The right to play

[Segev]

Their stock has been taking due to negative reputation, not because they couldn't find a way to make money off shutting the game down. That's what I meant by their common sense being motivated by greed.

Enlightened self-interest - emphasis on that first word - would have caused them to study their audience and realize that, if there is money to be made on the shut-down, they'd best make sure they can keep the squawking to a minimum.

They misjudged. Whatever the analysis they did that told them this was a good move, they failed to account for our enthusiasm and outrage. And it's killing them. I think this evidence that my thesis is, in fact, accurate: a badly managed company operating on a flawed model is suffering for their bad choices. Are we hurt? Yes! Is NCSoft hurting? Yes! Will this motivate others to try NOT to repeat their mistakes, as it is motivating us to make our own, better system to preserve our community? Hopefully! If not, then the market will punish those fools, too. And hopefully we'll do well enough to attract people with our model and show others how to do it right. All without laws changing to force us to do it the way some politician came up with.

They're allowing short-term greed to motivate them to make us lose out on our long-term investment. See, me being motivated by greed doesn't mean I, personally, have to pay the long-term costs of my short-term gains. ... I'm not immortal, if I made a billion dollars right now even if it cost the world 50 times that in 40 years, I'm still gold. I'm not even counting on being alive that long.

Fair enough. If you are a sociopath who doesn't even value his children's future, you can profit in this fashion. However, I bet you have to trick people into signing on, since there are people who DO care about their children's future. And who are, themselves, young enough that they'll be around in 40 years.

So now you're tricking people and engaging in the sort of non-productive activity that would be outlawed due to its trickery-based theft from those who would not have given you money if they'd known the costs you did know to be coming.

First, I don't care about sticking to one ideology, I only care about what works. That tends to be a moderated and mixed approach.

"Mixed" of what and what? I mean, I could mix Mercantilism and Communism, or Aristocracy with Feudalism, and get results that, history has shown us, are less effective than some of our more modern systems. "Mixed" is a buzzword, like "moderate" and "centrist." It doesn't have a guaranteed "best option" status, and often the "mix" is a "compromise" where one side says to the other, "You compromise with me by giving me everything I want, and I compromise with you by passing what I want that you've agreed on."

I, too, only care about what works. "Ideology" is meaningless without functionality. I don't adhere to ideas for their own sake, but because they are a refinement of what works. You will not find me being a martyr to ideology. Not in the sense that I will keep trying failed practices and bemoaning that they aren't working this time. (I won't abandon it, either, so I might qualify as a "martyr" in the "because I won't lie and support something I think is false to spare myself the pillory.")

And since what works is Swarm Intelligence - that is, unleashing people to make their own choices and innovate a thousand different ways to do things and adopt what they see others doing that works - that's what I advocate. Since what doesn't work is trying to regulate with one rigid set of rules - or worse, a set of rules that are mutable but only by people who are third parties and have no stake other than to enhance their own power - for every situation, shutting down innovation into how they work, I oppose that.

Second, I ain't sure what world you've been seeing where we've been moving 'away' from capitalism. We've been deregulating things that were regulated for the last 30 years. Labor laws and public support for labor support has been falling steadily. Call it a victory or a loss at your own discretion, but that's how it's been.

I am not goign to devolve into a political "he said she said," which is where this is leading. I will state, once, that we have not "de-regulated." We have had more expansion of government regulatory agencies than ever, and we've seen crony capitalism - which is not capitalism at all - at the highest levels as things "too big to fail" are bailed out and other things are nationalized and directed by the government. It's a mess, and it's a huge step away from capitalism.

[W]ouldn't 'enlightened self interest' compel these 'established' interests to fight for said regulation. Again you're promoting a system that endorses a motivator  then complaining about when the powerful use that motivator to do bad things. It's like you can recognize something is wrong, but you can't and won't blame the ideology, so you are arguing that we just need more of the ideology.

Flawed argument. I am promoting the establishment of a system which harnesses this inescapable aspect of human nature, and protects the enlightened form of self-interest while penalizing and disabling selfish, harmful acts. It achieves this by very narrowly defining those harmful acts as violation of life, liberty and property of another, punishing theft and violence - even if the theft is achieved via trickery rather than stealth or violence - and protecting the rights of individuals to use their lives, time, and property as they see fit.

This encourages people to produce for themselves and those about whom they care. It rewards innovations that work, and allows natural consequence to penalize those that don't. Risk does have failure as a possible outcome, which is why we want to allow people to choose to take risks or play it safe. Let each actor evaluate risk:reward himself, and if he succeeds, let others follow his example or risk a different path. If he fails, let others learn from his example or risk trying to tweak it to make it work. Up to them.

I don't "advocate" that humans are greedy or will work towards promoting their own wealth and comfort. That's a given. It's inescapable. You will never, ever change it, unless you can serve as the second coming of Christ.

Does this mean those powerful few who are building a corrupt system to siphon wealth away from the productive for their own selfish greed will fight any effort to change it? If course! To use an extreme example, a dictator will always fight to retain his dictatorship; it is still right to get rid of him and put in place something better.

I am outlining what that "something better" is. Something that exploits the natural human tendency that we cannot change for good, and penalizes all its evil (defined as harmful to productive and happy society) manifestations.

In the context of this thread, I am advocating leaving us free to try to come up with something better, rather than tying our hands and delivering our industry on a platter to those greedy and selfish forces that are building a system to empower themselves at the expense of others' productive efforts. (And yes, I'm aware I'm waxing a bit melodramatic here. Such is the nature of ideological discussion, even when discussing it in terms of "what works" v. "what doesn't.")

I'm typically skeptical of taking the advice of the players profiting from the advice, especially if said advice commonly makes everybody (and myself) else pay for it, and it's been these big players that you say are profiting from regulation constantly telling us to let them do whatever they want then hope unicorns and puppies explode out of it, so it would be a tough sell, but I'm not closed to the idea.

