hard for you to get logs. However, I don't care, as long as all the villagers are coming to me and trading in THEIR logs. Because the fact is, even if they know I'm not being "fair", they really want my shiny rocks, and they are willing to pay. Now if NOBODY were willing to pay the exchange rate of 5 logs:1 rock, I would lower my rate until people were willing to part with their logs. But they don't have to say a word to me to do that. They "speak with their logs"

For the 500th time, businesses will always seek to make the most profit they can. If the market allows $12/mo, they will keep charging it. You think they're making "too much profit", but we don't have any laws for companies making "too much profit".

To echo Max's point, game prices are NOT higher than ever. Game prices are lower than ever. I don't get why people are arguing on such faulty assumptions. Premium console games are $60. They were about that much historically, or even higher, so when you factor in inflation they are definitely lower than ever. But now we also have digital distribution/STEAM sales, Gametap, Goozex and the extensive secondhand market offering the same exact games in new or like-new condition for way cheaper as well.

thephoenix, all I have to say is that your argument is entirely subjective. You (wrongly) dismiss critical reviews and have based your position on people that you've personally talked to. You haven't offered a sound argument on why these aggregate scores are not valid compared to your own opinion and what you've personally observed. I could just as easily say, "For every one person I know that hated FFXIII, I know 10 people that loved it" and that would be about as effective as what you've been posting. No... it's because fans are a bunch of whiny bastards. When people find something they like, they tend not to share their feelings. In comparison, rants or complaints tend to attract more attention, and you're more likely to post about a crappy purchase than a good one (plenty of research on this, most recently one showing the most 'active' Facebook posts are ones with largely negative connotations.) This is intuitive. Have you ever gone out of your way to, say, post about a really great tube of toothpaste? Or a cooking wok? Or your refrigerator? I doubt it. But if you bought a tube of toothpaste and it was full of dead ants, or your refrigerator exploded, or whatever, you absolutely would want to tell as many people as possible. The Final Fantasy "fandom" has grown over time. The people who tended to dislike the game are more hardcore gamers, longtime fans of the series but more importantly, fans preferring traditional RPG experiences as opposed to radical deviations that cut out features near-and-dear to their hearts. This group also happens to be very vocal and very active on forums like these, despite their relatively small size (source: look at the sales of your average JRPG, the market is very small.) To draw a parallel, I'm very active in the community of hobbyist/pro composers that use sample libraries. There is one library (Garritan Personal Orchestra) that is generally looked down upon. It gets very negative feedback, some of the harshest I've ever seen. If you were just basing your view of the library on these forum opinions, you'd think it was abysmal. However, you have to remember that these vocal forum users are also the most tech-savvy, demanding and picky. They're the ones that have tens of thousands of dollars worth of software each. If you read reviews and opinions from your average user of GPO, or magazine reviews - NOT just forum users - it's actually very well-loved and highly-rated. The point is that while the negative opinions drown out the good ones, this isn't a good 'slice' of the overall base of users, many of whom are casual computer musicians that wouldn't have any interest in registering on a forum just to talk about this library. Thus while people on NeoGAF, Kotaku or OCR might be vocal about disliking FFXIII, that's not a good slice of the ENTIRE FFXII gamer base.

All games on any console go through some kind of QA. For example, Microsoft requires even XBLA developers to pay for Microsoft internal QA. Not to mention the NES had its share of unlicensed games without the seal, whereas it is literally impossible to print your own Wii games (or something to that effect). Shovelware games might still get released, but again, we're getting into subjective territory where QA might say a game is balanced properly, doesn't crash, has clearly defined controls etc., but an average gamer might say the game is not "fun" because it's about babies, or horses, or whatever.

Not true... it's pretty hard to become a Nintendo developer, even for WiiWare or DSiware. Their process is well-known for being arcane and frustrating.

That's not really true though. Again, look at the Humble Indie Bundle. Minimum 25% piracy rate and the game cost 1 cent as a digital download.

