Do you think the industry as a whole has turned entirely anti-consumer/anti gamer?

[[deleted]]

It seems that no matter where you go, you see overused buzz words such as "entitlement" and "over expectations" used by people who do not understand the definition of the word whenever a game does poorly. IGN pretty much coined the term "gamer entitlement" with thier ugly love letter to EA a few years back, which isn't surprising since IGN is known to suck up to publishers such as EA for money hats. Other video game "journalist" follow this method as well, which is expected since a lot of journalist are in the back pocket of major publishers these days. Hell, there is a reward show for journalist who does the most brown nosing. If that isn't the funniest thing i have ever seen, then a shoe i will wear.

But whats with the corporate shilling? Any time a game is released with gamebreaking bugs, or just doesn't work, and people complain about it, you have all these shills running in and brown nosing for the company like they beleive the company would embrace them in some disgusting, revolting, butt hug. Yes, yes, fanboys will always be misguided and over zealous with thier shilling, but what's the excuse for those who blindly defend any game developer? It seems today everything is "the gamers' fault" and all developers are innocent angels, even if the complaints are acceptable and agreed upon.

In fact, here is a drinking game for you guys. Find any forum for any game, look up general discussion section, do a search, and drink every time you see shills mindlessly use the buzzwords "entitlement", "whiners", "over-expectations", and "hater". You will literally die of alcohol poisonising in less than a hour. On second thought, don't do it. I don't want any of you guys to get hurt.

Do you agree? If so, what really caused this burst in "the gamer is always wrong, so shut up and buy out stuff you nave" mindset?

[Boink]

rojimboo の投稿を引用：

Suffer much from last worditis?

Irony:

1 : a pretense of ignorance and of willingness to learn from another assumed in order to make the other's false conceptions conspicuous by adroit questioning —called also Socratic irony
2
a : the use of words to express something other than and especially the opposite of the literal meaning
b : a usually humorous or sardonic literary style or form characterized by irony
c : an ironic expression or utterance
3
a (1) : incongruity between the actual result of a sequence of events and the normal or expected result (2) : an event or result marked by such incongruity
b : incongruity between a situation developed in a drama and the accompanying words or actions that is understood by the audience but not by the characters in the play —called also dramatic irony, tragic irony


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jn9V3gtwMrc



Hint: compare and contrast the content of our posts.


You're missing it.

[rojimboo]

Boink の投稿を引用：

rojimboo の投稿を引用：

I had looked at peer reviewed papers from all sides

That's why I produced at least five new papers in this thread you'd not read before.

You sure about that? Published and peer reviewed? I accept even tier 3 publications these days. Why don't you be a good lad and list them for me, hm?

rojimboo の投稿を引用：

You just can't beat peer reviewed

Says a person who doesn't understand why working papers (2013/2014) are only just being produced.

Awaiting publication is different from a working paper. They may overlap or not.

rojimboo の投稿を引用：

Being toppled by lowly underpaid research that was nevertheless peer reviewed with high citation indices

Danaher's papers have an average of three (3) citations.

That's some crazy math there.

The HADOPI paper's been cited 41 times. So that makes you an imbecile.

[Boink]

rojimboo の投稿を引用：

The HADOPI paper's been cited 41 times. So that makes you an imbecile.

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1989240


SSRN states three (3) citations.

Which either makes you an imbecile or SSRN inaccurate.



I suggest you take it up with them; either way, it ain't my problem.



(Note to peanut gallery - enough? 22 years clocked up and no attempt to escape? I think it's proven. Shrill little beastie, cull it)

[rojimboo]

Boink の投稿を引用：

rojimboo の投稿を引用：

The HADOPI paper's been cited 41 times. So that makes you an imbecile.

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1989240


SSRN states three (3) citations.

Which either makes you an imbecile or SSRN inaccurate.

I think they only do within ssrn, stop being so narrow minded. I must have quoted you at least 3 papers that referenced the hadopi paper, myself...

[Noctuary]

Sorry, I kind of got sick of this place and took a few days break.

So going back to that idiot (I forgot his name, did it start with a C or something?) who said we can blindly trust peer reviewed articles, you sir are wrong, wrong, wrong. Pretty much the only thing the "Peer Reviewed" sticker is good for in our case is a (supposedly) 100% correct source of information.

