Just watching the trailer I already had this feeling of "I can't see what's going on". That's not the impression you want from your trailer. Partly it's choppy editing I think--in the interests of speed for a short trailer they're cutting away from each scene before you can assimilate what the hell was happening in it. But partly I think it's that UI Liam was mentioning.

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Meh. Only Rubes use this. (rimshot)

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This sounds interesting. But I do hope there isn't less to it than meets the eye. There are some rather tired old tropes about interrogation and ethics where it is imagined there is a direct relationship between how unethical you are willing to be and how effectively you will gain information, at which point the ethical question is a simple one of whether the ends justify the means--nowadays generally stacked in favour of "yes". But my understanding is that professionals are often of the opinion that that's not how it actually works--that hard, unethical methods will generally get people to tell you what they think you want to hear, whether it is true or not. So I'll be disappointed if it's in that sort of "24" style.

(The main use of such techniques is for when there actually is something you want to hear, usually so that you can use the forced admission politically in some way. So for instance if you want some terrorist to tell you that Saddam Hussein's regime had relationships with al Qaeda even though the two were deadly enemies, you torture them until they tell you that. Or if you need a fast conviction and don't much care who really committed some ghetto crime, you beat a confession out of someone)

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Quoting: Eike

Quoting: Purple Library GuyBut if you just read the sentence "Greed is not the same as seeking your own advantage"--well, what is it then?
Perhaps we could come up with a decent, reasonably well defined distinction between bad greed and good not-exactly-greed, but I would suggest that it's subtle enough to make use of the term pretty defensible . . . especially since nobody seems to quite agree what they want to call it instead.

Let me give it a try:

Everbody deserves its share.
The border between being seekingyouradvantagely and greedy is if you're trying to get "your share" (whatever that may be) or if you're trying to get way more than "your share" (whatever that may be) - and thus eating away from other people's share.

It's clearly hard to say what's on which side (starting with the huge problem of defining "your share" in different parts of the world), but I don't think there's any subtility to the overall difference.

It's "I want what I deserve" contra "I want what you deserve".

If you're going to define greed as anything beyond just trying for "your share", then I think it's going to include a lot of what some of the other people here want to exclude. And it's certainly going to include about all the people I was talking about in my original post that got people annoyed, thus meaning there was no point in bugging me about it.
Let's see . . . one might distinguish greed as the refusal to weight other factors such as causing distress to others when deciding whether to pursue a gain, or something like that. But then, some people are clearly greedy and yet have limits to what they would do for a buck. It's tricky.

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Quoting: EikeI feel you're hurting your point by using the wrong term.

I feel I'm not. We're really at a place in the discussion where there's not much point going further. I get that some people are upset by my use of the term and think it's out of place. I disagree. (shrug)

Quoting: EikeGreed is not the same as seeking your own advantage. Yes, most of us are often driven by monetary advantages (which is probably good enough to prove your original point). Greed is the exzessive, antisocial variant, which I don't think most people adhere to.

Clearly we could have a very subtle semantic argument about this. The distinction I'm seeing is not really in meaning, just that one part of our socialization says "greed is bad" and another part says "seeking your own advantage, entrepreneurialism etc. is good" and so we figure they can't be the same thing, because one is bad and the other is good. But if you just read the sentence "Greed is not the same as seeking your own advantage"--well, what is it then?
Perhaps we could come up with a decent, reasonably well defined distinction between bad greed and good not-exactly-greed, but I would suggest that it's subtle enough to make use of the term pretty defensible . . . especially since nobody seems to quite agree what they want to call it instead.

In any case, I couldn't really have used a different term. The point I was making was in reply to someone accusing game developers of greed--not accusing them of enlightened self-interest. And I was saying "Yeah, so?" Trying to mess around with other words would have destroyed the whole point.

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Very calming.

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Quoting: doomiebaby

Quoting: tuubi

Quoting: kuhpunkt

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: orochi_kyo

Quoting: HoriHowever I wonder when will the big elephant be addressed - namely the house's cut on each sale. That thing should definetely be more open (read: reduced), as it actually does affect the consumers. Devs aren't happy with it, at all (and for good reason) and decide to sell elsewhere, which is not ideal at all for the users.

