On Piracy in Gaming

[Embar Angylwrath]

My personal line is that I will get media you cannot obtain in stores or online for a fee, and I don't mean the GameTap rental style agreement. If I can't own it because the company won't sell it because it's too 'old' or too 'niche', I have no problems going out and finding it. Companies have new ways of distributing old works, and if they're too lazy to offer them to people, that's when I go and get it. Otherwise, I pay, because that's likely the only way the artist sees any money from me.

Translation: I'm an entitlement whore. I will pay for it if I think I should. Otherwise, I'll steal it.

[Mukik]

What about other scenarios

A person pirates a game thats 50 bucks but buys it when it hits the 10 dollar rack @ walmart, etc

A movie pirated and then the dvd purchased on release date (13 bucks) or when it hits the 7.50 rack or less?

How bout those scenarios..is it like a time released theft or ?

[Kulaf]

However since software, music and movies are one of our biggest money makers in our economy I support any and all efforts to protect said industries while not unduely affecting consumers.

Arguing that piracy hurts our economy doesn't make sense to me. Amenities lost in one area will be gained in another. Jobs lost at the post office = jobs gained developing email servers/clients. Money lost due to downloading movies = money gained by companies that sell servers, portable media players, internet connections, etc...

Paying for digital media is so... 1990s.

Ok......so when China doesn't enforce copyrights and you can buy pirated DVD's for a buck or pretty much any piece of software for the same.......you don't see how that hurts US companies? For the sake of arguement let's just use round numbers and say China has 1 billion people. Let's say 10% of them buy Batman Returns for $10 US instead of $1 from some local pirate. That would be $1 billion (yes with a B) flowing into our economy.......that isn't. And that is just 1 movies worth.

Do you get it now?

[Bahd Zoolander]

What about other scenarios

A person pirates a game thats 50 bucks but buys it when it hits the 10 dollar rack @ walmart, etc

A movie pirated and then the dvd purchased on release date (13 bucks) or when it hits the 7.50 rack or less?

How bout those scenarios..is it like a time released theft or ?

No, that's normal supply and demand. The publisher still gets their money, however little it is, and no theft has been committed.

[Ddrak]

Ok......so when China doesn't enforce copyrights and you can buy pirated DVD's for a buck or pretty much any piece of software for the same.......you don't see how that hurts US companies? For the sake of arguement let's just use round numbers and say China has 1 billion people. Let's say 10% of them buy Batman Returns for $10 US instead of $1 from some local pirate. That would be $1 billion (yes with a B) flowing into our economy.......that isn't. And that is just 1 movies worth.

Do you get it now?

You're making the same incorrect assumption that the RIAA et. al. make - that a pirate would have bought the item at full price had the piracy option not been available. I'm not saying piracy doesn't hurt the US economy but your argument is seriously flawed.

Of course, the 10% number is a complete joke in China (that number wouldn't even have TVs let alone DVD players) and the movie studios don't sell DVDs for anywhere near $10 over there. That's the other reason that region coding exists - so the movie makers can charge the Chinese a much cheaper price without people in the US getting smart and importing all those Region 5 copies at a far lower price than you can get a Region 1 copy.

Dd

[Rsak]

Tax,

Taking/Using it doesn't matter which word you want to use. If you do something with copyrighted material in a way that the creator or owner does not endorse then you are in violation.

Youtube is violating those laws everyday because they have copyrighted material and they are not paying the owner for its use. Youtube skirts this issue because the users of the site upload the material and they delete it when it is reported, but they are certainly enabling copyright violation.

This is the point I'm trying to make with regard to the service of entertainment...

You have to understand the methods of delivery used for entertainment.

TV: Broadcast on television with advertised commercials (cable) or subscription fees (hbo,showtime, etc). Released on DVD or sold through online stores (itunes).
Movies: Displayed at cinemas with ticket prices. Released on DVD or sold online.
Music: Sold on CDs or online stores. Played on radios where there is advertised commercials.

All of those situations include money changing hands and that is very important to the industry and the creators of the media. The question of who gets paid what for online material is the whole reason there was a writer strike this last year.

So if you use Youtube or Songza then you are violating copyright laws because you are using a service that does not have a right to broadcast that media.

Again I say that if you can live with yourself doing it then by all means continue, but there is no gray area out there since it is very clearly violation of copyright laws.

[Taxious]

there is no gray area out there since it is very clearly violation of copyright laws.

