Except that in P2P, you're not just shoplifting CDs. It's more like stealing CDs then going out front of the store and shouting, "HEY! Anyone want a copy of these CDs?"

Even if you go put the CDs back after a lot of people have copied them (thus no permanent deprivation of property!), you're not exactly doing the store any favors there. I suspect in this case the cops wouldn't just chuckle and say, "kids will be kids!" The thrust of most arguments here seems to be that because copying bits online is easier than copying bits from physical media it should be accepted. Some of us don't agree with that argument.

The mandate to produce new content instead of fix old broken content. I'll never understand that one, and I tread on dangerous ground going too much into it, but it was a horribly bad idea.

I'm an MMO developer, but I only played Warhammer Online in the open beta. Didn't get into enough (and my friends didn't start playing it) to buy the box and play it afterward. But, allow me to provide some insight here.

Most major MMOs like Warhammer follow a trend which is set by the number of players they initially attract. After they hit their peak (usually pretty quickly after launch), they usually slowly decline over time to a steady state. There are small fluctuations based on releases of expansions, etc., but the number of players during that steady time is generally a function of the peak number. So, conventional wisdom is that you want to have as high a peak as possible to retain the maximum number of people playing (and therefore paying) when you hit the steady state later. Yes, there are exceptions like EVE Onlien or WoW, but those are special cases (EVE Online flopped when it launched and the company only survived due to some particularly lucky circumstances as I've heard it) or minor trickery (Blizzard has been able to smooth out fluctuations in WoW's North American subscriber numbers with Chinese player figures, something that few other western game companies can do due to severely increased government restrictions on games in China.)

Put in this perspective, this mandate makes more sense. In general, new content attracts new people while fixing old content retains old people. Which catches you attention more: We added two new zones! or We've fixed four dozen bugs! For most people, it's the promise of new content they didn't experience before that draws them in. EA/Mythic likely wanted to increase the number of people to increase that peak and therefore have more players on the other side of the peak. I'm sure the comforting lie told was that they would fix the old content once they had hit their peak. Unfortunately for them, they hit that peak early and it's not been good news for them.

Now, obviously, this didn't go according to plan. But, it's not like someone intentionally made a stupid decision; the logic was supported by a lot of evidence. Turns out that the usual interpretation wasn't so good.

If I were a betting man, I would wager that in the next century or two the number of languages in common use will reduce to one or two hundred.

If I were a betting man, I'd take you up on that for several reasons despite your assertion that rapid transit and near instant communication will reduce barriers. (Ignoring, of course, the fact that jet travel is becoming much more expensive and likely less common depending on how how oil supplies do over the next century.)

1. Many languages are spoken in very low-technology places. Most of the languages are also highly local. You mention 6000 languages, but keep in mind their are only about 195 or so countries in the world. That means that some geographic areas have a lot of languages that haven't already been subsumed for one reason or another.

2. We've had jet engines and the internet for decades now, and barriers between people haven't exactly been obliterated. If anything, it's reinforced humanity's natural tendency to seek out others that look/think/act like they do. It's not language related, but let's take a look at U.S. politics: has the internet made conservatives and progressives understand each other's point of view? No, if anything it's encouraged even more separation as it's been easier to go to a website that matches your own personal biases and have them reinforced by others.

3. Language is part of cultural identity for a lot of people. You go tell a Québécois he can't speak French, or tell a Basque he can't speak Euskara. Even in the U.S. the idea of trying to standardize on English as an official language often has racist connotations.

Now, yes, languages are dying out and they're becoming extinct faster and faster. But, to think that we're going to go down to only 200 language in a century? I strongly disagree. If I were forced to guess how many languages would remain, I think a more realistic number, assuming we are starting with 6000, would be about 3000-4000. I think the vast majority of lost languages would be people simply dying out and their descendants learning a more common local language.

Now, I will agree that among the educated and well-connected, we will see a dominant language. Currently, that is English. My guess is that it will remain as such, and become the "lingua franca" of online discussion and international business. But, given that French was previously considered the diplomatic language and is no more, understand that the position of a language is fragile.

Some thoughts from a language geek.

As others have pointed out, it was the record producer's decision to make. Obviously the friend knew the value of free samples: he gave the CD to your son; I think he also knew that letting copies be made freely might not help him achieve his goals. I'll also point out that there are other ways to share music besides making a copy of a CD: lend the CD out, play the CD in a music player while friends are visiting, or even buy a copy of the CD for friends if it's available for sale. All legal, all ways to share the music without breaking the law in most jurisdictions. When I was a kid I recommended a lot of console games to my friends using these methods, back in the dark ages before emulators and widespread piracy on consoles.

