#Thess on piracy

[thessalian]

Thess vs Piracy

Yeah, I'm awake. I have the ow. And probably the lurgy. And now I have a philosophical conundrum to attend to while I do editing work on the recording of the recent D&D session. See, I reblogged a post from @noctumsolis just now about how there's a different term needed for copying a piece of digital media for personal use without paying the one selling it than "theft". So obviously I got to thinking.

First, I looked up the dictionary definition of "theft". Which according to our sentencing laws here in the UK is, "The dishonest appropriation of property belonging to another with the intention to permanently deprive the other of it". The Oxford English Dictionary basically calls theft "The act of stealing", which when one looks it up is: "the action or offence of taking another person's property without permission or legal right and without intending to return it". This all focuses on physical property and depriving others of it. Which piracy does not do.

Now, @noctumsolis went into the details about how for piracy to be considered theft, you would have to either overwrite the original data or destroy the device upon which that data was stored. Which is a whole other set of crimes, probably. But for the most part, it's ... making a copy for your personal use. So ... like ... if you broke into the Louvre and took the Mona Lisa so you could keep it in your house, that would be theft. But sitting down and painting a copy of the Mona Lisa so you could keep the copy in your house ... weird grey area. If you were claiming that you were the original artist, or that your copy of the Mona Lisa were genuine, then you're looking at forgery, or fraud. But you're not doing any of that either. You're just ... keeping it in your house because you want a copy of the Mona Lisa in your house, and no one's going to sell it to you no matter how much money you have.

So then I got to thinking, "What is the actual crime here? Who's being hurt by this, and how are they being deprived?" My first thought was the people who actually created the work. And yeah, they're hit to a point. Authors are the worst hit, honestly - the publishing world is fucking brutal, and will probably only get worse once the spread of ChatGPT-written novels gets to epidemic proportions, and if you don't sell enough books, you're not getting a shot at a "next book". But for the most part? TV and film, video games, stuff like that? The people who made it have already cashed those cheques. They're not losing anything except maybe residuals, and that's only if the corporations that claim ownership of the material don't manage to weasel their way out of giving residuals. (YES I AM LOOKING AT YOU NETFLIX.)

Which brings me to who the crime "hurts". Piracy means that the CEOs aren't getting all the money they believe they deserve to be getting. CEOs believe they deserve all the money, in the world, full stop, so they're already grumpy about sales, but when sales aren't happening...

The CEOs would say that the pirates are stealing their money. Buuuuuut ... that's not true either. Theft as a crime is reliant on the concept of taking something that belongs to someone else with the intend to deprive the other of their property. That money doesn't belong to the CEOs yet. The potential customer refused to give the CEOs their custom and obtained the media through other means.

I mean, there is a term for the crime already - "copyright infringement". Which basically means "using any bit of media in a way that the copyright holder doesn't like", and all the copyright warnings on TV shows and movies talk about that including copying and distributing the work. And when dealing with software like, say, video games, you can also add "breach of contract" since most video games have a pretty hefty EULA which does a lot of, "By using this software, you agree to have actually paid for this license and also agree to not copy it for distribution to others", which means you're automatically signing it just by running the software.

Thing is, I guess CEOs and the like are trying to keep this both as simple and as ugly as possible. "Breach of contract" and "copyright infringement" are complicated legal matters and have a lot of nuance. Especially copyright infringement, as there are a lot of legal precedents for everything from, "I have the DVD but I want to save the movie to my computer" to ... well ... *gestures at AO3* EVERYTHING OVER THERE. But theft? Theft is simple. Theft is something they can imagine happening to them. It's "Someone took the portrait of my dog!" instead of "Someone took a picture of the portrait of my dog because it's really cute and they wanted a copy to hang in their living room BUT THEY DIDN'T MAKE ME A QUADRILLIONAIRE!"

My brain is a ludicrous place sometimes.

[selfshipstuff]

Thanks to @sketchy-galaxy​ for the ask! Here’s my answer for Question 1 of the voice ask meme, which was as follows: 

“Recall how long I’ve known my f/o(s) and how I discovered them/their source material.” 

I’ll put a transcript of my rambling under the cut. 

00:00 - 00:35 - Um... hi. So... for question number 1-- which is about how long I’ve known them and how I discovered their source material-- I’m thinking I’ll start with Hunk, since, Starr, you’re the one who asked and I remember that we bonded a little bit over... um... being with Hunk and Lance respectively-- and Lotor, of course, in your case as well. 

00:36 - 01:34 - Um... Hunk, I met in... 2016, I wanna say? So, it’s going on... 3 years now? Or I guess it is 3 years now, 'cuz I met him... towards the end of 2016. And, I mean... with Voltron... I was introduced to that by-- well. It being so popular on Tumblr. I’m not quite as into Voltron as I was at the time? But... he’s still really special to me.  Obviously, I mean, [laughing] you never really,, [shaky breath] stop loving someone when you love them that much. But... [long pause, awkward laugh] Anyway! Next!

01:35 - 02:28 - Um... mmh. With... Adrien, from... Miraculous Ladybug-- um, Miraculous is another one of the ones that I discovered through Tumblr. Um, it was really fun though, because I’ve always had, like, a soft spot for French, and, um... French culture and France in general, so it’s really cool that there’s this show that’s focused on like, superheroes, and magic, and France, all three of which are like extremely fun to me. And... I don’t really remember when I started watching Miraculous, but I think it was a little bit before or after I started watching Voltron, so probably also around that 2016 area. Mmmh...

02:30 - 04:09 - And then... with the Hitachiin twins, Hikaru and Kaoru-- um... I could be saying all of their names with the proper, um, accents, but... I... don’t think it would sound good, and I am not confident enough to be recorded [laughing] saying them that way. [deep breath] Um, so, Adrien, Hikaru, and Kaoru it is, rather than all the accented ones. But, with the twins, I, um... they,,, have been around for me for [chuckling] a lot longer than a lot of the others have. Because I’ve liked them since I first watched the anime-- um, it’s Ouran High School Host Club, for anyone who doesn’t know, I guess, although it’s pretty... it’s a classic, I guess, so most people would know, I think. Um... [clears throat] when I first watched it, I was in middle school... so that was probably... um... I wanna say... 7th grade? 8th grade, something like that? So... I graduated this past year, it’s 2019... um... [long silence where I’m basically doing the math lady meme] I wanna say 20...12, 2013? Something like that, but it’s been a while. Um... [laughs sheepishly] 

04:10 - 05:00 - Aaand... then there’s... Krel, who’s really, relatively new, but [chuckling] I love him so much. Um, he’s from 3Below-- Tales of Arcadia-- it’s the second installment in the Tales of Arcadia series, it comes after Trollhunters. Um... I had been meaning to watch Trollhunters... since I started seeing content for it on Tumblr as well. Um... [weird throat noise rip sorry skksjkj] but... I had been putting it off for a while? That’s the case with like, all of them, by the way, that I discovered on Tumblr. Um, I started watching Trollhunters around the time that 3Below was released? So I wanna say... 2016, 2017 as well. 

05:01 - 06:32 - Umm... then there’s Stardew Valley, which I also discovered partially through Tumblr, partially through my boyfriend, who plays as well? He-- his favorite is definitely Shane, um, mine is... Sebastian, although I love [chuckles] all of them... a lot. Um... Demetrius can go eat dirt, but-- maybe some of those like... mushrooms that he put in my,, stupid,,, cave on my property, but... um... I don’t think any of them are poisonous, unfortunately. RIP to anyone who likes Demetrius, but I’m better. [deep breath] UM... [pause] now I feel bad, I shouldn’t’ve said that, that’s mean. But anyway, um... dang... I wanna say Stardew Valley I started playing, errmm... late 2016, early 2017? I know that seems to be, like, a really... popular time for a lot of my-- my babes, but like... I don’t... know why that is. I have a really poor internal clock, so I probably am just like, not remembering the timing properly. Um... but I would say that’s probably about the time that I started playing Stardew Valley and met Sebastian. 

