3 ms·
I think the assumption is sound. The kind of content that doesn't need to be incentivized to be created, is the kind of content that is created for a purpose ot
by dkimball 17y ago
I think the assumption is sound. The kind of content that doesn't need to be incentivized to be created, is the kind of content that is created for a purpose other than "to be good content of the type in question."
We see how this works out in the historical patronage system; before the development of copyrights, most reproducible art (poetry and the like) was created not to sell, but to flatter some aristocratic bigwig -- that's why its conventions were so stubbornly moribund, and why it took something like 1400 years for the novel to be reinvented after the end of the Western Roman Empire.
I think this is a particularly alarming situation in regard to computer games; it would mean that the average game would probably be a cheaply-produced advertising piece -- imagine a world in which the Burger King promotional games outnumber _Jagged Alliance_ and _Final Fantasy 6_ by an even larger margin than they do now. I think that we can get a hint about what would happen by looking at the Arab world, where piracy is unusually rampant and the only active game development is done by Muslim fundamentalists...