Actually, if you pay attention, the CEO of GE and Warren Buffet and the like are amongst the biggest proponents of expanding governmental oversight into their various industries. They're often held up as examples of "wise" and "not selfish" rich people who prove that it's really just greedy SOBs who oppose expanding regulations. In truth, these people have MADE theirs. They can absorb new regulatory costs easily, while their competitors cannot. Further, these new costs bar people who are not independently wealthy from even trying to get in, and vastly increase the risked losses should a venture fail. It helps protect, if not a monopoly, then at least an oligopoly of the established industry giants.

The ones pushing for de-regulation are the ones who want IN, or who are just starting up. The ones that are trying the new, innovative models they think are better, that they think will make customers happier. The ones who will be pushed out by regulations telling them "no, you can't do it that way."

Fourth, why is it always cool when somebody with a lot of power uses their 'enlightened self interest' to promote themselves, but suddenly frowned on if say, I used my 'enlightened self interest' to band together with my peers to fight for a higher wage.

Who said it was bad? Go for it! It's a perfectly valid tactic. I don't advise trusting modern big unions to do it for you, though, as they have their own highly-paid, wealthy bosses who are in it for their own power and not for your sake. I recommend forming your own little agreement-community to handle these things.

[Segev]

Or to keep a game running that I liked and spend money on. Kinda the pot calling the kettle black a bit. Maybe my best tool in my arsenal is cooperation and teamwork with my peers. Like what we're doing here, with NCSoft. I know for sure that if this effort to save this game was left up to any one man, it would had died on arrival.

You'll note I'm in here with you fighting to give NCSoft's black eyes some painful prodding through market forces to get them to see their enlightened self-interest aligns with their customers' desires.

This is wholly in line with everything I've been outlining! The only part to which I'm objecting is the calls for regulations to force things. Use your voice! Use cooperation! Band together and remind NCSoft that we're not infinite money sources to be sucked on and discarded! But do it in a way that measures how to make it in their interest to cooperate, and then to make it painfully obvious to them that their interests WILL align with ours because all other legal routes are self-destructive.

That's what we've been doing, and it's been working.

Let's not get the law involved. Last time the US government got involved in big businesses losing big bucks because they'd screwed their customers too hard, the government decided they were "too big to fail" and bailed them out. Can you imagine if the US decided the correct course of action was to bail out NCSoft as their stocks fell? CEOs who engage in the siphoning game rather than trying to actually please their customers by providing something of value are very adept at telling politicians sob stories. I'm sure Kim could talk Obama around to how it's not his fault; the game just wasn't doing well enough, and while it's too late for the game, he can make sure it doesn't happen to B&S and to GW2 if they get some stimulus...

[P]roperty and rights are also human constructs that serve as a polite way to do business slightly less barbarically. They're in the same sort of boat as laws. Idealizing them and humanizing them like such makes you blind to their origins, uses and costs.

False. Property rights are an extension of liberty.

Do you agree that the absence of liberty to choose NOT to do something is slavery?

If so, then you have to agree that property rights are an extension of liberty. Theft is the taking of property without the permission of its owner (by definition). Property is something that you have produced, or obtained from somebody else who willingly gave it to you (often in exchange for something else you produced...or did; thus can service translate to property).

Blacks were enslaved on plantations, forced to produce cotton whether they wanted to work there or not. What if, instead, they'd been told, "work these fields and you may do as you like with the cotton," and thus those who chose to work those fields were working of their own accord, needing no overseer? Then the plantation owner, after the cotton was produced, simply took it. That would be theft. The product of the workers' labor was taken without their permission.

Slavery just cuts out the middle man, and takes the labor without permission. It's the same thing in the abstract and in the end, except that the slave is at least not under any illusions about how he is being exploited.

Thus, without the right to what one earns, whether by making it oneself or convincing others to give it to one in exchange for other property or services rendered, one has no right to one's own labor. With no right to one's own labor, one either is a slave, forced to work for another against one's will, or one has no incentive to work at all, and produces nothing.

One is immoral, the other wasteful. Both prevented with proper protection of property rights.

Creative partial abridgement of property rights obscures the damage done by merely diminishing incentive, but it leads to a creeping corruption as those with the power of partial abridgement slowly amass more wealth on the backs of those who produce it.

You might feel you should have the right to life. But that's a really flexible concept, even then, because then you go on to talk about some exceptions to the right of life, such as defending yourself. That's because your right to life is a pleasantry we as a society give to each other to make society better to live in. It would behoove you though to realize that said right is only backed up in the same way as everything else; through bribery, diplomacy or force, and only exists as long as enough people say it does and have the ability to uphold it.

Oh, sure. In truth, there is only one thing that matters in terms of whether you CAN do anything: power.

"Can I do it? Can you stop me?"

The whole point of the construct of laws is to optimize things such that using one's power to do things that harm productivity and society ultimately is prevented (at least from happening a second time, through means such as jail and other separation-from-society punishments). Swarm Intelligence requires certain rules of behavior, but they're designed only to prevent forces that artificially inflate one's success-value at the expense of another, not to protect agents from making mistakes. To do the latter is to, again, artificially inflate success-values, and obscure the true value of the choices people make.

You might feel you have right to property, but what entitles you to the Earth? You say that you should have the right to things you 'produce' with your own industry, but at what point where you entitled to the materials you 'produced' with? Or the land needed to have space to produce it with. At some point down the economic chain somebody is getting something for nothing. 

Generally speaking? I believe the traditions of the past were "first claim," but nowadays we have all the land generally claimed by somebody, and thus ownership is established. If you find something nobody claims? I guess it's yours! If nothing else, you put in the effort - the labor - to "produce" it by going to it and obtaining it. As long as you're not stealing it from somebody else - e.g. picking the apples off of somebody else's tree - then it's legitimate. This really isn't a hard concept (though it leads to some interesting races to stake the best claims when there are frontiers). Whether people using this philosophy in the past were actually stealing from prior claimants is irrelevant; nowadays, the only "unclaimed" land is in Antarctica and space, and I don't think you'll be forcing any natives out of there if you manage to get there.