06:33 - 08:32 - Um... [long pause] let’s see. Then... this is getting into... the... not super current territory, but like, still like, “I love you, please be on my list”? Y’know, that kind of area? Where you’re like, [high voice] “I’m not posting about you, but I still love you, I promise.” Um... Cisco from The Flash, I started watching The Flash, I wanna say, 20...17...? Like, mid-2017, I think, and I loved him like right off the bat. He was my favorite character, episode 1 of season 1, and... that has like, not changed, at all. [laughs, then settles down] They did him dirty, I was so mad about all of his, like, canon love interests? ‘Cuz like, they did him so dirty, poor baby... um! [laughing] That’s kind of off-topic though. Um-- then... there’s also... oh. How I discovered The Flash-- um. I mean, honestly? It’s just because the DCU is so, like... I guess... it’s so big, in pop culture, and I hadn’t really watched the MCU or DCU movies or shows? Until like, really recently. So I started trying to catch up to it, so that’s kind of how that happened. I’m all caught up on The Flash through season 5 now, but... for a while, I wasn’t. Um... but anyway. 

08:33 - 09:47 - Next is... let’s go with Connor. Connor Murphy, from Dear Evan Hansen. Um... this is, as you can tell, a [laughing] popular theme throughout all of them, but Dear Evan Hansen is another one that I discovered through Tumblr. Um, it was kind of difficult...? To get to the source material, because... as,, anyone who’s ever been into musicals knows,,, um,,, ya gotta... ya gotta watch those bootlegs. But they’re not like... super legal... [wheezing in laughter] so it involves,, some, like... lowkey piracy... um... I-- technically-- yeah, not technically. Completely, 100%. But it’s worth it. He’s a Boy. He’s so relatable. I’m gonna say 2016 for that as well, but probably af,,ter,,,, I watched,,, Voltron? I wanna say..... um, actually, maybe 2017, that’s probably more accurate. 

09:48 - 10:29 - Um. At this point, I’m just reading down my-- my actual F/O list, um, on my blog, [collapses into laughter] because,, I don’t,,, actually have the capacity or the bandwidth to properly keep a list in my head, and... just talk about them all in an organized fashion without something to look at, ‘cuz I’m a very org-- eh, visual organized person, when it comes to like,, how to like, think and talk about things. So... if thess-- (bluh) if this order sounds familiar, that’s why, I’m literally just reading it off of my list. 

(divided this next one into 3 paragraphs bc it’s so long good god--) 

10:30 - 14:47 - Um... next, I’m gonna say-- I’m not even gonna specify which F/Os, ‘cuz there’s like a looot of them from this source material-- but I’m gonna say Homestuck. Um. I discovered it, again, through Tumblr, but also through like...? I dunno if it’s pronounced Quo Tev or Quote V, but that fanfic website we'd all been to when we were like 11. Um-- [laughs] Um, I first discovered it-- or, I guess... um... [deep breath] I don’t wanna say “interacted with it”, because I really didn’t, I kind of just... observed it for the first time,, when I was, I wanna say... 12, or 11, so 2011... 20-- no, 2012 or 20...13, I wanna say, and then I finally read it in the first couple months of 2016. And, I think-- I actually binged it, and... I didn’t,, I’m not like... a very highly motivated person, so I would read them in like short bursts throughout a couple weeks. 

I think I finished it in like 2 weeks, but... I would read it at like... after midnight hours, [laughing] so I would be sitting in bed, in this dark basement, by myself, and I remember reading about when Gamzee canonically was like... off the shits. [bursts into wheezing laughter] And I was,,, so freaked out, ‘cuz I was sitting in this dark basement, at like 3 in the morning, all by myself, reading about this like, killer clown-- I’m not even afraid of clowns, but like, god! What the fuck! [laughs] ... Um-- so I guess, some of the more prevalent, um, folks from Homestuck for me would be Dave and Davesprite-- um. I know that’s like, a really common one,, for Dave, because he’s like That Guy for the series, but for me it’s more like, “Wow! We have a lot of... shared experiences,” and, I mean... I dunno. That’s something to get into some other time. 

But, I mean... I think I’ve liked... Dave, Davesprite... um, Dirk, in like a palerom way, if you’re familiar with the quadrants from Homestuck? Which is basically kind of like, uhhh, “I wanna be your best friend” but like also, comfort, like-- like-- I don’t know, it’s hard to describe. Um... I guess it would be kind of like a queer-platonic partner, if you’re familiar with, um, ace-spectrum language. Um... I also really liked Roxy for a short time, and... Dave,,peta,sprite??? I don’t know how to pronounce their name. Um, I was never really a fan of Jade, to be honest, um... which I know is like... the bad mojo for that fandom, but... it be like that, I apologize. Um..... anyway, let’s move on before I get into the trolls, because that’s a long list that I don’t even have time to touch right now, we’ve already been going for like 15 minutes and I still have more to talk about... and this is just for question one, I apologize, Starr, what ha-- what can of worms have you opened-- [laughs]

14:48 - 17:30 - Um... I guess, next would be... Donnie, from TMNT. Because... because,, ss-- shocker, surprise! I’m,,, very, very pan,,,, very, very not picky when it comes to who I am loving,,, my stupid heart is like “Not human? Not a problem!” Of course, you still have to be able to consent, yadda yadda yadda, no, bestiality is gross, et cetera, et cetera. Um... but like, when it comes to TMNT, that’s one of those things that... I’ve been... aware of, for like, my whole life, because I mean it’s been around since like-- how long now?? Wh,, since like the 19...8...0s...? Something like that? Um-- oh shoot, my sisters are home. Oh well. 

Um, Donnie is definitely a Main when it comes to the four of them, um, shortly thereafter followed by Mikey, and then it’s Leo, and then I also... I-- I mean, I like all four of them, in separate ways, but like... Raph is definitely, like... Raphael is kind of on the bottom for me? Which I know is kind of odd and uncommon in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fandom, but... that-- I appreciate that he’s [laughs] really passionate,, but I have a hard time,, with, um... people who have, like... quick tempers. Um... due to like, past experiences. So... that’s, um... [long pause] Anyway, I started watching based-- uh, with the 2012 series. Um, I haven’t seen the new one yet-- with the 2D animation, where they’re all different types of turtles? Um, I did watch the 20...14/2016 movies, um... Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and TMNT: Out of the Shadows-- those were really good as well. Um... [huff] and that’s that! I live by that.

17:30 - 19:30 - So, next I guess would be... Merlin, from the show of the same name that aired on BBC. Umm, I don’t actually remember when I watched this? I wanna say 20...14, 2015... probably mid-2015. [burps] ‘Scuse me-- um... I mean... pretty much immediately, I liked him. Um, like, first five minutes of the show, I was immediately like, [surprised voice] “Oh! I love him! He’s mine now.” Um... I discovered him through, um... I mean, general internet culture, same as Homestuck. I did, uh-- kind of find them through Quo Tev-slash-Quote V, however the hell you wanna pronounce it, as well as Tumblr, and like Ao3. Um-- ‘cuz y’know, um, Merlin and Arthur are a really popular ship, so... I did see a lot of that-- I actually do kind of like that ship, but personally, I’m also kind of like, [high voice] “Mmmmmmmm... Arthur,,,....... he’s mine. Go have fun with Gwen.” [pauses, then laughs] ... Not gonna lie though... Morgana before she went, like... crazy, crazy evil? Was like... highkey eyes emoji. And then she went over to the dark side ‘cuz they had cookies or whatever and I was like [high voice] “Mmmmm, I don’t like that.” ‘Cuz,, I’m not, like,, super, like,,,,.... no tea, no shade, y’all who have villain F/Os are super valid, but that’s for me-- [bursts out laughing]

19:31 - 21:08 - Um-- [long pause] And then I guessss... have I mentioned Peter yet? Um,, Spider-Man-- I mean, shh, I totally didn’t just reveal his identity, um-- but... I’ve,, always really liked Spider-Man?? Like, he’s always just kind of been one of my favorite heroes. Um. Even when I hadn’t really watched much of the MCU or DCU, I think Spider-Man was up there with Wonder Woman for me. Um... I still haven’t watched,,, like, anything other than the Tom Holland ones-- [laughter] I do own them, I just,, haven’t watched them-- [collapses into laughter again] Um,, I think,,, [groaning] I don’t know, I just love him... I watched, um... like, I watched... what’s it called? Um-- Homecoming. When it came out. Uh, I saw it in theaters, and I don’t remember when that was, but... I did-- I pretty much immediately was like [high voice] “Mmm, boyfriend material.” So-- I mean, I discovered that through mostly popular culture and cultural osmosis as well, um, but Peter Parker’s been like a childhood one for me as well, I guess. 

