You sir, said exactly what I wanted to say, thanks for saving me time. I just shook my head and laughed as I heard Jim make those analogies.Aaron Sylvester said:Hey Jim, could you please explain how your examples/analogies are even vaguely relevant to what gaming companies are doing? (I expand further on my question below the quote.)
1) You stabbed a man in the dick - you broke the law, here come the assault charges.The Grim Ace said:I always did find the "they only exist to make money" argument crazy. I mean, if I went over and stabbed a man in the dick and he asked me why I did it, he wouldn't accept, "hey, I exist to stab people in the dick," as a reason. That might be an extreme analogy but when I'm spending sixty dollars on a game and only getting fifteen hours of content, my wallet feels terribly abused.
3) You didn't give the man a choice, you didn't ask him whether he wanted a knife in the dick or not. You simply did it, implying force.
2) You severely harmed a human being. This is a very negative thing.
So your analogy, while extreme, wasn't even vaguely on the right track. Neither were Jim's terrorism, drugs and human trafficking analogies. They are devastatingly harmful, they are forced, they break the biggest of laws. How were they relevant in any fucking way?
While they're not exactly saving starving babies with their profits, companies aren't HARMING anyone either. They may be harming gaming as a whole but that is an extremely subtle and difficult-to-measure issue, because a lot of companies are doing really great stuff as well. The extreme analogies which imply forceful harm, destruction or lives, etc 100% of the time don't goddamn apply.
You don't live under their fucking iron-fisted rule, EA is not your abusive alcohol-drinking dad and you are not 10 years old. You have options - either don't bother with the product, or boycott the company and all it's products, or buy the product and give negative feedback. All 3 options are effective to varying degrees.
Companies make money because people GIVE them money. Do I feel it's right to abuse that power? No. But do I feel it's harming mankind and the companies should be HATED for it? Fuck no! They are only taking hints from the consumer, and the overwhelming hint companies like EA/Activision have received is that consumers will willingly spend money on anything if it is marketed heavily enough. Consumers willingly give money for poor DLC practices, consumers willingly spend money on DRM-infested games. They are simply testing what they can get away with, how far they can push the boundaries. But I repeat, they are not forcing you to buy their shit, they are not mass-murdering fellow human beings.
Companies will alter their practices according to how consumers react (sales, reviews, feedback, etc). It's that simple. No need to over-complicate it or use dumb analogies.
People in this thread have said that a company's main purpose is to provide a service/product not just make money. What people seem to forget is that companies don't have to provide the service/product in the way people want or charge only what the people want to pay. People more and more forget that they can walk away and find another company if others aren't providing what they want.
I know it is kind of hard for some people to understand, but such battles are the type that are won by retreating. The can't do the so called "bad" things to people if there aren't enough people to do them to.