At some point you have people basically laying claim to things they don't own, telling everybody else that now I own this and you can't have it, then wanting compensation for use of resources that they just kind of said they own. Then smugly telling themselves they have a magical inherent 'right' to all this and the ability to reap everything sown on that land, to the point where people that didn't get to yell 'tag' on the whole of the earth, to make their daily bread, have to work that person's land because they have no other choice and no 'right' to anything that sustains their life.

Oh, it can get sticky. Fortunately, we're beyond that point right now with earthly resources. We'll likely establish rules for it when we start exploring space, but honestly, simply claiming something and doing nothing with it other than charging people to go try to use it will generally fail.

And really? If you went out and claimed it and are going to charge people to use it? You're going to first have to convince them it's worth paying you to use. And if you, for instance, found gold in your new area, you HAVE done a service: you've located a valuable resource. You've cut down the costs of those you're charging for the privilege of mining it by telling them where to look!

So again, even THAT is a service done.

That system is inherently flawed. You have a ruling caste that smugly tells everybody that they have a special 'right' to the proceeds of their work because they have a 'right' to do what they want with property. Knowing full well that their rights only exist as long as the community doesn't band together and lynch them.

Sure. And if that ruling caste really never does anything but leech? They're gonna get lynched eventually. Some that genuinely DO contribute value commensurate with their claims get lynched anyway. There's a reason laws are tricky in the specific; the base philosophy of optimality guides their formation, but HOW to do it sometimes is a little fuzzy. What constitutes "finding" property? How far can you claim? These are laws that do need founding.

That "ruling caste" exists in our politicians these days. They smugly tell everybody hat they have a special 'right' to hand out largesse to the masses, and that the masses should be grateful to them and keep voting for them so they don't let those greedy "rich people" steal it all from them.

In today's world, the right to property is either inherited, bought, or earned through service/trade. The first is the only "free" one, and falls under the right of a property owner to do what he wills with it...including choosing who gets it when he can't use it anymore.

But you know what? Again, I'm not interested in cleaving entirely to one system or another. If parts of capitalism work, if pretending that rights are important helps me get some of the things my own 'enlightened self interest' wants, if working to ensure some people who frankly are competition with me have a 'right' to property they claimed that nobody owned can still make all of us better off, I'm for it.

But I'm not for cleaving to this ideal even if it sinks me. My 'self interest' wouldn't allow it.

Ah, see, you admit, you're acting with greed. Not enlightened self-interest, which looks towards elevating the wealth of all by growing the productivity and thus getting you a larger share and better advances than would otherwise be, but instead focuses on greedily hoarding what you can get your mitts on and screw anybody who actually produced it.

(I actually doubt you truly feel that way, but you're making my point for me about the difference between greed and enlightened self-interest as you mis-use the term.)

Yeah, but if you can swing your fist so hard it creates hurricanes, then you have more responsibility with your fists than previously thought, wouldn't you agree? If a man existed, as a thought experiment, that could swing his fist so hard that even if it didn't connect with your face, but created an air pressure difference strong enough that it could blow away an entire neighborhood, would you not have to amend your basic rule for liberty?

Only the wording of it. The rule is, more precisely, that one has a right to act as long as one is not willfully destroying another's life, liberty, or property. And, generally, one is liable for unwillful/accidental destruction of the same, but generally speaking, "restitution" is all that's needed there. If one willfully causes such destruction, restitution AND punishment are in order, because such behaviors must be discouraged strongly enough that one can't make a cost/benefits analysis and decide that one can do harm, pay restitution later, and profit personally overall to the detriment of the one harmed.

That's the state of the world, though, right now. And that's the state of the world as it always has been, and always will be. There are people who can 'swing' their 'fist' of money hard enough to damage those that they don't directly 'hit'. So once again a 'basic rule' or ideology that strives to solve all problems isn't something I want to cling too hard to.

Depends how you define "harm."

Nobody has lost life nor liberty due to the closing of CoH. I would even go so far as to say nobody has lost property, but I can see the counter-argument regarding whether micro-transaction-purchased "things" constitute property or simply licensed usage. This goes back to the ownership model NCSoft and other MMOs use being flawed, and the best solution being new models being tried and better ones thus being found and adopted.

You might think that people swinging their hurricane fists occurs in a victimless bubble, but reality rarely plays that out. Reality requires solutions that are more nuanced than "I'll do whatever I want and hope that my poisoning my portion of the river stays in my side of the river".

See, this is an area where the whole living in a community thing comes in. You can either come to an agreement with your neighbors regarding your responsibilities in not letting what you do ruin their portion of it...or you can deal with them doing such things as preventing your pollution from contaminating their land by building a dam on their land just beyond your border and flooding your land with water and pollution.

Me, I'd work out an arrangement, because I think the flooding of my land might be bad. NCSoft, on the other hand, seems to think we didn't have the guts to build the damn, and now they're drowning.

That's the thing though, putting your hands up and watching a murder and going "Can't legalize morality!" makes for a poor society quickly.

Fallacy. I did not say "well, murder's okay, I guess, because we can't legislate morality." I explicitly stated that murder should be illegal for optimality reasons if nothing else. Moral ones are also good, but from the standpoint of optimizing a society, murder MUST be illegal.

Giving the code or an executable to the players for something they've paid for that they have no reason to keep secret due to it being buried is hardly an undue burden on an MMO creator. REALLY, NCSoft wouldn't have to had done anything but step back and not get in the way; Tony V's crew was well on its way to reverse engineering a lot of it anyways for the legal purposes of creating this webpage.

I agree. I'm not saying they shouldn't have done something like this. I still hope to convince them that selling the IP to somebody who'll keep it running is in their best interests. All I'm saying is they have a right, legally, to do as they've done, and that changing the laws would cause more harm than good. They SHOULD have the right to make this idiotic decision, just as we should retain the right to go prove how wrong they were both by doing what we're doing on a PR front and by striving to build something and running it in a way that is better.

Saying that a company should be 'free' to make a self destructing product only INVITES abuse, majorly. "We shouldn't burden them with the horrible task of making sure their ovens don't break down and leak poisonous gas! If we legislate that even less people will be willing to make ovens!".