21:09 - 23:51 - And then there’s also... uhhh... one second, I’m thinking-- oh. [snaps fingers] Right. I have the list. Right in front of me. Um, Ratchet, from Ratchet & Clank, the 2016 game-- um, I actually haven’t played any of the other ones in the series. Um... I haven’t,, I’m not super familiar with the franchise? I know that he has, like, a canon girlfriend at some point who I’m like... not super comfy with. [starts laughing] Um,,, content for her keeps showing up on my dashboard and I’m like “I don’t want these,,,” But, um... so, I discovered it... through, um. Well. 

Unfortunately, I discovered it through my dad, who I have a very bad relationship with, but he-- at the time, um, he hadn’t disowned me yet, and I was over at his house, because I was-- it was like, visitation weekend. So, I was on the PlayStation, and he had bought Ratchet & Clank in like a weird attempt to like... bribe me with,, affection, or something. And, I guess... I just like... I played it. ‘Cuz like, there wasn’t anything better to play, and I just immediately like fell in love with the game. The graphics are really good, um... the game was fun, it was easy to play once I got a hang of it, which is [snickering] really good because I’m not very good at video games [full-on laughing] even though I love them. Um...

And I mean, that was kind of more of a gradual thing for me. It wasn’t like a [snaps fingers] “I love him,” it was more like [surprised] “... Oh. Ohhh, no,,, I’m starting to love him!” Which is actually kind of strange for me, because it’s kind of like... slow-burn things are less common for me. Um, like normally I’ll at least have like a crush at first, but... for Ratchet, it was really more like... “Ohhh my... Suddenly, I Am Starting to Have Some Affection.” Like, in the middle of playing the game, and it was kind of hilarious. Um... this was, I wanna say, 20...17, 2018. So, more recent. 

23:52 - 25:30 - And then, of course, um, Sans Undertale. Because who doesn’t love The Boy? Ummm... obviously, discovered Undertale through, um... Tumblr, also my boyfriend had it, so I got to watch him play it a bit, and he talked about it as well. Um... popular culture, because everyone was talking about it, it was on YouTube quite a bit, um, and at the time, I was pretty active watching YouTube videos-- I don’t really anymore, but I did at the time. Um... honestly? I never finished the game myself. It’s-- I still have it, it’s like, on my computer, I just haven’t touched it since I like... first got it. I played it for like a couple weeks, but I already kind of knew everything that happened, and I just kind of... didn’t?? Anymore?? So I’m real-- I’m like-- Before I even played the game, though, I was already like “I love him!” because... I mean... I’mma keep it real with you, Chief... I saw a lot of Undertale content on Tumblr and Ao3... and I was just like “Well. I guess I love him now!” Um, I wanna say that was-- I don’t remember when Undertale came out, but I wanna say it wassss... half a year after it came out? Maybe... closer to a year, somewhere around there. 

25:31 - 27:10 - Um... I think those are pretty-- oh! [snaps fingers] Y’know what, I know who I’m forgetting. Um... I also, um, recently started watching Supergirl, and, like, immediately, I loved Winn. He’s so good. Um-- I started watching Supergirl probably... June, July, August of this year? So, it’s very recent, but [shaky voice] oh my god,, I love him. This is again, through like, pop culture, um, it being part of the DCU, being how I discovered it. Um, and also I saw some stuff about lesbians on Tumblr-- um-- I do really like how they handled Alex’s, um... journey through that. And then, I mean... I don’t think I’m gonna say much more, [laughs] ‘cuz I’ll just,, keep going, and I’ve already been recording for like 27 minutes? And I’ve gotten off-topic for probably about half of that. 

So, that’s question number one... if I,, left out any?? That you wanted to hear about, I can do another one, but I think... this should be good for now. 

[thessalian]

Thess vs Spoiled Gamers

On a different note ... still playing the Dredge DLC, and still seeing Reddit whining about it.

The complaints are basically, "No new areas; no new exploration! We're just going to the same areas again and seeing them just a bit different! Why are we bothering with this?"

And I sat there going, "But ... new mechanics, new ship upgrades, new tasks, new fish, new aberrations, new aberrations of the exotic fish that used to be once-in-a-lifetime catches and we can now farm if we want to, new types of bait, new story... We have new shit to spend the shitloads of money we keep picking up in this game and new stuff to do; how is that not enough?!?"

And then the lead dev (who is pretty much The Guy; it's not like he's got a huge dev team or anything) actually went onto the post (because we all know this guy has a Reddit account) and said ... basically the same thing: "We were actually shooting for different things in our two DLCs to date - Pale Reach was always about a new zone and a new fish type, while Iron Rig was about making use of all the money you pick up after awhile, giving you a different experience in the world during new playthroughs--" (because seriously it is such a different game if you start a new playthrough with Iron Rig installed than if you get to endgame and then run through Iron Rig) "--and telling a different kind of story to the ones we told in the base game and Pale Reach".

Which ... I mean ... yeah. All three are takes on mortals messing with shit they can't understand, but the themes are different. Base game is love; Pale Reach is ignorance; Iron Rig is greed. And people wanted new zone and new mechanics and new fish and new story ... and I guess they wanted all of those things wrapped up in each DLC, instead of having it spread out.

Do ... people really not understand the difference between a AAA studio, which only has staffing issues because it laid off thousands of people, and an indie studio, which has, like, maybe a couple of people, max? Like, I'm not complaining about how long it's going to take for the next chapter of Scarlet Hollow to come out because that is being made by two people, and only one of those people is doing every single drawing for that game. I get being demanding of AAA games because ... well, hell, we want something for the amount of money we're spending - because while I'm okay on cosmetic items as a concept, I'm not comfortable with the amount they expect us to pay for what sometimes just amounts to recolouring existing armour. I do not get being demanding of indie devs who are doing their best. It's like indie devs get all the backlash that should be reserved for the money-grubbing AAA games companies because "they're all the same", and they're not.

Be nice to your indie devs, people. The AAA games companies are starting to reach the point where the bubble they've been inflating for decades is about to burst. The industry has tanked before, and it's likely to tank again before rising up in a new form. If and when that happens, the indie devs are going to be producing the only new games we get, so ... be nice.

And as I say that, I am looking at the assholes who basically shut down Emika Games. Emika Games makes psychological horror walking simulators, for the most part, and most of them are not very long at all. They're also not very expensive. A whole bunch of people bought the games knowing damn well that the estimated play time was less than the two hour limit on Steam refunds, played them through once, and got a refund. So Emika Games never saw that money and apparently had to shut down entirely, not having enough money to finish the next game they wanted to put out (From Day To Day - the demo's out but it's been "TBA" for years).

This is why I never know how to feel about piracy, y'know. Like, I get not wanting to give certain companies money, but then there's the people who just steal from everybody because they feel entitled to stuff but don't feel like paying for it. It's a problem.

[thessalian]

Thess vs Last Straws

You know that feeling when one of your friends is a self-absorbed little shit and you know they’re a self-absorbed little shit but their self-absorption and little shit-ness just hit one button too many and you just want to slap them? It’s the weirdest damn feeling because it can be the smallest thing to set it off after years of arguably bigger issues.

This is concerning an old RP friend, who I still follow on Facebook. Now, he was an issue generator for quite awhile when I used to see him in person. I honestly have zero recollection of how we met, but he joined my Mage group when I ran in meatspace, and a few other games as well. He was problematic in all of them, frankly, with a bit of Main Character Syndrome and that thing that goes, “I have to be a hero in this game because I need validation of the type I don’t get in real life”. Also ... okay, y’all know I have zero issue with anyone on the spectrum, but I do have issues when someone doesn’t try. Fucking hell, I try - every day I try, and it’s not easy, so I am totally understanding when people slip up. But I tripped over a post of his that basically went, “Hey, I think I’m going to write up a guide to how to communicate with me and hand it to everyone I know”, and he was not joking. Not sure he ever actually did it, but his answer to, “I have communication issues” was not “I should work harder at ensuring that we all understand each other as best we can”, but “I will tell everyone how to talk to me so that I don’t melt down, and thus put the entire responsibility for the success of our communication into their hands because I can’t be bothered to moderate my own behaviour”.