This is where we are getting confused. I'm not arguing that the law is gray, but the morality behind the law seems antiquated. To me, there is a big difference between going into wal-mart and stealing a CD compared to listening to some songs from that CD on songza. I realize both acts are illegal, but I'm saying that one of them shouldn't be.

If a business does not have the revenue to pay it's employees then they will leave and the company will fail. Nobody works for free.

If nobody buys games there won't be anyone left making them.

ohai2u

[Arathena]

I can go listen to garage bands play bad heavy metal covers in the parking lot on summer nights for free too, Tax. I suggest you go play some open source games. Try Tux Racer, it's cute, and it's caught up to the graphic technologies of 1995 to boot. Battle For Westnoth is pretty much the pinnacle of open strategy games, and favorites like lightcycle are readily available. Or if you want to see the pinnacle of open source gameplay, try nethack.

A half million bucks and a drop dead ship date do wonders for products. It latches a need for completion into something, and when you're paying someone to work on it as priority number 1 for 40 hours a week, you get priority 1 for 40 hours a week. Since we're talking about Americans, not Frenchmen, when crunch time rolls around, you get priority 1 for 80-100 hours a week. This is important. You get everyone pulling in the same direction. You have the full attention, if not cooperation of a half a dozen specialists. You have tool resources available, not whatever happens to be in your garage or under your desk. It means you get the housing built around the engine, the fairing gets chromed, and then it gets the spit polish.

Open source is very, very good at making things functional - The people who are writing them are writing them to use, so they fix their tools when they break, and are generous enough to share with us all. Open source is very, very bad at making art, unless you're trying to emulate Jackson Pollock.

[Taxious]

Open source is very, very bad at making art

I don't agree with you.

[Rsak]

This is where we are getting confused. I'm not arguing that the law is gray, but the morality behind the law seems antiquated. To me, there is a big difference between going into wal-mart and stealing a CD compared to listening to some songs from that CD on songza. I realize both acts are illegal, but I'm saying that one of them shouldn't be.

No.. The morality is not antiquated. It is saying that the creator or owner of the copyright can decide how it is used. This last SXSW concert made 740 songs available on torrents legally because they got consent from the performers and record labels. You can have any media you want free legally if you convince the owner of that copyright.

The problem is that they are trying to make a living do what they do and if their creations are quality then they should be rewarded for it with financial success.

[Arathena]

Tax, You've posted 2 clones of commerically developed games, one of which has been given a cease and desist threat from Microsoft, the other of which has been in beta for a modpak for a commerically developed game engine that was open sourced after its successor was written, what appears to be an iTunes clone (As I said, awesome functionality), and someone dicking around with a screenshot of a desktop as a texture on a cube. Color me supremely impressed.

I love open source. I love the indy game developers that made things like Crayon Physics. They're fun, often. But they are not going to give us games like Dawn of War, Crysis, World of Warcraft, what have you, any time soon, or with any regularity when it happens. The price of rapidly advancing technology in niche applications, like gaming, is paying specialists to work on it as a priority, rather than letting them do it 'whenever they feel like it.'

[Taxious]

I wasn't aware that originality was a requisite for beauty.

I understand the point you are making about paid projects getting direct attention, obviously money can fuel something to look trendy, but it sounds like you haven't used an open source program in years. I think it's pretty unfair to say that all open source projects look bad, but maybe everything that is considered art to you must be purchased.

In case you want to give them a try:

what appears to be an iTunes clone

Amarok

someone dicking around with a screenshot of a desktop as a texture on a cube

Compiz Fusion

[Select]

rather than letting them do it 'whenever they feel like it.'

Likely because they're spending a lot of their time at another job trying to make money. Now, if it was their job to make games -and they would gain money from it- they could spend all of their time on making games and not have to worry about feeding themselves and their families. Novel idea!

[Ddrak]

Most serious open source development gets done because the company providing the cash is making a bucket from services and can afford to pay the devs. This is why Linux gets so much cash - because you can sell services on it.

Other than that, you're not going to see "blockbuster" open source games any more than you're going to see "blockbuster" backyard movies. They are simply too expensive and require too many resources for people to go out and create. Look at the budgets for most of the games out there nowdays - they are comparable to movies...

On the stuff Tax linked:

Tremulous - doesn't count. It's using an engine that was payed for as closed source and only open sourced after the successor engines came out. Sure, you can tinker around with a modpack for a 5-generations-too-old engine and pretend you're making some uber game but when you try to stack it up against Crysis or Gears of War you're just left looking like an idiot.