This is a foolish argument. A company that makes such faulty ovens will not stay in business long. And if it IS killing people and they knew it, then they either aren't informing their customers (remember how I keep saying that deception-based transactions are also theft, and thus should be punished?) or their customers are willing to poison themselves. I don't think the "willing to poison themselves" demographic will buy enough ovens to keep EvilSears in business.

That's true, but the thing is, the nature of power is that, if it exists to take, somebody will and already has. If I don't give this power to this 'third party' then I'm basically giving it to somebody else.

The power remaining with the guy who built the thing is only moral. What has that third party done to deserve it, other than get a bunch of people together to say, "Yeah, we want to steal that thing, so give it to him?"

Do you think that, if I got everyone on this community to somehow agree that I should have your computer, you should have to ship it to me? I somehow doubt it. It's YOURS, so the power to decide whether or not you keep it should remain with you.

In this case I'm saying 'building a product that can self destruct at any moment no matter how much of my own obligations I meet' is one of those powers that I don't feel NCSoft has proven themselves worthy of wielding, in the same way that you're saying "Killing people I don't like isn't a power that I or you should wield".

You agreed to this when you started doing business with them. Sure, you, like most of us, trusted that they'd act more responsibly. We were proven wrong, and I am sure not only that we won't make that mistake again, but that our efforts here make NCSoft realize how big the mistake was and serve as an object lesson to others who might be in their position in the future.

Does it suck? Yeah. But they exercised their right to poison their part of the river up stream, so we're exercising our right to build a dam on our property that is flooding their land.

Again I agree. I just don't have the faith in people that they're all moral enough people they don't need those laws. Does that make sense? Maybe if 100% of people were you and didn't murder, we wouldn't need such a law. But I don't feel we live in a reality where people can't harm each other, legally, right now, with money. So I'm against letting them do that willy-nilly.

Uh, even if 100% of people "wouldn't" murder, having laws against it would be good. Because it's something that harms the optimality of the society.

Nobody is causing harm to anybody who didn't at least agree to the risk that it COULD happen as it has happened. We all made the mistake of thinking NCSoft would act in the interests of making profit, and thus treat their customer base with respect. But we knew the possibility existed under the ownership model they offered.

In the future, we will likely work to make sure the ownership model is more to our liking, more something that we can defend our ability to use what we pay to use beyond the period the provider is willing to support it. Lesson learned, sadly and painfully, but at least it is learned.

We have the power to act to prevent ourselves from being in this position again, if only by never doing business with anybody using NCSoft's ownership model for an MMO.

Optimizing who's productivity? Ultimately you're gonna have to balance one person's productivity against another. Me having thousands of dollars vanish overnight from this game harmed my productivity. Should I only care about NCSoft's needs?

Who does the balancing? Reality does it. You had thrown that thousands of dollars away on an entertainment product. It was gone one way or another. If it truly is a waste, then you'd have wasted more if it continued. If it was worth it, then it was worth it. You knew that this could happen. Just because you didn't think it would doesn't mean you were wronged in the sense of your productivity being stolen. You agreed to the risk, you just thoguht it wouldn't ever happen. Not this way.

You don't "balance" productivity. Productivity - and the choices one makes with its fruits - is its own measure, provided you prevent theft. If people agree to something that squanders their productivity, then the diminishment of their productivity is a measure of the wisdom of their choices.

Sad as it is, we've had it proven to us that trusting NCSoft was unwise, and we feel whatever pain we feel because of it. We will strive to do better, and not make this mistake, in the future. Meanwhile, NCSoft is feeling the pain for its own foolish choices. The measure of their productivity is demonstrating how bad it was.

These actions, again, don't take place in a vacuum. NCSoft's actions didn't take place in a bubble dimension where they have no impact on others.

Why then should I only be concerned with their 'productivity'? Is that in my personal enlightened self interest?

That's all well and good when it works. But for every City of Heroes, there's a Tabula Rasa and Auto Assault where this happened and nothing came for it because the community that you're relying on to 'police' the world wasn't capable of it.

Note that those were losing money. NCSoft's actions there were understandable, even to the customers. They were sad, but they didn't act as we are because they knew that it was useless. NCSoft couldn't continue running a losing product forever. It was literally impossible, and fighting as hard as we have been is exhausting. Even more so when you know it can, at best, grant a stay of execution, not a genuine reprieve.

I didn't see NCSoft suffer a darn thing from that, aside from the litigation with Garriott, which only then happened because they forged his resignation letter.

They weren't harmed by their customer base because the risk they'd taken was that the thing would be profitable, just like NCSoft had. Both lost. They WERE punished for what they did to Garriot because they stole from him - in this case, his good name, which is of tremendous value...and the value of the stocks they denied him the ability to sell at an optimal time. Theft, again, was punished.

NCSoft and the customers both suffered loss based on the unprofitability of those games. Nobody fought it because, frankly, punishing somebody because they don't defy gravity with the power of their will is a non-starter. And that's what making a company run a game at a loss amounts to; they can do it by jumping and flapping their arms...but they'll fall back down when they run out of "jump."

So you're basically saying that social justice only matters in cases where it harms a well enough organized base? Does it only matter when it effects 'my' community but isn't a problem with it effects 'theirs'?

I have no idea where you're getting this. Since it's not something I've argued, I see no point in arguing it now.

You're basically betting on a world where good outcomes only happen basically once in a while. And increasingly so as movers and shakers like the RIAA counter your ability to complain about them. If NCSoft was big and powerful enough of a company, it wouldn't be probably too hard for them to put this forum underground and demolish its support. I don't particularly care for that.

woah, woah. Who said I was against allowing people to complain? I'm all for it! I love the First Amendment! Did I ever say to stop complaining? I'm right there with you, shouting about how horrible NCSoft has been in this!

All I'm saying is, don't clamor for new laws and regulations. Guess who'll get to formulate such things? That's right: "movers and shakers like the RIAA." And do you really think they'll make them to protect your interests? The best solution is to deny anybody that kind of power.