Plus, if we cannot take anything (AT ALL!) on the internet seriously then why the hell are you even here? If not to add to the coversation then you're just ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. At least on the internet we have two sides to every arguement. In a peer reviewed paper you only have one speaker who might even slightly slant the information.

There are many flaws of the peer review system. Read this:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1420798/

Also, if what Rojimboo says is true about how anyone can write a paper then your whole argument is a bad joke. Somebody look this up, I'm too tired and it's not really worth the effort deflecting the argument that "YOUR OPINION IS USELESS, HAR HAR HAR"



Lastly, to Rojimboo who states that Valve is leaning towards established consoles, just explain why they are releasing their very own console which will work much like a PC? Also Gabe has numerous times been critical of consoles. Was Dota 2 on consoles? No. Was the version of TF2 on consoles stripped down? Yes. It's easy to see that in gaming as a whole the PC isn't fiscally everyone's console, and that's because Gabe Newell owns pretty much the entire pie here. Just look at how much of a failure Uplay is compared to steam.

He fricking called the PS3 "A waste of everyone's time".

Great words for someone that you'll never work with again.

Anyways, I really don't know what the hell this thread has turned into, for the last five (or more, I don't really care to look) pages you guys have been arguing about citations or quotes or some other insignificant thing that really doesn't change anything other than who's more hardcore of a PC fan or something. I suggest for anyone who wants this thread to stay open that we shift our talk to something that closer resembled the OP's question. Unless you want this thread to get locked, cause I'm alright with that too. It's not like anything useful has been said for the last 10ish pages.

So to conclude I know some dumbass will come out of the woodwork and scream "no, you're wrong!" or something, I just want everyone to take a look at the last 5-10 pages of this thread.

[rojimboo]

The Defiler の投稿を引用：

So going back to that idiot (I forgot his name, did it start with a C or something?) who said we can blindly trust peer reviewed articles, you sir are wrong, wrong, wrong. Pretty much the only thing the "Peer Reviewed" sticker is good for in our case is a (supposedly) 100% correct source of information.

If you are blindly going to trust anything, then it should be peer reviewed papers with high citation indices that have not been countered with peer reviewed papers with high citation indices.

Plus, if we cannot take anything (AT ALL!) on the internet seriously then why the hell are you even here? If not to add to the coversation then you're just ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. At least on the internet we have two sides to every arguement. In a peer reviewed paper you only have one speaker who might even slightly slant the information.

I think you will find the counter-arguments and discussion on shortcomings more rigorous than in its opponent's papers, after all it is one of the requirements to get published.

There are many flaws of the peer review system. Read this:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1420798/

Indeed, it is not perfect but by going to higher tiered publications with high citation indices, you resolve many of the issues. It's simply the best we have, and is the ultimate argumentative tool in a forum debate surely trumping media website's reporting and non-regressioned surveys.

Also, if what Rojimboo says is true about how anyone can write a paper then your whole argument is a bad joke. Somebody look this up, I'm too tired and it's not really worth the effort deflecting the argument that "YOUR OPINION IS USELESS, HAR HAR HAR"

Anyone can write a paper, few get to publish it. Even fewer in higher tier journals, and only some of those get high citation indices.

Lastly, to Rojimboo who states that Valve is leaning towards established consoles, just explain why they are releasing their very own console which will work much like a PC? Also Gabe has numerous times been critical of consoles. Was Dota 2 on consoles? No. Was the version of TF2 on consoles stripped down? Yes. It's easy to see that in gaming as a whole the PC isn't fiscally everyone's console, and that's because Gabe Newell owns pretty much the entire pie here. Just look at how much of a failure Uplay is compared to steam.

He fricking called the PS3 "A waste of everyone's time".

Great words for someone that you'll never work with again.

Yet he then published Portal 2 afterwards on it - what was it about not lying to the internet? It will eat you up alive.

My argument was that Valve had shifted business models away from the PC exclusive singleplayer experience to accomodate for piracy. Nothing I've read or seen has lead me to believe otherwise.

Maybe if Half life 3 is SteamOS exclusive, do we get to go back to the glory days.

Anyways, I really don't know what the hell this thread has turned into, for the last five (or more, I don't really care to look) pages you guys have been arguing about citations or quotes or some other insignificant thing that really doesn't change anything other than who's more hardcore of a PC fan or something.