You know, fans are great and I love all my fans, but it takes money to pay the rent and eat. Half a dozen *potential* fans who won't fork over cash even on a friend's recommendation aren't necessarily all that valuable, even if it is uncool to say "no, please don't freely distribute my work."

This seems to be following a trend where people think that adding "a game" to something mundane (usually related to soul-destroying work) can make things better. The recent example was Jesse Schell's talk at the 2010 DICE conference. There's also been a lot of people who have used the appeal of MMOs being able to gather a lot of people into one area to use these worlds as beds for research. There have been a lot of academic papers trying to glean economic insight based on the activity of players in different MMOs.

I think both these approaches forget that games and reality aren't the same. As a game designer, I would certainly argue that games can influence the world around us, but adding experience points doesn't make brushing my teeth more fun. Likewise, seeing how someone spends virtual currency that exists in endless supplies on an unending horde of enemies to slaughter doesn't necessarily give insight into how people would behave when dealing with "real" currency.

I expect that the "business" aspect to this game is something that the company founders used to stand out from the crowd of people who want to make MMOs. Given how the "business" aspects of Second Life have gone, and how much work making a game takes, I'd expect that the company is going to have a hard enough time focusing on making and maintaining the game.

Still, it's nice to see someone trying some that isn't just an underfunded WoW-clone for a change. ;)

Yeah, because I get my proprietary applications from tarballs hosted on mirror servers.

Er, wait....

No, this wasn't an attack based on access to the source, but it was an attack that took advantage of the nature of open source software community. The lesson here is that open source advocates need to get off their high horses and accept that vulnerabilities happen, even to open source projects.

Which game are people going to buy?

1. The one their friends are playing.*
2. The one with better reviews.
3. The one with better marketing (which is related to #2).

(* I'd snark about Slashdotters not having friends, but let's pretend we do for this exercise.)

There are a lot of reasons to buy (or not buy) a game. Given that Crytek is fairly well known and there are people who will buy their games and magazines that will give them high scores for eyecandy anyway, they can probably afford to not produce free demos. Not every game company will have that luxury, though.

Some insight from a game developer who knows too much about the business side of things.

Usually adding the modifier "for free" means that you're asking them to do something they would normally charge for. I don't know any real consultant who would ask to get paid for something like you describe, so the qualifier "for free" isn't necessary and is, in fact, misleading.

So, you failed to get some possibly good programmers because you have an insufficient command of English. I hear overseas outsourcing works cheap, though, and those workers might speak your native tongue.

That very attitude would sink another company.

Yes, it's a shame about how airlines, cable companies, phone companies, and all those other industries that failed to provide great customer service went under.

One time I spent 10 hours delayed at an airport because United didn't have a plane ready for the scheduled flight. What did they do to make it right? Offer me $100 off the next time I bought a ticket from them. Maybe I could just not fly United again, but that attitude isn't going to be any different than any other airline out there.

The reality is that a corporation has one goal, and one goal only: to make money. For some, the best way to make money is to help the customer out the best they can. For many, it means realizing that there is little to no alternative and that all their competitors are going to be doing the same thing, so cutting costs is the best way to make more money. Don't like your bank's policy? Go to another one. Just don't be surprised when you see the exact same behavior there, too. Or, perhaps, different annoying policies that simply treat you like a walking wallet.

Were your parents too poor to afford books? That's kind of the point of the post you're replying to. If your parents could buy you all the books you wanted to read, then you were lucky.

See, my parents were too poor to buy books, especially as much as I read when I was young. My parents were more worried about keeping our home repaired and food on the table than buying me all the science fiction books I wanted to read. So, they took me to the library and I got to read A LOT.

I was additionally blessed in that the local library didn't just carry books, but also had computers. I had a keen interest in computers from playing with them when visiting friends and relatives, and the local library could loan out Commodore 64 computers for a while. My parents got the computer for me several times. It was a great way for me to learn about programming without them having to spend money buying the computer. Yeah, sure, I spent most of my time coding up games (no surprise I'm a game developer today), but it gave me a deep appreciation and love for computer programing that informed my education and career choices.

I went to college and got a B.S. in Computer Science, a B.A. in Spanish, and a minor in Business all in 5 years if we want to compare degrees. I might have still gone into CS without getting the computer from the library, but I believe it gave me a huge advantage in figuring out how much I enjoyed technology that playing computers at friends and relatives houses didn't allow me.