Boycotts have been, historically unsuccessful throughout history. This is a rare case, a mixture of a large enough tight knit community and a weak enough corporate entity. And we're still, honestly, losing. I have hope, but I'll have to admit that hope is largely optimism.

We shouldn't have to boycott every time a company decides there's an acceptable amount of cyanide to put in their hamburgers. Such idiocy should be just straight up illegal.

The success we're having isn't due to any sort of boycott. It's due to our PR. And I'm all for it.

Also? Even if we don't get the IP sold to soembody who'll use it, we are still currently free to try to build a replacement that uses a better model. The Phoenix Project is founded around the idea that our customers are valuable and should be treated with respect.

Again, I'm not advocating for a blanket 'everything is illegal' law, like you seem to think I am.

I never said I thought that. You're advocating for increased regulations governing what MUST be done with private property. This will result in harm to all involved except the bureaucrats.

I'm sorry, but that sounds a lot like "We should stick our junk in a beehive to see if it works out or not". I think there are definitely some things that are stupid or wrong enough we don't have to 'test out' alternative to.

Ah, but how do we know that it's that obviously stupid? Because we've seen the consequences of similar actions.

I think if we have to have a 'swarm' intelligence to tell us that letting somebody close up something that you've invested so much money into on a whim like this is bad for customers, then we are doomed as a species to stupid ourselves off the face of the planet.

As you yourself noted, it hasn't harmed people enough to create this level of outcry before. Wiser moves would include studying to see WHY this time it was a bad choice. The reason I hypothesize centers around THIS product having been profitable.

[Sajaana]

If you want cold hard calculating reasons, then economically you should be upset that your rights as a customer amount to nothing.

Well, that assumes I didn't actually "get" what NCSoft was selling me.  NCSoft is saying that I "got" everything I paid for...and then some, if we count the three months extra.

Now, from my perspective, I felt I was entitled to more.  Indeed, I am upset that my fun was taken away from me.  But am I justified in feeling upset?

Am I? If I am, please tell me why, because I'm not sure anymore.

It seems to me, upon reflection, that I might be no more justified in feeling upset than the compulsive gambler would be if we kicked him out of the casino.  I bought into the neon lights of the virtual Las Vegas, checking myself in to the Hero Hotel.  Do I feel like a hero now?  Frankly, I feel like a fool.

After all, NCSoft owns the means of my fun, ownership gives them the right to destroy my fun or exploit my fun as they see fit.  I shouldn't have believed that my fun was anything to them other than a commodity to be exploited and discarded as they saw fit.

They did just that, and how can I blame them?  You can't blame the bourgeois for using the means of production to exploit those who depend on them any more than you can blame the tiger for eating the deer.

[corvus1970]

They did just that, and how can I blame them?  You can't blame the bourgeois for using the means of production to exploit those who depend on them any more than you can blame the tiger for eating the deer.

I don't buy that for a second.

We are not Tigers, nor are we Deer. As human beings and social animals we have the ability to think of others as well as ourselves. To take responsibility for our actions, and to cultivate a sense of responsibility to the social groups and larger world we are connected to, whether we wish to be connected to them or not.

A company should have responsibilities other than making a profit. Its that simple.

[HeliumPhoenix]

EULAs have not only been successfully challenged, many have been shown to be outright false in their clams.  No EULA can enforce an illegal doctrine, nor can it remove asserted rights from the user.  That said, EULA's CAN affect any litigation arising out of any disagreements between the contracting parties.......and the rest of the legalese in them is mostly there to 'convince' the end-user who actually reads them that they ARE giving up their rights, and that legal action would be easily dismissed or crushed under said EULA.

The big problem here is not that we need laws to enforce 'continuance' of services.  A company has every right to discontinue a service as long as that service is not essential to health and well-being (like utilities.)  The problem is the ability of a company to 'squat' on IP and copyright to bully, squash competition, and stifle innovation.  Despite many who understand the issues fighting the creation of laws to extend copyright to ridiculously long durations, allow use of 'IP' to fuel lawsuits to crush smaller competition and developing niches, and line the pockets of big-business with even more litigation proceeds by civil action against supposed 'infringers' with penalties so out-of-proportion to any real damages has put the law on the side of the corporations, not the people.

We need many of these laws repealed, and the rest overhauled.  It used to be that you had 7 years to profit from an idea while being protected.  Now, we have life + 75 years.  Do we see the problems here?  If NCSoft couldn't just 'squat' on the IP, they'd sell it in a heartbeat, rather than it simply be re-done by someone else.

This is the crux of the matter.  We've allowed corporations to lobby in legislation that makes them immune to responsibility, able to live off things they created long ago by threat of lawsuit, and exist as entities with no criminal and limited civil prosecutability.  NCSoft and others like them only care about bottom lines.....not those affected in raising them......because they've been allowed to make it legal.

Software companies, electronics innovation, and so much more thrived before these laws existed.  Now, progress is actually slowing down because of these laws which supposedly 'protect' innovation.  They don't protect innovation, they protect corporate profits.

[Pinnacle Blue]

New legislation would take too long and tie up all our energy (see, for example, this thread).

Guys, I'm all for a philosophical discussion but I want to know what practical action we can take, and by practical I mean something devastating to NCSoft (nothing illegal, mind you) that can force them to give up the IP.  A EULA challenge seems to me like a realistic route.  If not, what other actions can we take?

[Little Green Frog]

Well, that assumes I didn't actually "get" what NCSoft was selling me.  NCSoft is saying that I "got" everything I paid for...and then some, if we count the three months extra.

Now, from my perspective, I felt I was entitled to more.  Indeed, I am upset that my fun was taken away from me.  But am I justified in feeling upset?

Am I? If I am, please tell me why, because I'm not sure anymore.

