Piracy Hurts Pirates

The standard defense against internet piracy is that it doesn’t hurt anyone.  This is often explained by the idea that physical objects are stolen, so the creators are free to continue selling their product.  Thus no real harm is done.  If we avoid arguments of intellectual property theft and copyright infringement, there is someone that is more directly harmed by internet piracy: pirates.

In a capitalist economy, product creation is driven by supply and demand.  The greater the demand, the greater the supply.  In this modern era, with the plethora of information available, demand is very easily quantified.

Because of this, past sales greatly impacts new creations.  Your video game sold 8 million copies?  You get a sequel, regardless of the original’s mixed reviews.  Your game sells poorly?  You don’t get a sequel (at least anytime soon) even with great reviews.

So how does this relate to piracy?  While not every download equals one sale, every sale that is lost hurts the chances for a sequel.  This includes more than just true sequels.  An entire genre can be doomed by poor sales and piracy.  Case in point: poor adventure games sales have limited its widespread support, while high-selling first person shooters cause continued development of a plethora of games every year.

Similar tales can be told of movies and music as well.  As consumers, our most powerful tool is to speak with our dollars.  We do this by buying the kinds of media we want to see created.  Not buy stealing it.

A Forgotten War: Afghanistan

The Iraqi war gets lots of headlines.  There is a constant political conversation about whether or not the war was justified, how the war is going now, and when is it going to end.  This keeps that conflict on the top of people’s minds.

But the United States is also fighting a second war, this one in Afghanistan.  I understand that this war is not as sexy or interesting.  There is no major political angle or current controversy.  It was a retaliation war, backed by the majority of our allies, in direct response to the very real attack on 9/11.

But it too is a deadly conflict.  Americans are giving their lives to protect this country every single day.  According the Department of Defense, 968 American service members have died as part of the operation.  I know this is small compared to the 4,366 who have died in Iraqi.  But each and everyone of those people had families and friends who mourn their lost.

Three men died on Friday, February 5 in the Afghanistan conflict.  I do not process the resources to access much about the deceased.  All I can give you are names and a bit of basic information.  But I hope this is enough to remind you that there are those out there giving the ultimate sacrifice for our protection, and we should not forget them.

HARTMAN, David J., 27, Sgt. 1st Class, Army; Okinawa, Japan; 96th Civil Affairs Battalion (Airborne), 95th Civil Affairs Brigade (Airborne).

SLUSS-TILLER, Matthew S., 35, Sgt. 1st Class, Army; Callettsburg, Ky.; 96th Civil Affairs Battalion (Airborne), 95th Civil Affairs Brigade (Airborne).

STETS, Mark A., 39, Staff Sgt., Army; El Cajon, Calif.; 8th Psychological Operations Battalion (Airborne), 4th Psychological Operations Group (Air borne).

Listen to Your Players

Every game master knows that planning a game is an intense creative process.  As such, it is important to always be on the lookout for inspiration.  Great game ideas can come from movies, books, video games, and television.  They also can come from your players.

Your players will talk with each other at the table.  Often the table talk is focused on the task at hand, be it combat or conversation.  But every once in a while, the talk will turn to speculation.  They will try and discover the identity of their current villain or the purpose of the precious Mac Guffin. All sorts of theories and concepts will come out.

A GM should listen carefully to all of this speculation.  You should do that even if you know exactly who the villain is or what the Mac Guffin does.  While you may be a creative genius, your players are probably relatively creative people as well.  All the ideas they throw out can be useful, in two different ways.

The first is obviously in relationship to the task at hand.  If they think up a better idea for the Mac Guffin, use it.  Feel free to abandon your pre-planning if your players create something better.  This can make the quest itself better and more interesting.  It will also make your players feel smarter for having figured out the mystery.

The second use is to file it away.  Great ideas are hard to come by; never throw one away.  Maybe their concept that the Mac Guffin is a the heart of an ancient demon lord doesn’t fit your story.  But it could easily fit into your next campaign that involves a war between demons and devils.

So listen to your players.  They will give you all sorts of clues and hints of what they think is going on.  Make use of this to make your game as good as it possibly can be.

-That is all.

11 Minutes More Than Baseball

The Wall Street Journal recently did study of NFL football broadcasts.  They broke down how much time was spent on each of the various parts of the presentation.  The biggest surprise?  In a 2 hour and 45 minute broadcast, there is 11 minutes of actual football.

It is really amazing to think of how much time is spent on other things.  There is actually more time (17 minutes) spent in replay. Over six times as much time is used to show players standing around.

What makes this impressive is the fact that most football viewers don’t really notice this.  The pace of the action and its presentation create a feeling that there is far more action.  In a good game, the broadcast can completely captivate the audience, even when nothing is really happening.

I think the main reason is because the NFL has created a culture of conversation about its sport.  Every game is promoted by every possible angle, creating a multitude of topics to talk about.  They schedule off-season activities like the draft such that their sport is in the news all year round, despite having the shortest actual season.  Clear presentation and marketing has turned 11 minutes of intense action into the most watched sports programming in America.

-That is all.

