Jimquisition: SimShitty

[Costia]

"Some businesses would have trouble in my opinion" is not a justification for copyright. People who make games are much better at figuring out how to make it profitable than you or I, and they'll find a way. I've given a multitude of examples of it happening already. Microtransactions are only one model that already exists, and who knows how many don't exist yet.

Thankfully for me this is a winning battle People already act like copyright doesn't exist, so businesses will either need to adapt to that or die, so the survival of business in the face of copyright abolition is a moot point. It's going down that road no matter what the law says. Now it's time to abolish copyright entirely and stop the harm it's doing.

As for not wanting to pay, what's with the ad hominem? My position is correct whether I'm a greedy prick who never pays a cent to artists or I'm the most generous person in the world. And, if you want to evoke sympathy for artists, why not the ones whose careers are destroyed by intellectual property?

It was a counter argument to your post. Not my justification for copyright. So far you said that artists will have no trouble and even thrive if copyright is abolished. Now you acknowledge that people will get hurt. The industry will have to adapt - and it's going to be a hard process for everyone. Artists aren't just going to be fine - it will take a lot of effort.That's all I wanted to say with that paragraph.
The ad hominem was because it looks like not wanting to pay is your only argument.
The question wasn't meant to evoke sympathy. i want a serious answer to this: Why are artists special? why should you be payed with a paycheck and they shouldn't?
My justification to copyright is simple: If I made it - it's mine. since it's mine it's my decision what to do with it and not anyone else's. Doesn't matter if it is tangible or not.
The ad hominem was because so far everything you said leads to "i don't want to pay" and "people are getting hurt by copyright"
Could you summarize your reasons in a sentence or 2?
Shouldn't I be able to own the things I create? Why all the stuff I make should be free for all?

 

[Worgen]

EA's logic is kind of backwards. If they were really afraid of us, you'd think they'd be doing everything they could to appease us.

Or they would be setting up a system that gave them so much control that they felt they could get away with anything.

 

[Kenny3k]

not sure if anyone saw this but Sim City made Fox News, www.foxnews.com/tech/2013/03/13/simcity-pr-nightmare-escalates/?intcmp=features

 

[waj9876]

Think about what happens to people who refuse to pay when the local supermarket tries to extract money from them. They may be thrown out of their house, or even locked away, and if they refuse to go when they're locked away, they could even get shot in the process. Are you willing to say that it's justifiable to use the threat of death on people just to fund your favorite food franchise?

Well there would be a symmetry there If someone takes money from you by force, they can't complain when you take money from them by force. There's already force involved. It's not being introduced by the anti-theft laws.

Likewise, if someone copies your art, they can't complain when you copy their art.

But, copyright has nothing to do with that symmetry. It's pure corporate welfare, extracting money from peaceful people and putting it in the hands of a favored industry.

You responded to the wrong person. I didn't write that.

You had to have PUT that text into a quote from me...

 

[Flunk]

I've wanted Sim City for a while but I knew that this would happen.

Because of how badly this was managed I'm waiting for it to wind up in the bargain bin. EA doesn't deserve full price for this one.

 

[NemotheElvenPanda]

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/122702-Modder-Proves-That-SimCity-Works-Offline

So yeah...apparently, all that stuff about the DRM and always online thing being essential for the game isn't entirely true.

DRM and forced multiplayer aside, Simcity looks to be a legitimate successor, and that's what really sucks. I want this game, and so does my brother, but we're not ones to play with other people, not even each other. It's just not how we play; we prefer it on our own terms in our own hands.

I can accept using Origin, and I can accept DRM if it only applied to an *optional* multiplayer experience. This however is inexcusable, especially with all of the server issues. If you're going to force us to use your severs to simply play alone, at least have the decency to have them work when we, the customer, want to use them.

 

[Novuake]

F#>k that hogwash, I play games YEARS after they are release. I am a nostalgic one, I have a dedicated Win98 machine for some older games that just will not work on later systems. Anyway... DRM has to go, but it won't and that makes me sad.

Oh, i do play games long after, and thats how i discovered those peoblems. want to play empire earth? sorry, we clsoed servers down in 2008.

the only game i was not able to make run on my win7 system was Scarface, and that was because my graphic card somehow magically didnt support the old pixel shader technique the game used. appears to be a windowns issue though as forums claim it woud work on XP, but i didnt want to play the game enough to emulate xp at that time.

Yeah I found the same. Windows ends up being the issue. Dungeon Keeper 2 was one of the worst for me. JUST REFUSED to work with an AMD card and Win 7 64 bit. That is when I decided its time for a dedicated machine.