There are some arguments for and against. Some other posters in this thread are quite good at pointing the latter, so I will concentrate on the former:

• You have co-created the content, be it in the form of costumes for your characters, their bios, super groups or forum posts. As such you may be viewed as a co-author and at least be entitled to the data you produced. I believe some EU laws cover this, they just weren't tried in a case like this.
• You were counting on the continued existence of the platform and had no reason to expect imminent closure. In the business world if a company fails to disclose such thing ahead of time to its investors, shareholders or even clients, it is at the risk to be tried for fraud. Or misconduct. It would be open to the court to decide these rules apply in this situation, but until such ruling exists, we can't know for sure.
• Because of the point above, Paragon Studios could also have a chance to make a case for the court. I was actually expecting them to do that, and am wondering what stopped them.
• The company has stated that it exhausted all options to sell or otherwise prolong the game existence, which now appears to have been a lie. Lies in business world often bring legal trouble for those that articulate them.
• Better yet - if you could be seen as co-author, they lied to mislead you in order for you to drop any action preventing the game from closing down. I am trying to avoid legalspeak, because I am no lawyer myself, but this again smells like misconduct or something similar.

edit: And hey, NCsoft has been known to break the law before. In particular they are no stranger to fraud, misconduct and forgery: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NC_Soft#Controversy

It seems to me, upon reflection, that I might be no more justified in feeling upset than the compulsive gambler would be if we kicked him out of the casino.  I bought into the neon lights of the virtual Las Vegas, checking myself in to the Hero Hotel.  Do I feel like a hero now?  Frankly, I feel like a fool.

A gambler does not add any creative value to the casino operation. A MMO player does.

[dwturducken]

Noted, then I apologize for my contribution to this, and I'll probably not reply anymore to this topic to further aggrieving this problem.

I'm sorry if my responses have broken any rules or offended anybody.

None of these! The thread is going in an interesting direction, but it's a little further than a simple tangent.

[Osborn]

I'm deleting this message because I really shouldn't be trying to make this into such a political thing, and need to take my own advice to not do so.

[Turjan]

If not, what other actions can we take?

Curiously, it's the concept of us - gamers - ourselves taking action that I believe has led to the recent (and ongoing) successes of Kickstarter video game projects.

The gulf between game developers and game publishers is widening - the publishers see a successful formula and keep churning it out in the belief that if it worked once, it'll work again - and better second time around because it'll have moar cowbells, as it were. In this category we find the infinite number of Call of Dutys and of course the infamous Korean grindfests.

Game developers however tend to have a different view. They want to keep adding and expanding and innovating, not mass-producing the same title over and over with tweaks.

And this is why game developers are turning to Kickstarter rather than the big name publishers, and seeking funding directly from gamers. The gamers have an actual say in the game's creation, and therefore also the whole issue of The Right To Play.

In the same way that Myspace made the record companies panic because it took control out of their hands and put it back into the hands of the musicians themselves, I foresee the same thing happening with Kickstarter video game designers and the big games publishers.

Kickstarter promises a sense of community, a level of personal involvement that the publishing companies simply cannot offer. People like to feel special, that they're part of something. No one likes to think of themselves as some faceless statistic, another number to be ticked off on a monthly sales graph. Empowering the gamer is what Kickstarter projects are all about.

And for the games publishing companies, an empowered gamer is something to be feared. The more successful games projects Kickstarter produces, the more I believe the games industry will be forced to change the way it treats gamers. Gamers are no longer the cash spewing dupes they've been taking them for all these years.

[Victoria Victrix]

They're listening to us:

http://www.holdtheline.com/threads/layoffs-at-ncsoft-seattle.3936/

Check out the main page: 

http://www.holdtheline.com/

[Perfidus]

Hold the line! Love isn't always on time! Oh oh oh.

That's great news, thanks for the tip VV.

[Osborn]

Curiously, it's the concept of us - gamers - ourselves taking action that I believe has led to the recent (and ongoing) successes of Kickstarter video game projects.

The gulf between game developers and game publishers is widening - the publishers see a successful formula and keep churning it out in the belief that if it worked once, it'll work again - and better second time around because it'll have moar cowbells, as it were. In this category we find the infinite number of Call of Dutys and of course the infamous Korean grindfests.

Game developers however tend to have a different view. They want to keep adding and expanding and innovating, not mass-producing the same title over and over with tweaks.

And this is why game developers are turning to Kickstarter rather than the big name publishers, and seeking funding directly from gamers. The gamers have an actual say in the game's creation, and therefore also the whole issue of The Right To Play.

In the same way that Myspace made the record companies panic because it took control out of their hands and put it back into the hands of the musicians themselves, I foresee the same thing happening with Kickstarter video game designers and the big games publishers.

Kickstarter promises a sense of community, a level of personal involvement that the publishing companies simply cannot offer. People like to feel special, that they're part of something. No one likes to think of themselves as some faceless statistic, another number to be ticked off on a monthly sales graph. Empowering the gamer is what Kickstarter projects are all about.

And for the games publishing companies, an empowered gamer is something to be feared. The more successful games projects Kickstarter produces, the more I believe the games industry will be forced to change the way it treats gamers. Gamers are no longer the cash spewing dupes they've been taking them for all these years.

The problem though with Kickstarter as a 'solution' to the problem with publishers are that Kickstarters don't generate enough cash to get the sort of Triple A titles that people demand often (causal gaming is successful, and indie gaming is successful, but they're not mutually exclusive with Triple A titles; they scratch different itches). The most successful Kickstarters are done by people who, frankly already have the clout that most people wouldn't have had to start with without a publisher. Though there are plenty of exceptions to that rule, they aren't the 'Big Bad Boring Publisher' killer that people think they will be. The 'record' Kickstarters are raking in maybe 3 million dollars. And that certainly isn't the median. I wouldn't expect much but niche gaming from them anytime soon.

The second problem is that, Publishers often weather losses that I don't think a Kickstarter group is going to tolerate. Too many people throw cash into a Kickstarter thinking it's effectively pre-ordering a game in a year. But not every game makes it to the shelves. There are a lot that just end up vaporware for various reasons (or should had stayed that way. See: Duke Nukem Forever). Publishers do take big risks sometimes and have the clout and money to absorb the occasional loss. That's why they favor 'boring and samey' games like Call of Duty 32,946, because that's a constant revenue stream that brings in the bacon to allow them to finally take a risk or two.

