ezaviel said:
Jabberwock xeno said:
ezaviel said:
Jabberwock xeno said:
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That's not what I mean either.
I suppose a better way to convey it would be like this:
An individual disk containing any type of non physical data is only worth the amount of the physical disk itself. However, a game, program, movie, whatever, IS worth something, as many people's time and effort went in to it.
The issue with our society is that we put values on things. I'm no expert in economics or history or whatever, but i'm fairly certain that the entire foundation of currency was developed because different objects or substances had a practical use. Like in africa, gold wasn't worth nearly as much as salt, as salt had a much more practical purpose.
Somewhere along the line, a few things happened: We started to assign value based on other factors:
- Scarity/limited-ness: The loss of a amount of these deprived the owner of that use. Or, in other words, the gain of something requires the loss of that thing from other places. Like with a math problem that has stuff on both sides of the = sign. You can't add stuff to one side without subtracting it from the other.
Therefore, things that were harder to obtain became more valuable.
- Entertainment/pleasure:/demand by a person's subjective "worth" of it. Entertainment, pleasure, etc are all subjective things we experience that have no direct physical impact on the world.
- Time/effort: Also, because we don't like spending a lot of effort and time, only to have it not mean anything in the end, some amount of value was placed on time and effort as well. Likewise, things that reduced the amount of effort or time became more valuable.
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Remember the thing I said about the math equations? Well, with digital things, that's not true. You can make an infinite amount of a thing without causing the loss of it in the first place. But you can't just say it's worthless, as the thing was still the result of time and effort.
That's goes directly against of current model of a things worth.
So, with Video games:
- They serve no practical purpose; Worthless in this aspect.
- They have no limited aspect or "scarcity"; ENTIRELY Worthless in this aspect.
- They ARE a major source of entertainment, and are worth a LOT in this aspect.
- A LOT of time and effort goes into making a game, so it's worth a lot here.
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So, what do then?
Well, we know that as you can make an infinite number of these things, you shouldn't be paying for them on a indivual basis, "disc by disc" (I put it in quotes because I don't actually mean discs, as that is worth something by itself, I just can't thing of a equilvent statement for a purely digital purchase.)
Practicality has no bearing on any idea to pay for these, except in case of digital price vs. retail price: digital purchases should cost less, because you aren't paying for a box and a disc.
A price SHOULD be determined by enjoyment, and by time and effort.
As I stated, one way to do this would be to have all profits be made totally by donation. This way, a person wouldn't be paying for the scarcity/practicality of the thing, but they would be paying based on the subjective pleasure they get out of it.
Sadly, it's likely that not enough people would pay enough to make it "profitable" enough in the aspect of time and effort. So, this model really is not any better, and arguably worse than the current.
Another way to do it would be to make the games free, but since the consumers now have more money because they don't pay for games, the CONSUMERS pay the devolpers to MAKE the games, not to buy a already made one.
This also has issues, tough, of course
