StingingVelvet wrote on Apr 13, 2012, 03:00:
Well you're not their target market anymore anyway then. Which is fine as long as you don't expect them to cater to you.
And yet I still buy and play games. They are not even trying to get customers back in many areas of the entertainment field, instead they pass laws and put in DRM to shut out second hand sales trying to force people back to them.
Of course they want you to spend as much as possible on them, they're a business, their goal is to make money. How is this a surprise? Shit, how is this even wrong? Capitalism 101. It doesn't mean you have to spend a dime, but nor do you have to pirate anything.
Their goal is to make money, but you often don't find many businesses setting out to alienate all of their customers by selling them inferior products or nickel and dimeing them on extras that used to be included in the price. It's wrong because they are talking out of both sides of their mouth, one day you are a pirate and you need this DRM in your products to make sure you've paid and at the next moment they are putting out extra pay-for content for the product that everyone is stealing. Paying customers shouldn't even have to listen to this kind of bullshit, yet it's out there all.the.time.
Any other market place, someone else would have came in and ate their lunch by treating people better. The control through IP lockouts, technology lockouts, and sheer cost keep someone from really taking them to task. And then buying up all the small developers who even come close.
How well it works for others will of course vary, but the point was that this idea of not knowing anything about the product before spending money is ridiculous. There is a ton of information and unedited gameplay out there.
And besides, this is not such an alien concept. Have you ever gone to the movies? A show? Have you ever fucking gone out to eat? We put money down before getting the whole product all the time.
Oh it's quite possible to buy a game and end up with something that won't play on your machine, especially with DRM. Or have a thoroughly unplayable experience even though you did all your research and have to wait and hope they patch it to fix it. Remember you rarely can return media anymore.
And with a movie, you are free to complain and get your money back when someone talks throughout the movie or something goes wrong. A show if the lights go out or fire alarm goes off, you are reimbursed or given another ticket. If you go out to eat and the food is no good, you can get your money back or ask them to redo the meal to something edible. There's a level of service to be met in each of those things and yet with media entertainment you are not allowed to express dissatisfaction over dismal gameplay or horrible framerates or whatever else. And with movie theaters, shows, and restaurants, if they suck, they go out of business. Yet another counter-intuitive thing when it comes to mass publishers. When their business suffers they blame piracy. Restaurants aren't out there blaming piracy or telling customers their taste buds are faulty or expectations for 50 dollars are too high...or can't understand why you don't like getting frisked for items on your way in and out. Or movies patting you down for outside food.....how long you think a theater like that would stay in business?
Yes they want your money all the time, that's their job. No they can't "make you" buy anything, you sound insane.
If you want music and they have killed your ability to get affordable music from other sources, you either get their music or go without. If you want ebooks at 5 dollars or less and Apple comes in and makes a deal with all the big publishers and tries to force Amazon into raising all book prices by 3-5 dollars above where they were before, you can switch to the library. And when they go to the library and make it so they have to pay more or lend less, making it less able to service people on it's budget, where do you go then?
What about when they start monitoring your activity at the ISP and see you are downloading songs from an unrecognized song site (or not itunes/amazon) and deem that infringing behavior even though you are paying for it, just not from some place they recognize as legitimate due to slow adaptation or poor filtering. And you end up with a warning on your account and no review process to fix it, what if it gets your internet service cancelled? Are you going to keep risking buying your music anywhere else but providers A, B, and C because they are recognized and authorized sellers? What if they don't carry the music you want?
They can force you to buy their goods or no goods by simply limiting your options via the various methods they already have at their disposal. And when you don't buy their stuff? You are pirating and they just haven't found a way to prove it yet...they need more filtering and more power over you.
Consumers hold the power as long as we are in a capitalist system with free will and the ability to communicate. No matter how much you want to yell and scream about these evil companies forcing things on you they can't do shit without people buying their products.
You can point of how greedy these companies are all day long but it will never make me pause. Their job is to be greedy, that is what they exist to be. They only get away with flagrant greed if consumers accept it.
Consumers have ALL the power.
So ISP monitoring was something consumers requested and used their power to implement. DMCA is something consumers asked for. SOPA/PIPA and now CISPA are things consumers wanted. DRM is something consumers asked for. 15 minutes of FBI warnings and such are something consumers want on their movies. 15 minutes of commercials before movies at the theater are what consumers want. Commercials in television shows are what consumers want. Crippled DVD players, crippled televisions via HDMI, and other crippled hardware are things consumers demanded to pay for when they buy things. Not buying these things have turned up alternatives, because none of this stuff is required to be put into devices made for certain purposes or laws passed due to special interests that are counter to consumer desires.
If consumers have ALL the power, SOPA wouldn't have made it past the wet dream stage because businesses would fear overstepping their bounds and angering the consumer. It ended up failing, but that's only after corporate interests on the other side came out against it. When there's no corporate interest otherwise, you as a consumer have the option to either take it or leave it. Good luck getting hardware for your computer or entertainment system that doesn't have any of this stuff built into it. Good luck finding an ISP that won't be monitoring you in a 1 or 2 ISP choice area. Good luck with the always on DRM without an internet connection. Enjoy the commercials.
Saying consumers have all the power is like saying being a voter gives you all the political power. When it comes to getting laws passed, the consumer has no say in what politicians decide, voters might. But we see what's going on in Michigan now and how disenfranchised the majority of voters are ending up there...basically having their local government flat out trodden over by the state and it's "emergency" bills. This is an excellent example of how little control each and every person has even with constitutionally backed rights.
And we're talking about how consumers get screwed on how they get their entertainment, I mean it's the lowest of the low in terms of productivity or benefit to society and yet it garners laws and special interests......of course they will let monied interests bend you over for a buck. They get a handful options and are left to decide if they can muster something out of it worthwhile or abstain entirely. That's a sham of a choice in an area that should be able to offer a plethora of options in all media facets due to technology. Technology entertainment businesses refuse to embrace and have laws written up keeping the old models viable. It's wonderfully innovative, like consumers have always demanded in each decade...less options....less content for more money......inability to watch it how they want.......no ability to share.......
I see absolutely no forthright and honest effort on media conglomerates part to address even a modicum of consumer desire. Hell they are still trying to rebel against Steam, look at EA with Origin. Apple book deal with all major publishing companies to spite Amazon, whom independent authors are doing well on and throwing back in the faces of the publishing houses who are trying to curb their success. Independent authors, musicians and developers are about as close to honest as you can hope to get in them wanting to keep you happy and meet your demands, but they aren't able to do that as well as a conglomerate due to their profit margins. And these independent guys aren't even covered under any of these measures being put in place, because NO ONE cars about the individual's rights. See any political campaign that steals artwork from photographers and uses it on their sites in infringing ways, good luck getting the price of a song out of the politician like the RIAA tries to get out of regular people.
Supporting them by buying into their piracy stance while they do all this other dishonest and counter-consumer crap is a fool's game.
This comment was edited on Apr 13, 2012, 06:34.