How does affect consumers? Because Greedy devs wants a bigger cut

Well, of course they're greedy. It's capitalism, everyone in the game is greedy. That's the point. Developers are greedy, portal owners are greedy whether Valve or EGS or even GoG, and we consumers all want cheaper games, we're greedy too. Everyone is, in effect, forced to be greedy.

That seems like an overly negative attitude

It's also quite an accurate summary of capitalism. You can call it the pursuit of personal gain instead of greed if you prefer. But in the end, we have to be greedy if we want to be (financially) successful in a capitalist system. That's something we should all be able to agree on, no matter our political leanings.

"Should" all be able to agree on?? how's about we can all at least agree on definitions for words like 'greed'? that is if we're going to use them and bother trying to communicate at all. personal gain != greed. if i work for food, i want personal gain. that is not the same as greed.

" You can call it" .. tell ya what, i'll call it what's most accurate and not accusatory. sounds like a serious case of characterization. is it really honest to start making assumptions about people's motives?

Why so insistent on sanitizing language? I can see where it bothers you to think that the way of life you're embedded in is based on "greed" as opposed to some less-ignoble-sounding version of the same thing. But let's be clear, the system isn't based on working for food, it's based on maximizing income, on the idea of everyone trying for an infinite amount of money. "Greed" seems a succinct summation of that. Now a lot of people don't, for practical purposes, really do that--most don't really have the opportunity anyway. But anyone who's a player in the game, anyone who could be considered an entrepreneur or engaged in any for-profit endeavour, is greedy, grabbing what the traffic will bear, or they're losing. And even those of us who aren't, are constrained to operate and even think that way to some extent. It's not like it's our fault. It's how things are rigged.
So any time someone calls out Valve, or developers, or whoever, for greed . . . depending how you look at it, it's either irrelevant or it's someone's personal instincts rebelling against the existing economic system without realizing it. But it's not really a valid personal criticism of the people involved; they're just doing what they're supposed to.

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Quoting: kuhpunkt

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: kuhpunkt

Quoting: tuubi

Quoting: kuhpunkt

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: orochi_kyo

Quoting: HoriHowever I wonder when will the big elephant be addressed - namely the house's cut on each sale. That thing should definetely be more open (read: reduced), as it actually does affect the consumers. Devs aren't happy with it, at all (and for good reason) and decide to sell elsewhere, which is not ideal at all for the users.

How does affect consumers? Because Greedy devs wants a bigger cut

Well, of course they're greedy. It's capitalism, everyone in the game is greedy. That's the point. Developers are greedy, portal owners are greedy whether Valve or EGS or even GoG, and we consumers all want cheaper games, we're greedy too. Everyone is, in effect, forced to be greedy.

That seems like an overly negative attitude

It's also quite an accurate summary of capitalism. You can call it the pursuit of personal gain instead of greed if you prefer. But in the end, we have to be greedy if we want to be (financially) successful in a capitalist system. That's something we should all be able to agree on, no matter our political leanings.

But calling _everybody_ greedy... that's kinda insulting. Even the less offensive "pursuit of personal gain" is hard to swollow. Is everything you do just for your personal gain? Don't you share things? Don't you gift other people presents? Don't you think others should be treated and compensated fairly?

If you think that's how all people are... that would be just sad.

Well, let me give a contrast. Imagine there was a system where everyone got a certain amount of credit every year that they could dedicate to paying creative people via sort of patreon/kickstarteresque portals (and that's all--it's not money, it's just a sort of vote to award someone money). Musicians, writers, game developers and so on. They'd all get paid from that. The amount any given creator could get per year would have a sort of soft cap, with rapidly diminishing returns past a certain point--but that point would involve a pretty solid living. But then the stuff they created would be free to all, available on public websites, steam-like portals or what have you built with open source code.
Of course this would all involve a fair amount of tax money. And might be inefficient, and so on, so it might not turn out to be a desirable setup, that's not my point.
But it would not push anyone to be greedy. The game designers could make a decent living without coming up with all kinds of tricks to boost revenue; they could just get on with making cool stuff. The "Steam" things would be public, not for profit. The public would get all the games, music, books or whatever they wanted, for free. Incentives would be very different. Our current system, for better or for worse, is based on greed, on harnessing the power of greed to (in theory) motivate productive effort. It is possible to imagine other systems based on other things, on harnessing different aspects of human motivation, but those would be different systems. Could be worse; the feudal system was largely based on pride and bloodthirstiness.

