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Pirates playing a game dev simulator complain about piracy

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Re: Pirates playing a game dev simulator complain about piracy

#321

Post by Evbn »

wahsd wrote: post #269
vidarh wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sim City is another good example of this. Even as a child when I first played the original, I remember reacting to the tax model in the game and how it affects net migration, as it was nothing like what I knew from Norway (and indeed, it bears little resemblance to how things works in most of Europe). A newspaper in Norway recently had to social economists play the most recent Sim City game to review the economic mod…

SimCity and many other similar games are often biased towards American ideals, techniques, and methods. They are, in essence, confirmation biased. A good example is the tax structure, i.e., taxes automatically mean drag on an economy. The problem with such assumptions is that they are supremacist in that they make a broad assumption that they are definitive in spite of all the evidence in the real world to the contra…

Taxes are very rarely considered good. Spending projects are often good, and they balance out or exceed the pain of taxes (we hope)

Re: Pirates playing a game dev simulator complain about piracy

#322

Post by jholman »

corresation wrote: post #226
eloisant wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not really a problem, unless you have some server costs or something. The question game developers should be asking is not "How many people will illegally copy it?" but "How many people will buy it?" It doesn't matter if there are 100 free riders for 1 customers, as long as you have enough customers.

It doesn't matter if there are 100 free riders for 1 customers, as long as you have enough customers. I cannot put into words how profoundly this line of thinking upsets me. It is, quite literally, the antithesis of Western society.

>> It doesn't matter if there are 100 free riders for 1 customers, as long as you have enough customers. > It is, quite literally, the antithesis of Western society.

Can you explain this to me? It looks like trolling, but I'm trying to extend the benefit of the doubt.

What does "Western society" mean? I'm both curious what countries or cultures qualify as Western for this purpose, and also what aspects of those countries/cultures you see as being the essential ones.

How do you equate the "accepting some free riders as long as some people pay" idea with the antithesis of Western society? Are you claiming that the fundamental premise of "Western society" is "don't let anyone have anything without paying for it"?

What does "quite literally" mean in that sentence? Is there some non-literal sense that you wanted to disambiguate, or is just an intensifier?

Re: Pirates playing a game dev simulator complain about piracy

#323

Post by hosh »

mjn wrote: post #60
algorias wrote: post #15

While I think this is a very clever idea, it's also somewhat dishonest. In the game world, pirates cause studios to go bankrupt. In the real world, the causal link is not as clear. People arguing that piracy is ruining gamedev routinely ignore the fact that those who pirate don't necessarily have the means to buy many games; their choice is purely between pirating and not playing. Of those 90% or more who pirate the…

That's a common approach to using gameplay for rhetorical purposes; the fact that you can code causal processes as you want is one of the main ways you can get videogames to push a point. As a more overt example, in the game Bacteria Salad [1], created after one of the E.coli scares, profits trade off directly against food safety: bigger farms are more profitable but also spread contamination more quickly. This may o…

If so, then what about conflict and violence in video games?

I'm speaking less about the use of games as a rhetorical device and more about creating and reinforcing deeply held assumptions and worldviews.

I used to strongly object to rhetoric about how video game violence induces violent behavior in people; I thought that was bullshit coming from people who were scared of video games or did not understand them. It's been years now, and I have deeper (relatively speaking) understanding of the nature of conflict and violence. There are relatively few RPGs or shooters that give you the option of completing the game without killing vast numbers of monsters. And I haven't seen any where you can do things like, actively spend experience points or sacrifice your powerups to resolve conflict. People want to feel more powerful by beating up bigger and bigger monsters.

There are other interesting deep beliefs such as the notion of fairness. People get very, very upset when the game seem to cheat. People have gotten upset at games like Corrypt, when things don't seem to work the way they think it should.

Re: Pirates playing a game dev simulator complain about piracy

#324

Post by csense »

homosaur wrote: post #218
algorias wrote: post #15

While I think this is a very clever idea, it's also somewhat dishonest. In the game world, pirates cause studios to go bankrupt. In the real world, the causal link is not as clear. People arguing that piracy is ruining gamedev routinely ignore the fact that those who pirate don't necessarily have the means to buy many games; their choice is purely between pirating and not playing. Of those 90% or more who pirate the…

"Of those 90% or more who pirate the game, it's probably less than 10% who can be persuaded to actually buy it." True, and also one had even heard of this thing yet, which is a big reason why the major distro was all pirate. Some of these folks who pirate grab any and everything new to try. There's also a large population who refuse to purchase anything that's not on Steam. I'd like to see the numbers on this with cu…

> refuse to purchase anything that's not on Steam

And there are people like me, who refuse to purchase anything from Steam.

Re: Pirates playing a game dev simulator complain about piracy

#325

Post by dllthomas »

jtbigwoo wrote: post #301
raverbashing wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly There's a point where packing and leaving is easier. And the richest the people, the easier this is. Governments have to realize that, at a certain point, they are in competition with other countries. Multinational companies and rich people come to mind. The rich can pay their way through most of the immigration burdens that prohibit the average joe from moving (yes, even to the US)

Only certain types of rich people can pick up and move like that, though. Moving to a new country or even a new city means leaving behind the business connections and infrastructure they've built over the course of years and years. You'd have to be one of the idle rich or work in an industry that is location-independent and knowledge-based. That doesn't describe most rich people. You're absolutely right about the abi…

Sometimes the money can move instead of the people.