But we're just waiting, really, for a Kickstarter that gets really big, and I mean like, 3 million dollars big, to fail. Then all hell is going to break loose in the Kickstarter world, and it's going to get the same sorts of rule and regulations that are going to turn it basically into another stock market/publishing arm the same as every other company ever, I bet.

That's why Tony V's been very wise to not try to rely yet on crowd funding at this stage in either the Save CoH effort or Plan Z efforts, even though the longer he waits the less he'll be able to make period. While I'm sure he'd love to have the largest bankroll possible for whatever direction this effort takes, the effort would suffer many fold more if things didn't pan out and people basically donated for nothing.

[Victoria Victrix]

These guys are seriously into ethics in gaming (and other places) and the folks who are posting here could do a WHOLE lot worse than add their voices over there.

[AlienOne]

These guys are seriously into ethics in gaming (and other places) and the folks who are posting here could do a WHOLE lot worse than add their voices over there.

WHOLEHEARTEDLY AGREED.

Some of the stuff I've read in this thread alone should qualify some people to head over there and start posting... Get your voices heard!

[Turjan]

The problem though with Kickstarter as a 'solution' to the problem with publishers are that Kickstarters don't generate enough cash to get the sort of Triple A titles that people demand often

But that's the point - it's the 'Triple A' titles that end up being bloodless reanimated cropses of their former selves. It's the very notion that such titles are "the way to go" that needs to be abandoned if gamers are to see any justice or have any personal power. It's like the Brawndo drink in the film Idiocracy - people aren't demanding it, they've just been drinking it so long they have no concept of drinking anything else, because the company slogan "Brawndo - it's got electrolytes" has become a mantra. Even though they have no idea what electrolytes are...

Thankfully, Idiocracy isn't reality. Not yet at least ;)

In reality, no single product can appeal to everyone, which is why so many of the big game titles seem so bland and shallow - they have to be in order to maximise sales. But niche gaming IS the future because that's where gamers can find the product that appeals to them as individuals. And there too they can exercise the most say and therefore have the most control.

The second problem is that, Publishers often weather losses that I don't think a Kickstarter group is going to tolerate.
........
That's why they favor 'boring and samey' games like Call of Duty 32,946, because that's a constant revenue stream that brings in the bacon to allow them to finally take a risk or two.

There was a time I'd have agreed with you about publishers having the clout to take a risk, but I think the sad truth these days is they just don't seem to want to bother with risk titles any more. If they did, Kickstarter games wouldn't even exist at all. With very few exceptions, the big publishers have bought into their own hype that it's easier to simply keep churning out the same titles over and over.

And the very fact that Kickstarter is crowd funded means the game developers can't weather a loss - that's the point. They commit to a project and their backers commit to them. Everyone knows that at the outset, so it's not really a case of a group tolerating a loss, the fiscal mechanic is entirely different.

That's why Tony V's been very wise to not try to rely yet on crowd funding at this stage in either the Save CoH effort or Plan Z efforts, even though the longer he waits the less he'll be able to make period. While I'm sure he'd love to have the largest bankroll possible for whatever direction this effort takes, the effort would suffer many fold more if things didn't pan out and people basically donated for nothing.

Absolutely. The main reason why Kickstarter was mostly being rejected in the early days of our campaign was because of the IP hassles. It's not possible to Kickstart "City of Heroes" because it wasn't ours to Kickstart. And as long as plans are still afoot to try and regain the original CoH IP we all know and love rather than concentrate 100% on an entirely new "spirit of CoH" project, it would be both impractical and previous to try to put a Kickstarter together.

Maybe, should everything fail, and NCsoft squat on the CoH IP like some bloated Shelob in their ever-darkening lair, then Kickstarter may well be the way ahead for us with an incarnation of Project Z/Phoenix/whatever we choose to call it. You said yourself it works best for niche markets, and that does pretty much sum up what we are! :)

[Osborn]

But that's the point - it's the 'Triple A' titles that end up being bloodless reanimated corpses of their former selves. It's the very notion that such titles are "the way to go" that needs to be abandoned if gamers are to see any justice or have any personal power. It's like the Brawndo drink in the film Idiocracy - people aren't demanding it, they've just been drinking it so long they have no concept of drinking anything else, because the company slogan "Brawndo - it's got electrolytes" has become a mantra. Even though they have no idea what electrolytes are...

Thankfully, Idiocracy isn't reality. Not yet at least ;)

Ignoring your Idiocracy quote as I believe it harms your argument more than it helps because that movie is terrible, I don't really see a need to 'abandon' Triple A titles. A lot of very good games came out of it. Even lately, titles like Skyrim, Portal 2, Assassin's Creed, Mass Effect etc. came out of the Triple A industry.

And my point was, really, that Kickstarters aren't going to be able to produce those games. And when they do make enough bank to produce them, eventually something is going to fall through because, as I said, many games don't make it to shelves (or shouldn't). But I don't think customers who pay into Kickstarters do it with the proper mindset.

I don't like EA. I really don't like publishers, at all. I don't like the fact they can own IP rather than lease them, and can bury them without intent to use them like they're doing with CoH. But EA is capable and willing to put money on a risk that normal customers, if they were educated, probably wouldn't.

It's really a ticking time bomb for something to get both mega huge and to fold up without any product. I don't think Kickstarter users are prepared to deal with crowd funding 10 million dollars into a game to have it vaporware. And it will eventually happen.

In reality, no single product can appeal to everyone, which is why so many of the big game titles seem so bland and shallow - they have to be in order to maximise sales. But niche gaming IS the future because that's where gamers can find the product that appeals to them as individuals. And there too they can exercise the most say and therefore have the most control.

I don't even think niche games are going to appeal to everybody, that's not their point either? I'm not sure your point. Mainstream games don't appeal to everybody either, or you wouldn't be here complaining about them. Are you trying to argue that Kickstarters allow customers to exercise more control over the market than just buying games? Because really you exercise the same amount of control either way.

