Jdopplegaenger

There are certain studies which are of particular interest to those who are interested in politics, which I come across and then forget, only to search for them again. Even if only for my own future reference, here are a few interesting ones:

http://www.dominionpaper.ca/articles/4100

Apparently, the town of Dauphin, Manitoba was used for a sociological experiment in the 1970s, in which every resident was given a guaranteed minimum income regardless of their circumstances. They were then compared to residents of nearby towns in similar economic straits but without this program in operation. The result: contrary to popular belief, it did not cause people to stop working. The only people who worked less under the guaranteed minimum income program were teenagers (who tended to go back to school) and new mothers (who tended to raise their children). In both cases, that is an outcome that most people find desirable. This tears a big hole in the popular conservative notion that minimum income would make people stop working: apparently, nobody is particularly happy to live on a minimum income, and rather than simply laying about on it, will use it as a springboard to attempt to move up the socio-economic ladder.

http://www.psmag.com/magazines/pacific-standard-cover-story/joe-henrich-weird-ultimatum-game-shaking-up-psychology-economics-53135/

A researcher named Joe Henrich decided to conduct numerous psychological experiments which had been done before in the US, but he conducted them on residents of foreign cultures. The results were startling: many of the conclusions drawn by psychologists from prior research on Americans were assumed to be universal human traits, but were in fact unique to Americans. This has many far-reaching ramifications for the field of psychology, since the bulk of psychological research has been conducted on Americans.

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsa022033

According to a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in August 2003, the administrative overhead cost of American health care is roughly three times as high per capita as the administrative overhead cost of Canadian health care. Not only does this blow a hole in the widespread assumption that private industry is always more efficient than government, but it explains much of the soaring cost of American health care.

http://www.nber.org/papers/w9873

“Are Emily and Greg More Employable Than Lakisha And Jamal?” Researchers conducted experiments in which they sent out resumes with identical information except for one difference: “white-sounding” versus “ethnic-sounding” names. The results were startling: white-sounding names received 50% more call-backs for interviews after sending out otherwise identical resumes. Not only that, but the effect of higher-quality resumes was more pronounced for the people with white-sounding names. Variations of this study have been conducted independently in different areas, with similar results. For those who call for an end to “affirmative action”, this study rather inconveniently points out that the raison d’etre for affirmative action still continues to exist, and that it merely levels the playing field rather than unfairly tilting it toward minorities.

This year marks the 20th anniversary of Magic: the Gathering. Many of the game's earliest fans still look back fondly on the art that appeared on cards in those first few sets. While their work may not have been as polished as today's Magic art, those early artists had more freedom to experiment, creating images that were sometimes unexpected or downright weird.

Some of those early artists have banded together to contribute to a new art book, The Gathering: Reuniting Pioneering Artists of Magic. Three dozen artists who made Magic art in those early years are creating new pieces for the project, which will be available in softcover, hardcover, and numbered collector's edition formats. Some of the artists have re-envisioned classic Magic art, while some of them created entirely new fantasy art, with no connection to the game at all. Pictured above is artist Heather Hudson's updated take on Chains of Mephistopheles.

Artist Pete Venters, who has been working on the project, answered all our questions and even provided us with some some exclusive preview art.

Could you tell us how this project came together? What inspired it and who got the ball rolling?

Pete Venters: In the first couple of years following Magic's launch, as the game grew exponentially, we suddenly became the guys at the shows with the massive autograph lines. This was all kind of a shock, and those early artists formed a loose community built upon shared experiences and that rare feeling of riding some kind of juggernaut.

So, over the years, many of us had wondered if it'd be possible to get the 'band back together' for some kind of project. Last Summer, Jeff A. Menges and Bryon Wackwitz were having one of those "what-if?" conversations, when the subject of Magic's impending 20th anniversary came up. Jeff took the lead and used Facebook to get us all in one place to pitch the idea of an art book to us.

