Well, now I've seen EVERYTHING.

A My Little Pony episode about capitalism, the free market, and the evils of poor quality control.

Here is a link. (Note if at some point in the future the link doesn't work, you're looking for MLP Friendship is Magic, Season 2 Episode 15 "The Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000".)

I don't care if you normally like the show or not. Just watch this episode, it really is amazing. I was thinking of making a post about the show as a whole and why it's actually pretty good but then this episode happened and that's what I want to talk about. And I talk about whatever I want to talk about, because this is my blog and fuck you.

If for some reason you can't watch it or don't want to, here's a summary:

- Applejack and her family are making a good living selling apple cider, but mostly due to high standards of quality, they can't even produce nearly enough supply to satisfy demand.

- Enter the brothers Flim and Flam, with both a fancy cider-making machine and a fantastic song in the same style as the classic "Monorail" song from The Simpsons.

- Granny Smith, Applejack's grandma, is sceptical. Perhaps because she's an advocate of tradition, she says there's no way a machine can match the same care that goes into the hand (or hoof)-made stuff.

- Flim and Flam show her the machine's quality control system that automatically rejects bad apples, and then proceed to make a nothing-short-of-extortionate partnership offer to the Apple family, which is quickly rejected.

- In the end they agree to a contest the next day, in which whoever produces the most cider in one hour gains exclusive cider-selling rights in Ponyville. Granny Smith lets Flim and Flam use one of her family's orchards for the apples they'll need, despite that losing the cider business will (somehow) force them to close down their farm.

- During the contest, Flim and Flam's machine is clearly outclassing the Apple family's old-fashioned methods, until Twilight Sparkle and co offer their help (which AJ accepts- not sure if that's inconsistent writing or logical character development) and start producing cider much faster.

- Flim and Flam suddenly realise they may actually lose the contest, and start tuning up their machine- it's not just  taking in apples now, but whole trees! When this still isn't enough, in their bid to gain a monopoly they disable the quality control system and start letting both good and rotten apples into their cider.

- Flim and Flam win the contest. Applejack and family walk away in shame. However, once they start trying to actually sell their cider, it turns out to be disgusting. The crowd, who were previously in favour of Flim and Flam due to the promise of enough cider for everyone, are now angry because they produced something that they don't want to pay for.

- Flim and Flam can't sell their cider and leave town, leaving the Apple family free to take back their business, and now with enough of their own cider to go around.

Now. I'm not sure what I think of the writers using the show to sell their political viewpoints to six-year-olds, but it's not like this sort of thing hasn't happened before, and we could argue that FiM has always been teaching kids about morality and friendship anyway, where exactly do we draw the line between "stuff kids should always know" and "stuff that's just the writer's opinion"? Do we unanimously agree that modern corporations are bad and tradition-oriented family businesses are good? 

It worries me that I'm not sure I can speak for everyone when I say that this episode's message is a good one. I'm not sure I like when kids' shows try to touch on larger real-world issues, and one day I think this practice is going to spread and someone will touch on something not everyone is ok with.

I suppose at least it does teach a viewpoint that I can agree with- corporate monopolies are evil, a free competitive market is best for everyone and the consumer should be treated with respect.

The funny thing is, this show actually only exists so that Hasbro can sell toys. Go figure.

SOPA: The Final Boss of the Internet.

I don't like discussing political issues.
I usually don't give half a damn what a bunch of self-important folks in ties spend their work hours arguing over at the taxpayer's expense. Funding, legislation, taxes, environmental initiatives, I leave all these kinds of things things to people who understand these things better than me. Because I don't give half a damn.