Yeah, he worked extensively on both. Which is why it's not really nice of people here to be shitting on the game so hard. Keep in mind that developers sometimes have no say in scheduling and can be forced to make a AAA title in an impossibly small length of time.

OK, enough is enough. This isn't an economic debate. JackKieser isn't even talking economics, but rather the morality of capitalism itself, which is a different topic and belongs in PPR if anything. I'm hesitant to move it yet again but honestly all of you are just banging your head against a wall because you're failing to see the fundamental disagreement that is making intelligent debate impossible. But on the topics of games and piracy, since that was basically the origin of this to begin with: people heavily pirated the first and second Humble Indie Bundle, both of which could be purchased for literally 1 penny, the lowest possible price imaginable (and at that price, the developers involved were taking a loss simply due to cost of transaction/bandwidth alone.) We're talking a minimum of 25% piracy rate, and these are games that the gaming community at large widely-praised, being sold at the lowest possible price point. This invalidates your argument that developers can realistically combat piracy by lowering prices. Keeping in mind that no developer can realistically charge 1 penny, or even $1 and expect to recoup the costs of even the transaction, much less the production of the game, substantial piracy will inevitably exist simply because some people are lazy, immoral assholes.

Let's just focus on one thing here, since it's a pretty fundamental disagreement. It's not extortion. It's the basic underpinning of any market-based system, also known as "profit". Unless you're absolutely, completely opposed to all market-based economies and literally only support communism, you have to accept that "profit" is a fundamental part of economics. Why bother to sell something if all you're going to do is recoup your costs? In other words, if you have $1 million to make a game, but you can only make $1 million back... why make the game to begin with? What's the point? Now believe me, if you want to talk about things like health care, I'm 110% AGAINST the concept of insurance companies making anything more than a tiny profit, because it's a basic necessity of life. If someone pays $1 for health care, 99 cents of that dollar should pay for health care, not a CEO's vacation. But when we're talking about PURE LUXURIES, like cars and video games, businesses need incentives to get together the budget to produce products or services. If all they can do is recoup what they spent, then all they're doing is wasting a year (or however long it takes to make the product) since they're just getting however much money they spent back. Before you bring up indie games/artists/music/open source (etc) yes, I know that some people do things for free or spend their own money to release a game/product and expect nothing back. That's fine. If you've noticed, I've released dozens of free remixes and songs myself. But it's entirely unrealistic to expect every video game developer to stop caring about earning any money and just being content to essentially volunteer their time and resources at cost. If nothing else, earning only what you put in prevents you from ever expanding in scope or size - remember that not all profit simply goes into the pockets of CEOs, but is often reinvested back into new employees, new equipment, new technology, and so on.

None of this makes any sense. Raising the price of the game beyond the equilibrium price doesn't somehow equate to more profit or revenue, nor does it equate to more profit or revenue faster. You'll have to explain how that works, because it isn't supported by any logic or economic principles that I know of. Additionally, "rising cost of games"? How old are you? I remember going to Funcoland when I was 9 and seeing SNES games *routinely* selling for $80-90 or more. Games on average are cheaper than ever when you factor in iPhone, XBIG, XBLA etc., but even looking at premium console games, they were definitely more expensive in the days of the SNES. I don't even know where to begin. First of all, the "worth" of any good or service varies from person to person. Note that I'm not talking about the COST of something (eg. the literal value of the materials used to make it), I'm talking about "worth" in the sense you're using it. Look at luxury cars. I would never pay $50,000 for a car. A luxury can "on sale" for $50,000 would be "overpriced" to me by about $40,000. Meanwhile, to someone who loves driving luxury cars, $50,000 might be an amazing deal - they might be willing to pay up to $100,000 for the same car. This is true for ANY good or ANY service. When you aggregate the subjective value that all consumers place on a given good or service, you get a "demand curve". This isn't some magic, abstract law, you've experienced it yourself countless times - any time you look at a product or service and say "that's a deal" or "that's too expensive", and someone else says the opposite. It's because we all value things differently. If a company tries to charge "too much" for a product, what that means is that they are overestimating the equilibrium price. But guess what? If they do that, fewer people will buy it, and the company will make less money. This will always happen 100% of the time. Not only is that inaccurate, but it's also not relevant to the discussion. Suffice it to say that my entire career revolves around running businesses based on intellectual property successfully, and I'm doing just fine. Move on. Edit: The ridiculous thing about this discussion is that you're talking to someone who is probably more liberal than 90% of the people on these forums. I support extensive government regulation and I've posted hundreds of times about how opposed I am to the libertarian philosophy of unfettered capitalism. However, there's a difference between not supporting unfettered capitalism and lacking a basic understanding of economics and logic.

