So, fifteen minutes after I send out an email to the Cadre reviewing HL2: Minerva, someone else responds in seconds with “if you want HL2 for free, come talk to me, I’ll hook you up.”

This behavior is foul. It offends my sensibilities. It’s messed up. So, of course, I went to ask my Cadre friend, let’s call him Am, why he believes he’s entitled to this game (and movies, and music, etc.) for free. He comes up with the same claptrap we’ve heard a million times: 0) I don’t want to pay money for a crappy game , 1) there’s plenty of others who buy them so I’m not cheating anyone out of anything, and 2) I do pay for SOME games, so if it’s good enough - I’ll buy it. In this case, he defended his actions by saying he paid for WoW, which you can’t play unless you subscribe to the monthly fee.

I pretty much got this gist: he doesn’t give a shit about the developers who develop these games. In his logic, if the games were good enough, he’d pay. I suggested he use demos first and his response: Demos don’t give you the full game.

At that point, I realized that Am should to be castrated, strung in the spokes of a wheel and left for carrion.

So instead, I started the following thought experiment:

Stage 1: In a population of Players. Each player has two resources: Time and Money. In our population, we have

Bobs, and
Game Developers aka Devs

And the following rules

Player spend money over time to survive. No money == death.
Bobs generate money over time just because they have “real jobs”
Devs generate games over time
Players want to be Happy
Games make players Happy
Devs only get money the sales of their games (let’s not go into Advergaming here).

Now, were we to use a strict population control model from Dawkin’s Selfish Gene and Extended Phenotype books, I would expect equilibrium to be met quickly. And we all know that some people, we’ll call them Ams, steal games and let’s adjust the model.

Stage 2: Introduce the parasites.

Bobs (good hearted, true I-pay-for-games souls)
Ams (evil no-paying slackers), and
Devs

And the following rules

Ams can steal games with an expenditure of time, rather than money.

Now, were we to use a strict population control model from Dawkin’s Selfish Gene and Extended Phenotype books, I would expect Ams to thrive, Bobs and Devs to wane until a strange equilibrium is met.

Stage 3: Now were we to add a rule on top of this:

Devs and Bobs can grudge a player that steals a game.

Thus once you stole once, if you get grudged, you can never steal again.

You’d end up with a standard grudge model, which has a good equlibrium. Thus, I encourage everyone else: don’t play with theives. While this is totally impractical and draconian, it a fun fantasy to roll over the brain.

Now, before you condemn me for being a republican, it just disturbs me that there’s a notion that someone believes they’re ENTITLED to free games. After all, Tic Tac Toe is free, why shouldn’t [Insert triple-A title here]?” More importantly, opening up the discussion with these people is like discussing evolution with fundies. People like Am are never going to change their mind until someone steals from THEM.

And that’s a sad truth. If a game gives you a smile or exposes you to a thought you didn’t have before, you should be willing to pay for it. If you don’t want to pay, then wait until it becomes free.