I largely stopped engaging him after that, at least in part because I was a little disturbed at his overriding need for a girlfriend. I swear, it was all he talked about for quite some time. Of course, see above re: his communication skills, so that probably wasn’t happening. But he said something today that I just wanted to slap him over. He was whining about “I can’t buy the Toby Daye series or the InCryptid books because they’re not out on Kindle! Why are they not out on Kindle? WOE!” At which point I looked at my two shelves of paperback involving both those series and went, “Hang on; what now?!?” Then I engaged.

I should not have engaged. I mean, my first thing was flagging up that honestly, I don’t know if the author asked for there to be a gap between those books getting published and those books hitting Kindle, but I wouldn’t blame her if she had. McGuire is hugely outspoken about how book piracy can destroy an author’s career, particularly when dealing with a series. Book 1 sells well, but if Book 2 (or 3, or 4, or whatever) gets pirated more than it gets purchased, the publisher will decide that the series isn’t worth it and bin the whole thing. Now, I imagine you can pirate a book that hasn’t made it to ereader yet, but it’s a lot harder and a lot messier, and it still might not end up legible. So I started with the first bit of that - I mean, they’re her biggest and longest-running series and I wouldn’t blame her for not wanting the Kindle versions to float around for a good long while.

He said, “But if I can’t buy it, wouldn’t that make me more liable to pirate it? Which I don’t want to do because I do want to support her, but...” Like he had no choice - like it was either Kindle or nothing.

I looked at my two shelves of paperback again at that point and decided I wanted to throttle him, not slap him. So I flagged up the second part of that statement above - how a pirated copy of a book that hasn’t come out for ereader is likely to be messy and barely legible and there are other ways to buy a book than getting the Kindle version - like the local library, or ... you know, buying the paperback. I asked him to at least please not be disingenuous; to acknowledge that it wasn’t that he couldn’t buy it but that he couldn’t have it in his desired format.

Apparently he doesn’t have a local library, but he did at least subside a bit with, “But I see your point. I guess I’ll just wait”. Given the earlier replies, I can’t help but read that with a tinge of sulk.

Maybe it’s just the one straw that broke the camel’s back. But after awhile, you get tired of someone insisting they should have things entirely their own way without having to compromise or consider the situations or feelings of others, and then sulking when they have it proven that the world doesn’t work that way. I distanced him when he whined to me that he had to be the hero in my game because it gave him the kind of validation he lacked in his real life; I distanced him further when he whined about not being able to get a girlfriend. I’m about ready to just block him entirely over this one. Not because this is that bad - although it is that bad, since I’ve read time and time again how pirating books can destroy a series and an author’s career - but because it’s one more bit of proof that he has to have everything entirely his own way and will sulk if he doesn’t get it. My life is too short and too stressful to deal with people like this.

I mean, I don’t have anything against people who prefer Kindle to dead tree. But someone whining that they can’t buy it at all when what they mean is, “I can’t have my preference”? Miss me with that. If I want to support my favourite author and read the continuation of the story I’ve invested so much time and feels in over the years, and I can’t have it on Kindle? Just put down the paperback and back away slowly. Gods, he’s even whingeing about Be The Serpent and that’s not even out in paperback yet.

[thessalian]

Thess vs Survey Annoyances

Booted up the computer this morning and what’s the first thing I get? EA’s Origin storefront with a survey. The survey, in point of fact, with its single question:

How likely are you to recommend Origin to a friend?

I am getting increasingly snitty about my answers to that one. Because I could just not answer it but come on. Every time it’s the same stupid question and it basically has the same answer: I do not recommend distribution services to friends. I recommend games to friends. What the fuck do they think I’m going to say? “I just bought X new game; the game’s okay but that storefront! You have to get this game just for the pleasure of shopping on Origin! *chefkiss*” - is that what they expect?

This time I flagged up the bit that annoys me about it as well as flagging up that I am never going to recommend a distribution service to friends: “If we want to play an EA game, we have to have Origin, so what’s the point?” Hell, even if we buy these games on Steam, it opens Origin in the background, same as playing, say, the later Assassin’s Creed games obliges you to have UPlay running in the background. They keep their games on their own personal platforms - or, if they’re somebody like Epic, they’ve paid obscene amounts of money to keep the game storefront-exclusive even without actually having developed it - in hopes that we’ll purchase through their distribution service out of convenience, and thus keep more of the money.

I personally like curating my gaming library through Steam. I am happy that Steam is actively banning NFTs and “play to earn” crypto-mining bullshit. I don’t really like having to run various different bits of software in the background no matter what distribution service I used to buy a certain game. It’s resource-intensive and it’s stupid. It’s what the fucking streaming services have been doing; staking out their little fiefdoms with exclusivity and making life more complicated for people in the hopes of getting more money ... and really just encouraging piracy because at the end of the day, all we want is to keep our stuff in one place and play it without having to weed through multiple systems to find the thing we want to play, or watch, or whatever.

We pay for convenience. None of this is convenient anymore.

Really, if EA wants to know if we like Origin, there are better questions, even on a simple 1-10 scale. How easy are you finding curating your game library? How intuitive did you find the storefront to use? Bring up specific features! The one thing Origin has that Steam is slightly lacking in is a one-screen look at what DLC is available and being able to purchase it with a single click (which I guess has its reasons for a money-grubbing bunch of shits like EA, but hell with it; at least it’s convenient). How likely are we to use the chat function? Stuff like that!

I know they think that recommending something to a friend is a sure sign of success because of how social media works, but honestly, we do not talk about how fun and engaging it was to shop for something. If we talk about a distribution service at all, it’s to complain about it. And if we do talk about one positively, it’s usually in the context of another one being awful by comparison. Most of us have Origin on our computers because EA didn’t give us a choice, not because we loved the fucking distribution service.

I swear, the next time I get one of those, I’m clicking Not At All Likely again and in the comment section, I am adding, “I don’t care what distribution service you force me to use for it; just put down the next Dragon Age game and back away.”

[thessalian]

Thess vs Economy Logic

So before I go back to fun liveblogs of video game stuff, a few thoughts on how short-sighted these not-really-capitalist plutocrats that hoard the money instead of paying their workers, and the oligarchs who protect all their money by putting all the financial burdens on those who can’t bear them, are actually being. Basically, this in the context of those stupid “Millennials are killing the [Whatever] industry” articles we keep seeing. Millennials are killing the diamond industry. Millennials are killing the golf industry. Millennials are killing the Hooters franchise. Etc etc etc.

Because ... yes, that is what happens when you deprive the general population of money. They will stop buying useless things because they can no longer afford useless things, and the industry will die. There’s something about poverty that really narrows the focus in terms of what we need and want in life. And the first things to go are going to be things like ... overpriced blood rocks mined in miserable conditions and kept scarce and thus supposedly valuable by hoarding the really good ones, or knocking tiny balls into holes on ecologically unsound land that would make a way better nature preserve than it does an overpriced lawn with holes in, or a misogynistic chain restaurant that uses breasts instead of decent food as its selling point. Because not only are they not necessary, they’re not even all that good. We honestly feel better not supporting that shit. And the whole point of capitalism is that if people no longer want to buy your product, you adapt or you die.

Except, no. No, now we have the plutocrats and oligarchs trying to make damn sure that the capitalism model only changes in ways that give them the most money for the least effort, so it’s all bitching about how we’re “killing industries” instead of just fucking adapting.

That’s going to cost them, in the end. Because what goes after the dross? We’re having to tighten our belts more and more every year. Here in the UK, people are going to go hungry and cold, for the next few weeks (since they guesstimate that the last frost here will be mid-late April) and in the autumn, when apparently fuel prices will go up even more. And since wages won’t rise to properly compensate, those who are just managing now will have to choose between heating and eating, and those who are already in that position won’t have either.