Jeff’s been the project leader ever since. He’s the man working to get the book laid out, printed and in the hands of the customers by our promised date of September 2013. I’m running the Facebook and Kickstarter pages. I’d heard how crazy these things get but it’s like ‘The Matrix’; you have to see it for yourself.

One example: There was one request for a reward tier for the actual hard drive that one of the digital pieces was created on, so they could own the closest thing to the original. We had to turn that guy down, but it certainly wins for thinking outside of the box!

Above: Dan Frazier, who painted all five original Moxen, puts them all onto one golden dragon.

What has Wizards of the Coast's involvement been? I know this is an independent project, but they're letting you use some of their trademarked logos. Anything beyond that?

Well, originally we wondered how we could do the art book without stepping on Wizards' copyright but then we just reached a point where we said, "Let's just run it past Wizards and see if they're good with this." They were. They've actually been remarkably supportive and all we had to do was ensure they had some oversight. After all, we're playing in their sandbox.

Above: An original piece by Ken Meyer Jr. called An Eye for an Eye.

Had any of the artists moved on or stopped making art professionally, or were otherwise difficult to track down?

Moved on? Certainly. I don't think a single one of these old-school Magic artists is a regular contributor to the game anymore. I think Mark Tedin and myself may have been the last regulars.

I don't now if any of them had stopped painting, but it certainly didn't stop them jumping back in the saddle. As for people difficult to track down, I think that award goes to Anson Maddocks, who had moved to another town, rarely uses email and the only phone number any of us had for him was an old one! We caught up with him by sheer luck.

Above: Julie Baroh revisits Clone in a very different style.

Are there any interesting stories behind each artist's choice of a piece to revisit?

Well, that's the core of the book for many of the artists. Why this card? Why this art? For some, it's a card that was a big deal when it was released, and all the associated memories that come with suddenly having the card everyone wants. Others, it's a favorite painting from the past, and occasionally, a painting they dearly wanted to redo - after all, if you find one of your weaker paintings ending up on one of the hotter cards, you're going to be signing that card a lot and regretting that art every time!

That’s not to say every one of the new pieces of art is related to a Magic card. Some of the artists’ ties to Magic are far enough in the past that they felt odd revisiting a Magic card. This handful of artists are producing work appropriate to their interests now.

Above: Mark Tedin re-imagines one of Magic's most controversial cards, Chaos Orb.

What kind of impact has Magic: the Gathering had on fantasy art in the last 20 years? I'm thinking about this both in terms of style and also the business of being a pro artist.

Prior to Magic, the amount of color work, especially paintings, in the hobby game industry was almost entirely limited to book and module covers. A lot of new painters found an outlet when suddenly there’s this product that needs six hundred or more paintings every year!

However, I don’t think there’s a way to view Magic’s effect in isolation. The last twenty years have brought us significantly cheaper color printing, a robust set of alternate methods of creating digital art and most importantly, the Internet. The latter has given any product a potentially worldwide pool of artistic talent and I suspect that breadth of cultural diversity and the instant feedback provided by any one of a score of established art forums has played a bigger role in the changing look of fantasy art than any single product, even Magic.

The same goes for being a pro artist. The competition is global now which is a great opportunity, dizzying in its scale, and thoroughly intimidating at times.

Above: The original Elder Dragon, Ed Beard Jr.'s Nicol Bolas.

What is it about early MtG art that makes people say, "I love early MtG art!"? What sets it apart from the art being made for the game today?

Its eclecticism. The early artists were drawn from all walks of life, many had never considered being fantasy artists, and I think that breadth of backgrounds brought some radically different approaches to the table. From the evocative watercolors of Drew Tucker to the refined Mucha-esque linework of Quinton Hoover, from the broad cartoonish works of Phil Foglio to the intricate textures and shapes of Richard Kane Ferguson.