Establishing the extent to which piracy is harming sales seems to be the core of the argument atm. You're welcome to join.

I suggest for anyone who wants this thread to stay open that we shift our talk to something that closer resembled the OP's question. Unless you want this thread to get locked, cause I'm alright with that too. It's not like anything useful has been said for the last 10ish pages.

I would argue it has been an informative discussion, as counterpapers were presented and refuted.

You can easily unsubsribe if reading is such a chore, nobody is forcing you.

[Boink]

rojimboo の投稿を引用：

I would argue it has been an informative discussion, as counterpapers were presented and refuted.

No, boy, no they weren't "refuted".

For one thing, you cannot "refute" a working paper, since it hasn't been peer reviewed yet. (Logic Bomb Alert: your own logic dictates you've contradicted yourself). Not only that, you're not in a respected enough position to "refute" anything.



Having got the nonsense out of the way, please note only one side had music and videos.

I did not believe that a Cause which stood for a beautiful ideal, for anarchism, for release and freedom from convention and prejudice, should demand the denial of life and joy. I insisted that our Cause could not expect me to become a nun and that the movement would not be turned into a cloister. If it meant that, I did not want it. "I want freedom, the right to self-expression, everybody's right to beautiful, radiant things." Anarchism meant that to me, and I would live it in spite of the whole world — prisons, persecution, everything. Yes, even in spite of the condemnation of my own closest comrades I would live my beautiful ideal. Emma Goldman


Youtube is arguably a social good - and also an information good. (Of course at the same time it's also a cesspool, a viral brain drain and houses the scum of the internet. And, of course, at the same time also representing monopoly, large Corporate control of a single entity and so on).


The reason (apart from boredom, puckishness, drink and the need to have some music - there's also some meta and obvious jokes attached to each video) I've been adding youtube content of copyrighted material is it's precisely what some in the industry want to stop.


Entirely. Never without paying or being locked behind proprietary gatekeepers like UPlay, iTunes and so on. For 120 years according to the leaked TPP drafts.

Yes, 120 years is the current goal of the TPP agreement for Corporate Trademarks like Mickey Mouse[TM - @R@]. That's four generations of ♥♥♥♥ sapiens sapiens.

And you think pirates are immoral scum? These entities are literally attempting to control the future for the next four generations. All discussed in secret.



Thus, we return to the argument over acceptable levels of content management, DRM, copyright IP law and so on.

To return the hypothetical favor to Danaher as he uses such an egregiously wide hypothetical in his paper: if a single ♥♥♥♥ sapiens sapiens (gender not important) is inspired by pirating a game at a young age to learn to code and then produce a work of art (perhaps the next generations' System Shock, Half-Life etc) due to this formative experience then there's merit to small levels of grey / black market behaviour.

Our 5-10%, for example. (*Innocent whistle* Did you spot this coming? I love this bit)


If you attempt to entirely dominate a creative process through the appliance of Law, you'll end up killing the golden goose. You also end up stomping over a whole lot of normal people, larger legal rights and basic freedoms.

For four generations all in the name of a rather funny little concept called "money". Which you then avoid the responsibilities to the societies that enable its' generation with things such as "Hollywood accounting", "Tax havens", the "Double Irish" or the "Dutch double-Irish".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting
http://www.forbes.com/2010/07/06/tax-havens-delaware-bermuda-markets-singapore-belgium.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Irish_arrangement

Apple alone has over $100 billion (cash) stuck outside of the USA because they don't want to pay tax on it (US tax... not, of course, EU, Russian or Chinese tax that they've already evaded or minimized).

You'll also note that the best tax havens in the EU are found in Luxembourg and Belgium. For the Americans here, the EU is based in Belgium. That might give you a little tip off about how large an issue this is.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wntX-a3jSY



Ask some grizzled developers if they ever pirated a game back in the day: the answer will usually be yes ;) I know I did when online digital retail did not exist. I also know that my (then) household spending on PC games was far in excess of the average because there weren't that many of us with home PCs.




TL;DR

These issues are wider than single papers; I hope that this is obvious if you bother to read the thread without taking it all too seriously.

Games aren't purely economics - if you treat them like that, then you end up with Zynga.



p.s.