Also add to that the physical and mental toll all this takes. People are working and still starving and cold. People have to take multiple jobs. The disabled have to try to find jobs. Their health will suffer, and they will end up being unable to work, which means no more money, or very little with the paucity of social safety nets, and they’ll have to tighten their belts even more. And that’ll just lower the number of people able to work, making the ones that remain work harder for even less, until such time as companies no longer have enough staff to even partially make it work.

Know what that means? I mean, if you’re a heartless selfish jackass of a plutocrat, know what that means?

More dying industries, that’s what that means.

People will have to whittle things to the bone. And the next things to go will be a combination of “things that spark joy” and “essential but I can make do and mend a little longer”. The clothes industry is going to suffer as people struggle to learn to mend things and make the cheap clothes that were all they could afford last a little longer, and more and more people turn to charity shops. Same for housewares. Hell, there are bedding banks in this country, and baby banks, because people can’t afford those things. People are going to cancel their streaming services because they have no choice, and turn to either piracy or, again, charity shops. A fair few people are going to get more choosy about their video games because they’ll only be able to afford a few, so that industry can kiss their NFTs and loot boxes and pre-order bullshit goodbye as a lot of people say “It looks good but I’ll wait for the Steam sale”. The convenience food industry is going to suffer. Hell, most of the food industry in general is going to suffer because at least in this country, people are refusing things like root vegetables like potatoes at food banks because they can’t afford the cost of the energy it takes to cook them. People will more and more often go for the cheapest of things, specifically because they can’t afford anything else, and so any industry that focuses on luxury items is going to suffer - except for the really massively overpriced luxuries that only the truly rich can afford anyway.

At which point, their bubble economies will burst, because they’ve all been predicated on an illusion of infinite growth. News flash: that only works when people still have money to give them. Once we don’t? Well, they can’t perpetuate growth when profits fall simply because no one can afford to buy things anymore. So there are a few options for the future, and I honestly don’t know which is most likely.

Option one: frankly, riots. The above are bread and circuses - the things used to pacify the masses since ancient Rome. When we stop having that? Well, there’s not going to be a lot else to do but riot, is there?

Option two: enough companies will collapse that it’ll cause an economic downturn that actually touches the well-off enough that they’ll have to see some level of sense, in the form of actually paying their workers a little better.

Option three: government will see the writing on the wal as regards options one and two, decide that’s no way to keep power, and take just enough steps to keep the status quo at a level of “miserable for the plebs, just fine for the rich”.

None of these are ideal. Frankly, a lot of people are going to die in all three scenarios. But this is the only place logic takes us. Unfortunately, most of the wealthy don’t believe in logic. They believe in insane troll logic where somehow growth can be infinite and they can effectively print money with share buy-backs, but we all saw how creating infinite money on that scale worked for the Confederacy. That’s all share buy-backs are. That’s all laying off staff to make profits look bigger to match the Oracle of the Stock Exchange’s predictions means. It’s the Confederacy making money that’s not backed by anything and expecting it’ll work out because “Hey, more money”. But you only get more actual backing for that money in a service economy if you treat your workers well and pay them properly. They feed that money back into the economy and the cycle continues. “Trickle-down economy” was never a good concept anyway, but when the ‘trickle’ becomes an occasional drip, like that one faucet in the house that doesn’t leak quite enough to merit fixing but still drips once a week, death ensues. Death of people (which is my main concern), and death of industries (which is the nightmare of the sociopath money-hoarders).

Y’know, there are TV series dedicated to helping hoarders through their addiction to it. Maybe we should sic them on various captains of industry. It’s not my favoured method of dragon-slaying, but anything to get the hoard into the hands of the people who made it possible by working for it.

[thessalian]

Thess vs Actor Salaries

There was a Tumblr post that once again I chose not to hijack, mostly focusing on how Bezos is on track to become a trillionaire, but touching on how actors are paid. Yeah, actors are paid a lot of money when compared to ... well, almost anyone else who works a job. Thing is ... acting is a job, and the main reason I don’t have an issue with actors’ salaries is because of how few people seem to think that acting is a job. Because actors ... well, it’s a really large-scale version of how a lot of people don’t seem to think they should pay artists, and inform writers worried about what piracy does to their chances of getting their next book accepted by a publisher that “you should be glad people want to read your work at all and not worry about the money”.

Society as a whole undervalues entertainment and art. They expect it to be there, and they object to having to pay for it because they still see it as people indulging hobbies. Writers and artists have it particularly bad, because people find free stuff online all the time, and come to expect it everywhere, from everyone. The networks and studios have managed to keep that from happening to television and cinema thus far, but voice actors get a particularly bad rap because they’re more or less invisible. Seriously, thank you, Critical Role, for demonstrating to huge parts of the world how skilled and talented voice actors are, and how those voices you hear in your video game or cartoon aren’t just computer generated but actually acted by actual people who actually spent a lot of time and probably money getting good at this shit. As to your average big-name actor...

First question: do you know how much privacy costs?

The problem with people is that they get weirdly proprietorial about things that are in their immediate orbit on a regular basis. They become familiar with actors by face, by voice ... and they feel like they own that actor, and are owed some piece of them. After all, “we pay the actors’ salaries!” Erm ... no, we don’t. Once we’ve watched the movie or show, or played the game, the actors have already cashed those cheques. We may be giving a demonstration of the popularity of the actor, which might affect them getting work later, but that’s another thing. Actors owe us nothing but what they choose to give us. Unfortunately, a lot of people don’t accept that. So yeah, the big-name actors who appear in the blockbusters have big houses hidden away somewhere; if they didn’t, they’d have weirdos digging around in their garbage at minimum. High-grade security systems? Accountants? Lawyers? Oh gods, so many lawyers to look at contracts and represent their interests when things go screwy, for whatever reason things go screwy. Agents to make sure some studio isn’t screwing you over, and more lawyers to make sure the agent isn’t screwing you over? Shopping in overpriced places that are used to celebrities, simply because those places are used to celebrities and won’t stare or ask for autographs, and only ask for a pretty hefty price hike in return? Privacy and protection do not come cheap.

Then there’s what an actor of any kind has to go through on set. Men and women both often have to starve themselves and/or dehydrate to maintain a ‘certain look’, and then they have to stand under hot lights for several hours, remembering lines, blocking, multiple takes, freezing in position for a camera change. They often have to learn a whole new set of skills to pick up a new role - swordfighting’s a common one - so after all that, they have to go do some fucking martial arts practice. Or possibly before. Before all that, there are table-reads. Again, multiple takes, and imagine the frustration of having to do the same scene several dozen times because the director, the cinematographer, and the guy in charge of lighting are having a war over what they want the scene to look like. That’s not even talking about the anywhere from 1-3 hours in makeup - and yes, even if you have your cast looking like perfectly normal humans, there’s still the best part of an hour in makeup, so don’t even get me started on the ones who need prosthetics. They will do all of this stuff covered in water, fake blood, mud, all manner of oozes. They’ll get sweaty and have to pause to have their make-up touched up, they’ll have wardrobe malfunctions to deal with, let’s not even get started about women having to do multiple takes of fight scenes in high heels or anyone having to wear armour under hot set lighting... Yes, it looks like fun, but that’s after months in post-production. It’s not all fun and games. People get hurt. People get mistreated. People are immensely uncomfortable. Months if not years of work go into that three-hour bit of popcorn you just watched.

And again - at the end of it? They’ll have to put up with everything from straightforward abuse to stalking ... to people complaining that they make too much money for ‘playing pretend’ for a living. After the physical and emotional abuse that can and often does happen on set depending on director (and the physical is non-negotiable in action movies and particularly superhero movies where men are forced to suffer dehydration for defined abs and then have to go sweat under hot lights; FIGHT ME ON THIS), we’re also looking at physical and emotional therapy being in order to put themselves back together in time for the next job. Even if most of these actors weren’t American, and even if they didn’t need truly robust health insurance to work in the US, none of them could feasibly get universal healthcare without, again, a gross invasion of privacy.

