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by alkonaut 1530 days ago
But a game costs hundreds of millions of dollars to create. Just royalties to sports leagues etc can be massive, for a sports game for example.

RMS should work backwards from that assumption and explain how to get such games into gamers hands while maintaining freedom. If he can’t then he should probably give up arguing that people should stop playing or switch to something completely different than what they consider a “game” is.
1 comments
DocTomoe 1530 days ago
No. A game does not cost hundreds of millions of dollars to create. Some games choose to burn hundreds of millions of dollars, for very little return. Some of the best games were a lot cheaper to produce. License costs are elective: Noone forces you to plaster Football players names and team logos on your Football game (and some of the best (and creative) Football games choose not to)

The main problem is that RMS lives in a world in which people care about freedom, when they only care about brand recognition - and that is in fact related to marketing and thus "millions of dollars".

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alkonaut 1530 days ago
> The main problem is that RMS lives in a world in which people care about freedom, when they only care about brand recognition - and that is in fact related to marketing and thus "millions of dollars".

There are other reasons than licensing and marketing that makes games cost hundreds of millions too. People expect games to be on the scale that they are, so the cost of developing these games will be astronomical.

It’s ok to care about freedoms of course but I don’t see how it’s a meaningful to argue that the most popular section of games should simply go extinct rather than work for making those more free or privacy conscious than they are.

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crtasm 1530 days ago
Mobile games are more popular than AAA games, and would AAA games be so popular without the millions spent on advertising?
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alkonaut 1529 days ago
Mobile games are popular on mobile. The medium is somewhat limited, but there at least there is still a theoretical chance you can develop a blockbuster without a massive bugdet.

> would AAA games be so popular without the millions spent on advertising?

Kind of a hypothetical, but I'm guessing yes. But to spend a billion on a game and then not tell anyone you did would be kind of silly. It's not like "advertising" or "marketing" is some kind of scam to get people to buy things they don't really like.

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