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[Mfbrew]

Dwarf fortress is best game evar and it was built on pledge drive money.

Open source software is generally 10x better than commercial when top of the line proprietary technology isn't involved.  If you're trying to accomplish a basic task in Linux, you can download a fully featured program in seconds.  In windows, it's like... Well this program is only free for 30 days, this other one secretly installs weatherbug, the other one doesn't exist and just runs you through fake web sites, and that one requires you to install 10 gigs worth of .net and directx crap.   

"bigger is better" is not necessarily a positive thing.  I will cheer on the pirates until developers and the masses stop feeding each other's lust for fancy empty crap.

[Blacken]

People do spend money on games when they are in a recession, though. Also on movies and other forms of entertainment. This is a trend which has been observed again and again.

Where did my last post go? :O

They do, and I realize this... But they also spend money on food, clothing, beer, etc. The gaming industry really isn't having much of a "boom"... It's just that there are some really good games that have been coming out. During summer, sales will be crap. They always are.

Not quite. In recessionary periods, more cost-effective forms of entertainment do considerably better. Video games are relatively cheap for the amount of entertainment they provide, and there is quite a lot of truth to the notion that they are expanding. Almost everybody's posting significant gains, which most industries aren't.

In terms of economics, whether a game is "really good" or not doesn't really affect companies' bottom lines as much as gamers would like to believe. Lots of people buy lots of games, and quality is a secondary factor for a large segment of the market.

Dwarf fortress is best game evar and it was built on pledge drive money.

No. Dwarf Fortress is a good game of very limited scope built by a single person who is willing to accept incredibly massive flaws in order to realize his own vision. Which is fine, but then you don't get...you know...really good large-scale games like Baldur's Gate 2, STALKER, and so on. I know it can be really hard to, well, actually read people's posts, but as I noted above, in order to make actual games instead of ASCII-representation stuff that a vanishingly small segment of the market actually wants to play, you need specialized tools and you need specialized developers--you need 3D modelers, you need 2D artists, you need production guys and sound guys and level designers (which isn't as simple as the clueless gamer thinks) and tools developers and engine developers and so on and so forth. This takes a shitload of money even for ten or twelve developers, if they want to do it full-time. Like I said upthread: figure about $1,000,000 for 8-10 developers to bring a game to full release and support it after-the-fact. Is your silly little pledge drive going to make that? I don't effing think so.

(Edit for clarity: $1,000,000 is good for 8-10 developers, but it's not going to give you an AAA title. Most AAA titles hover between $8,000,000 and $15,000,000. Possibly more these days, I haven't looked because I don't exactly have that kind of money.)

Toady seems cool with living on the cheap to make his game, and good on him for it, but most people want to be able to have a wife and kids and not go on welfare to do it. Richard Stallman thinks programmers should live like he does, making "just enough" (go read his essays, he essentially says this), but the rest of the world, not so much.

Open source software is generally 10x better than commercial when top of the line proprietary technology isn't involved.

I am an open-source contributor to multiple projects, and guess what? I'll tell you straight-up that the majority of open-source software is crap. "Top-of-the-line proprietary technology" has nothing to do with it. What does is that most good software isn't sexy and requires you to do a lot of boring coding that nobody wants to do--and in the land of the fwwwwweeeeeeeee, you can't force people to do it just because it has to get done. This is why you have programs running around with utterly shit interfacing that's inconsistent with everything else just because it can be. This is why you have software with shit-all for documentation and they expect you to go to some IRC channel so they can have the spectacle of people begging for help. Open-source software is perpetually five years behind the main unless some large and self-interested company decides to release something.

Even if you were arguing in good faith--which it's clear you aren't, you're a fanboy--you aren't knowledgeable enough to argue your little OS wars crap. Here's a hint how I know you're clueless: you bitch about installing DirectX and .NET and that they're "10 gigs," when they're maybe 300MB together (only slightly larger than the Qt and KDE libraries that the KDE desktop requires, and you download that) and if you have a modern version of Windows you get them automatically, just like an Ubuntu user gets libsdl or what-the-fuck-ever. And your OS trolling has nothing to do with the fucking topic anyway. Open-source software relies on copyright and as such has only a passing relationship to do with what the people better off than a room-temperature IQ are discussing. Take your OS trolling and shove it.

