We’re finally nearing the end of a digital revolution that
has been going on for over a decade. I’m sure everyone remembers Napster. Not
the one that charges people for music, but the one that created a business
model based upon copyright infringement and started handing music over freely.
Maybe, if you’re young enough, you don’t. In a nutshell, it was the great
divide between content providers and content consumers. People had been used to
purchasing compact discs for so long, and, seemingly overnight, they had the
entire world’s worth of music at their fingertips. If you give someone
something for free, it becomes very difficult for him or her to go back to
paying for it. If you want to know more about it, you can check out this Wired
article from back in the day.
Still, the music industry made it work. Knock out the peer
sharing networks and develop digital distribution platforms (iTunes, Amazon,
etc.) for consumers to purchase, at a nominal fee, single songs they actually
want off of their favorite artists’ albums instead of dropping $20 for an
entire album of garbage so they can have access to one or two songs. This
method transferred over to the film industry well enough, though it needed to
be tweaked a little bit. Subscription based services such as Netflix and
digital distribution platforms such as Zune are working hard at accomplishing
the physical-to-digital transition.
But what is happening with video games? Console developers
still hold a lot of the power in the game industry, because they developed
solid methods for combating piracy. Sure, you can still play pirated games on
consoles. You have to modify them to do so, first. Then you can kiss your Xbox Live
membership goodbye, because that gamer tag gets banned as soon as you log
on. Some people are willing to accept that for the ability to play illegally
acquired games, but most have just bitten the bullet and continued to purchase
their games, either through retail outlets or through digital distribution
platforms like Steam, PlayStation Store, and the Xbox Live Marketplace, so that
they can feel the thrill of “pwning” some guy in a different country that
they’ll probably never encounter again. But this is “old news.”
Let’s examine what is happening from the standpoint of the
content creators, for a moment. I cannot tell you how many times I have heard
someone complain about the commercialization of expression through art. With
music, the record labels had all of the power and were able to determine
whether or not a song should be distributed simply based on whether or not it
would sell to the masses. Is that fair? Something that may speak to me on a
spiritual or emotional level may mean absolutely nothing to the world majority.
Does that mean I should be robbed of that experience simply because that work
of art is not a moneymaker?
For decades, the balance of power has been extremely one-sided,
and the content creators (authors, musicians, film directors, game developers)
have been at the mercy of the people with the resources to distribute that
content (publishers). To be fair, those
publishers take a risk every time they decide to invest in content. But, since
we’re on the topic of “fair,” it’s also worth mentioning that it never used to
be so difficult for content creators to share that content with the world until
they were faced with competition that intentionally and maliciously pushed them
out of the loop. It’s about time that the content creators stood up for what
they believe in instead of bowing down to publishers, right? In the words of
the great Howard Beale,
“We’re mad as hell, and we’re not going to take this anymore!”
I believe this is the real golden opportunity represented by
the digital revolution. If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll see that it has
already been happening. I’m not talking about Bieber becoming a YouTube
sensation and being picked up for a recording contract. I’m also not referring
to Zynga and their free-to-play social games that aren’t much fun at all
without the seriously overpriced micro transactions. I’m talking about bridging
the gap between the consumer and content creator. Content creators don’t have
to pay outrageous fees anymore, because digital distribution has virtually no
overhead. They can produce their own material now, with affordable software and
hardware that, while not perfect, gets the job done. Just kick a commission
over to the distributor, and the power is back in the hands of the artist, the
director, and the game developer.
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