Lightknight said:
Hopefully my point can be found somewhere in all that sarcasm. This is a good idea but implementing it will take iterations to get right. It isn't going to start out perfect and saying that it wasn't is merely a red herring, not some sort of point against the practice itself. Just pointing out the bugs and flaws in the system as presented.
Red herring nothing. You're comparing what is to what might be.
It's your slippery slope, not mine.
Yep, the players who got a full refund once the issue was discovered. Sooo much loss?
Recovering from failure does not negate the fact it failed (disastrously) in the first place.
So spare me your sugar coating and sarcastic bullshit.
Complaining about having to pay for a good or service you consume is correctly labled as entitlement. It means you think you are entitled to the fruits of labor of others without compensating them whether they like it or not.
Except when those goods were offered for free, but I'm sure you're going to gloss over that in your misguided attempt at framing this as some new moral dilemma.
Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of "entitlement" claims being levied at gamers that are absolute bullshit. But this is one of the few correct ones.
No, no it isn't. But you'll see why that's a dead-end argument by its very premise shortly.
Modders? Because they provided a good or service and that deserves to be rewarded if they want it.
And since I already showed the existence of a reward that's worked for 20 years, your point is utterly bunk here.
Unless you mean to imply that the only VALID reward is money.
Need isn't in question here. It's deserved. Why do you NEED to get paid for the work you do at your job?
Well if modding were a JOB, you might have a point. But it isn't, and never has been.
Meaning that the only way this works is if modding is redefined to be a job, which is just providing an artificial problem so you can push an artificial solution for that problem.
Yes, modding takes effort, but effort alone does not fulfill the requirements for a "job".
Sometimes people hold the door open for me. That obviously requires some effort, but curiously, nobody receives wages for it. Maybe we should redefine door-holding as a job to help all those oppressed slavering door-holders?
Or maybe we can accept the reality that holding the door to be nice has a different reward all to itself.
"Necessary" is a meaningless term. Why are games "necessary" at all? They aren't. They're entertainment. You logic is entirely irrelevant to the discussion because of that premise.
Well by that logic, why bother even discussing gaming at all? Why bother with its cultural aspect?
It's all just one big fucking money chase, so why even bother with modding if it doesn't make money?
Hey, all modders past and present!
This guy thinks you've been wasting your time and effort on meaningless bullshit!
And he's the one that claims to knows what's best for you.
HMM.
Instead, we would get higher quality mods and more entertainment from them. We may even begin to have professional mod companies that do elaborate work that surpasses first-party DLC by a fair margin. But this isn't something that modders really have the time and resources to do right now. With financial compensation, it could even be a full-time job for them.
Which completely defeats the purpose of modders because, WE HAVE DEVELOPERS FOR THAT ALREADY BY DEFINITION.
Once you mandate a price for mods, it just becomes DLC (not even unofficial DLC since it's being fronted on their market with the acceptance of the original producer) and the modder becomes another underling of the producer. They become a developer by adhesion.
I get it, you don't want to pay money for things. You can maintain this sort of argument all you want but modders should be the ones who get to choose whether or not they give their work away for free, just like they can also decide whether or not they want to give their work away for 25% of the profits.
So you think I just want free stuff? You think that's it?
If that's all I wanted I wouldn't bother paying for my games in the first place, nor would I bother arguing to you about it. I'd be out checking torrents for free shit like every other short-sighted asshole.
I've been modding games for over 15 years and it wasn't out of some misguided attempt to nab "free stuff" from anyone, so spare me your implications about my morals or intentions.
I'm here because I'm passionate about this, and very, VERY fucking angry.
I'm angry, because I'm sick of this endless cheapening of gaming culture.
I'm sick of gamers getting badgered in every conceivable way for the benefit of someone else, be it politicos or producers.
It speaks dimly of a hobby that is becoming more and more estranged from itself because we losing trust in each other, and we're losing that trust because we're endlessly preoccupied with finding new ways to jack each other.
In this case, like so many others, it's jacking players in the wallet yet some more for the benefit of the producer.
Yet when I challenge that, I'm met with half-wit retorts about "entitlement".
So let me spell this shit out to you, and why it's such a beyond-broken argument.
"Entitlement" DOESN'T CARRY MORAL IMPLICATIONS OR ANY GREATER MEANING HERE since both parties act entitled towards EACH OTHER in ANY given market.
And I can say that because each side has something the other covets. Presumably, there's a price both parties are willing to agree to for an exchange(which possibly includes FREE).