"bigger is better" is not necessarily a positive thing.  I will cheer on the pirates until developers and the masses stop feeding each other's lust for fancy empty crap.

If you actually think that something like Mass Effect is "fancy empty crap," you're not looking at the same title as everyone else. Is it my cup of tea? No. But it's in no way "empty crap." But I can understand how a resentful little twerp might think it such, because it's quite clear that you ascribe to the "anything I don't like is shit" philosophy. But you know what the funny thing is? The big developers don't give anywhere near as much of a shit as the small developers. Your short-sighted, stupid "cheering" for piracy is hurting those small developers that don't provide "fancy crap" considerably more than they will ever harm the Activisions and the EAs of the world.

But to you that's okay, because your self-righteous masturbatory yammer isn't about "fancy empty crap" at all. It's because you like things for free, and you don't have the basic respect for creators to either pay for the software or not use it.

[Mfbrew]

Wow dude, relax.

I still think you're wrong about open source.  So gimp isn't as good as Photoshop, and blender isn't as good as Maya, that really only affects companies working on top of the line stuff.  For my every day use, open source stuff is just as good with less hassle and less cost.

And the main purpose of copyright in open source is so lazy companies can't just slap a label on somebody else's busywork and sell it.  A company can still read open source code and essentially steal all the algorithms without violating the GPL - it's no different from american eagle designers going to Europe and seeing that green sweaters with blue stripes are totally "in" this season, so they'd better make it too.

So I am on topic.

And small designers who churn out the same old puzzle games and space shooters deserve to get pirated just as bad as the big companies.

I personally don't pirate games, since I just don't want to play that crap (and I don't want to get fined).  I play DF, wesnoth, free browser games, stuff my friends make.

If you're going to argue, I'd suggest calming down, avoiding baseless ad hominem attacks, and avoid making assumptions, since it doesn't help your argument.




 

[Phmcw]

I don't understand what this argument is all about. Seriously.
Every body bicker on how the gaming industry is going to cope with the possible fact that we suppress the stupid restrictions on file sharing they issued?
Well, they will find other way to makes money, or they will die.
Mostly they will find other way to make money. I won't way how because I don't know. A lot of game manage to make profit while staying free. Open source software are widely used and nothing close to amateur's work, but without the restriction of copyright the software industry will change a lot, way more, I think, that just adopt the current free software strategy.

Now will the big games  disappear? I don't know.
I feel that the inherent immorality of the system is worse then the possible economical consequences of dismissing it.
Richard stallmann pretty much summed up what should be the right of the users. I won't accept anything less.

[Sir Pseudonymous]

When it comes down to it, pirates either don't have the money to spend on media in the first place (like, say, people in third world countries and poor college students), they couldn't spend money on it if they wanted to because it's not available (like, say, people in third world countries, or, in the case of particularly old/obscure media, anyone), or they already spent their media budget on what they saw as the best value and are just pirating the shit from the bottom of the barrel/obscure shit they just happen to come across (the largest category).

So trying to paint them as freeloaders is slanderous and intellectually dishonest: they take nothing from the industry, and in most cases give more to it than non-pirates, who generally don't consume nearly as much media.

Now, used games do hurt the industry, in that they're essentially full price, but nothing goes back to the devs/publishers. They're also legally protected, and the recent efforts to fuck up used game sales are fucking disgusting. "Fuck your rights, I want free money! >:O "

[DrPizza]

Richard stallmann pretty much summed up what should be the right of the users. I won't accept anything less.

RMS decreed that users should have certain "rights" without ever defending why they should have them. His entire argument is "you should be able to do these things just because".

[Phmcw]

Drpizza please watch your language.
And of course "anti-copyright" mean "anti copyright as they are enforced now", no need to be a genius to understand it.
Still gpl is basically a copyright "anti-copyright", which basically exist to grant you right over the copy you own. A copyleft.

