Hi Shaun, Well, this is veering a bit off topic, but the topic of economics does relate to gaming so I'll allow it so far as it is relevant to gaming. Here is my take on the issue at hand.
Right now, at this point in time, capitalism is really the only viable economic system for a strong economy, to introduce competitive innovation, and better products and services. I don't think capitalism in of itself is evil, but unfortunately it is often the men and women at the heads of corporations and the money markets who allow their greed to take unfair advantage of the system and habitually abuse it for their own ends. That is why capitalism, even though it is a very viable system, seems broken because there aren't enough laws and regulations preventing companies from throwing their considerable weight around. Let's look at a simple example. Well, we all know Lucasfilm Ltd. holds soul ownership and copyrights of the Star Wars franchise. At least until Disney bought them out. Due to the way the copyright laws in the U.S. are written they can pretty much charge whatever they want to legally license it to toy manufacturers, game developers, and so on. Normally, this isn't a problem if we are talking someone like Hasbro who can pay out millions in royalties and licenses, because they have the funds to do so. Lucasfilm makes money, Hasbro makes money, and everyone is happy. However, no small independent developer such as myself has the funds available to license the trademarks etc so if I were to make an accessible audio game I could legally be sued simply for making an accessible adaptation of an existing game or idea. This isn't so much the fault of capitalism, but the laws regarding how much control any single company has over their intellectual property, and how much they can reasonably charge a third-party for their use. If we could extend the fair use clauses in the copyright laws or force large companies like Lucasfilm to license their trademarks for a fair price then we would have solved a big part of the problem with capitalism in terms of accessible gaming. Marxist Communism has slowly been making a big come back through open source and more community property licenses like the General Public License and Creative Commons License. While they have their place they also have a problem, and that is it is hard to make a living wage on free software, free music, and other free products developed under such licenses. Community property is all well and good to a certain point but history has conclusively shown communism is a failed philosophy in practice. We only need to look at the U.S.S.R. to see how it was mismanaged, how the economy stagnated, and how innovation suffered because it lacked the financial means to industrialize the way the United Kingdom and United States were during the same period of time. The principle reason I feel communism fails is there is no room to compete, to be given a wage based on developing a better product, no way to really profit from having a better idea. It is a downward spiral because human beings will always want to better themselves, better their status in life, and can't be content with the status quo. There is no incentive in it to work harder or to put more effort into a product. For example, let's assume company A makes a number of games for $10 such as Poker, Blackjack, Uno, Boggle, etc. Since $10 is the going wage for developing accessible games what incentive is their for company B to develop games like Tank Commander, Shades of Doom, Time of Conflict, and Lone Wolf which are more difficult to program? The answer, of course, is there is none. At least not financially. The company could work harder if he or she personally wants to develop a game like Shades of Doom, but under Communism he or she will still make the same wage if they write something simple like BopIt, Blackjack, or Scrabble. So if company B makes the same amount of money as company A then there is no financial incentive to make anything better, more complex, or to spend time and effort innovating new ideas. With capitalism there is the belief that a man or woman should make more money if they make a better product, work harder, or perform a better service. So if company A could sell games like Uno, Blackjack, Poker, and Boggle for $10 each it stands to reason that company B should be able to make more money for developing advanced products like Shades of Doom, Tank Commander, Time of Conflict, and Lone Wolf. If company B can make two or three times more money by developing more advanced games they have a financial incentive to innovate, to put more effort into the product, and to add more features in their products than company A. That is how I see it. Take for example the disparaging difference between Linux gaming and Windows gaming. Now, to be fair there are some cool games for Linux, but in many cases they aren't quite as good as their commercial counterparts. On Linux there is a free game called Flight Gear which is suppose to be a free clone of Microsoft Flight Simulator. Flight Gear is a decent game, there are many Linux users who like it, but truth be told Flight Gear isn't nearly as good as Microsoft Flight Simulator. For one thing FSX has much better sounds, graphics, force feedback control, and there are commercial add-ons like Its Your Plane that makes FSX more accessible. I think the main reason Microsoft's Flight Simulator is better is because they have millions to spend on better graphics design, to spend on more high quality sounds, and to test it with a wide range of flight controllers where Flight Gear, as far as I know, is developed by a few guys in their free time as a hobby not as a part of their job. As a result Flight Gear ends up being a free but less competitive product than Microsoft's more expensive simulator. So to sum up this long e-mail Communism doesn't really work out as well as Capitalism in practice. Just looking at commercial games verses free games bee it Rock Band verses Frets on Fire or Microsoft Flight Simulator verses Flight Gear it is obvious which is the better product. The reason why is commercial developers can afford to hire better programmers, purchase top graphics designers, purchase top quality sound effects, whatever where the open source developers may produce a decent product but they usually fall short in a number of areas. So Capitalism, no matter how crooked companies may get, is generally more productive in the end. Cheers! On 11/16/13, shaun everiss <[email protected]> wrote: > true. > on an interesting sidenote a show talking on various things talked > about the state of echonomic affairs of the world and the western > world in general. > WHat I was told was that right now capatalism dirty and bad though it > is is at this moment the only viable and workable system to keep > things going for now. > THat other systems had not built up to it yet. > I was unfortunately traveling in the car to a friends place and > arrived there just as it was getting interesting. > We can get from this a couple of things. > 1. the current system sucks but so what or. > 2. the current system sucks but its all we have right now but > another system may take over in the near future. > So there is hope. > Saying that the system we have now wasn't always bad. > We needed it when things got started, but just like a hard drive its > getting to full of files. > its running out of ram and well it needs upgrading. > It doesn't help then when things break which they will tend to do > that well who knows. > I agree with nvda though. > Its growing quite fast and yess eventually the collective may have > power over the others. > But There is a question. > If we have power to crush the others do we become what we hate so much. > If I was a pirate that was going after copywrite holders of stuff > because of prices and such. > If I ever managed to get big would I end up doing what I was my swarn > enemy. > Would I be the person doing the evil deed. > The scary thing is I think I would. > Greed is one of the human trates that has existed since the beginning > and will continue to do so. > Its vary possible that it will go round and round. > ants will become giants eventually that will step on ants that were > once like themselves. > This is getting to complex for a sunday. > However in the case with nvda its worth noting that there are people > in the industry that even if they don't put it out publically do > acknowledge at least privately some being my friends that nvda is > one of the moovers. > Its not like its a secret ofcause. > Ofcause the big thing will be when they become a big threat when the > big guys realise they are about to become ants and then attack on mass. > If we survive a suit or 2 maybe we will survive. > I hope blind games can get to the point where if we need to fight we > can do so and win. > I am not sure how many such fights we need to be rated among the big > guys but still. > Then again not all giants are bad, only sertain types in sertain arieas. > --- Gamers mailing list __ [email protected] If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to [email protected]. 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