Most of your post seems to be railing against how companies decide to spend their money and pay their workers. That's fine. I agree with you on basically all of it. However, what does this have to do with product pricing? There are no exceptions to the rule of equilibrium price. There is always a single price point that will result in the most revenue. This has nothing to do with wanting more profit in the short-term than the long-term - profit isn't even what we're talking about here. This is strictly a matter of what price will yield the highest revenue (calculated by total sales * per-unit price.) Now, if you want to get into more complex aspects of pricing, such as sales and consumer perception of value, we can. But "overpricing" is a term that makes no sense. If you are charging more than the equilibrium price you are ensuring that you're going to get less total revenue, because fewer people are going to buy at that higher price point. What are you talking about?

Yes, if you use small sampling sizes, the results will be inaccurate. The best you can do is take as wide a polling as possible. Hence the purpose of sites like Metacritic which aggregate opinions. If all the critics were simply being 'bought' (which in reality doesn't happen, Kane & Lynch has a very low score on MC) that wouldn't explain why the aggregate user rating is just as high. Where is the "very wide consensus"? It certainly isn't among reviewers, or among any user opinion aggregates I've seen. You're only going on your own subjective view. And yes, I posted several pages ago that Square admitted to doing international playtesting too late. However, they certainly didn't say that they "knew it wouldn't do as well in America." In your opinion. You keep making grand statements like "there is a wide consensus" with no source to back them up. When I show you sources to the contrary you just arbitrarily dismiss them. Look, you're entitled to your opinion. But you're not talking opinions. You are trying to describe reality - how the majority of people feel about Final Fantasy XIII. You're insisting that most people didn't like the game, without showing any evidence of that. What's the point of a discussion if you're just going to say whatever you feel like without backing any of it up with logic or facts?

There's no such thing as "over-pricing". Every product has an equilibrium price - the price that results in the most revenue. That price is what all businesses strive for. At ANY OTHER PRICE POINT, the business will make less money. If you go down from $50 to $1, you will undoubtedly get more sales... but not necessarily more *total revenue*. Likewise, if you go up from $50 to $500, you'll make a lot more revenue per sale, but the loss in sales will not make up for it. This is what basic economics teaches, and there are basically no exceptions outside of complete monopolies for necessities like energy and heat (which are regulated anyway.) Don't even get me started on the indie scene, BTW. Almost everyone that says they support "indie games" is being a hypocrite. The indie community is in many ways even more closed-minded than the mainstream game community. Look at all the indie darlings, the fan favorites: almost all of them are either platformers, 8bit, or both. Don't get me wrong, either. I love many of these games. But I've spent the last month trying to promote my own game, "Return All Robots!", which is not 8bit, nor a platformer, and basically not one single indie game site has paid it any attention. Meanwhile, 8bit platformer #5612 gets tons of attention. So guess what we're going to do next? We're going to make an 8bit platformer, because apparently trying to be inventive and innovative isn't appreciated on ANY level. I'm overblowing it here a little bit for effect, but hopefully you get my point. If you're going to demand that developers make "better games" then you need to pay more attention on what's already out and support those developers who are legitimately trying.