And don't double post.

RMS decreed that users should have certain "rights" without ever defending why they should have them. His entire argument is "you should be able to do these things just because".

Yes that's pretty much what basic right are. Right you have "just because" it would make society better or something .

[DrPizza]

Drpizza please watch your language.
And of course "anti-copyright" mean "anti copyright as they are enforced now", no need to be a genius to understand it.

But they aren't anti-copyright as enforced now. If copyright went away, all of their "freedoms" would disappear immediately, because every GPLed work could be trivially turned proprietary. The mandatory source disclosure "feature" of the GPL would evaporate.

This feature is fundamental to the FSF's objectives. "open source" is not their goal. "free software" is their goal, and under their definition of "free", source code disclosure is essential. The only way to achieve that is through copyright. The end of copyright would be absolutely ruinous to the FSF. They would have literally no means of advancing their political objectives, because they would lose any and all source disclosure mandate.

Still gpl is basically a copyright "anti-copyright", which basically exist to grant you right over the copy you own. A copyleft.

GPLed works are thoroughly copyrighted and the FSF depends entirely on copyright law to achieve its political aims.

To position the GPL as "anti-copyright" is to totally deny reality. No copyright == no GPL == no "free software".

If the FSF were "anti copyright as they are enforced now" then they would advocate donating all works into the public domain. They don't, however, because doing that means that anyone can take those works, modify them, and then not release source code.

Yes that's pretty much what basic right are. Right you have "just because" it would make society better or something .

Yes, "or something". Who the hell knows. One thing I do know is that RMS has never had to work for a living, which makes it awfully easy for him to make pronouncements on what other people should and shouldn't do. If I never had to actually earn my living then I would probably be inclined to say that people should give all their stuff away for free too.

[Phmcw]

I know and I understand. I just feel that gpl should be the main, if not the only, license enforced.
That pretty much "anti copyright as they are enforced now" and is a trend of the "anti copyright" movement.

Edit : by that I mean that every license should enforce the fundamental right of the users as defined by RMS.

[Deathworks]

Hi!

Mfbrew: While there are the caveats at Blacken's statements from my own experience with freeware resources which are not always "crap" (although there are great differences and very interesting dynamics at work, including the influence of commercial engineering software in one case), I have to strongly oppose your position on piracy and have to re-iterate what I and Blacken have already said: Open source relies on copyright itself. The only case where you could claim not to use copyright would be public domain, as far as I know, and guess what, the amount of freeware created in public domain is negligible nowadays (they did have their hayday in the 90s, I think, but quickly died out).

And your stance on piracy is outright folly. Frankly, if you are a supporter of linux or any open source project, you should be an enemy of piracy. Think about it - how does the debate go? The industry claims big losses due to the piracy and all the damage they do. Regardless of whether those claims are actually true or not, they then use that to push for stronger DRM methods. You should be thankful that the hysteria your "friends" the pirates have caused has not yet been enough to push through the plan for the license-bound hardware I mentioned before. In case you hadn't noticed, that was actually debated to be made a law in the US - to make a law that forces computer makers to include hardware into their computers that made it impossible to run non-licensed software on them. And guess what, there is no way Linux or any open source stuff could ever get those licenses as the open source nature of them would make them back doors bigger than the portal of a barn yard. So, you would no longer be able to purchase a new computer that would run Linux. Dwarf Fortress, not being open sourced, might actually be able to get a license, but I suspect you know a lot of good open source titles you like and hold dear and which would drop dead.

Yes, those pirates are really doing you a favor there (< sarcasm, if you haven't noticed)

The way I see it, the people most profitting from the pirates are the big labels with a bad reputation, like for instance Microsoft. It is commonly known that many people complain about Microsoft and their various policies, like how Vista had to get some features changed in order to get allowed for usage in Europe. Your pirates give them every excuse and justification in the public opinion to do just the things you abhor.