AMDs, especially older models, were known for some compatibility issues in gaming. they claim they fixed that but its still up for debate. However lately i been using a stragey of "does not run? ok, ill just go grab another game of the list of games i want to play when i have time, which is over 100 games long".

Haha so many games, so little time.

 

[Seydaman]

Seems we do not have the technology to use always connected games. Silly EA.

Edit: I feel like a lot of games have been able to do a sort of "if you're connected" type deal, like if you're connected to interwebs in Sleeping Dogs or DA2, you link up to the social hub thingy, you can still play fine offline, but it's a little connection to other players.

 

[Strazdas]

F#>k that hogwash, I play games YEARS after they are release. I am a nostalgic one, I have a dedicated Win98 machine for some older games that just will not work on later systems. Anyway... DRM has to go, but it won't and that makes me sad.

Oh, i do play games long after, and thats how i discovered those peoblems. want to play empire earth? sorry, we clsoed servers down in 2008.

the only game i was not able to make run on my win7 system was Scarface, and that was because my graphic card somehow magically didnt support the old pixel shader technique the game used. appears to be a windowns issue though as forums claim it woud work on XP, but i didnt want to play the game enough to emulate xp at that time.

Yeah I found the same. Windows ends up being the issue. Dungeon Keeper 2 was one of the worst for me. JUST REFUSED to work with an AMD card and Win 7 64 bit. That is when I decided its time for a dedicated machine.

AMDs, especially older models, were known for some compatibility issues in gaming. they claim they fixed that but its still up for debate. However lately i been using a stragey of "does not run? ok, ill just go grab another game of the list of games i want to play when i have time, which is over 100 games long".

Haha so many games, so little time.

Indeed. especially when the so little time is really very little nowadays (curse work+studies).
Still, it could be just that i want too much which for my hoarder personality may very well be.

 

[Richard Eis]

I see the odd person here and on reddit is still trying to drive the "Not enough servers was a plan to hide the game errors" conspiracy.

If they had stopped to think for a minute they would have realized that having fence sitters put off from buying by server issues (mentioned in major news outlets) for a full two weeks and Amazon halting sales actually gave the early adopters (ie rabid fans) chance to test and highlight the broken system while everyone waited. So now they have lost sales in the first two weeks, and on the fat-tail of 3 weeks and beyond. This is before we even discuss the number of people saying that they are boycotting any EA game from now on.

So yes, it is "possible" that EA decided to try that tactic, but if they did then it was phenomenally stupid and guaranteed to backfire...

Or they did what most online-only game publishers have in fact done at large launches, which is to fail to have enough servers. Some thing that has happened about 5 or 6 times in the recent past.

 

[dbenoy]

It was a counter argument to your post. Not my justification for copyright. So far you said that artists will have no trouble and even thrive if copyright is abolished. Now you acknowledge that people will get hurt. The industry will have to adapt - and it's going to be a hard process for everyone. Artists aren't just going to be fine - it will take a lot of effort.That's all I wanted to say with that paragraph.
The ad hominem was because it looks like not wanting to pay is your only argument.
The question wasn't meant to evoke sympathy. i want a serious answer to this: Why are artists special? why should you be payed with a paycheck and they shouldn't?
My justification to copyright is simple: If I made it - it's mine. since it's mine it's my decision what to do with it and not anyone else's. Doesn't matter if it is tangible or not.
The ad hominem was because so far everything you said leads to "i don't want to pay" and "people are getting hurt by copyright"
Could you summarize your reasons in a sentence or 2?
Shouldn't I be able to own the things I create? Why all the stuff I make should be free for all?

What do you mean when you say artists wouldn't get a paycheque without copyright? I may be confusing my threads, but I thought I gave you numerous examples of how copyright both isn't necessary for artists to make money, and actually prevents them from making as much money as they otherwise would. (That's the hurt I was referring to. That harm needs to end.)

Also, saying that making something means its yours can't be applied universally. For example, if I smash the house you made, and make a shack out of it, does that make the shack mine? I made it, therefore I own it right?

There are already rules for what belongs to someone or doesn't belong to someone else, and when I own something, such as a CD burner, it is mine, and I have a right to use it for any purpose except to prevent others from using what's theirs. People understand this already, so I have no need to justify the abolition of copyright. It's people who support copyright to justify why their system is worthy of violating the rights of peaceful people.

 

[Something Amyss]

Well, I don't think we're going to make any more progress in this situation because we seem to be a fundamental disagreement about how good the industry is at learning from mistakes. So I guess we'll have to continue disagreeing and wait to see what happens. In the mean time, it's been fun.