Plus, once their careers are over? They’re still going to get hounded. They won’t be able to work a regular job ever again, and their kids might have a similarly hard time, depending on how visible those kids have been. A buffer seems necessary at that point just to make sure that they can still live and have all the security, lawyers, accountants etc required to keep their privacy. Men have this easier, honestly, but an actor’s career is not that long when compared to most of the rest of us, and when it’s over, it’s not like they can take up another career without their very recognised face being an impediment to just doing a job. Plus there’d still be people digging around in their trash cans and hounding them for retrospectives and such, because people seem to love to indulge in a bit of schadenfreude over actors who are no longer the audience’s darlings.

If the audiences were 100% decent people who just left actors alone, and if studios weren’t entirely happy to screw over their talent if at all possible, and similarly if studios didn’t torture their talent to achieve a look that is perceived as ‘attractive’ but is actively unhealthy ... then maybe I’d say we should look at actors’ pay with a view to, “Do you really need all that money?” But audiences aren’t 100% decent people, and will happily abuse and impose themselves on famous people in ways that range from aggravating to damaging to the mental health. Studios are willing to hurt their talent - their employees. And so are so-called ‘fans’.

Yeah, none of us have it easy in terms of their jobs. But anyone in the entertainment industry - particularly anyone who is particularly visible in the entertainment industry, as in on the screen - lets themselves in for an absolute nightmare. We should be past the idea that actors are shells of people in it for the fame and the money and all really love all the attention. Actors are there to do a job - a job they may be good at, a job they may enjoy, but not a job that they necessarily took because they’re narcissists. Maybe actors make an obscene amount of money, but I will never say they haven’t earned it, if only because anyone who has to put up with what fandom has become deserves hazard pay.

ALSO VOICE ACTORS NEED WAY BETTER MONEY AND MORE TRANSPARENCY IN THE ROLES THEY’RE GIVEN AND WE ALL NEED TO STOP BLAMING WHITE VOICE ACTORS FOR VOICING POC BECAUSE THEY PROBABLY DIDN’T KNOW UNTIL THEY WERE DONE RECORDING; WE CAN BLAME THE DEVELOPMENT COMPANY INSTEAD, PLEASE.

That is all.

Thank you.

[thessalian]

Thess vs Underappreciation

I would like to speak now, a little bit, about writers and the internet.

You know that whole thing about “Pay your artists”? Where a lot of assholes seem to think that because it’s a “hobby” and because there are so many pretty pictures online to look at that the artist drew for fun, that artists shouldn’t need paying for all their hard work.

Well ... that goes double for writers.

Consider this: in the UK at least, this article in late 2016 illustrated the fact that authors get paid well below minimum wage - so banish all thoughts right now of the tiny number of authors who made it big, because they probably got the actual wealth through movie or TV adaptation rights. Then there’s the whole thing where authors are literally being told that they should be happy about their work being pirated “because at least you have readers” - which is great and all but that doesn’t put food on the table. And yes, that article is a couple of years old, but one from earlier in 2019 shows that things have not changed one iota in terms of ebook piracy. In fact, it’s getting worse.

People cite not being able to afford books because “I’d rather use that money for going out” - which, look, sorry, but when it comes to your entertainment options on a limited income, you have to make a choice. And the choices shouldn’t involve a third option of “pay for the thing you can’t scam for free and then have both”. People cite “pre-reading”, or downloading the pirated version just to read it before deciding whether it’s worth money because they’ve found themselves “disappointed in books they’ve bought in the past” - hey, jackass; THAT’S WHAT LIBRARIES ARE FOR. And you know that even if they love the book, once they have it? They’re not going to bother spending the money on it.

And publishers will only take it seriously for individual artists - their big earners. For those just starting out, piracy’s a death knell that could kill a series. If a lot of people loved the first book, then pirated the second because they felt like reading it but didn’t want to buy it ... that second book isn’t making money and the third installment probably isn’t getting greenlit. Pirates have cut off their own noses to spite their face in that instance.

Full disclosure: I have pirated exactly one book in my time. That book was one I had already bought, read to tatters, and couldn’t find a replacement copy. In cases where I have had to replace a book because I read it to shreds or lost it or loaned it to someone and never got it back, I buy it again, usually. I wouldn’t dream of pirating a book. I’ve read too many published authors struggling to put food on the table.

And that’s published authors - people with agents and publishers and editors behind them. Consider the life of the indie writer. They write stuff and post it in the same kinds of circles where the fan-lit lives, and they ask to be paid for it because they worked hard, it’s not using anyone else’s IP, and they need food and shelter and utilities to live. But a writer’s even less likely to get support from their community than an artist is, and artists at least have, “You want the drawing? Pay for the commission” as a defense because while they may not get the money for the commission they didn’t do, neither are they putting in all that work and having nothing to show for it. ...Unless someone’s been a jackass and pulled a refund out of PayPal and fucked an artist over royally; that’s been known.

I know full well that when I started writing on Patreon, I got little interest. I got a tiny bit, but not much. And even less when I had to tweak some things when Patreon got cute about taking fees direct from patrons. So I gave it up; what was the point of all that work when no one was seeing it? I keep my Ko-fi link up just in case someone wants to contribute to the cause of keeping me healthy and happy enough to do all this stuff, but it sees nearly no use, and I guess I don’t expect it to. It actually makes me less willing to put up any of the stuff that rattles around in my brain, you know; art at least gets likes, if not enough reblogs. I get few likes, nearly no reblogs, and no one seems to think what I write - and the effort I put into that writing - is worth very much. Why bother when no one notices, never mind cares?

We work hard, writers. We work hard and we try to put ourselves out there ... but sometimes we’re shy and sometimes we’re self-deprecating and often we’re struggling like hell to make ends meet, like the rest of you. The difference is that we, like graphic artists, take time out to put words to paper in a way no one else does - in a way no one else can, because every writer is unique. We work ourselves even harder, all to provide other people with ... entertainment, escape, whatever. And we largely get ignored. What we do is expected. We are writers and we need to get those words on paper, so why should anyone bother paying us for that?

Because if you don’t, we suffer. And if we suffer, we don’t have the spoons to write anymore. Imagine a world without writers, just for a few seconds. No TV shows, no movies, no video games, no books, no comics, no fanfic, no essays, nothing. Anyone here who pirates books and tells themselves that they’re somehow sticking it to the big publishing company? No; you’re just killing an author’s career; the loss the publishing company takes is negligible in the grand scheme of things but the greedy assholes in charge will decide that if they can’t profit off that author’s work, they’re not getting another chance. Also, I know money’s tight. I do. I have every sympathy with that; I live that every day. But when someone’s providing you with so much entertainment and it’s largely for free, maybe consider thanking them with a virtual coffee?

Support your artists. ALL of your artists; not just the ones who paint the big flashy pictures. People seem to think that anyone can write. Nope - anyone can compose a sentence, put words on a page or a screen. But not everyone can tell a story, and each individual writer is the only one who can tell the story they’re putting to paper in the way they’re doing it. Please at least remember we exist.

[thessalian]

Thess vs Regional Restriction

Dear Disney:

Okay, so you’ve moved all your ultra-cool Star Wars properties to your streaming service.

Which is crap. Just by the way.

But then you make it unavailable in Europe.

Where I live. Just by the way.

Where a hell of a lot of people live. Just by the way.

Do you want pirates? You clearly don’t want pirates; you have cracked down so fucking hard. But this? This is how you get pirates. Forgetting that there are Star Wars fans in Europe is how you get pirates. Because they literally have no other way of getting the content. Because you forgot that there are Star Wars fans who legitimately want to give you money in Europe.

Region locking, staggered releases for different countries ... we have the internet, you jerk-socks. Information is global. And you’re basically torturing entire markets by instilling the Fear Of Missing Out bullshit and then legit refusing to sell to anyone but the US.

It costs you relatively little to actually remember that other markets than the US exist (mostly subtitling). It’s probably hugely offset, that cost, by what you lose to piracy in those other markets. So ... seriously. Do you want pirates? Because regional restriction gets you pirates.

No regard whatsoever,

A Star Wars fan in the UK

[thessalian]

Thess vs MMOs

Over the years, I’ve played a number of MMORPGs. They’ve come. They’ve gone. Mostly they’ve gone. I thought I’d give myself a tiny bit of a retrospective here just to see if I actually miss them.