Unfortunately, I can also confirm that the disrespect of the pirates and redistributors (hereafter I use it for redistributors for freeware items who don't have the permission to redistribute) is causing harm on the roots level. Those who know me from other places know which I will mention, but those unaware of it may read on.

As I hinted at, I am a fetishist and I also have internet contact with such communities, both on the English and on the Japanese internet. I am also keeping an eye on download shops in Japan and have a reasonably good overview about items relevant to me.

For your information, Japan's internet is very rich with creative activity. You have both freeware projects, some (of course not many) of which are really on professional level as well as the doujinshi sector which is a fleeting sector between amateur and professional and uses forms of direct printing and publishing, and on the internet download shops.

Point 1: There is a great fear among the Japanese communities about the English internet because of the many pirates. Of course, these are not completely logical fears in as far that there are also Japanese redistributors and pirates, but still, that atmosphere of fear is real and strengthening xenophobic tendencies. Granted, there are also other aspects, including blunders/cultural differences (blunders is something that has probably put me on the wrong side of several people), but the pirates are only making things worse.

Even beyond the software/art creation communities, there is this gap which is held open thanks to the efforts of the pirates.

Point 2: That image of foreign pirates is sometimes used by Japanese businesses to engage in xenophobic policies. Take for instance that abomination of Buddy, a nice little piece of DRM that requires you to be always online when using the software (otherwise the game will abort in the middle of play) AND only works on Japanese computers. Thus, thanks to your "friends", titles like the later versions of "Tir nan og" are currently beyond the reach of foreigners, which is really a pity (I do have a slim hope that System Soft Alpha will phase out them with time to that one shop that does not do Buddy, but that is a very slim hope indeed).

I am glad that ASCII/Enterbrain finally changed their mind despite the RPGMaker affair, but I wished they would allow download sales to foreigners of their Japanese program versions instead of putting all those tight restrictions there.

Point 3: I have seen various instances of individual artists reacting to the disrespect. To understand the relevance, I need to point out that the communities I belong to are about the average-sized to smaller of the "unknown" fetishes, that is fetishes without a high public profile like furries or leather. So, we don't exactly swim in an excess of good artists:

A) In one sad case, an artist who did not wish their site to be associated with the related fetish community published a colored manga for free in good quality on their homepage. That manga was never finished and that homepage abandoned after Japanese redistributors ignored the explicit request of the artist not to get redistributed on the fetish boards.

B) In another case, an artist gathered some of the most famous of the legendary old artists who had become low productivity before most of the young people even joined the online communities and created a series of thin doujinshi booklets - physical booklets they sold at big conventions in Japan. They also sold one of the doujinshi online and even worked on making an English translation of it - that translation was scrapped, and the other mangas were not make digitally available (except for one title on a no-foreigner download shop) after a notorious pirate redistributed that first manga. After years of negotiating, a friend of that artist got him as far as to allow shipment of remaining copies of the physical booklets internationally, but to this day, he will not publish online again.

C) Another artist who seems to be professionally involved somehow in art and does not want his professional surroundings to become aware of his fetish has clearly stated that his art should not be redistributed. He has gone through several incarnations of hidden homepages the information about which he only shared with friends, but he kept getting betrayed, resulting in his shutting down his homepage and keeping a low profile for a while.

D) I also witnessed the emotional outburst of an artist who had made a gift piece of artwork for a friend's homepage. That artist was really shaken by finding that the art had been redistributed without permission. And even though I had not much experience with Japanese at that time, even I felt that the person had been hurt seriously by that.

E) Another friend of mine is involved in creating doujinshi in order to raise awareness of the potential of doujinshi for the communities and the potential of the communities for the doujinshi market. While he is still willing to do download sales, his latest creation was delayed more than a year between its physical release and its download release after several piracy incidents. Before that, physical sale and online sale co-incided or even favored the download sale.

...

If I tried hard, I could make this list longer and longer, but it sure wouldn't get any nicer.

These are all individuals, some of which sharing their art for free, others expecting you to pay for it, and none of them are involved with any of the "evil big publishers". And yet, they are the real victims of the pirates and their doctrine of disrespect.