Look, you can deny the evolving business model all you want, but it is evolving. the problem appears to be that it's not evolving to your tastes, which does not in any way indicate future failure. They're clearly shifting the market towards people who are okay with the products as service model. Combined with people who seem to be unwilling to give up their vice despite all their protests, we have a model they can grow into and still thrive. Now, you can protest all you want, but it's a working model.

And while we're on it, I've always found the "wait and see" deal to be little more than a cop-out used when a point has become so weak as to be untenable to defend. I'm curious, though, assuming this is in good faith. Since my argument is simply absence of failure and yours is that it's unsusatainable, at what point does it become ostensibly true? A year? Five? If they go down in 200 years, will you feel vindicated based on your current estimation of the market?

I think EA will likely remain solvent in the foreseeable future, but I fully understand that the market could change at any given time. While I could see EA alive in 5 years, nobody would have predicted that THQ was going to go down even 3 years ago. All it really took was a heavy investment in uDraw, not the proto-EA tactics they were employing.

So....

 

[Waffle_Man]

Look, you can deny the evolving business model all you want, but it is evolving. the problem appears to be that it's not evolving to your tastes, which does not in any way indicate future failure. They're clearly shifting the market towards people who are okay with the products as service model. Combined with people who seem to be unwilling to give up their vice despite all their protests, we have a model they can grow into and still thrive. Now, you can protest all you want, but it's a working model.

I'm curious, though, assuming this is in good faith. Since my argument is simply absence of failure and yours is that it's unsustainable, at what point does it become ostensibly true? A year? Five? If they go down in 200 years, will you feel vindicated based on your current estimation of the market?

A man drives home drunk every weekend. If they never get into a crash and never get pulled over, does that make their actions wise? What is the criteria for determining that such an action is unwise? It's because doing so has brought calamity to other individuals. Placing too much investment into a small focus is demonstrably risky from an economics perspective both theoretically and historically. Saying that a constantly changing base of consumers will just buy into something is not.

I actually like more games that were produced in the past six years than were produced in the previous ten, so my tastes also have nothing to do with it. The point is that the industry is engaging in really risky behavior. Much can be said about the pay off of the new markets they are investing in, but none of these are longitudinally known and a disproportionate amount of the industries resources are being geared towards such markets. In fact, the video games industry as a whole is incredibly infantile, but the major industry has massive trends towards homogeneity, which is a terrifying prospect. Worse yet, I'm worried that market saturation is starting to catch up with the industry, but the industry still seems to have no idea how to handle it.

I think EA will likely remain solvent in the foreseeable future, but I fully understand that the market could change at any given time. While I could see EA alive in 5 years, nobody would have predicted that THQ was going to go down even 3 years ago. All it really took was a heavy investment in uDraw, not the proto-EA tactics they were employing.

So....

I'm not demanding that companies be somehow punished for their injustices. This isn't even the first time that it's occurred to me that the industry is heading into uncharted waters. Rather, I'm trying to articulate that I've finally become terrified that the industry might not know how to tread those waters safely. Video games as a medium would survive, but much of the cultural relevance that they've worked so hard to achieve would be damaged for years.

And while we're on it, I've always found the "wait and see" deal to be little more than a cop-out used when a point has become so weak as to be untenable to defend.

I had originally intended to make the last post my last response in this thread. Yet, here I am responding to you again. Outwardly, I'd say that this is because I don't want to ignore the conversation between us as it would just end up closing communication and I'd rather that neither of us go away from this conversation feeling dismissed or bitter. Upon self examination, I realize that this is probably just because my ego isn't as small as I'd like to think. Still, it wouldn't surprise me if it's a bit of both.

Neither of us have been speaking from a position of authority or using statistics, so unless you actually intend to bring up something new, the only thing that either of us can do at this point is just reiterating our opinions and conjectures. The reason I made a post saying that I was done with the conversation was out of respect for closure, not dismissal. While I could spend the next decade rebutting replies with more supposition, I don't have anything to gain from doing so. I obviously haven't convinced you of anything and you haven't convinced me of anything. We're not in a court of law, and there is nothing at stake.

If you absolutely must have a major concession, I'll give it to you. The part I wrote in bold about it being inevitable isn't true. It was hyperbole, but you can claim it as having defeated me rhetorically on some level. If you must feel like you've won, go ahead and consider yourself winner.

 

[Costia]

What do you mean when you say artists wouldn't get a paycheque without copyright? I may be confusing my threads, but I thought I gave you numerous examples of how copyright both isn't necessary for artists to make money, and actually prevents them from making as much money as they otherwise would. (That's the hurt I was referring to. That harm needs to end.)