You get bonus points if you can find the authors of academic papers on the subject of DRM, their location around Delaware and tax havens. And they're only the small bit players. A bit heavy for a Steam comment, but it's amusing.

Lions, Tigers and Bears.

[|ʁ|]

Yes, very much so. Microtransactions on full priced games (see Ubisoft and EA) should never be considered acceptable. Nor should geoblocked artifical price inflation, retailer exclusive or on disk DLC. Many AAA titles now also have terrible plots written for the sole purpose of sequel milking or DLCs instead of trying to deliver a complete experience.

There is also the "Capcom issue" where some companies casualize and destroy the core gameply of their series to appeal to a "wider audience" and instead end up alienating their core customer base.

But by far the worst and most egregious offense (and outright illegal in many countries) are when developers restrict the ability for a player to use their single player titles they legally purchase, and try to destroy the first sale doctrine.

[Γαῖα]

You name it big business, governments they all say every one else is wrong so its not soley the games industry.

As for terrible plots, incomplete stories and the DLC garvy train, thats capitalism for you.

Incase you dont understand capitalism, for every winner their must be a loser so in business thats the customer.

[rojimboo]

Boink の投稿を引用：

rojimboo の投稿を引用：

I would argue it has been an informative discussion, as counterpapers were presented and refuted.

No, boy, no they weren't "refuted".

For one thing, you cannot "refute" a working paper, since it hasn't been peer reviewed yet.

Of course you can. You can especially refute a working paper.

Yes, 120 years is the current goal of the TPP agreement for Corporate Trademarks like Mickey Mouse[TM - @R@]. That's four generations of ♥♥♥♥ sapiens sapiens.

What is it now? It can't be too far off. Oh, it's 70 years in the EU. Considering greater life span of humans, it seems acceptable. Imagine if a songwriter wrote a song in their early youth, surely they have the right for their intellectual property to be protected for his/her lifetime.

And you think pirates are immoral scum? These entities are literally attempting to control the future for the next four generations.

What makes you think it's just entities?

Thus, we return to the argument over acceptable levels of content management, DRM, copyright IP law and so on.

No, you are wildly rambling on, on the most succesful DRM platform in existence.

To return the hypothetical favor to Danaher as he uses such an egregiously wide hypothetical in his paper:

Like where? If you can't quote it, it never happened, that's how much stock I currently put in 'your word'.

if a single ♥♥♥♥ sapiens sapiens (gender not important) is inspired by pirating a game at a young age to learn to code and then produce a work of art (perhaps the next generations' System Shock, Half-Life etc) due to this formative experience then there's merit to small levels of grey / black market behaviour.

You presume the child could not have experienced the game legally for some reason. Equally you neglect the fact that publishing said work of art would be riskier and more difficult, and it might never be published due to the presence of rampant piracy.

Our 5-10%, for example.

Where on earth do you get these numbers from? I would like to see it backed up, else you just pulled it out of your arse. Are you saing current piracy levels of video games only affect sales by 5%-10%? According to which peer reviewed paper with transparent methodology? If you can't source it, it never happened.

If you attempt to entirely dominate a creative process through the appliance of Law, you'll end up killing the golden goose. You also end up stomping over a whole lot of normal people, larger legal rights and basic freedoms.

Plenty of golden geese around laying eggs, protected by 70 years worth of copyright law protection - hasn't hindered them much has it? For digital goods the arguments are even more lopsided towards the protection of creative content creators, as the pirated good does not diminish in use and wearablity and is usually identical to the legal work of art.

For four generations all in the name of a rather funny little concept called "money".

Are you saying creative content creators shouldn't be rewarded for their work? Not all creative content creators are solely motivated by money, but surely many are, and it would not be fair on them at all to contribute to social welfare without some kind of reward in return.

Ask some grizzled developers if they ever pirated a game back in the day: the answer will usually be yes ;) I know I did when online digital retail did not exist. I also know that my (then) household spending on PC games was far in excess of the average because there weren't that many of us with home PCs.

Yay, justification for piracy. Whatever helps you sleep at night. Note that currently digital retail does exist, so there goes your flimsy excuse. Ask some grizzled developers whether or not they condone piracy of their their creative content: the answer will usually be no ;)

These issues are wider than single papers; I hope that this is obvious if you bother to read the thread without taking it all too seriously.

If you object so much to IP laws, what is your alternative solution?