I hope these points make somewhat clear why I have not the least sympathy for the pirate mindset.

Deathworks (who doesn't like people who hurt his friends)

EDIT: While I typed this, 8 replies were added to the thread. So as to get this out, I take the liberty of not including them in this one (otherwise I while never finalize this post (^_^;; ).

[Blacken]

Wow dude, relax.

You are fundamentally uneducated about the topic and you show a dogged determination to hide from anything that might disagree with you. It's reasonable to get annoyed with you for intellectual sloth.

I still think you're wrong about open source.  So gimp isn't as good as Photoshop, and blender isn't as good as Maya, that really only affects companies working on top of the line stuff.  For my every day use, open source stuff is just as good with less hassle and less cost.

How the hell do you figure? Do you actually use any of this stuff? You don't have to be "top of the line" to benefit from the huge workflow improvements that an integrated system provide. Everything integrates with Photoshop; if I make a texture edit, it pops up instantly in 3DS or Maya. These programs are not good programs. A few years back when I was dumber about open-source nitwits and their hatred of all things slightly different from their One True Vision I tried to start up a GIMP branch intended to provide a halfway decent user interface, and oh god, the butthurt, it was immense. But the software is really that bad if you've ever spent a significant amount of time using real tools. It could get better, but it won't, because making it better isn't sexy.

You can think I'm wrong all you want, and I hate to beat the "authority" drum because I don't consider myself one, but I am very been-there-done-that-got-the-T-shirt about this stuff. I said exactly what you are now, maybe five years ago. I was wrong then, too.

Open source is not a model for user-facing software, and it's certainly not one for games.

And the main purpose of copyright in open source is so lazy companies can't just slap a label on somebody else's busywork and sell it.  A company can still read open source code and essentially steal all the algorithms without violating the GPL - it's no different from american eagle designers going to Europe and seeing that green sweaters with blue stripes are totally "in" this season, so they'd better make it too.

Uhm, what? This is absolutely false. You can slap a label on a BSD-licensed or CDDL/MPL-licensed program and sell it. You can even do it with a GPL program. Are you sure you know what you're talking about? (That I'm having to correct you about the absolute basics of open source indicate that you likely do not. But that's okay: most Linux fanboys don't, you're in neckbeardy company.)

And small designers who churn out the same old puzzle games and space shooters deserve to get pirated just as bad as the big companies.

Nobody deserves to get pirated at all! What kind of morally bankrupt lizard are you?

If you're going to argue, I'd suggest calming down, avoiding baseless ad hominem attacks, and avoid making assumptions, since it doesn't help your argument.

B-B-B-BAWWWWWW, HE DOESN'T LIKE ME BECAUSE I CALL HIM OUT ON HIS SHIIIIIIIT

Seriously. You want to help your argument? Lose the five-year-old's view of the world and the cheerleader's pom-poms.

Every body bicker on how the gaming industry is going to cope with the possible fact that we suppress the stupid restrictions on file sharing they issued?

No. The issue is that you are breaking the law and disrespecting the societally established rights of creators. You don't have the testicular fortitude to try to do it legally, to get copyright fixed, so you just pirate. After all, it's easy, and working is hard.

Mostly they will find other way to make money. I won't way how because I don't know. A lot of game manage to make profit while staying free.

No they don't. Those that do are quickly finding their revenue streams dry up (ad-blocking being more and more common).

Open source software are widely used and nothing close to amateur's work, but without the restriction of copyright the software industry will change a lot, way more, I think, that just adopt the current free software strategy.

Yes. It will die. And then the jagoffs who whined that oh it needs to be FWEEEEEE will go "well, shit, I can't pirate anything now!" You'll get a lot of decent business apps, but using those is like working for the man, maaaaan.

Not that it'll come to pass, because idealistic tweens (and those like RMS who are at the same mental age) are kept well away from the controls of government and the economy.

I feel that the inherent immorality of the system is worse then the possible economical consequences of dismissing it.

