GameSpot - Net Neutrality - a major issue for games?

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SasqWatch
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According to Gamespot, Oddworld's creator Lorne Lanning has this to say about losing the risk of losing net neutrality for games:

"These are multinational, enormous corporations and if they get their way, they could stifle this indie community in the media. They could start really clamping the dial and taking away the revenue that we've finally been able to find that we can get, that allows us to keep going... Today on a $10 product, we get $7. Well what if $2 of that has to start going to AT&T or Comcast? That could very easily happen."
Do you agree with mr. Lanning?

More information.
 
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A short article, yet touches too many things.

Some already know that I've backed Neptune Pine and it's not being shipped yet (more than a half of a year delay). It's already manufactured and set for shipment so where's the delay?
FCC.

Mentioned in that article. FCC, probably deliberately, didn't issue a needed certificate yet. In the meantime, apple and samsung are leaking info on their upcoming smartwatches, seems also google and asus will join the race.
Conspiracy theory? They all payed FCC to stop Neptune Pine!

But it's a gadget, not a game. When it comes to games it's obvious that today marketing makes possible to sell crap. And then you buy that crap and don't have more cash to buy a good game, most probably an indie game.
Another thing mentioned in the article is "taxing" a player. You live in a country and you pay taxes set by your government, right? Yea... Somehow, somewhere, some companies decided they're above governments and you should also pay taxes to them. I really dunno who started it, but it was MMOs who launched so called "subscription" you pay even if you don't play because if you don't pay you won't be able to play when you're feeling like playing a game.

Will idies really suffer in the end? No.
I'm still the minority, but people are not stupid. With enough quality indies you pay for once and play anytime you want, eventually noone will accept to pay (taxes) for nothing.
 
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A short article, yet touches too many things.

Some already know that I've backed Neptune Pine and it's not being shipped yet (more than a half of a year delay). It's already manufactured and set for shipment so where's the delay?
FCC.

Mentioned in that article. FCC, probably deliberately, didn't issue a needed certificate yet. In the meantime, apple and samsung are leaking info on their upcoming smartwatches, seems also google and asus will join the race.
Conspiracy theory? They all payed FCC to stop Neptune Pine!

But it's a gadget, not a game. When it comes to games it's obvious that today marketing makes possible to sell crap. And then you buy that crap and don't have more cash to buy a good game, most probably an indie game.
Another thing mentioned in the article is "taxing" a player. You live in a country and you pay taxes set by your government, right? Yea… Somehow, somewhere, some companies decided they're above governments and you should also pay taxes to them. I really dunno who started it, but it was MMOs who launched so called "subscription" you pay even if you don't play because if you don't pay you won't be able to play when you're feeling like playing a game.

Will idies really suffer in the end? No.
I'm still the minority, but people are not stupid. With enough quality indies you pay for once and play anytime you want, eventually noone will accept to pay (taxes) for nothing.

I actually prefer the subscription based MMO. I'm old enough to remember that the first 'MMOs' (basically the first MUDs or online multiplayer RPGs) charged for the time played. To me that was much worse, as I fell like when I was playing I had to do something, I couldn't just chill, read the descriptions, talk to other players. With subscription I didn't have to worry about what I was doing anymore, I could take my time no problem. Maybe a solution would be to have both, a per-hour fee for those who don't play much, and a monthly fee for those who play a lot.
 
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Wolfling but what's wrong with the model Wizard101 uses?
You have a few areas to play for free. Other areas you unlock by paying once and playing any time you want and as much time as you want.

But okay, it's all MMO stuff. What and who guarantees we won't see MMO subscription models in singleplayer games? We already do see crapitems DLC that are totally MMO thing. Who says a month or a year from now we won't have to pay monthly to Steam, Gamergate, GMG or someone to play a singleplayer game we bought ages ago?
 
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I'm pretty much in the boat that the less government the better. And when big corporations collude with the government to affect policy that favors them at the moment, they become the age old crony.

I have no doubt net neutrality, or whatever nomenclature eventually gets used as government keeps coming back to this kind of regulation over and over again under different names, is an inevitability. Our apathetic culture can't really be bothered to pay much attention to anything until it affects their wallets directly... and then it's too late as the policies have already been made into law.
 
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But if they start getting charged $10 a night for that overnight session that they like playing, I think they're going to vote.

Internet works kind of like that in canada and everyone hates it, but it's government mandated. No ISP in the US will be dumb enough to charge this way because they will go out of business.
 
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I'm pretty much in the boat that the less government the better. And when big corporations collude with the government to affect policy that favors them at the moment, they become the age old crony.

I have no doubt net neutrality, or whatever nomenclature eventually gets used as government keeps coming back to this kind of regulation over and over again under different names, is an inevitability. Our apathetic culture can't really be bothered to pay much attention to anything until it affects their wallets directly… and then it's too late as the policies have already been made into law.

This +1000.

Plus in all the talk about Net Neutrality the benefits of competition are almost always completely ignored. If there was more competition there would be strong incentive for ISP's to be neutral and open their networks as much as possible because the consumer could easily vote with their wallet and move to a more open Internet provider.

I feel that Net Neutrality as it is being currently advocated would help the big dupolistic ISP's more than it would hurt them because it would be written in a way that makes more competition even less likely and then they could price gouge us even more. They would have a hand in writing the legislation to do just that.
 
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I sort of agree with him but, honestly, the Internet needs to be treated as a common carrier first.
 
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I don't think people understand what happened with Netflix which started this trend of event. That's not to say that network owners couldn't change their business model but to my knowledge it hasn't happened yet and Netflix is not a counter example…
 
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