Those earliest sets lacked the visual cohesion of modern Magic, but depending on who you talk to, that’s no bad thing. The sheer variety made individual pieces easy to pick out from across a card table.

Above: Pete Venters' Morrox, Demon Prince of Goblins, an original piece.

Wizards has released new versions of old cards with updated art from time to time. Have they expressed any interest in using any of these paintings on actual cards, or in Magic Online?

Wizards hasn't talked to us about using the art on cards. It's not out of the question but each individual artist would have their own comfort zone regarding that.

By Tommy Refenes

I think I can safely say that Super Meat Boy has been pirated at least 200,000 times. We are closing in on 2 million sales and assuming a 10% piracy to sales ratio does not seem unreasonable. As a forward thinking developer who exists in the present, I realize and accept that a pirated copy of a digital game does not equate to money being taken out of my pocket. Team Meat shows no loss in our year end totals due to piracy and neither should any other developer.

For the sake of argument, some of those people that did pirate Super Meat Boy could have bought the game if piracy didn't exist but there is no actual way to calculate that lost revenue. It is impossible to know with certainty the intentions of people. With the SimCity fiasco and several companies trying to find new ways to combat piracy and stating piracy has negatively affected their bottom line I wonder if they've taken the time to accurately try to determine what their losses are due to piracy.

My first job outside my parents cabinet shop was at KMart. KMart, like countless other retailers, calculates loss by counting purchased inventory and matching it to sales. Loss is always built into the budget because it is inevitable. Loss could come from items breaking, being stolen, or being defective. If someone broke a light bulb, that was a calculable loss. If someone returned a blender for being defective, it wasn't a loss to KMart, but a calculable loss to the manufacturer. If someone steals a copy of BattleToads, it's a loss to KMart.

All loss in a retail setting is calculable because items to be sold are physical objects that come from manufacturers that have to be placed on shelves by employees. You have a chain of inventory numbers, money spent and labor spent that goes from the consumer all the way to the manufacturer. A stolen, broken, or lost item is an item that you cannot sell. In the retail world your stock is worth money.

In the digital world, you don't have a set inventory. Your game is infinitely replicable at a negligible or zero cost (the cost bandwidth off your own site or nothing if you're on a portal like Steam, eShop, etc). Digital inventory has no value. Your company isn't worth an infinite amount because you have infinite copies of your game. As such, calculating worth and loss based on infinite inventory is impossible. If you have infinite stock, and someone steals one unit from that stock, you still have infinite stock. If you have infinite stock and someone steals 1 trillion units from that stock , you still have infinite stock. There is no loss of stock when you have an infinite amount.

Because of this, in the digital world, there is no loss when someone steals a game because it isn't one less copy you can sell, it is potentially one less sale but that is irrelevant. Everyone in the world with an internet connection and a form of online payment is a potential buyer for your game but that doesn't mean everyone in the world will buy your game.

Loss due to piracy is an implied loss because it is not a calculable loss. You cannot, with any accuracy, state that because your game was pirated 300 times you lost 300 sales. You cannot prove even one lost sale because there is no evidence to state that any one person who pirated your game would have bought your game if piracy did not exist. From an accounting perspective it's speculative and a company cannot accurately determine loss or gain based on speculative accounting. You can't rely on revenue due to speculation, you can't build a company off of what will "probably" happen. Watch "The Smartest Guys in the Room" and see how that worked out for Enron.

Companies try to combat piracy of their software with DRM but if loss due to pirated software is not calculable to an accurate amount does the implementation of DRM provide a return on investment? It is impossible to say yes to this statement. Look at it as numbers spent in a set budget. You spend $X on research for your new DRM method that will prevent people from stealing your game. That $X is a line item in accounting that can be quantified. Can you then say "This $X we put into research for our DRM gained us back $Y in sales"? There is no way to calculate this because it is not possible to quantify the intentions of a person. Also, there's no way of accurately determining which customers would have stolen the game had there not been DRM.