Even if that is/would be true... what makes you say that everybody is greedy? I'm not. Many others aren't.

I can see it's a disturbing thought. And I'm willing to believe you are, say, less greedy than many or most other people. But you are constrained to be motivated by money; it's the game in town. Do you prefer buying things on sale or full price? If you have retirement savings, do you want them to make a high rate of return? Would you like a raise? Would you like to win the lottery? Do you worry about either the poor, or the rich, taking all the money (via social programs or immigration for the former or tax breaks/evasion and subsidies for the latter) and leaving none for your kind of people?

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Quoting: Patola

Quoting: Purple Library GuyThe only people in the whole biz who seem pretty clearly not driven by greed is itch.io. They're weird, I like them.

And then again, Itch does not have regional prices, and to people in the third world like me, their prices are simply excessive, I have never spent 1 "real" (brazilian currency) there. Sometimes Steam is like 4 times cheaper than in there. So in my viewpoint, they are the greedy ones.

Costing more to you /= greed. To the contrary, as you point out they simply lose you and a huge category like you as a customer for lack of that kind of infrastructure. itch.io as I understand it have a "pay what you want" cut from developers; I don't see how it's possible to define such an arrangement as greed.
They lack infrastructure and that's bad for many potential customers. They lack infrastructure because they don't have money, they don't have money because they're not greedy; they are in effect trying to buck the existing system without the help of having any other system in place that could enable their lack of greed. It's a hard thing to do.
But their platform is open source. In theory it would be perfectly possible for international customers and/or game developers to write an international pricing extension for it and ask them if they wanted to use it.

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Quoting: kuhpunkt

Quoting: tuubi

Quoting: kuhpunkt

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: orochi_kyo

Quoting: HoriHowever I wonder when will the big elephant be addressed - namely the house's cut on each sale. That thing should definetely be more open (read: reduced), as it actually does affect the consumers. Devs aren't happy with it, at all (and for good reason) and decide to sell elsewhere, which is not ideal at all for the users.

How does affect consumers? Because Greedy devs wants a bigger cut

Well, of course they're greedy. It's capitalism, everyone in the game is greedy. That's the point. Developers are greedy, portal owners are greedy whether Valve or EGS or even GoG, and we consumers all want cheaper games, we're greedy too. Everyone is, in effect, forced to be greedy.

That seems like an overly negative attitude

It's also quite an accurate summary of capitalism. You can call it the pursuit of personal gain instead of greed if you prefer. But in the end, we have to be greedy if we want to be (financially) successful in a capitalist system. That's something we should all be able to agree on, no matter our political leanings.

But calling _everybody_ greedy... that's kinda insulting. Even the less offensive "pursuit of personal gain" is hard to swollow. Is everything you do just for your personal gain? Don't you share things? Don't you gift other people presents? Don't you think others should be treated and compensated fairly?

If you think that's how all people are... that would be just sad.

Well, let me give a contrast. Imagine there was a system where everyone got a certain amount of credit every year that they could dedicate to paying creative people via sort of patreon/kickstarteresque portals (and that's all--it's not money, it's just a sort of vote to award someone money). Musicians, writers, game developers and so on. They'd all get paid from that. The amount any given creator could get per year would have a sort of soft cap, with rapidly diminishing returns past a certain point--but that point would involve a pretty solid living. But then the stuff they created would be free to all, available on public websites, steam-like portals or what have you built with open source code.
Of course this would all involve a fair amount of tax money. And might be inefficient, and so on, so it might not turn out to be a desirable setup, that's not my point.
But it would not push anyone to be greedy. The game designers could make a decent living without coming up with all kinds of tricks to boost revenue; they could just get on with making cool stuff. The "Steam" things would be public, not for profit. The public would get all the games, music, books or whatever they wanted, for free. Incentives would be very different. Our current system, for better or for worse, is based on greed, on harnessing the power of greed to (in theory) motivate productive effort. It is possible to imagine other systems based on other things, on harnessing different aspects of human motivation, but those would be different systems. Could be worse; the feudal system was largely based on pride and bloodthirstiness.

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