Do you pay for tickets to music concerts? [...] Do you pay for movie tickets?
In both of these examples you consume some physical resource, however. You occupy a seat in the theater and the staff has to clean up after you and maintain the theater. When I have but a copy of a digital good, it has no effect on anyone else what I do with it.
I understand where you're coming from though, because I didn't like Dragon Age 2 very much either, and I also played it through to the end. But I bought it and I learned my lesson and won't be buying EA/Bioware products again.
Here's the core of the issue; You only get to vote with your wallet for the second generation game. If you always buy before you play, a developer's first sale to you is always positive reinforcement to them, even if they shouldn't be rewarded for it. Dragon Age 2 sold
well and they bribed the "official" reviewers to give great scores. To their eyes, it looks like a commercial success, and we're likely to get more of the same. The only way to tell them they made a mistake is to
not buy at all. And that requires playing before making the decision.
Right now the way I understand your argument is something like this "the only things that have value are physical goods, such as food or electricity." Which is not true. Just because something doesn't disappear after use doesn't mean it has no value, and therefore doesn't have to be paid for.
I
completely disagree. That's
exactly how it is. Digital goods are not scarce goods; They have practically infinite supply. And the economics of supply vs demand dictate that digital goods therefore
have no value.
As a developer of digital goods, be it games, music or movies,
you're not selling a product. The product itself it essentially worthless because it has infinite supply. What you're selling (or
should be selling, if you're appropriately adapting) is the
service of making more. What people actually do with your product is of no concern, because it's out of your hands, infinitely copyable and unenforceable (in private use). The only thing you should be worrying about is incenting people to support further development. Rushed product, bad quality, bugs, DLC and DRM are
not incentives. Neither is "you're all criminals!".
I think it's morally insincere to reap the benefits (whether its entertainment, however slight, or lessons learned about good/bad design) of hundreds of peoples' hours of hard work, only to later decide it wasn't valuable to you. If you want to get a taste without buying it, you can play the demo.
A fair claim, but I argue that I received no benefit from playing these games. It was their decision, their risk, to sink so much work into a bad product. I feel not sorry for them one bit. People come together and labor for the stupidest things, for the "benefit" of everyone; Does
not oblige me to support them in any way if I so choose. And I've already pointed out that demos are not representative of the final product, ever.
There's nothing morally insincere about it. I'm perfectly aware that if I want to play good games, it's my responsibility to support the developers of such games; Otherwise they go out of business and no more games come my way. Indeed, I have not pirated a single Valve game to date. They know how to add value to their products and rarely make stupid decisions (looking at you, Left 4 Dead 2 and Team Fortress 2).
If we want
evolution to happen in any media
bad developers must die. It's very simple, universe 101.
But if you play the entire thing, then it's obvious on some level you found it valuable, and therefor are obligated to pay the people that created that value, even if you don't give them the asking price.
Now there's a good idea. I'd be happy to give BioWare, say, two dollars, to nudge them in a different direction, "not good enough, try again". But
I can't. They provide no facilities for me to do this. I have to pay the price on the box or nothing at all. Even worse, there's lots of middle-men: retailers, publishers, DRM companies, etc. shaving a cut off the profit.
I don't want to support these obsolete entities. Again, BioWare offers no way to directly pay
them for their work. I would love a pay-what-you-want,
after-you-play, directly-to-developer service for all games. That's precisely what I'm going for here.
You are saying that you played the game for 30 hours because you didn't have anything better to do. That means playing the game was better and more interesting use of time than whatever it was you would normally be doing. Which means it made your life slightly better during that time period, and therefor you were entertained. That means you extracted value from the game.
Once again (did you read my previous posts on the thread...?) I did not play the game because I
enjoyed it. I played it because I didn't
know if I'd enjoy it or not, without playing. I played it because it had the
potential to entertain me more than something else I could have been doing instead - sadly, it failed to do so. But I couldn't have known that until the end. I might have
extrapolated that Dragon Age 2 wouldn't get better towards the end from the aimless beginning and middle, perhaps, but you know BioWare. The quality of their products varies greatly between sections.
This argument is nonsense. You are putting the forum post in a (semi)public space. Which means you are giving it away for free. It would be like writing a sign and putting it on your lawn and then asking people to pay you when they read it from the street. Or maybe more like going to a mall and then starting conversations with people and then asking them to pay you for the conversation.
Just as nonsense as producing an infinitely copyable digital good and trying to prevent people from doing so. If you make something and give it to people, they will share. Always have, always will. Anything you put on the Internet is free game in private use (as it should be). Time and time again it has been shown that this does not kill the industry, on the contrary, it creates new markets. It's the old, obsolete companies struggling to adapt to new technologies and culture that scream "piracy!" and beg for government bailouts.
Also, good job calling my arguments childish without actually saying what was childish about them. Ad hominem.
Player