I discussed many of these issues in my lit review, and from Danaher's paper, with regards to piracy's effect on economic social welfare, and how it can be said to negatively affect it:

There are a few cases to consider when determining what the effect on social welfare due to piracy would be:

1) Imagine a music artist who has a vested personal interest in seeing that content creators are compensated for their efforts. Imagine an employee of a movie studio that worries that if piracy diminishes studio profits he may lose his job.

2) On a philosophical level, without Intellectual Property (IP) rights, information goods such as movies, songs and software could easily be replicated and sold by anone, limiting the ability of content creators to profit from their work.

3) If piracy diminishes the ability of content creators to profit from their creative efforts (which appears to be the case), the incentives to bring new quality works to the market will also be diminished resulting in either fewer or lower quality works of creative media such as music, motion pictures and software. This is clearly a potential concern not only for producers but also for consumers and policymakers, because if a product that would have existed in the absence of filesharing is never created due to reduced incentives brought about by filesharing, both producers and consumers lose causing an overall net loss in social welfare.

A necessary argument for all three is that content creator must be motivated by the profits they obtain from their works. Focusing on the third case (the second one is philosophical, the first one largely with no counter-arguments), which is the one where there is reasonable debate whether such an argument exists in the world of artistics goods. Such as that in the presence of large enough profits, the content creator cares little for the loss of some additional profit. Also, there may exist musicians for example who would continue to work in the exact same manner even in the face of diminished profitability. However, this says nothing about the rest of the people involved in the production chain, like sound engineers and label executives to distributors, who are clearly more motivated by profits. Blockbuster movies are a clear exception to this, as they operate on a profit-maximising mantra. If the profits are reduced by piracy significantly, then these studios will have less incentive to invest in the creation of such films. This is particularly true for riskier, more innovative films.

The third case would most effectively be shown to be true or false to what extent, through empirical methods; specifically we are talking about the effect of piracy on the supply of creative content. This has proven almost impossible however. Questions like, what creative works would have been created in the absence of piracy - are pretty impossible to show. Nevermind whether piracy may impact the quality of creative works - a very difficult thing to measure. For example, if the number of songs created were to remain the same when piracy rises but the average quality of these songs were lower, how would we observe this lower quality in order to measure it? Also, even when Mother Nature or the world grants us these experiments naturally, such as when Bittorrent appeared and it was shown to massively increase music piracy, or when Limewire was shutdown and was shown to reduce music piracy, the impact to sales was clear and immediate, but any impact to the supply of creative content (if there is one) would have likely been longer-term as firms slowly respond to the changed environment.

Further effects of piracy on the supply of creative content can be found in anecdotal evidence in countries like Spain, which is generally considered a high piracy country, suggests that firms are reluctant to release legal versions of their products or to invest in marketing and promotion of their products (New York Times, August 20, 2011). If the presence of piracy causes these responses, the outcome will be reduced social welfare to any consumers who would have benefitted from the market availability of these products. Marketing, promotions and other services are also an important component of the product experience and a decision of reduce investments in such activities would also constitute social loss by reducing the information available to consumers about products they might benefit from consuming.

Danaher et al. also mention that '...while current empirical evidence of a connection between piracy and product availability is sparse, given standard economic theory it seems reasonable to assume that some connection will exist. Hypothetically, imagine a world in which the moment a major blockbuster film is produced, piracy prevents the studio that developed it from extracting any revenue from theater ticket sales, DVD sales, or other legitimate channels. In other words, imagine a world where everyone can easily obtain motion picture content for free through piracy channels and as a result no one pays for this content. In this hypothetical world, is seems highly unlikely that studios would invest the large fixed costs necessary to develop blockbuster movies. Indeed, this is the very logic behind the copyright protections afforded to content creators by the U.S. Constitution. And thus we propose that, even in the absence of conclusive proof that piracy reduces the incentives to supply quality content, that there is theoretical rationale for governments to consider the possibility that filesharing may negatively impact social welfare.' Thus, it can be reasonably assumed that piracy reduces overall social welfare, and that reduced piracy due to effective deterrents, increases overall social welfare.

[timabe10]

Fork_Q2 の投稿を引用：

No.

That said, the OP smacks of entitlement.

Yes

[Zoe]

This thread was quite old before the recent post, so we're locking it to prevent confusion.