But then I start hearing about this "SOPA" thing in the US.
If you don't know what it is, this makes a good introduction: 

So. What happens if this passes? Well, I'm not a time traveller, I don't know politics, I don't understand intellectual property law... but I do know the internet.
And we need to understand the internet to understand SOPA.
To some people, "the internet" is just Facebook, an internet subscription is essentially a license to spam people with duck-faced pouty-lip bathroom-mirror pictures and as much as I despise these people, even they will feel the effects of SOPA.
To others, the internet is a research tool. Sites like Wikipedia or even Google allow you to have more or less all human knowledge at your fingertips- thanks to the internet we live in an age where information is free and anyone can just go study up on any damn subject they want, without needing to pay for tuition or have knowledgeable friends. Yep, SOPA will ruin that too. If we allow information to become regulated like this, then knowledge will become a rare commodity, ignorance will run rampant and many serious issues will eventually go un-discussed because nobody knows about them.
To more people, the internet is a career. Not just for the huge corporations who hire one or two people to market things online. Not just for people like Mark Zuckerberg who own multi-million dollar websites. Not just them, but thousands upon thousands of writers, critics, bloggers, webcomic artists, cartoonists, comedians, web game designers, musicians and many more people who add content to the internet. I'm a huge fan of many people whose careers depend on the internet- let's look at some:

Bob "MovieBob" Chipman reviews movies and talks about interesting nerd things on The Escapist. The Escapist pays him and people like him to create content to make their website interesting.. It was a comment in one of MovieBob's videos that inspired me to make a blog, and I aim to be like him. Of course because of the nature of his job, copyrighted materials make up a large majority of his subject matter. You can't review a movie without talking about it and you can't talk about anything you're passionate about without, you know, mentioning it. (Remember, even "Could Superman beat up Darth Vader?" is a discussion of copyrighted material.)
If SOPA passes, this man's whole career can and will end because of it.

On a similar note, The Escapist also introduced me to the LoadingReadyRun crew- these guys have been running an online sketch comedy show since even before YouTube and established several entertaining shows for various websites since. Not only are they some of the greatest comedians of our time- whose work would never even have existed were it not for the internet- but they also started "Desert Bus for Hope"- an amazing annual fundraiser that now raises significant six-figure sums of money for Child's Play- a charity that supports childrens' hospitals.
I should add that Child's Play itself is largely if not entirely dependant on the internet, because they were originally brought to public attention by Gabe and Tycho- the co-authors of massive webcomic Penny Arcade and have over time become the go-to "gamer's charity".
If SOPA passes, LoadingReadyRun, Desert Bus and Penny Arcade will all shut down and its creators rendered jobless.

Hank and John Green (the VlogBrothers) make videos for YouTube. It started as an experiment whereby they spent a year communicating entirely via four-minute videos and from it they've created not just a career but a massive global community of people not only sharing ideas but raising funds for charity and doing more good in the world than a lot of registered charities. These are people who raised the money to charter five planes full of medical supplies to Haiti. These are people who host regular charity drives, stand up for everyone's rights and build wells in third world countries. These are the people that melt away a lot of my normal cynicism by reminding me that there is still good in humanity.
If SOPA passes, not only will the careers of the VlogBrothers be wrecked, the principles of everything they built up and stood for over the years will be destroyed.

What I'm trying to show here is that now, in the 21st century, the internet isn't just a research tool or a communication medium or even a career maker. It's a whole way of life.
It's a culture- not even just one culture but several. The internet is like a whole other country, just not geographically.
And SOPA stands poised to destroy it- to create an age where the corporations have absolute power over what does and doesn't get to exist. Corporations, I might add, that don't like competitors. Corporations that care about little more than their profit margins, and who time and time again have taken cheap shortcuts, provided shoddy or even dangerous service and support, and had the nerve to even blame the consumer for their own shortcomings. Do we really want to give these people serious power over our everyday lives?

I owe the internet. For friends I've made, for things I've learned, for college assignments I've passed, for music I've found, for games I've played... I owe the internet.
And so do you.
Yes you, reading this.
Every single one of us who benefits from free speech on the internet in any way- whether you've made a friend online or you've discovered a band on YouTube or you've read a review of a game or even if you've played Minecraft... the internet has given you something. Now, it is our duty to defend it.