Re: Pirates playing a game dev simulator complain about piracy

#326

Post by Garoof »

UnoriginalGuy wrote: post #98
Dylan16807 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"sandbox game" really stretches the meaning of the term game. I'm not saying that minecraft is bad, I'm saying that what it has is not "gameplay".

So SimCity, Rollercoaster Tycoon, Euro Truck Simulator, The Sims, etc aren't games either? Since they too are sandbox games that let the player direct the experience. Frankly I would love to know what your definition of the term "gameplay" is because it seems unique. To me any interactive medium contains gameplay mechanics, even point-and-click adventure games do, hell even some BluRay menus could be described as hav…

On SimCity and that, Will Wright tends to think of his creations as toys rather than games.

'hell even some BluRay menus could be described as having "gameply."'

Which should be a pretty sure sign that "can be described as having gameplay" isn't that meaningful.

(The problem with arguing semantics on the internet is that everyone starts obsessing about technicalities. Quake, SimCity, Minecraft and Blu-ray menus, all qualify as technically being games. And so technically qualifying as being a game is clearly irrelevant to anything interesting. It is obviously not what people usually mean by "is it a game?" and such.)

Re: Pirates playing a game dev simulator complain about piracy

#327

Post by csense »

jtbigwoo wrote: post #301
raverbashing wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly There's a point where packing and leaving is easier. And the richest the people, the easier this is. Governments have to realize that, at a certain point, they are in competition with other countries. Multinational companies and rich people come to mind. The rich can pay their way through most of the immigration burdens that prohibit the average joe from moving (yes, even to the US)

Only certain types of rich people can pick up and move like that, though. Moving to a new country or even a new city means leaving behind the business connections and infrastructure they've built over the course of years and years. You'd have to be one of the idle rich or work in an industry that is location-independent and knowledge-based. That doesn't describe most rich people. You're absolutely right about the abi…

The rich may not physically move their bodies, but what about moving business operations to tax-friendly locations? Especially if you only do it on paper?

What about the flight of manufacturing from the US, c. 1980-2000?

Re: Pirates playing a game dev simulator complain about piracy

#328

Post by justindz »

doktrin wrote: post #313
alan_cx wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are assuming that some one using pirated software would have bought it. I think pirates actually harm people who make free and cheap software, by using expensive "pirated" software instead. Had they not used the pirated software, they would possibly be using the free stuff and boosting the use of that free stuff. The big boys don't lose out, because they wouldn't have bought it in the first place. As such, the hi…

> You are assuming that some one using pirated software would have bought it. If you replace "it" [that particular good] with " something " [that good, or a similar one], then yeah. People used to buy music, after all. > " I suspect that if there really was a way to stop piracy, many more people would use Linux and all it's alternatives for free. " How many people pirate their OS? Windows comes bundled with just abou…

The "Yea, but so what?" is relevant for policy-making. Legislation that would protect a specific luxury/entertainment industry from privacy may be re-distributing wealth to those players from other less protected players.

Not an argument against you, but a point that I see glossed over a lot. Unless you somehow legislate away piracy across an entire budget category very broadly for families and individuals, you run the danger of picking winners.

I thought the point about demand signal was interesting that you raised. Do people consider rampant privacy in some specific area to be a demand signal that is coupled with an extremely high price sensitivity?

Re: Pirates playing a game dev simulator complain about piracy

#329

Post by csense »

awesomeasfxxk wrote: post #304
algorias wrote: post #15

While I think this is a very clever idea, it's also somewhat dishonest. In the game world, pirates cause studios to go bankrupt. In the real world, the causal link is not as clear. People arguing that piracy is ruining gamedev routinely ignore the fact that those who pirate don't necessarily have the means to buy many games; their choice is purely between pirating and not playing. Of those 90% or more who pirate the…

^^ This Confession.... I own a modded Xbox and only use it to play pirated games, Why? I simply do not play it enough to justify cost, when buying it my consideration was simply hacked Xbox vs no Xbox. I last turned it on about 3 months ago for about 30 minutes. Games are way too expensive, I would gladly pay some money but not the crazy prices of most games vs my usage.

If only there was some way you could pay a small amount of money, to have access to a game for a few days or hours...

Most video rental stores used to rent games, before they were pretty much all killed by the triple whammy of streaming, Netflix, and the recession.

There actually may be a market segment of people like you, who are willing to pay small amounts for short-term access to games, which is being more-or-less ignored by most of the gaming industry. If the market segment is big enough, could it be an unexploited startup opportunity?

Re: Pirates playing a game dev simulator complain about piracy

#330

Post by john_b »

I wonder if it would be possible to exploit human vanity to reduce piracy amongst those who can afford a game. People do things like buy fancy cars and large houses to signal wealth; perhaps similar forms of social signaling can be incorporated into smaller purchases like videogames to provide a social incentive to purchasing instead of pirating?
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