So, even if it doesn't benefit you, don't think its useless to everyone. To others, it can be a life-changing experience. It was to me, and it probably would be to some kid today who grows up in a family that can't afford a computer and internet connection.

To put it succinctly: a college degree isn't enough. It is, however, a good start.

I think the real benefit is that college gives you the time and resources to do your own thing. For example, it's easier to do an unpaid internship if you already have room and board covered through student loans or from your parents.

I got a CS degree (and Spanish, minor in Business) in the mid-90s. About the time I was graduating, I saw people get into CS because the dot-com boom showed that programming was big money. I'm sure lots of people were disappointed when the crash came along a few years later. I didn't do an internship in school, so the first job I got was one that literally nobody else wanted to do. I only got it because I called back after everyone else had turned down job offers. It was a soul-sucking job, though, working at a small company owned by a huge company and experienced the worst of both worlds.

When I was in college, I spent a lot of time working on text MUDs (predecessors to MMORPGs) while I was working on my CS assignments. I eventually got the opportunity to be a programmer ("Wizard") on a game and spent a lot of time creating and designing. It was this experience that let me get my foot in the door in the game industry. I've been working on the game industry for nearly 12 years now, first as a mook, then owning my own company, and now doing mostly consulting and contract work. I'm relatively well-known in my small niche. But,I owe a lot of it on working on MUDs. That experience got me my first job working on Meridian 59 at 3DO which lead to other opportunities.

So, take this advice: do something else while you have the time and resources in college. Internships, volunteer for a open source project, work on games, whatever. Just get something to help you stand out from the crowd.

I think part of the issue is what the audience expects. The biggest audience for CoD4 is the North American market, so pronunciations conform to that. Even voices with supposedly British accents will probably pronounce words the American way to conform with American expectations. Perhaps this isn't accurate to the real world, but meeting player expectations makes them enjoy the game more.

Some thoughts from a game developer/designer.

This is inaccurate from what I remember. After launch, there were more PVP realms (servers) than PvE realms. You couldn't see exact populations on each server, but the PvP realms were reported to be just as full as the PvE realms, leading most to believe that the PvP realms were more popular. This lead some MMO developers to hope that this might spark an interest in PvP again....

However, WoW has always been a PvE-focused game. Not surprising that things have shifted over time.

The reality is that the number of people who find being griefed fun is smaller then the number of people who don't.

Actually, I think it's more accurate to say that people don't like losing. Most games, WoW included, make fighting a virtually zero-sum game in that each winner requires a loser. It doesn't help that most PvPers will take any advantage they can, and the winning strategy is to pick a fight you will most likely win (much higher level, opponent is fighting NPCs, etc.) If you feel like you're only ever going to be on the losing end, PvP competition loses a lot of its appeal.

Actual griefing is pretty rare these days. Losing a fight, however, is very common.

It's been said before, but Slashdot needs a (+1, I can believe some no-life made this, but it's AWESOME) moderation option. :)

Most of the whining about "deletionism" is from fans who want to blither endlessly about their favorite movie/comic book/Star Trek episode/vampire.

I don't know about "most", but I know it's not all mindless whining about fandom. My own disappointment with Wikipedia comes in the form of an article that was specialized, but useful in my professional field: Dragon Kill Points (DKP). There used to a fairly detailed page about this player-based MMO mechanic. (That's a link a user made to preserve the old page.) A few scholarly works on MMORPG economics referenced the article. I used to send it to young designers who didn't know much about raiding and how player created systems can impact design.

Then some admins decided that this topic wasn't notable enough. When a few of us experienced MMO people said, "No, this is in fact notable in our field," they started attacking it for not having enough references. After failing twice the request for deletion succeeded the third time in a rapid decision only a month after the second failed deletion attempt.

Oh, hey, guess what? An abbreviated article is back on Wikipedia. Not nearly as useful as the previous version was, but I guess enough notability and reference were found to make it worthwhile now. (If you look at the talk page of the new article, you'll notice I point out the old article and suggest the article could be expanded to its old glory. Someone has the audacity to tell me to "be bold". Not throwing my time away just to see someone else go on a power trip and delete it again, thank you very much.)

I've seen this happen other times, too, with other topics. But, lesson learned: Wikipedia is not a reliable reference, even ignoring the fact that vandalism happens. I don't link to it anymore because I never know if the useful article I found will remain undeleted a few weeks from now.

So, you can dismiss the complaints about deletionists as mostly bellyaching from people who want to write about Star Trek (on a site with multiple articles with info about every Pokémon), but I've had a very different experience.