There's nothing immoral about it, unless you find latching software developers into slavery--essentially RMS's viewpoint, stripped of his pretty words--to be a moral behavior.

Richard stallmann pretty much summed up what should be the right of the users. I won't accept anything less.

Awesome. Don't accept anything less. You're totally free to use whatever fwee software you want, and you and RMS can go sing and frolic in the basement of your mom's house and she can serve you carrots and celery. With dijon! Nobody's forcing you to use proprietary software. If you don't want to--great. Don't use it!

But that's not the issue here. It never is. It's that you want other people to kowtow to your wishes. Your fetishization of "fwee" conflicts with your desire for entertainment, and you are willing to fuck over other people to get it. You are advocating for other people to have to give you their software. And that's fucking despicable.

When it comes down to it, pirates either don't have the money to spend on media in the first place (like, say, people in third world countries and poor college students), they couldn't spend money on it if they wanted to because it's not available (like, say, people in third world countries, or, in the case of particularly old/obscure media, anyone), or they already spent their media budget on what they saw as the best value and are just pirating the shit from the bottom of the barrel/obscure shit they just happen to come across (the largest category).

Then fucking do without. It's not a hard concept. If you can't pay for it, don't take it. Piracy fundamentally disrespects the rights of the creator that we have established as a society. You bitch about your rights, which is funny because you're busily pissing on theirs.

Hypocrites.

So trying to paint them as freeloaders is slanderous and intellectually dishonest: they take nothing from the industry, and in most cases give more to it than non-pirates, who generally don't consume nearly as much media.

Prove it. No, seriously: prove it. Prove that pirated media is a net benefit for the industry. (Hint: you won't find it from a reliable and credible source.)

It's entirely anecdotal, but the overwhelming majority of pirates I know (college students, not having money? really? that's not it at all, they want to spend it on beer instead) don't buy games at all except where they have to, i.e. consoles. Looks like more lockdown really is the answer! Awesome!

Now, used games do hurt the industry, in that they're essentially full price, but nothing goes back to the devs/publishers. They're also legally protected, and the recent efforts to fuck up used game sales are fucking disgusting. "Fuck your rights, I want free money! >:O "

Resale is 100% a consumer right, and I agree utterly that trying to stop game resale is a serious problem. But it does not excuse piracy.

One thing I do know is that RMS has never had to work for a living, which makes it awfully easy for him to make pronouncements on what other people should and shouldn't do. If I never had to actually earn my living then I would probably be inclined to say that people should give all their stuff away for free too.

Never had to work for a living...sounds like most people who pirate!

[DrPizza]

I know and I understand. I just feel that gpl should be the main, if not the only, license enforced.

Why? Why shouldn't I, the person who slaves over a hot keyboard to produce a program that you want to use, have some say in the terms under which people can use it?  Why exactly should I be compelled to let you give it away to anyone else for free? It's not as if you made a single solitary contribution to its production. So what exactly is the moral authority you are claiming here? What does it stem from?

That pretty much "anti copyright as they are enforced now" and is a trend of the "anti copyright" movement.

Well, no, it's really not. It's very much "pro copyright as enforced now", for all the reasons I described above.

Edit : by that I mean that every license should enforce the fundamental right of the users as defined by RMS.

What "fundamental rights of the users"? Why, exactly, are they "fundamental"?

[Blacken]

Edit : by that I mean that every license should enforce the fundamental right of the users as defined by RMS.

What "fundamental rights of the users"? Why, exactly, are they "fundamental"?

'Cause they sit on their fundament and wait for people to make things for them?

[DrPizza]

Edit : by that I mean that every license should enforce the fundamental right of the users as defined by RMS.

What "fundamental rights of the users"? Why, exactly, are they "fundamental"?

'Cause they sit on their fundament and wait for people to make things for them?

That would adequately cover the "mental" part, too.

[Zai]

Edit : by that I mean that every license should enforce the fundamental right of the users as defined by RMS.

What "fundamental rights of the users"? Why, exactly, are they "fundamental"?

'Cause they sit on their fundament and wait for people to make things for them?

Funny.