[MUD-Dev] Future of MMOGs

[Crosbie Fitch]

From: Koster, Raph

> "Ah!" you cry. "There are enough people willing to do it for the
> joy of it!"

Hmmmn. I'm not sure I'd cry that quite that way actually.

There will be some who 'do it' for the joy of it. There already
are. Then again, there are many rewards apart from direct
remuneration that are available (publicity, kudos, learning,
authority, etc.)

If you read www.digitalartauction.com I think you'll find I'm pretty
much on the side of trying to enable people to make money out of
digital art. I find it difficult to believe the market for saleable
digital art will dry up.  Though that doesn't mean I think copyright
has a future.

So, if by 'enough' you mean 'enough that there will be no market',
then I disagree: there are not enough people willing to do it for
the joy of it. We need some people willing to do it for the money.

> You see, copyright being a line in the sand that inevitably falls
> also leads towards another conclusion. "Don't broadcast anything."

OR: the conclusion that I came to: "Don't broadcast anything until
you've been paid for it - unless you don't want to be paid for it"

> "Information must be free" just leads to proprietary information

Noo. That's wrong man.

The meme is this: "Information wants to be free"

Like 'ideas want to be free' like 'birds want to be free', like
'secrets want to be told', that kind of thing. Just like Open Source
needing to get across 'Free as in Speech, not as in Beer'.

There's nothing stopping anyone selling a piece of software to the
public domain. Look at Blender. That was a proprietary piece of
software and after receiving $100,000 from 'the interested
community' the proprietary owners released it to the world as Open
Source software.

Similarly, there's nothing stopping a company or individual selling
information to the world.

You create a game. You say "I'll sell this to the world for X
dollars". As long as enough people come forward with a few dollars
willing to represent a proportion of the world, such that 'enough'
times 'few' dollars is X, then you got a deal. Sold to the world for
X dollars!

So, "Information wants to be free" turns into "Information wants to
be sold" cos it has to go via "Information wants to be free and if
the only way it can be free is if the owner sells it, well, then the
information wants to be sold".

> I admit I'm conflicted on all of this. I am a member of ASCAP and
> of the IGDA and the AIAS; I'm also a geeky guy with MP3s and
> region-free DVDs from Asia who puts up short stories on his
> website. This whole situation is not as linear as "it's a line in
> the sand, and it's gonna get crossed." It's more like pushing a
> gyroscope--this push towards the death of copyright is just going
> to make the whole thing precess in a different direction.

  The people is the tide.
  The sand is intellectual property.
  Copyright/IP law/etc.  is the line in the sand.

Commerce is the gyroscope.

People think it's going to get pushed over and that when it falls to
the ground dead, we're all going to starve because no one can make
any money any more. But it won't fall over.

So, you're right, commerce will get pushed into precession (rather
than recession) by the failure of copyright, or in other words, it
will adapt to make money no matter what the circumstances. If there
are artists that need money, and there are people with money that
need art, there's a market, there's commerce.

I really don't know how people can worry about commerce. Sure, you
can worry about some of the big publishers that may be too gigantic
to adapt to the change in prevailing conditions, but change happens
- the big and old die out, and the nimble and young prosper.

Commerce has a big voice and you're going to hear the agonised roars
of those dinosaurs for quite a while as their 'oxygen' of copyright
disappears.

But, the world isn't ending for the little guys who just want to
make art and get paid for it.


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