Massively Enjoying My Role

I am playing Mass Effect 2. Note that this is the sequel to my favorite Xbox 360 game, and one of my favorite games of all time.  I beat the original six times, spending over 150 hours in the game. Needless to say, there was a lot to live up to.  And it fulfills every single one of my expectations.  An awesome game that everyone should play.

That said, the game definitely departs from its predecessor when it comes to traditional role-playing mechanics.  There is no loot.  Killing enemies gives you no experience.  The skill “trees” are linear and very basic.  Combat is mostly dependent on player skill, rather than based on stats and dice rolls.  Leveling is important, but mostly controlled through game progression.  The common phrase in reviews is that this is a “third-person shooter with RPG elements.”  I understand what they are trying to say, but I believe they are missing the greater picture.

Mass Effect 2, like its original, is not a game driven by its shooting mechanics.  Nor is it driven by its armor, its weapons, its leveling, or its skills.  Story participation, world exploration and character interaction is what rules this universe.

The story is not a passive journey that tags along the action.  You, through the actions of Commander Shepard, are an active participant of the story.  Your actions and decisions will change how the story progresses, right up to and including the final ending.  This game even incorporates the choices you made in the original.  Add-in the non-linear nature of the mission selection and party composition, and everyone’s journey through the game will be different.

And that is what role-playing is to me.  The ability to forge your own path that is unique from those around you.  It is important that gameplay be fun, but it is also important for the gameplay to stay out of the way.  By focusing on a limited scope of mechanics, ME2 makes the choices stand out more, makes the consequences be more powerful.  Mass Effect 2 is most definitely a role-playing game, and a damn fine one at that.

-That is all.

Why We Help Others

South Carolina lieutenant governor Andre Bauer recently compared people on government assistance to stray, breeding animals.  When questioned about this comparison, he further elaborated:

My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why? Because they breed! You’re facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don’t think too much further than that.

So rather than help others, we should let them starve, preventing them from having children.  This from a “pro-life” candidate who argues against abortion in order to preserve the “sanctity of life.”  Hypocrisy at its best.

Bauer is assuming that every person on government assistance either a) deserves being poor because of their own mistakes or b) would not be poor if they just worked harder.  He is missing people who are on government assistance for reasons outside of their control.  These range from getting laid off because of an economic downturn to being cultural discriminated by the mere fact of race, gender, sexual orientation or location.  These are the people that need help.

When a man or woman is laid off of hir job, it is usually a temporary situation.  This is true even if the original job never brings them back; most people will eventually find new employment.  Government assistance helps ease the dead period between.  When the economy is bad, this new job is sometimes less money.  Government assistance can aid in transitioning to a lower standard of living as well.  We help them for a temporary stretch until they are once again stable.  This is usually pretty well accepted.

Cultural discrimination is a bit more complicated, due to it happening at a larger scale.  It is a problem all across our society, to individual and groups alike.  A heterosexual, upper-middle class, white male (like myself) has access to far more resources and opportunity that a homosexual, poor, black female does.  The goal of government assistance here is to help the woman to overcome this cultural gap.  To people like Andre Bauer, this action is taking their hard earned money to help these people, and that this taking is unjust and unfair.  The argument goes that if ze earned hir money, ze should decide what to with it.  Ze is not responsibility to pay for cultural discrimination.

This is the wrong stance to take.  One must acknowledge is that those of us with privileged have that privilege through the discrimination of those of us without.  The example heterosexual, upper-middle class, white male does not earn all of his success himself.  This is true even if he is not the least bit racist or sexist or homophobic.  The world around him simply treats him better than a poor, black woman.  He has opportunities she does not.

Similarly Bauer did not earn his success himself.  His wealth and power came at the expense at opportunity and success of others.  Not only should he help those who are discriminated, it is needs to do if he believes in fairness and justice.  Our culture gave him an unfair advantage through his privilege, and he should pay it back.

-That is all.

Advertising to Fight DVR

I wrote a while back about DVR and its ability to fast forward, and how that would change advertising.  The idea is that an ad needs to be functional at two different speeds: standard playback and fast forward.  When I wrote the first article, it was simply speculation.  I had no practical examples.  Until now.

Now, this is not a great ad from an artistic standpoint.  Nothing stands out to distinguish it from any of a million other ads on television.  But pull the slider across, and you realize why its special.  There is still a coherent message given entirely through visual elements.

The companies mascot, the grasshopper, is featured front and center through the entire piece.  Key words are given at the top, and linger long enough to be seen even at high speeds.  Finally, it ends with a simple information panel.  It too lingers long enough for it to be understood and processed.  Fast forwarding will limit the audio absorption, but the ad is not an entire loss.

I believe that this is just the beginning.  As we move forward, this kind of thought process will be more and more common.  These “fast forward proof” ads will become the standard rather than the exception.

-That is all.

Cheapening Life with Miracles

Traditionally, a miracle is an effect or extraordinary event in the physical world that is ascribed to a supernatural cause, usually with positive results.  The parting of the Red Sea by Moses and Jesus multiplying fish and bread are two miracles from Christian mythology.  These were tales of agency, of a divine being’s chosen one directly influencing the world.

