Cheeze_Pavilion said:
Why don't you make that your position? That there isn't enough discussion of the issue--especially by people interested in doing things like making legal analogies as opposed to people advocating for one side at all costs--in order to take a position, and that any position worth taking is going to wind up being a full paper in itself, and not a tag line?
Because there's a lot of issues we didn't tackle for that reason. The point wasn't to necessarily answer every question, but to state ones that we did feel we had answers to.
As it stands now, the person who pirates software from a paying customer is in a greater category of wrongdoing than someone who buys an illegal copy of the software from a bootlegger: if I buy stolen goods, I'm just guilty of buying stolen goods, right? While if I pirate software, you're saying I've actually stolen.
Even if you're certain that no piracy is justifiable, why not take the position that while it's not justifiable, neither is it stealing? Just because you disagree with one side of the argument, you don't have to adopt the vocabulary of the extremists on the other side. We have plenty of words for wrongful use--embezzlement, infringement, etc.--so I have to ask: why did you settle on the word *stealing*?
Steal means "to take the property of another wrongfully and especially as a habitual or regular practice" and "to take from another without right and without detection." That is the word for what is going on, no?
Other words, such as robbery, larceny, embezzlement, and infringement, are all defined specific legal terms. Stealing is not. Its a synonym for pilfer, filch, and purloin, but it has the virtue of being easily understood in common parlance. "Piracy is pilfering!" lacks bite, no?
Also, why is the legal and the practical conflated with the moral? Aren't those three different questions?
Sorry - could you give me the context of where this is aimed?
Why is there a disclaimer at the beginning of this question: "Do we need more diversity in games?" that isn't in "Is the used games and games rental business good for consumers and game companies?" and "How much compensation do game creators deserve for making a hit game?"
The straight answers is that we wrote our positions first, then phrased the questions for what we had written as answers.
The philosophical answer is that the question is itself part of the position. For example, if we had asked "Do game creators deserve compensation for making a hit game", that would have implied that the core issue of compensation for artistic creation was open to question here at The Escapist, whereas as written, the question suggests that we are evaluating how much game creation should be valued, relative to other things.
Why is the "current used games business and game rental business" and example of "poor business practices" because they "put the retailer in ongoing conflict with the game companies" and "will lead to fewer games, less innovation, and higher prices"? Why should retailers care about any of those things? Isn't that just an *unfortunate* business practice for the consumer and the game companies, and a GOOD--the opposite of bad--business practice for the game retailer? What's wrong with conflict in a market economy?
Perhaps "inefficient" or "sub-optimal" would have been a better word, but we were aiming for accessibility. From your studies of economics, you'll know that a business practice can be sub-optimal for the market as a whole even when it benefits one particular market participant. For example, monopolies are "GOOD business practices" (to use your phrase) for the monopolist, but nevertheless are not something we'd recommend.
Do you think maybe you've taken a vantage point that privileges the game companies in this manifesto? Jumping back and forth in using words like "good" and "justifiable" from the moral to the legal sense in order to make an argument that sees the rights and wants of the game companies first, the consumer second, and the retailer practically non-existent?
At least with regards to this question, I know that we have. We never claimed that we'd be value neutral as between game companies, consumers, and retailers on any given issue. We're giving our position, not outlining every possible position. That was, as I said, the whole point; to make it clear where we were coming from. So at the risk of alienating EB Games we took this position.
Why is the issue of game companies tying a purchase to a particular user/console/account/etc. not addressed, when the technology to do so is basically here, and would end the used/rented game issue overnight?
The original draft had several proposed solutions to the used/rented game issue, but our advisory board recommended we simply state our positions, not try to solve the problems.
And, again, we are trying to keep it succinct and readable. Obviously we've already published hundreds of thousands of words on topics similar to these with in-depth discussions of many of these topics.
Why do you say that "damage caused by pirates is absorbed by legitimate game consumers in the form of higher prices and, indirectly, in fewer games being made overall."?
One, aren't prices set at a level of maximal return? In other words, if selling for $30 will get three customers, $50 two, and $70 one, doesn't the company sell for $50 regardless of how many pirates there are because $100>$90>$70?
To address briefly, if a near or perfect substitute is available at lower cost, it will result in decreased demand for the product (the game). That may actually result in a near-term reduction in the game's price, as the marginal price falls to a price point that will move more units in the face of decreased demand. Long term, however, suppliers will address the decreased demand for games by lowering the number of games they create, decreasing supply. The result is higher prices and fewer games. This is not particularly controversial. If there's enough piracy, eventually production ceases virtually entirely, as it has for many IP-based products in many parts of the world.
Both you and I are engaging in an oversimplification of how prices are set, as I'm sure you know. Since different people have different economic views, I will share that I believe the best example of price theory is the austro-classical theory embodied in Geore Reisman's CAPITALISM: A Treatise on Economics. You can find it on the web as a free PDF. Having each tossed around some econ, I'm afraid I can't spend too much time trading theory here, as it's not a debate that can be resolved on the forums.
Two, are you sure fewer games are being made overall? I'm sure you're familiar with the DRM letter from Stardock about Sins of a Solar Empire, where they talked about how games get made for the market of people who will buy games and not pirate them, just like the styles of Window Blinds reflect the desires of the people who actually buy Window Blinds (or whatever it was called).
I mean, there's what--three Europe Universalis games out now, with tons of expansion packs? Didn't Mount & Blade just come out? Are you sure there are less gamings coming out because of piracy, or are there just *different* games coming out as the hobby evolves? I mean, Russ Pitts talked of an isomorphic, turn based Fallout being unplayable, but a new Fallout certainly did come out. Are you sure that when you say there are less games coming out that you're not looking at how certain styles of games are no longer coming out, while ignoring the new styles of games that are coming out, or that certain styles are more diverse than they ever were?
Certainly if one includes casual games, or what I call (and have given speeches on) "gamer snacks" the PC is far from dead as a platform. We are, in context here, refering to the sort of games that *used* to be predominantly on PC, but now are not, i.e. hardcore games.
Which leads to the question: when you say "Piracy of games has been a leading cause of the decline of the PC as a platform" what do you mean by the word "decline"? Personally, I'm continually amazed when I look at the offerings of Strategy First and Paradox, which makes it hard for me to understand how someone could say PC gaming is in decline.
Hmmm. This is almost a discussion distinct from our position, so I hesitate to get into it, but at least my personal sense is that PC gaming used to be in some way the flagship platform for AAA gaming, and it no longer is. As per your sentence below, you actually agree with me on this, and that if we'd said "decentralization" of gaming this conversation would be shorter.
Now, PC gaming isn't at the *center* of gaming like it was, but, is that really a decline? Is it a decline to see the shelves of Babbages and EB lined with used console games in place of PC games? And does that have anything to do with piracy? Or is it that it's far easier for retailers to sell a used console game than a used PC game? Or that the console has become ubiquitous and so the blockbuster games have moved from the PC to the console?
Why can't it be all of the above? We didn't say that piracy was the exclusive cause of the - ahem - "decentralization" of the PC as a platform.
And obviously the used game issue is closely related to the game piracy issue.
Maybe that word 'decline' has to be better defined--to me, it's a relative decline if anything, as new gamers tend to be console gamers and not PC gamers percentage wise. Is that the result of piracy, though? Or is that the result of consoles turning people into gamers that the PC would never have reached in the first place?
PCs are, if anything, more ubiquituous than consoles, and more casual gaming happens on PCs than on consoles (spades, tetris, etc.) So it's hard, in my opinion, to claim that consoles are inherently more casual or more mainstream than PC games.