There was a time I'd have agreed with you about publishers having the clout to take a risk, but I think the sad truth these days is they just don't seem to want to bother with risk titles any more. If they did, Kickstarter games wouldn't even exist at all. With very few exceptions, the big publishers have bought into their own hype that it's easier to simply keep churning out the same titles over and over.

Two things with that. One, I don't think publishers used to take more risks. I think they take about the same amount of them now as they have since pretty much forever. There was a whole library of the same doughy kinda but not Mario like platformers on the NES. Not taking risks with the exception here or there is something publishers have been doing for basically ever. This isn't some sort of new age of non-risk taking, that's been pretty much static ever since money was involved in this system.

Secondly, you seem to think that people will either buy a Triple A title like Skyrim or play something like Minecraft and there's no middle ground and none of them ever play both. Kickstarters exist not because people won't play Triple A titles, because considering the major bank games like Call of Duty 30 thousand they apparently are playing those games, but because people can and will play both.

And the very fact that Kickstarter is crowd funded means the game developers can't weather a loss - that's the point. They commit to a project and their backers commit to them. Everyone knows that at the outset, so it's not really a case of a group tolerating a loss, the fiscal mechanic is entirely different.

You seem to be in some sort of bizarre reality where spending money automatically equates success in a project, but that's not the case in the reality I've witnessed. Game developers can surely still blow through their Kickstarter funds. Actually what you said there is a good example, to me, of the mindset people who pay into Kickstarters have that is going to make them eventually fail as a thing.

You, right there are basically telling me that you believe these things are magically perfectly guaranteed. But that's not how reality plays out. Things happen. Sometimes a project being worked on needs to start over. Sometimes a designer dies. Sometimes the fad moves on and the developer needs to change tactics. There will come a point where SOMETHING will come up to a million dollar + Kickstarter and it won't be able to continue without another infusion of another millions dollars. This is a reality of publishing anything with high enough development costs.

This is why Kickstarter, as is, is a time bomb. Eventually it will grow big enough to fund a game with the scope of something like Skyrim. And those projects fail all the time. Eventually one of them is going to fail, and people like you who think that "I threw money at it, that means I was committed, and they were committed" are going to have to look at the reality of this failed project and reevaluate this funding method.

And, as I said, I don't think the general internet crowd is going into this with the right mindset. You're all going into Kickstarters with the mindsets that it's this basically flawless plan, like if you put 50 dollars into the Kickstarter you're basically pre-ordering a finished and guaranteed product.

That is the very mindset that's going to burn people when inevitably something backfires.

[srmalloy]

This is why Kickstarter, as is, is a time bomb. Eventually it will grow big enough to fund a game with the scope of something like Skyrim. And those projects fail all the time. Eventually one of them is going to fail, and people like you who think that "I threw money at it, that means I was committed, and they were committed" are going to have to look at the reality of this failed project and reevaluate this funding method.

And, as I said, I don't think the general internet crowd is going into this with the right mindset. You're all going into Kickstarters with the mindsets that it's this basically flawless plan, like if you put 50 dollars into the Kickstarter you're basically pre-ordering a finished and guaranteed product.

It depends on who is behind the Kickstarter proposal. One I backed was the Ogre Designer's Edition, put up by Steve Jackson Games -- a gaming company with a known track record, who had produced the original version of the game. And they were wildly successful, getting more than $900,000 in pledges against a $20,000 goal. But I admit that this is a special case, and the run-of-the-mill Kickstarter project organizers aren't going to be anywhere close to having that kind of recognition and confidence that they would be able to deliver on everything they're promising.

[Turjan]

Ignoring your Idiocracy quote as I believe it harms your argument more than it helps because that movie is terrible

lol If you prefer then, think instead of the 1951 Cyril M. Kornbluth story called "The Marching Morons" on which Idiocracy was mostly based.

Secondly, you seem to think that people will either buy a Triple A title like Skyrim or play something like Minecraft and there's no middle ground and none of them ever play both. Kickstarters exist not because people won't play Triple A titles, because considering the major bank games like Call of Duty 30 thousand they apparently are playing those games, but because people can and will play both.

I never said that people who play Call of Duty 'to the Nth' don't play anything else as well, I said that everyone has a unique set of preferences, and a generic title cannot satisfy them the same way a tailored game can. Continuing that 'tailored' analogy, folk will buy a 'nearest fit' off-the-shelf item, but if given the choice, they'll prefer to take one that's been tailored specifically to them.

This is why Kickstarter, as is, is a time bomb. Eventually it will grow big enough to fund a game with the scope of something like Skyrim. And those projects fail all the time. Eventually one of them is going to fail, and people like you who think that "I threw money at it, that means I was committed, and they were committed" are going to have to look at the reality of this failed project and reevaluate this funding method.

I think you're painting people with a very broad brush here. Your statement implies you assume that everyone who backs a Kickstarter project is some sort of financially naive idiot. You may disagree with the system, but that's no reason to insult the people who do back Kickstarter projects - especially when you're implying they're committing money blindly and without thought.

And, as I said, I don't think the general internet crowd is going into this with the right mindset. You're all going into Kickstarters with the mindsets that it's this basically flawless plan, like if you put 50 dollars into the Kickstarter you're basically pre-ordering a finished and guaranteed product.

That is the very mindset that's going to burn people when inevitably something backfires.

I must say, you seem to have as negative a view of Kickstarter as you're accusing me of having a positive one! :P

I can certainly understand reticence or caution - such a mindset is wise when it comes to committing any money to anything, especially in these financially troubled times - but I fear your attitude of Kickstarter doom may be bordering on the pathological ;) Before anyone backs a project at Kickstarter, they are directed to the Basics and FAQs. And key among those are these :

Kickstarter Basics: Accountability
Why can't Kickstarter guarantee projects?

It's there in black and white, before even a single dollar is pledged. No one is forcing anyone to invest their money, and the Kickstarter system itself makes it quite clear that nothing is 100% guaranteed.

[Victoria Victrix]

Play nice, or by all that is holy I will turn this thread around and NOBODY gets ice cream!