It’s not a rhetorical question.
I’m generally unimpressed with mobile gaming. I’ve always felt that the combination of small screens and touch-based controls narrow the range of the possible to a really constricting degree. There are exceptions, of course, but I’m deeply underwhelmed by most games for smartphones. I got the Android version of Another World, a brilliant, beautiful old PC game. It’s awful. The touch-based controls are vague and indistinct, and you can’t watch the beautiful animations because the screen is constantly covered by your hands. For most game types, the lack of tactility is a problem, and it just doesn’t make sense to have the same surface used for input and for visuals.
But there are some that pull it off. One such game is Monument Valley, a genuinely beautiful, inventive puzzler with great production values, including wonderful sound and music. It’s what people ask for when they ask for video games that are emotionally moving and artistically inventive. The developer who made it has just released a major expansion for only $2. And so of course, people are losing their shit. Because two dollars is too much to ask for much more of a brilliant game, people are flooding the App Store with one-star reviews. Two. Dollars. Two hundred pennies.
Eli Hodapp:
seriously guys? It seems like the hive mind of the App Store is continually pushing developers in to this unrealistic corner of demanding absolutely everything but not being willing to pay anything. The fact of the matter is Monument Valley is an amazing game, made by real artists, working in a real studio, getting paid real salaries, with real families they go home to and support. They’re selling their game for a total of six bucks if you buy both the game itself and the expansion. I don’t fully understand what happened to get us on this horrible Biff with the almanac timeline of Earth where this kind of thing is unacceptable to iOS gamers.
We are now about 15 years into the era of file sharing. For years and years, people who pirate digital media have been vociferously defended as noble political resisters to Big Media companies. The problem, I’ve been constantly told, is that there’s no convenient, inexpensive ways to get this content, so of course people turn to torrenting. Well, guess what: that argument is not remotely defensible, anymore. The infrastructure for conveniently delivering content that you asked for has been built. Those low prices that you wanted are available. And people still download by the millions.
You’re mad that Taylor Swift pulled her music off of Spotify? Hey, here’s the MP3s on Amazon for the entire album for $12. There’s the individual songs for $1.29. Or is that too expensive for you? An album that took hundreds of hours to write, produce, and record? That cost millions of dollars to make, market, and distribute? $9.99 for the CD, delivered to your home, is a burden you can’t afford to bear? You want movies. Cool. Here’s brand new releases for 48 hours of streaming for $3. Here’s a ton of older movie rentals for a dollar. Here’s digital rights for life for $10. Amazon Prime comes with thousands of movies and it costs $100 for a year, along with unlimited photo storage, hundreds of free albums, and free deliveries. Netflix has thousands of movies and shows, including original programming that you can’t get anywhere else, for $9 a month. Do people still torrent that programming constantly, despite that cheap price? Of course! You’re a gamer? Here, let’s check out Steam. Here’s its constant sales, endlessly driving prices down. Here’s a beloved, award-winning game for $12. And here’s the torrent site where that game has been downloaded thousands of times. Here’s a charity bundle where you get 10 games and can name your own price. Here’s the torrent for that bundle. Gaming on the go? Here’s a free game from the Google Play store. Here’s a bundle of 20 games for $5. All delivered wirelessly, as if by magic, to your phone in a matter of seconds. But somehow, you think you’re oppressed by the fact that the makers of one of the best mobile games ever dared to ask you to pay them for their labor.
Guess what: we’ve got access and we’ve got cheap and people still don’t pay. They’re not principled revolutionaries. They’re not creating some new economy. They’re not oppressed by Big Media companies. By and large, they’re people who have the ability to easily get what they want in their own home, and they can afford to get it, and they just don’t want to pay. That’s not being part of the new culture. That’s being a selfish asshole. And the worst part is that I guarantee you these people will tell you that they love art most of all, that they’re the biggest movie buffs, that they take video games more seriously than anyone else. Well look: we’re living in capitalism, I’m sorry to say, and in capitalism, if you respect people’s work and want it to continue, you’ve got to pay for it. Free art and media all the time is not a workable solution in a world where the rent and food aren’t free. You want socialism, let’s start with the banks. I’m much more keen to get Jamie Dimon’s billions than I am to get Taylor Swift’s millions.
This is what the average tech-head wants now: he wants everything he wants whenever he wants it 100% for free. He complains about games that required an online connection but gets games he could get for $5 on Steam for free from torrents. He complained that you couldn’t get a separate HBO Go subscription but won’t bother paying for one now that you can. He’s mad there isn’t more independent media but he does nothing to pay for the independent media that exists now. He laughs at clickbait but he doesn’t pay for serious journalism. He hates online advertising but he finds paywalls laughable. He thinks free to play games are a contagion but he doesn’t want to pay for games upfront. He reads blogs and magazines religiously but he never pays into the tip jar or takes out a subscription. He has an endless series of indictments about the system but never considers the moral value of his own behavior at all. He’s a modern guy.
Time for new rhetoric, please. If you hate heavy-handed antipiracy efforts, like I do, and if you think we desperately need IP reforms, like I do, and you also think that artists should get paid for their hard work, then stop reflexively defending everyone who pirates digital media. You are part of the problem as long as you refuse to judge people who could pay and don’t. If you have a convenient way to pay a low price for quality art and media, and you choose to get it for free anyway, you’re a selfish asshole, and people who care about the future of art and ideas have to be willing to say so.