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Originally Posted by Leviathan99
That's exactly when wishes have to become laws: when they seek to control markets or economic realities.
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Laws can't make resources out of nothing. They are very important, but they don't circumvent economics. They can make something less viable, or more viable, but both require taking resources from elsewhere. Since there aren't infinite resources to pull from elsewhere, it should be used cautously.
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In particular, I think I'd probably argue that while gambling and games of chance are useful for redirecting wealth in places it would not ordinarily go, they also lead to less aggregate employment.
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How does this follow? What about the gambling industry is less labour intensive than any other industry? And how is this suddenly a labour intensity issue as opposed to a social harm issue anyway? If you want to legislate industries on that basis... wow, that is a whole separate board worth of discussion let alone thread.
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Furthermore, brick and mortar gambling may actually create long term jobs and a demand for service that fuels employment but brick and mortar gambling is fundamentally tied to real estate in a way that forces them to focus on long term retention and monetization.
You coat a building in diamonds and gold and neon and hire up hundreds of people to work there, it makes you committed to long term as well as short term profitization. You have created a beast that needs to be fed.
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So now it is about online gambling? And the issue is that it is online, not that it is gambling? You are sounding suspiciously like a luddite here... should all online transactions be similarly legislated against?
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Now... If you start a website or a game online, you have more pull out options.
I think the only acceptable business strategy is one where you don't allow yourself exits, where you plan on indefinite growth and indefinite reinvestment and even in the face of difficulties with either, you're comitted to keeping the doors open.
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When you are the one supplying the funding you can set your own risk levels. If you try to legislate artificially high risk levels (such as requiring certain reinvestment levels) you will find you simply have nothing starting up.
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My fundamental problem with the lockbox game, with cheap methods of profitization that target fast quarterly earnings and seek to minimize reinvestment, are that they fundamentally presuppose that there is a time in the foreseeable future where you walk away from your product. You're not chained to it with teams of writers and musicians and people who had to construct retention targeted emotional appeals. It's back to games as products with a finite lifespan.
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No company wants their product to have a finite life span. Again desire doesn't change reality, and that reality has to be estimated for accounting purposes (mostly to allocate development costs properly).
Moreover, the risks have to be disclosed
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Compare this statement from Perfect World's 2011 Report:
To this statement from the Old Republic developers:
Heck, Dan Stahl is talking about the fifteenth anniversary.
Someone needs to introduce these developers to their financiers and the developers need to be given some kind of sporting chance at their goal.
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You need to reread that statement from Perfect World. "Typically" 3 to 5 years, for "most" of their online games (which leaves them room to explain any they extend beyond that). They also earlier admit to being new to the industry and still learning it. In fact their report is full of disclaimers.
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