Today the term miracle is far more commonly used to describe incredible or unlikely events, without a physical agent of the divine intervening.  These events range from a starving family winning the lottery to a person overcoming cancer.  It is of these miracles that I want to address today.  Specially, that these are not miracles and to call them that is to cheapen the human experience.

Let us take the example of a woman overcoming cancer.  When originally diagnosed, she was given only a few years to live.  But through the various events that follow, she gets the cancer into remission.  Suddenly, her prognoses is for a long, fulfilling life.  She has beaten cancer.  Those who hear her story call it a miracle, that a god has reached out and saved her life.

But a god did not save her life.  First and foremost, it takes away her own agency.  A person does not overcome cancer without being strong.  It is an endurance run, a marathon that only she can do.  It is her hair that falls out; she is the one throwing up from the chemo.  To give the divine credit is to take away the strength of her struggle.

She does not do this alone either.  Cancer is not some unknown thing.  While it is not completely understood, current medical knowledge has made great strides in treating cancer.  Chemotherapy.  Radiation.  Surgery.  There are multitudes of methods used to fight cancer.  An entire multitude of people, from the direct doctors to the extended research and development, work with a cancer victim to help her fight it off.  To give the divine credit takes away from their aid of her struggle.

Finally, one rarely fights cancer alone.  There are family and friends that help her through the struggle.  Often this help is not direct aid against the cancer.  Instead, the support is through cleaning her house, cooking her meals, driving her to treatments, etc.  To give the divine credit takes away from their support of her struggle.

The woman did not survive because of divine interference.  It is not a miracle.  She survived from medical expertise, family & friend support, and her own determination.  And that makes it more amazing, not less amazing.  Humans, mortals like you and I, fought cancer and won.

The accomplishments of humanity are amazing.  Think about the fact that men have walked on the surface of the moon.  That I can call any one in the world from a device I keep in my pocket.  That scientist have mapped the entire human genome.  We did all of this. Us, a species of great ape that emerged from the tree of life only 200,000 years ago.  And there is more to come.  Makes me proud to be a human.

-That is all.

Shedding the pseudonym

Anonymity can cause problems on the internet, as the excellent Penny Arcade comic above illustrates.  The internet is full of vile, malicious people who hid behind screen names and gamertags.  Take any post on any popular website, and you’ll find someone being mean in the comments.  It seems utterly unavoidable.

Of course, the anonymity can also be helpful.  It gives people the opportunity to express themselves in a manner their normal lives inhibit or oppress.  A pseudonym can allow someone to speak out against their employer, their religion, or their country with some degree of safety.

My internet pseudonym has been “lebkin” since my first trip online dialing into AOL.  It was not extremely creative, being built out of the letters of my name in reverse (lleb kcin).  But it worked well.  Wherever I went on the internet, I could be lebkin.  Unlike my shy real-life self, lebkin spoke up on message boards and forums on a regular basis.  He held strong opinions, had a worldview he truly believed in.  He even built a network of friends, larger and more diverse than anything he had in his tiny hometown.  Lebkin was in many ways the best of what I hoped I could be, let loose by the anonymity of the internet.

Somewhere along the way something changed.   While I am still a quiet person, I am far less shy than I was.  I will gladly speak out about politics, religion, etc.  I even grew a beard.  In many ways, I grew into that person I was trying to be.  I have become my alter-ego.

In the same way, I have started shedding that pseudo name as well.  Every post on this blog is done not as lebkin, but as Nick Bell.  These are my words and I am proud of every single one of them.

Selling the Experience: Internet Style

Talk to any die-hard music fan, and you will probably hear them talk about the concert experience.  Being in the physical presence of an artist, even from a distance in a large venue, is something beyond that of simply listening to an album.  The artist becomes a fully breathing being, instead of disembodied sounds.

On a more practical standpoint, concerts allow a fan to more directly support the artist.  A band makes a great deal more for your ticket than your album purchase and even more when buying merchandise at the concert.  It gives you a chance to avoid supporting “the man,” and only give money for art.

Much like my post about game boxes, the internet has changed this.  While the concert is still important, there are new ways to sell the experience.  And the best example of this that I can find is artist Amanda Palmer.

Amanda Palmer is a singer, songwriter, performer.  She is one half of the “Brechtian punk cabaret” duo The Dresden Dolls, as well as performing and recording as a solo artist.  Her success is in many ways because she understands how to speak to the people of today.

She runs a blog.  She has a Facebook page.  She uses Twitter compulsively.  It is a rare day that something from Amanda Palmer does not pass through my media filter. There is a connection to her that I never felt with any of the prior bands I was interested in.

Palmer also knows how to make money from this social connection.  The best example is her “internet parties.”  She gets a group of friends/co-workers/employees together, puts up a webcast, and then invites the internet to join her.  She’ll play songs, sign items, give away prices, and auction whatever she has around of value.  These have been very successful for her, giving her a good source of income and giving us a chance to interact with her on a very personal level.

This is the future.  Simply making music and convincing some record company to publish it is not enough.  Nor is being the most played song on the radio.  You need to reach out and connect to your customers in a real and personal way.  Because if you do not, someone else will.

-That is all.

Bonus points for those who know the man with the chainsaw.