Jack Thompson was disbarred, and any kind of assertion between video games and real world violence is long since dismissed. Meanwhile games are willfully designed to leave you with a worse product and little to no indication what you’re actually getting for your money, and that isn’t some theory. Leaving a game in a reasonably functional state without intervention from the game’s publisher is pretty specific, and it just happens to cover some use cases that affect a game company’s bottom line, but that should be the cost of doing business. Developers and publishers can be just as guilty on this when they’ve got the same incentives.
Comment on Stop killing games
NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 2 weeks agoBecause it isn’t really even an initiative. It is a random non-law pushed by a youtuber that people have latched onto because it is a way to say “lazy devs are ruining gaming”.
If you are talking to chat about why you are their best friend? Yeah. It is awesome. And “Let our representatives figure out what the law should actually be. We just don’t want Them to take our gherms!”
If you are someone who actually is looking at the feasability of this for the industry? You start to see a LOT of major issues.
And if you are a normy who doesn’t watch the Right streams? You say “Wait… we want to trust the government with nebulous demands to legislate our passion? Are you fucking stupid? Do Jack Thompson and Tipper Gore mean nothing to you???”
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
Accursed Farms themselves have said variations of “We’ll figure out the specifics later”
Without “the specifics”? You are not proposing legislature or even “an initiative”. You are just writing the kind of MoveOn petition where Obama will have to do Hot Ones if you totally get ten million signatures.
And… that really matters for reasons we have already seen. You and I think Jack Thompson was a hack and a moron. But we semi-regularly see people talking about how loot boxes and gacha games need to be outlawed without even considering the underlying skinner box/operant conditioning aspects.
But hey? How about “stop corrupting gamers”? Gambling is bad and it ruins lives. So let’s get some legislature. Oh noes, now there can be no kissing or depiction of blood in any game because sex ruins lives and so does murder!
THAT is the difference between a child screaming into the void and actually trying to enact positive change. The former is vague “gimme what I want and figure it out for me”. The latter is “We want X, Y, and Z because of reasons A, B, and C.”.
Because
Leaving a game in a reasonably functional state without intervention from the game’s publisher is pretty specific,
Yes. Nothing more specific than “a reasonably functional state without intervention”.
As for what actually would be specifics?
- Instanced multiplayer games with less than 128 players per server require either a dedicated server to be released or for support for listen servers": This is “reasonable” because… that is literally how these games are running. Under the hood, a CoD lobby is not much different than a UT server was back in the day. But, as you scale up the number of players you start sharding (see: Planetside) which begins to become something that would be nice but also might not “exist” outside of “run the entire backend”. And the obvious loophole is that we are suddenly going to get a bunch of 130 player Overwatch games.
- “Games where N% of the game simulation happens on the customer’s computer must have an offline mode”: This is stuff like Dark Souls and Arkham Suicide Squad and The Crew (the game EVERYBODY totally loved…) and whatever. Ironically, games like Splinter Cell Conviction would be broken by this (because that is the DRM it used) but… fuck them? And the obvious loophole is “Well, we simulate N+1% because we stream this texture or some shit?”
But once you get beyond that? You start getting into messes of things like MMOs where there are a lot of very valid reasons for not wanting the entire server infrastructure to be running on a single player’s computer. And the reality ends up being you have things like all the WoW and Everquest private servers that literally charge players money to play a pirated version.
Specifics are good. Vagueries are just how you get dicked over by lobbyists and special interest groups.
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
It is a citizens’ initiative for the EU. Ross has been consulting with legal experts and even members of parliament in these territories in order to get this off the ground. This is not some feel-good change.org thing; this has legal ramifications, albeit with an absurdly high threshold to clear.
Gambling is bad and it ruins lives. So let’s get some legislature. Oh noes, now there can be no kissing or depiction of blood in any game because sex ruins lives and so does murder!
This is a strawman. We do legislate gambling already. Several countries have legislated loot boxes already without adding violent content on as a rider.
This initiative, which again, has actual legal implications unlike most petitions you’ve ever heard of, can only ask for so much before it’s in lawmakers’ hands. Terminology like “reasonably functional” is used all over laws on the books, and courts rule on what is reasonable or not. It would be reasonable to say that a video game is no longer functional if you can’t play it anymore. Lobbyists and special interest groups are why we have an industry subsidized by legalized gambling for children and other ways of fucking us over.
NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
Lobbyists and special interest groups are why we have an industry subsidized by legalized gambling for children and other ways of fucking us over.
And vagueries that will be interpreted by courts that likely have no knowledge of what a vidya game even is will resolve that?
ieatpwns@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I found piratesoftwares Smurf account
Or who knows maybe an industry plant
PieMePlenty@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
From what I gather, you want specifics in an initiative. You are getting ahead of yourself. What this initiative signals is the need for change and legislation in video games. If passed, the next step is sitting down with representatives of both consumers and video game producers where specifics are drawn.
You don’t start an initiative with specifics. If you start an initiative that way, you are presenting a one-sided list of demands where the only representation is the consumer. Unless people start dying over shutdown video games tomorrow, this is the only good shot at actually getting some consumer protections in this industry.
If you want change, you will sign this petition. If you don’t, you won’t. It’s as simple as that.
Ephera@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
All the initiatives I’ve read so far, did have pretty concrete suggestions for how laws should be changed. In my experience, law makers will gladly consider a suggestion, because making laws is hard. Yes, that means lobbying is rather easily possible, but consumers are the group that does the least amount of lobbying.