Final Fantasy XI: This one was my first. At the time, I wanted to try a MMO and had been weighing the relative merits and flaws of this, World of Warcraft and Everquest. In the end, I weighted it on art style and I just really preferred FFXI. That ... in retrospect, was probably a mistake. The levelling ‘system’ was frankly garbage in FFXI, at least in part because there were fairly few quests, even fewer of which you could solo. What it was, right, was ... you went out to a zone pretty far above your level, you put up your LFG flag, and you waited. Or you started a group of your own, whichever. Either way, you ended up in a six-man party, staking out a specific spot on one of the quasi-designated ‘farming’ maps, and you sent out your puller (usually a thief or a beastmaster; someone with range, anyway) to bring monsters to your ‘camp’ for you to gang up on. It was the only way to get a decent amount of XP in one go, particularly given that there were bonuses for chaining mobs. Which in and of itself was a problem when you had overzealous pullers dragging in a new monster before people had finished killing the first one, never giving the casters time to so much as breathe, never mind regen mana. Plus if a zone was overcamped, you ended up fighting over mobs, fighting over campsites, and in general just getting pissed off at other players. Every time a new class got added to the roster, groups ground to a screeching halt for some classes because everyone wanted the new class in their party and that left people still trying to level older classes entirely out in the cold. Endgame content was more or less out unless you had a dedicated guild. Basically, it was meant for the hardcore MMO player. I ... was not the hardcore MMO player. I did manage to level a fair bit in at least one class (White Mage, because healers always prosper, but even they started getting locked out when Scholar became a thing, despite them being neither fish nor fowl until the level 30s or so), but mostly ended up farming low-level stuff for crafting mats until I eventually got bored and stopped paying my damn sub. I don’t miss it. It was pants.

World of Warcraft: It was a good long while before I tried a MMO again, and the next one I went for was WoW, at least in part because I was starting to hear as how you could largely power through it on your own. So I had a good time with that for awhile, and actually started getting invested in at least one of my characters (Blood Elf Paladin who hated undead with the passion of a thousand burning suns because she lost family at the Wrathgate and then had a minor nervous breakdown when forced to serve on the Forsaken Front and basically told the Horde to go fuck itself and, after a brief stint of piracy in Booty Bay, stuck to doing things like repairing Deathwing’s bullshit). Then Mists of Pandaria came out and I just kind of lost interest. I don’t really miss it overmuch. Particularly since it was the first and worst experience of trying a dungeon that I’ve ever had - basically I was unaware when I started playing it that your DPS rating was everything and so I went in as a tank and trying to hold hate when everyone else (including the healer) is spamming damage like it’s going out of style is a nightmare and they eventually booted me out of the party in the middle of fucking Gnomergan because I wasn’t doing enough damage (THAT IS NOT MY JOB, YOU DIPSHITS; I AM HERE TO KEEP YOU FROM TAKING DAMAGE; NOT TO DO MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF IT MYSELF) and let me get eaten by respawns. I swore to myself, never again. ...I lied, by the way. Anyway, I miss it sometimes (well, I miss Missandei the Belf Paladin, really), but not enough to try to throw myself into it again.

Star Wars: The Old Republic: This is where ‘never again’ went wrong, though it took awhile. I had fun in this game for a good long while, actually. Had great fun on my smuggler, and discovered actual roleplaying in a MMO, which led to my trying new things and meeting new friends and generally having a pretty good time. I even started doing group content and dungeons (Ops, really, but hey) ... though I did kind of get locked into healer-mode no matter how much I wanted to DPS every now and then, because I was marginally more good-natured about healing than the other healer-classes in our guild. Then some personal stuff happened and, more to the point, the Zakuul thing started. I disliked being a bit player in my own story, I hated the plot, sticking us with a mechanics-heavy boss fight at the end that we had to solo and which was truly ruinous for some classes was a dick move, and I basically gave up. I don’t miss it. All the parts of it I liked (namely, some of the people I met) are still in my life, and that’s the important thing.

The Secret World: I liked this one, for all I had a year’s break from it because I missed a fairly key benefit to the game - namely being able to skip certain missions. Ironically, I did manage to get that mission completed in the end, but not after I dropped the game for nearly a year because it kept blowing me up (increased movement speed was the key to that fucking mining museum basement, it turns out). But once that was explained to me, I fell comprehensively in love with that fucking game. I ran around in it daily not because I wanted to get my money’s worth out of my subscription (which I didn’t have) but because I was having fun. I loved the story, I loved the setting, I loved not having levels, I loved the ability and skill wheels, I loved customisable builds (and exploited them mercilessly), I loved the dungeons, I loved the cosmetics ... I loved everything about this game. ...Then they turned it into an ARG with reticle targeting that pushed every single migraine button I have and I couldn’t play it anymore. I miss this one. I miss this one so fucking much you have no idea.

Final Fantasy XIV: Honestly, the only reason I got into this was because I needed a new MMO after fucking Secret World: Legends broke my heart, and it wasn’t FFXI ... though I could still play a tiny adorable bringer of destruction if I so chose. But of course, by this time, I was so heavily locked into Healbabe Mode that I just pretty much immediately went White Mage (though Astrologian was always my default once I got the class sufficiently levelled). I liked this one okay but the story left me cold a lot of the time. Loved the crafting, loved some of the dungeon challenge ... actively kind of hated the story. Especially that spot between Stormblood and Shadowbringers where I wanted Fabio von ShampooCommercial to just fucking stay dead already. I did not go through the absolute nightmare hell that was the Shinryu fight to have that fuck-knuckle turn back up again. I don’t miss it. Take your bargan basement Sepiroth and go screw, Squeenix.

Guild Wars 2: I’d actually had this for awhile but hadn’t done much with it. It was another Secret World situation - I went in, I got fed up, I got out, I got dragged back in by ... the same friend, actually (looking at you here, @true0neutral), and enjoyed it a lot more. It’s not as good as TSW was. I don’t love it as much. But it’s sufficiently enjoyable for something I’m not paying a sub for, I can get my Zen crafting on perfectly fine, and that’s all I’m really asking of a MMO at this point. I’d miss it if it vanished. That’s enough.

I did kind of poke at Elder Scrolls Online on one of their beta weekends, if memory serves, but that one was a hard nope from me. Wasn’t into it, found the combat clunky.

So that’s me and MMOs. I had one I truly, truly loved and it was taken away from me and now I have my GW2 popcorn while pining for my One True MMO. Woe.

[thessalian]

Thess vs Entitlement

So ... thoughts on piracy ... and in a roundabout way, entitlement.

I mean, piracy is a thing that happens. It’s always going to happen. No matter what companies do, some clever little shit who is following some personal belief that “I want it but shouldn’t have to pay money for it” is valid will crack the DRM (if applicable) and dump it on a torrent site. Thing is ... the entertainment industry is shit. So there’s kind of a checklist that determines how conflicted I am about the immorality of piracy versus the protest value involved.

Is it an indie company? This mostly applies to video games, but come on. An indie company needs the money. If they’re selling on someplace like Steam and GoG, they need the visit and purchase stats to boost their visibility in intensely crowded marketplaces. If you’re pirating a game by, like, any of the subsidiaries of EA or Activision Blizzard or Take Two or whatever? I’m going to feel a little less bad about the whole concept of pirating than I would about pirating something like DARQ, which was done over a span of several months by one really decent guy and minimal help from contractors. (I mean, this game has had a significant signal boost because of the creator’s reaction to being offered an Epic exclusivity deal, but the way he responded to that offer only solidifies my determination to reward him.)

Recurrent user spending - how bad is it? I mean, it’s already pretty bad when I have more or less had to accept that most if not all games now have some form of recurrent user spending. And ‘recurrent’ does not include story expansion DLC. Story DLC isn’t recurrent spending, because you buy the individual bit of story and that’s the end of it. When I say ‘recurrent’, I mean microtransactions: in-game currencies, cosmetics, XP boosters, quality of life improvements that should be unlockable, stuff like that. Now, it’s pretty damn hard to pirate a MMO (or so I imagine, anyway, though I guess nothing’s impossible) but for single-player games? I wouldn’t blame anyone for pirating, say, Middle Earth: Shadows of War back in the days when you had to buy shit in the cash shop to continue progressing your fortress-orcs beyond a certain point.