To add to that, the reality of our current software age is the internet is more efficient at breaking things than companies are at creating them. A company will spend massive amounts of money on DRM and the internet will break it in a matter of days in most cases. When the DRM is broken is it worth the money spent to implement it? Did the week of unbroken DRM for your game gain you any sales from potential pirates due to the inability to pirate at launch? Again, there is no way of telling and as such cannot be used as an accurate justification for spending money.

So what should developers do to make sure people don't steal games? Unfortunately there is nothing anyone can do to actively stop their game from being pirated. I do believe people are less likely to pirate your software if the software is easy to buy, easy to run, and does what is advertised. You can't force a person to buy your software no more than you can prevent a person from stealing it. People have to WANT to buy your software, people have to WANT to support you. People need to care about your employees and your company's well being. There is no better way to achieve that than making sure what you put out there is the best you can do and you treat your customers with respect.

Lets loop back to what's going on with SimCity. I bought SimCity day one, I played it and experienced the same frustrations that countless others are experiencing. For total fairness, I know the always on DRM isn't the main issue, but I can't help but think that the server side calculations are a "wolf in sheep's clothing" version of DRM. I won't claim to know the inner workings of SimCity and this isn't a Captain Hindsight article because that is irrelevant. EA and Maxis are currently facing a bigger problem than piracy: A growing number of their customers no longer trust them and this has and will cost them money.

After the frustrations with SimCity I asked Origin for a refund and received one. This was money they had and then lost a few days later. Applying our earlier conversation about calculable loss, there is a loss that is quantifiable, that will show up in accounting spreadsheets and does take away from profit. That loss is the return, and it is much more dangerous than someone stealing your game.

In the retail world, you could potentially put a return back on the shelf, you could find another customer that wants it, sell it to them and there would be virtually no loss. In the digital world, because there is no set amount of goods, you gain nothing back (one plus infinity is still infinity). It's only a negative experience. A negative frustrating experience for a customer should be considered more damaging than a torrent of your game.

Speaking from my experience with SMB, I know for a fact we have lost a lot of trust from Mac users due to the Mac port of SMB being poor quality. I could go into the circumstances of why it is the way it is but that is irrelevant...it's a broken product that is out in the public. We disappointed a good portion of our Mac customers with SMB and as a result several former customers have requested and received refunds. I'd take any amount of pirates over one return due to disappointment any day.

Disappointment leads to apathy which is the swan song for any developer. If people don't care about your game, why would people ever buy it? When MewGenics comes out, I doubt many Mac users are going to be excited about our launch. When EA/Maxis create their next new game how many people are going to be excited about it and talking positively about it? I imagine that the poison of their current SimCity launch is going to seep into potential customers thoughts and be a point of speculation as to "Is it going to be another SimCity launch?".

This is not a quantifiable loss of course, but people are more likely to buy from distributors they trust rather than ones they've felt slighted by before. Consumer confidence plays a very important role in how customers spend money. I think its safe to say that EA and Maxis do not have a lot of consumer confidence at this point. I think its also safe to say that the next EA/Maxis game is going to be a tough sell to people who experienced or were turned away by talk of frustration regarding SimCity.

As a result of piracy developers feel their hand is forced to implement measures to stop piracy. Often, these efforts to combat piracy only result in frustration for paying customers. I challenge a developer to show evidence that accurately shows implementation of DRM is a return on investment and that losses due to piracy can be calculated. I do not believe this is possible.

The reality is the fight against piracy equates to spending time and money combating a loss that cannot be quantified. Everyone needs to accept that piracy cannot be stopped and loss prevention is not a concept that can be applied to the digital world. Developers should focus on their paying customers and stop wasting time and money on non-paying customers. Respect your customers and they may in turn respect your efforts enough to purchase your game instead of pirating it.

[Tommy Refenes wrote this on sister site Gamasutra's free community blogs.]