Pirating RPGs. (And were not talking "arggg" pirate stuff here.)

[Lonely Tylenol]

What I love about these threads is how they bring the moral relativists and nihilists out of the woodwork.

You forgot the absolutists.

"There is no grey area!"
"Practical solutions miss the point!"
"You just don't get it, do you?"
"If you disagree with me, you're not just wrong, you're violating universal principles of righteousness!"

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

Oh please.

Creative people, truly creative people, don't need a monetary incentive to be creative.

So, then, you agree that piracy has no effect on production of creative works?

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

maybe you're right. still, i am neither rich nor powerful, and i like milo's venus a lot!

Yeah, back in the salad days of patronage, the rich and powerful tended to know a hell of a lot more about art than the common folk did. Why? Because they could afford to educate themselves on the finer things in life, and had the time to do it in. I have a hunch that the common people from the renaissance would probably have been interested in the renaissance version of Britney Spears if such a thing were available. Fortunately, at that time, conspicuous consumption amounted to building a beautiful church, filling it with magnificent art, and hiring a composer to flood the church with heavenly music. And Western society has reaped the benefits of some rich and powerful guy's taste in art for hundreds of years afterward.

 

[Falkus]

1. the majority of the market demands high quality graphic, and would demand it even if not having it would produce a consistent drop in the final price.

That's exactly correct. People are willing to pay extra for companies that give extra. Your economically irrevant attitude would destroy any possibility of graphically decent games. Nobody would ever risk spending the amount of money it takes to make a computer game without the assurance that it would make it back. Today's market, while not always guaranteeing it, does allow that to happen. Yours doesn't.

oh! you mean i could not enjoy great films like star wars 3, alone in the dark, and similar stuff? man, that would kill me!

How about Titanic, Lord of the Rings or Blade? Come back when you have an argument.

the general quality of products would probably drop down. so what? it would also cost a fraction of what it costs today.

Money, money, money, money. Is that all you care about? How much it costs you? You're not willing to spend five extra bucks at the theatre?

so no flashy (and useless, at least as far as i'm concerned) special effect

So basically, not only do you hate corporations, but you hate people who go to movies, and what to remove many elements that we find enjoyable. A lot of us like movies that have special affects more complicated than a flag that says 'bang' sticking out of the fun.

i might have an idealist view of the world, granted, and a very personal one (oh, what a surprise! we all had 100% personal views of things, last time i checked) but you are saying that, without copyright law, there would be nothing, nada, zero, niente.

Because there would be no incentive to make them. Learn your economics. People don't spend money on a project if they're not likely to get it back.

funny, i prefer my fairy land. you know, when years ago, i stopped acting as if everybody was trying to stabbing in my back, i realised that nobody was. also, when i started to be nice to people and give them credit, they turned out to be pretty decent and nice guys, in the vast majority.

Individuals are smart, charitable and kind. People are stupid, greedy and shortsighted.

maybe i'm in fairy land, but i suspect that if all the big corporations (be it food, films, music, you name it) would start to act responsibly and treat their customer as if they were living beings with a brain, as opposed to spoon-fed midgets, who can only find their ass because somebody else has nicely pointed it to them, maybe they would find the profit would go up.

History has shown that ruthless corporations are the ones that succeed. What you advocate goes contrary to sound, economic sense.

 

[The Shaman]

So, then, you agree that piracy has no effect on creativity?

On creating something? No. On feeding one's family by selling the creation? Yes.

 

[Bobitron]

*shrugs* I'm a consumer, no doubt about it. I'll spend money on things I whole-heartedly intend on using for a game and never use. I will absolutely download something for free (legally) that I might never use.

I have to agree with statements that 130 illegal downloads do not equal 130 lost sales, however, for the very reason I stated above. I think 10-20 sales is a reasonable estimate.

As for DRM vs. watermarking, I never purchased a single DRM protected pdf. I have purchased a total of about $200 worth of watermarked or unprotected stuff, ranging from small, $1 pdf-only products up to $20+ books that I also own in print.

 

[smcrey]

i have never bought any Drm pdf products nor will i ever. too much hasle trying to work with acrobat to read it. I have a wife and two kids and a gaming addiction. i will evaluate a product before purchasing it. if i like it then i will shell out the money. if they want to acquire over 5-10 dollars for a pdf from me then they are barking up the wrong tree. Over twenty dollars is absolutely crazy. why spend that much for a pdf when you can acquire a hardcopy for that amount.
my 2 cents
scott mcreynolds

 

[Voadam]

How about Titanic,

Are you serious?

I would send someone back in time with a mission to make sure that abomination was never made so that I would not have wasted my time on it. I didn't even pay to see it, I saw it on TV and I regret doing so.

 

[Bobitron]

Over twenty dollars is absolutely crazy. Why spend that much for a pdf when you can acquire a hardcopy for that amount?

scott mcreynolds

I can tell you why I do it; cut and paste. An original electronic format document is almost always worth the $ in a play-by-post game.

 

[jgbrowning]

I've never heard Drowing Pool. Why? Because I listen to radio on the internet to hear what I want to hear. Or I guess I could listen to one of the what, 500 channels on satilite radio. Sorry, Copyright isn't limiting creativity. It's making creativity econically viable in ways it had never been before because of the development of new media outlets (the internet).

Internet and satelite allow for musical options, but they are still forced into pigeonholes based on what the suits dictate as genres, because genres are easier to market than bands. You have the "classical" station, the "top 40" station, the "blues" station, the "oldies" station, the "rock" station, the "country" station, the "electronic" station, etc. These are all artificial categories; these categories do stymie creativity.

We'll I'm a bit confused. Describing music is now styming creativity? That's all genres do, you know, give a bite-sized summation of the general type of music. Labeling something isn't limiting something, it's a general description of something.

Ok, now I have to address your strange belief in the "suits." They're business men and they're making business decisions. You may not like the fact that music/art/creativity is a business but that's the way it is. These "suits" are not dictating creativity they are determining what their personal business does based upon what's creativly available at the moment. If you want to play classical-fusion-punk-christian music, go right ahead, but don't, ever, under any circumstances assume that just because you like CFPC music that if you can't hear it on the radio or if you can't seem to get a record deal that means your creativity is being stifled. It means that you're being out-competed musically and aren't worth the time to put on the air.

What it basically means is that a businessman doesn't think his business is going to be as profitable with your music as it would be with someone else's music. You should then go the route of Apple records or of Ani DiFranco's company or start up your own company and take the fiscal risks yourself to put out the significant and profound music instead of saying some "suit" is styming your creativity.

If you want somthing different enough, try any of the hundreds of college radio stations that don't have to compete in the market to exist and, hence, can play things that have no fiscally redeaming value.

Because if what I release as new music is not easily fit into one of these categories, it is rejected, and the reason is because of the suits. Because the way for their business of copying things to make money is to copy something that people will want a lot of copies of, and if it doesn't fit into a genre, if it breaks new ground, if it doesn't fit into an old pattern, the numbers say it is a gamble at best, and you don't run a business on gambles.

But the most significant and profound art is *always* a gamble. That doesn't mesh well at all with a business model.

I have to differ here as well. The most significant and profound art is probably the art that I think's crap—to be blunt. The stuff that's making the most money is the most significant and probably the most profound to the most number of people. I don't like it, but hey, my opinions in the matter don't matter.

joe b.