Did it used to be on a streaming service I have a subscription to? I am likely to feel less bad if some money-grubbing entertainment media company (*coff*DISNEY*coff*) pulls a show that I was watching on, say, Netflix or Amazon to put it on their own streaming service. While I dislike the idea that viewing figures might drop on a show I like because people would prefer pirating the thing to spending obscene amounts of money on every streaming service out there, there’s not that much option. I wish this shit was more like cable / digital TV, but then we’d have to deal with adverts. And probably still have to pay a premium for the streaming services like we do for sports channels. Either way, the TV industry is made of ass.

Can I access it in my country at all? One of the dumbest holdovers from the days before the global digital revolution? Regional lockouts. There is shit I can’t watch on YouTube. There are games I can’t buy for friends because of different prices regionally. Even the streaming services get regional variations that means I won’t see the same thing as my friends in North America. (Side note: Spotify is not exempt from this, and here’s irony for you - Pop Will Eat Itself’s Dos Dedos Mis Amigos album is not available on UK Spotify. Pop Will Eat Itself, in case you aren’t familiar, is a British band.) Honestly, I have no issue with pirating something that someone cannot get any other way, particularly if it is something that they can and will get legitimately when they sort out the issue with technology, ratings systems, pricing models or whatever the hell dumbass justification people are using to deprive people outside certain regions of a thing.

Honestly, that’s most of it. Can I access it, did I used to be able to access it before someone got greedy, are they being greedy in general, and how badly do they need the money they’d lose from it being pirated? Epic Store exclusive bullshit ... well, I don’t see that as necessarily a need for piracy, at least not in the cases where there’s a time limit on the exclusivity. It not coming to your preferred storefront on date of release is not a need for piracy; it’s a need for patience. I know Epic Store is lacking a bunch of features, and pre-loading is one of them, but ... honestly, pirating would mean the exact same wait time to download as the release-date 12gb nightmare anyway.

I guess what I’m saying is that there are reasons for piracy. But the difference between a reason and an excuse is simple: ‘reason’ means “This is why I did it”, while ‘excuse’ means “This is why it’s okay that I did it”. A good reason is an excuse. Having something you loved torn from you by a company’s greed, with no hope of getting it back without effectively paying a ransom, is arguably a good reason. I’m sure companies would be screaming about customer entitlement right about now, but here’s the thing that companies forget:

Customers ARE entitled. LITERALLY. They have paid for those entitlements with MONEY.

That’s the bit that I think the corporate world is losing sight of. They give us less and less, demand more and more in return, and seem to think that we should be grateful for the privilege of being allowed to give them money. We’re apparently not entitled to quality of goods or services, a certain level of privacy and respect, care taken with our personal information, apologies when they fuck up, anything. These are things we are entitled to because we paid for it.

I think the problem is the word ‘entitled’. It’s currently seen as a loaded word, a dangerous word, an insult. The thing is, its original meaning has been twisted. Originally, it translated solely to “the fact of having a right to something” and “the amount to which a person has a right”. Unfortunately, we have now added a new twist to the definition: “the belief that one is inherently deserving of privileges and special treatment”.

Note how that changed. From fact to belief. From right to privilege. We need to think a lot harder about the words we use and what they mean.

When we talk about someone who believes that they are inherently deserving of privileges and special treatment, can we maybe avoid the term ‘entitled’? Entitled means you have a right to something. The term for someone who believes that they deserve special treatment is ‘spoiled’. As in “spoiled brat”. Let’s start using it again.

To take this back around to the original topic: no one is necessarily entitled to a game or show unless they’ve paid for it. But if someone has rendered it difficult or impossible to pay for something that they would pay for if they had the opportunity, or used to pay for but would now have to pay for again, the idea of who’s entitled to what becomes a little skewed. We are entitled to be treated fairly by companies. The fact that those companies screw consumers with impunity stands somewhere between a right (they are technically allowed to by law) and privilege (those laws or lack thereof only exist because they have poured a lot of money into ensuring that companies don’t have to account for their actions against their customer base). So if their entitlement is skewing into privilege, I don’t morally see a problem with ours skewing similarly. Just ... try to minimise the karmic backlash, okay? No one pirate DARQ. Let’s reward good behaviour.

[thessalian]

Thess vs Piracy

You know what I really want to stop? This disingenuous crap about, “Oh, Epic Store exclusive? I’ll just pirate it, then! That’ll show ‘em!”

No. No, you were going to pirate the damn game anyway. This is just your way of trying to make yourself feel better about it.

Look, I don’t like the fact that the people running the Epic Store are spending all the money they made on Fortnite to buy timed exclusivity deals to force customers to use their substandard storefront instead of ... you know, improving that storefront first. I mean, it doesn’t even have a shopping cart. What the fuck? But when I see that a game I want is going to be a timed exclusive on the Epic Store, my immediate reaction is, “I have enough games anyway; I’ll wait until it comes to Steam”. It is not, “Yar har, fiddle-de-dee; do what you want ‘cos a pirate is free”.

Look, there are some good things about actually waiting. For one thing, it will remind video game companies that the money they make on any game can go beyond the first week of sales. It could conceivably encourage a more long-term view in an industry that is increasingly demanding all of the money up front right away. Right now, the ‘long term’ is reserved only for the customers: “You pay us now and stick with us through the bugs and the thin content and the shaky foundation, and we’ll reward you by fixing everything and giving you the game you paid for! ...Eventually!” If we’re expected to wait for full games, maybe they should be expected to wait for full profits, too. That’s something I’d like to encourage.

Anyway, not really the point. The point is that I am fed up with people engaging in piracy claiming the moral high ground. They say they’re pirating the game out of protest. But that’s not it, really, is it? They want the game, they want it on launch day, and they don’t want to pay for it. Epic Store and those who sign on with these timed exclusivity deals are just the excuse - and it’s a thin excuse at that.

If I want Metro Exodus and The Outer Worlds? I’ll buy the damn things next year. They’ll be cheaper, they’ll be in better shape than they are bound to be on launch day (because gods forbid games be anything other than vaguely playable on launch day), and I can keep my gaming library in one place. I may rethink if there’s a true exclusive, but meantime, I already have Discord lobbing Nitro at me in big handfuls; I’m fine with multiple platforms to a point, but they have to offer me something more than “You can’t have the game for twelve months unless you buy it from us”. I can be patient. So can a lot of other people.

Those who can’t be patient? Well, they’re going to be assholes about it, apparently. They have what they see as a perfect excuse for piracy and they’re gonna fucking use it. Honestly, the only people not getting the short end of the stick here are the money-men at the top; customers are getting sold unfinished games and having titles they looked forward to (and in some cases paid to have made on the promise that they would be available on Steam) held to ransom, while devs get forced into this crunch culture bullshit that is destroying their collective health, often followed by being laid off. Meanwhile, the guys at the top pull in insane salaries.

A lot of video game news lately and I have a lot of feelings about it. I mean, I’m not exactly salivating for Borderlands 3, but that’s at least partly because I can’t play first-person shooters without triggering an epic (no pun intended) migraine. Of course, the other half is that looter-shooters don’t really appeal to me, but that’s my thing. If Borderlands 3 quite possibly going timed exclusive to the Epic Store turns out to be genuine, that’s going to be an issue for a lot of people, but “I’ll just pirate it!” shouldn’t be the response - at least not if you don’t want to sound like an asshole. It’s like those people who subscribe to someone’s Patreon, copy all the reward content and then distribute it on Pirate Bay because “these things should be free; how dare the creators want money for it?” Creators deserve to be paid for the things they create, and that’s a message that both consumers and CEOs need to keep in mind.

And incidentally, while I will neither confirm nor deny whether I have ever pirated anything in my life, I would not do so under the umbrella of morality or protest - generally it would be “I cannot get this in my region under any circumstances so I have no choice and will pay for it when and if I am ever given the opportunity to do so”. Because streaming is global and region-locking is stupid in those circumstances.