If you're in the US, write to your politicians and congressmen and whatever else. Tell them what the internet has done for you that SOPA would destroy. If you're outside the US, like myself, just do what you can to raise awareness. The more attention this gets, the more likely it is that the internet-ignorant old men in US Congress will be forced to second-guess themselves.

If we don't defend free speech here, then what we will get in the long run is far worse than the Orwellian nightmare. Because it won't even be a government dictating what you think and say. It will be a board of directors and their shareholders.

Over-analysing Monopoly.

Ah, Monopoly. A staple boardgame of the stereotypical white middle-class household. We all know roughly how to play it, but how many people stop and actually think about how it works?

In a typical game of Monopoly, the average property will not pay out as much as it cost to buy, unless you collect its respective set and develop it to the point of having at least two or three houses, in which case recuperating your entire investment still relies on other players landing on it several times, but is actually possible.

Which means that from a purely business standpoint, buying any of the coloured properties on the Monopoly board is a terrible investment. Albeit still a necessary one. I'll get to that in a bit.

Actually, I made a few estimates and concluded that collecting both utilities (electric company/water works) probably offers the most favourable house-less cost/effort:profit ratio over the course of a game. Once you have both, you make ten times the current die roll from whoever lands on it, and seeing as the set costs 300 total you should recuperate that pretty quickly, assuming people roll at least 5 before landing on it (especially since both properties are on the more traversed side of the infamous "Go to Jail" spot).

We could argue that the station set is better than the utilities- it's certainly the more sought after one- but while it's lucrative, you still need to invest 600 (three stations) before you'll really start seeing returns on it.

This is not counting trading for properties with other players, which skews prices a lot. In my limited experience though this only inflates the price.

The really interesting thing about Monopoly though is that making investments that look terrible on the surface is actually an essential move. Have you ever tried playing Monopoly without ever buying anything? Me neither. Because you'll inevitably lose money. As other players scoop up these poor investments quickly you'll be left with no recurring income of your own beyond the "Passing Go" money, and while you could theoretically out-last some players as they liquidate each other, you'll slowly bleed money until eventually that last opponent will pile out hotels onto half the board and we know what happens next.

So, the only viable strategy is to buy properties that will more than likely not pay out until you collect the full set, which smart opponents will also try to stop you from doing. 

Obviously then, the real strategy in the game- because where you land isn't possible to control- comes from how you choose your properties and how you bargain with other players. Do you want to only collect one or two specific sets and save your money otherwise? I don't like this strategy, because if someone else gets that last piece of your chosen set then they have a lot of leverage over your game. They can ruin you entirely. When it works though, you get to spend a lot of money on upgrading your properties and (hopefully) making your money back.

Personally, I like to buy every unowned property I land on. It's a risky strategy that leaves me with very little spare change. I like my utilities and stations, but beyond those I'll usually have pieces of quite a few sets, ready to trade and barter with other players and capitalise on the ones nobody else is bothering with. I'm still not sure if this is a good idea yet, but it does help me to be flexible and I collect a lot of small rent payments early on.

Beyond this decision, it's important to look at how much you can make back per house you buy on your sets-  typically you won't start seeing substantial amounts of your initial costs back unless you can get about three houses per property, and even then you have to build up evenly so I'm not sure.

A lot of the time, the game isn't so much about gaining the most money as it is losing the least. Eventually there'll only be one player who isn't bankrupt and they'll usually wind up owning most of everything.

Which brings us right around to the name of the game, the reason it was created and the increasingly relevant message it bears.

All in all I like how Monopoly is set up and I can't help but wonder how much of this complexity- from the set bonuses to the rent prices- was deliberate design made with full knowledge of how much strategic thinking a player can actually put into it. Monopoly is a remarkably complex game considering how many people who don't consider themselves "nerds" still own it and know how to play it and to an extent the lessons it can teach are as useful in real life as in the game.

Not bad for a game that was originally published the best part of a century ago. The folks responsible for all of this were nothing short of brilliant.

Damn, now I feel like playing Monopoly. Anyone up for it?