Also, saying that making something means its yours can't be applied universally. For example, if I smash the house you made, and make a shack out of it, does that make the shack mine? I made it, therefore I own it right?

There are already rules for what belongs to someone or doesn't belong to someone else, and when I own something, such as a CD burner, it is mine, and I have a right to use it for any purpose except to prevent others from using what's theirs. People understand this already, so I have no need to justify the abolition of copyright. It's people who support copyright to justify why their system is worthy of violating the rights of peaceful people.

So far in you examples the artists won't get a paycheck - they would have to ask for donations, or find their own new way to make money. I think the main problem is that you want every game to be pay to win, subscription based or with always online DRM. Then the artists will get a paycheck. I want games to be playable offline. I want people sharing their art and code without being afraid that someone will use it to make money for himself, without their permission. The only thing removing copyrights will cause is more secrecy. If anything that's can be copied is free for all, I will never show my creations to others if i want to make money out of it myself. I will have to use/invent technology just to prevent others using it so i could make money from something that is mine.
Yes, the new shack itself is yours. But you committed a crime by destroying my home - this is an unrelated crime to the shack itself. And according to copyright laws if you creation uses something of mine - you need my permission. And the land you built on is mine. So i think that a court would decide to destroy your (it is 100% yours) shack (but the land it is on is 100% mine), and make you pay for the destruction of my property.
I disagree with the 3rd paragraph. You aren't allowed to bash someones head to death with that burner either, although technically you could. Not stealing is not the only law limiting you, as you seem to state. The law is allowed prevent you using an object (the burner)in any way that will hurt other people's rights. So you aren't allowed to use it to steal my creations either. (Also, being able to do something easily, doesn't mean it's OK to do)

The way i see it copyright makes sure that the artist who created something - will get paid for it. And without copyright there will be nothing to protect him. If you think artists aren't getting paid enough now, it will only get worse. I don't see how it will improve their ability to make money. All of your examples were of things the artist can do right now, with copyrights still in place.
You keep repeating that the artists would make more money. Could you explain why? What can they do without copyrights that they can't do right now?
So far you only said that copyright hurts artists "because i said so" and never explained how or why. (I don't count "it is obvious to everyone" as an explanation)

 

[FireDr@gon]

Right on - I fully agree with you. Publishers need to realise that they need us more than we need them and start treating us better. I hate needing an internet connection to play a single player game. I always have.

I have found myself being completley put off buying new games that pull this kind of dick-move.

Lump into this the so called "pay to win" "free" games, that deny the most desirable content unless you pay, regardless of customer satisfaction, and games that demand you continue paying long after you have already forked out for the game - case in point, world of warcraft.

Does anyone remember a bright past where you just payed for a game once and it would work when and how you wanted it to? Remember when games were made with love? Remember when communities could be built around mods and user-created content? This seems to be being stamped out, as you rightly put it Jim, for mere consumer control.

When we buy a game, we don't want to feel like we're getting a bank account or opening an insurance policy. We shouldn't pay to play games, we should just be buying the game.

If you buy a guitar, you expect all the strings on purchase, you don't expect, or want, to pay to "unlock" strings that should already be there. Also, if you bought a guitar you would get to test it out and see if you could play it. Not so with games today. Steam, for example, is quite happy to let you fork out for a game that cannot run on your machine. They won't let you have a downloadable demo despite sitting firmly on a "no refund" policy. In any other industry a product that was defective would be promptly returned for a refund, and now even this simple and intrinsic function of consumerisim is being robbed from us for no good reason. It sickens me.

Games are more widely available and cheaper than ever and yet customer support and care has never been worse. What about the complete lack of support for older games? The information was there once, why remove it? Because, and only because, they want you to spend money, they're bullying us into spending more money. Well they're not going to have my money any more and if there is a game that i really, really want; and it's trying this kind of shit - you can bet your ass that I'm waiting a month before I buy it. Of course, it would have to be a monumental game to justify the financial speed hump of getting a computer that could actually run it. Thank science for Jim (i'm an aetheist so who should i thank, huh?)

 

[duchaked]

hahaha waiting a few weeks is a partial stick-it-to-the-man method if any I suppose lol...sigh

It is really smart, though.

oh yeah I agree lol

 

[Augustine]

I'm glad Jim offered a real, easily implementable, solution to the VG ills of our day - delaying the purchase by about a week. Very constructive, bravo Jim!

 

[Drejer43]

I dont think there will be a crash, videogames are too mainstream and people like us who checks videogame sites are a niche.

 

[Dumoras]

just had my first run in with the no server issue on first day of playing.

 

[ViciousTide]

DRM decision, and they screwed themselves over big time. $50 Million down the drain.