Capitalist exploitation in alternative arts.

  1. NecroCommie
    NecroCommie
    I am sure that if you joined this brotherhood you know the situation. Fantasy gaming is ruled by capitalism wherever we go. Big game companies take outrageous profits from poor gamers, mostly due to the lack of competition, and sometimes there is actually deliberate capitalist game designing aimed at making profits. Sure there are many games and game makers who make their creations simply to improve the industry, but then there are these mega corporations who make the rules of the game so that one must buy more expensive stuff to keep playing.

    Question is: is there anything to be done about it? And what would be the place of such alternative industry in a communist society?
  2. Bitter Ashes
    Bitter Ashes
    Well, wouldnt copyright laws be pretty much scrapped as Intellectual Propety is basicly private property? I'd hope that credit would go to the workers who put together sourcebooks and stuff still, but I'm also sure that they'd be happy to be able to share it with more players without bieng penalised for it by capitalism.

    Oh and btw, your fraternal brotherhood was inflitrated by a sister in the form of your first member. ^^
  3. Bitter Ashes
    Bitter Ashes
    double post
  4. NecroCommie
    NecroCommie
    I know... I guess the stereotypical geek language is a bit presuming male domination.
  5. NecroCommie
    NecroCommie
    I hate the exploitation though!!!! Why do I have to buy entirely new deck of cards everytime wizards of the coast releases new rules for Magic: the gathering? Fucking ripoff!!
  6. Bitter Ashes
    Bitter Ashes
    Aye, or GW insisting you buy a fresh £40 rulebook every couple of years, making half your army illegal and then having to buy suplements and new minatures to replace the redundant ones, oh and then you discover half the rules are in White Dwarf, but you dont know which so you need a subscription and and... *sighs*. I think GW have got the process of squeezing money out of us refined to a fine art.
    Oh well, not I! Even if I did have the spare cash, I would be very relucantant to part with it in those kind of quntities.
  7. NecroCommie
    NecroCommie
    Yeah, GW is bad. I collected Imperial guard years ago. Its so god damn cool of an army, but I simply dont have the money to collect such a massive array of miniatures. Especially now when they are refreshing the codex = half an army away to the trash. Perhaps I start again with the armageddon steel legion when I get a proper job that pays.

    But not bad without good. I have had the same deck of Middle earth: the wizards for years now, and thanks to the pioneer spirit of the game company it is still "legal" and kicking ass.
  8. Bitter Ashes
    Bitter Ashes
    hehe. Yeah. Been playing 40k for about 15 years now. I started a Guard army after I left the military and I had the spare cash. The plastic kits were just starting up around then and that helped a lot with the costs, but it's only Cadian and Catachan, so no Steel Legion option. The new codex came out today actualy and I've been informed that most of the army is recoverable. Still, they've made it so that you can have up to nine Leman Russ varients (there's about 10 now) with your heavy FOC slots. Looks like they really want to push that Emperor's Fist box set.
  9. Jazzratt
    Jazzratt
    As far as GW games go I've taken to playing the specialist games (Mordheim, Necromunda, Gorkamorka and Inquisitor) - all the ones I play are cheaper (with the exception of inquisitor but I use my mates' models) and just as fun, if not so than the games themselves [your milage may vary, especially if you enjoy 2,000 point bloodbaths].

    The galling thing with new editions of GW games is that they seem to be degrading in quality and certainly don't have much of the "feel" of the older editions. Gone are the hallucination tables in 40k, the winds of magic in Fantasy and all the various piddly rules that made playing these games so damn fun. Modelling has improved though.

    As for the OP it reminds of the story behind the release of everyone's favourite (*spit*) edition of D&D. Wizards got fed up of the OGL allowing small companies and individual hobbyists to write new and innovative spins on their cashcow [probably galled that people weren't charging each other through the nose for these third party books as well]. At one point they tried to change or remove the OGL but they couldn't go back on it without causing a legal shitstorm so they released 4th edition in order to make everything relating to D20 and the OGL "obsolete". Fan communities still persist in using the D20 system, rather than the rushed abortion they've dumped on the public, for some reason.

    Wizards are a bunch of bastards though, they can't charge enough for pdf versions of their books so they *pull the whole fucking library* and force you to buy their jacked up hardbacks. White Wolf (another bunch of bastards, but for different reasons) responded to this by giving away Exalted 2nd edition FOR FUCKING FREE - possibly the biggest "fuck you WotC" I've seen in the industry.