Meaning that even on an conceptual level, 'entitlement' as used here IS NOTHING MORE THAN A STUPID ASS STRAWMAN that seeks to place the needs of producers above ALL ELSE. That's how it's been used, that's how YOU are using it, and that's the ONLY way it can be used as a shame tactic.
Of course people are going to act entitled in a luxury market, it's very existence is predicated on entitlement; the arrogance required to spend spare time and resources on something that isn't required for survival.
But even if we ignore that aspect of it, demonizing someone with "entitlement" still makes no sense from the most basic premise of exchange.
Markets require Supply AND Demand. The economic creed of "Greed is Good" is based on the fact that BOTH SIDES are acting in self-interest to find the most efficient price they can agree on.
But that can't work when one side is universally DEMONIZED for acting in self-interest while the other is praised for it!
You know what that argument looks like IN CONTEXT?
This:
"Don't like the rising cost of gaming? Don't like DLC? Well FUCK YOU FOR ACTING ENTITLED, you greedy scumbag gamer.
If you don't like it, don't buy it BUT KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT WHILE YOU DO IT because I don't want to hear it!"
"...Oh hey, hear about this new awesome game and its DLC?"
That's what "Entitlement" means here; it's just a way to marginalize an issue rather than address it. Full games have been rising in price faster than the relative cost of production and I can say this because the quality of games are plateauing while their costs continue to rise.
And all that cost is being shouldered onto the player.
Mods have kept works more commutative and free to avoid that problem entirely; which is why introducing them as regular commodities destroys the reason they work and exist.
We don't need "paid mods"
because those already exist as DLC. Just let the modders do their thing, and let the actual copyright holder (y'know, the BUSINESS) do theirs and everyone remains happier (as they have for decades).
The market was already oriented according to its needs. If someone wants to make money developing games (even for existing games) then let them work for the damn developers. That's already a viable business plan, and I can name several examples of that happening past and present.
But consider this: If their business is so inflexible that they won't accept offers, THEN MAYBE THAT OFFER ISN'T WORTH MONEY TO BEGIN WITH.
But oh no, we can't have that anymore.
Through this ridiculous condescending message of entitlement, the greater part of gaming has gone from a hobby to a relationship of growing abuses, and gamers let this happen to them far too often for far too long without questioning it.
Only now that abuse is being turned on modders for the sake of interlopers all looking to cash in on something that was previously unexploited; something that worked PRECISELY because it was unexploited.
You pretend this will help modders in the long run despite demonstrating NO understanding of modding or even practical evidence to support that claim. You treat modders as all other content creators despite the standards for modders being WILDLY different from that of developers.
It's ruining the few goods things that gaming culture has left, reducing it down to the mindless count of dollars and cents. At that point, gaming just becomes another fungible commodity, like an IKEA lineup.
And it's been happening since the start of the previous console generation, where seemingly EVERY SINGLE MEANINGFUL PLAYER BENEFIT is being stripped away for the sake of the producer (or hamfisted attempts at stripping such like the pre-180 Xbone)
Why can't there be literally ONE COMMON SPACE in gaming for those of us that want to share ideas and code freely without the baggage of business and market pressure? WHY? Don't tell because "It's only fair to the modders to be rewarded..." because that's just a fucking dodge and I've already shown why.
This is about keeping commerce out of just ONE PLACE, where "fairness" is evaluated on the willingness to try just for the sake of it, instead of who has the bigger bank account.
Mods will go underground if this horrible shit returns, and it will kill so many modding communities despite your misplaced optimism. Mostly because of greed being unleashed from Pandora's Box, but partly because modders will need the express grace of the copyright holder to attain any real degree of exposure; greatly slowing the spread of ideas and encouraging further monopoly, just as it happens in the real gaming business.
(what the do you think Copyright is for? It was a temporary monopoly to give the producer a grace period to recoup the costs of production; only now, it's not really "temporary" given that all new copyrights will likely outlast the lives of my fucking grandchildren.)
Even more broadly, there's tons of things I'd love to see from gaming now, even those that I would gladly pay well for (like a new Suikoden game, topically) and the thing that kills me is that it's never a lack of demand or ability that's preventing them from seeing fruition, but the rampant greed and incompetence of business getting in its way.
And you question why I want to keep that cancer out of modding?
You and what you want? That's not really relevant to them or the equation.
Hilariously this is where your entire argument collapses even from a fair business perspective.
If what I want as a player, as a CUSTOMER doesn't matter to them in the slightest, then why should I have even bother with them or what they offer?
Good luck supporting a business with no customers.
*mic drop*