Compiz - it's a window manager, not a game. Doesn't require anything like the same sort of effort and has been seriously funded by Microsoft's competitors because they're madly trying to replace Windows on the desktop so they can sell services.

Wormux - Are you serious? I mean this doesn't even stack up against Scorched 3D which *is* open source. If you want to see the current evolution of the Worms franchise then you're looking at stuff one hell of a lot better than that (ie 3D for a start).

Geometry Wars clone - lol. Mad development effort on that line art!

Kanotix - iTunes isn't a game. Doesn't require anything like the resources, and Kanotix sucks anyway.

Dd

[Embar Angylwrath]

I wasn't aware that originality was a requisite for beauty.

Wow Tax... that's a pretty profound question (if it was turned into a question). Is originality a requisite for beauty?

Dude, I don't know if you're in touch with some deeper connection, but that is "One Powerful Question."

I think I smell a thread hijack coming on. Either that, or Dd makes a separate category for philosophy. Right under (or above) the Politics category. This would be a GREAT discussion topic for those of the philosophical bent. And much more worthy than being tossed into the "General" category.

Dd.. can make another category for philosophical topics? I think its an element this board has missed.

[Taxious]

Dd, I linked non-game examples because the claim was that "open source is very, very bad at making art." I was talking about Amarok, where did you get Kanotix from? Since you are treating me like a tard, I might as well inform you that Kanotix isn't a game or even a media player.

Some of you might be interested in Cambrian House which tries to merge Open Source with commercialism by sharing profits of marketable projects with contributors. It's an interesting idea, we'll see if it goes somewhere.

[Arathena]

Your "Great Art Of Open Source" consists of the equivalent of four garage band covers of someone else's successful hits and one Wierd Al Parody song. They would have come into existence had not the closed source companies created first. Amarok may have, very arguably, but, personally, I couldn't uninstall it from my system fast enough when I made the error of putting it on.

Credit for a copy goes to the god damned original.

[Bahd Zoolander]

Gee, a link to open source. You're so smart Tax.

Name an open source console game that a mainstream gamer could play.

Name an open source game that won an editors choice or game of the year award.

And I'll stand by my assertion that nobody works for free. The vast majority of the open source authors you hear about in the news are being paid to do it whether directly or by trading on their internet fame to get speaking or consulting gigs. As long as people need to eat and pay rent they're gonna work to get paid.

[Ddrak]

Dd, I linked non-game examples because the claim was that "open source is very, very bad at making art." I was talking about Amarok, where did you get Kanotix from? Since you are treating me like a tard, I might as well inform you that Kanotix isn't a game or even a media player.

Some of you might be interested in Cambrian House which tries to merge Open Source with commercialism by sharing profits of marketable projects with contributors. It's an interesting idea, we'll see if it goes somewhere.

/shrug. I meant Amarok, not Kanotix. Brain fart while typing.

I'm not treating you like a tard - I'm just trying to explain to you that open source's typical best ability is to copy closed innovation (often in a more elegant way). There are a few outstanding exceptions to this rule, but for the most part it's a given that the new R&D happens in closed products which are then farmed out to open sourced products that simply don't have the billion dollar budgets to throw around for that effort.

I don't think Cambrian House will go anywhere serious because it's really putting the cart before the horse. Typically you need to fork out a bunch of cash before shipping anything or your devs and artists all die of starvation. No one is going to fork out that sort of money to people they don't have a contract to produce an end product with (ie an employment relationship) and in the case of a game, they are going to want to hold onto their IP after paying a few million to produce it in the first place.

Dd

[Partha]

My personal line is that I will get media you cannot obtain in stores or online for a fee, and I don't mean the GameTap rental style agreement. If I can't own it because the company won't sell it because it's too 'old' or too 'niche', I have no problems going out and finding it. Companies have new ways of distributing old works, and if they're too lazy to offer them to people, that's when I go and get it. Otherwise, I pay, because that's likely the only way the artist sees any money from me.

Translation: I'm an entitlement whore. I will pay for it if I think I should. Otherwise, I'll steal it.

Wow, either that's the biggest 'missed the point' you've made since Iraq debates in 2003, or you're deliberately trolling.

Prime example: I have a bootleg of Cheap Trick at the Rockford Armory, circa ~1975. Not available from the company or the band, probably never will be. Who is being stolen from? No one. I'm not packaging it to sell, I'm not even giving away copies - it's for personal use. How is the artist being cheated by it when they won't even offer it for sale?