Used Games and the Industry

It seems to be a growing trend on the internet to shun and attack people who buy second hand videogames. Why is this?
Apparently, us used buyers hate game developers. We exist for the purpose of bankrupting the people who make nice things that we pay money for. Or at least, we're apathetic enough that we don't care if they go hungry just so we can save a few pennies buying games cheaper than retail price.
Where did this belief come from? At a guess, I'd say the major publishers started it. At the very least they definitely propagate it. Unhappy with the size of their already lucrative profit margins, the corporate giants decided to crack down on people who aren't giving money directly to them, by cutting content from games and releasing one-use codes with new copies to get that content online. It's like if a car manufacturer put a thumbprint scanner on their in-car stereos just so that people who didn't buy the car directly from them can't use it. And just like that comparison, the lengths these publishers go to so they can lock people out of part of their product is not only an expense to them but an inconvenience to the consumer, in an age when convenience is one of the most marketable things in the world.
So to them, people buying used games rather than new is a "problem". Or at least, a threat to their gargantuan profit margins.

Ignoring the fact that the preowned market and the major publishers, not to mention the huge rental industry, have all thrived and grown for well over a decade without destroying each other, let's assume there actually is a "problem".

Why do we buy preowned? Personally, I rely on them as a way of catching up with older games I missed (of which there are many).  People who aren't me rely on trade-in credit from their old games. And some of us just can't afford the stupidly high prices that are demanded for brand new titles these days.
If we assume that these people are genuinely unwilling or unable to pay full price for games then if anything this continual resale of games is nothing if not profitable to the publisher once you realise how paid downloadable content works and add in the always important yet unmeasurable value of brand image and how it makes people more inclined to pay more money in future.
Brand image is more valuable than money, folks. Being able to get a high quality product cheap makes people more inclined to buy the next one for more.

But the burden of blame- if there is anything to blame for- is not on the player for wanting to resell his used goods or buy things cheaply- any halfway decent businessman will tell you that you should sell unwanted assets and buy things cheaper when you can, so I'm not going to defy these ideas just to fill the pockets of someone who would do the exact same thing.
 Let's pretend we want to "solve" the "problem". To do that, we need to understand it.
Why does the preowned market exist? Where do used games come from? Obviously, they come from the people trading them in. Why do people trade games in? Because the money or store credit they can get for them outweighs their desire to still own the game.
In other words, if a game is being sold preowned, it's because at some point between it being bought new and ending up on the shelf in front of you, someone decided they no longer wanted to own it.
If within a week of releasing a game, a substantial percentage of the people who bought it are filled with a burning desire to be rid of it, then there is probably something wrong with the product.

Now hold tight because I'm about to propose a solution that will rock worlds and blow minds.
What if someone released a game that was so well made, that people wanted to actually own it for more than a weekend? What if people bought that game, and they liked it enough to not only play it for more than a day, but to put it up on their shelf afterwards with the intention of playing it again in the future?
Once upon a time games like this were made. You may call them holy grails or ancient relics of a golden age long past. I call them "decent games". If you were to take but a single step into my room, then as you gazed upon my shelves you would see many examples of games, not only weeks but years old, that I once bought and never traded in. Games that were never sold on to other players at the expense of a new copy. Games that were so good that I actually hold onto them by choice. Games I like owning, that I keep so as I may later re-play them. Games that mean far more to me than the trade-in credit I could get for them.
Oh, and Spyhunter 2. I keep that out of circulation as a public service. Call it first-world humanitarianism.
But I digress.
If more games were released that people would be anything better than ashamed to own, preowned sales of those games (for the first several months anyway) would drop dramatically and new sales would be forced to take their place.

Publishers shouldn't blame customers for terrible sales. Customers should blame publishers for terrible games.


This is Carl, still looking for a catchy sign-off.

Step 1 complete.

Step 0: Procrastinate indefinitely (DONE)
Step 1: Create Blog (DONE)
Step 2: Procrastinate more (IN PROGRESS)
Step 3: ???
Step 4: Blog.