Civilization V's Social Responsibility (Community feature; manual example; 31 Aug)

[Centurio]

Your ball belongs to the community, comrade...

on topic: I'm totally cool with the pdf manual. Makes sense for them, for us and is environmentally sound.

Stone Soup much?

(The following is not at all related to the above quote.)

Really, I think its interesting that some members of this community are so cynical that they cannot accept a good deed for what it is: a good deed. It is not as if the developers would refuse to give the money away if they did not sell 'x' quantity of their product: they are going to give the money away regardless of sales figures, and so we are answering the question of 'where?', nothing more, nothing less. Besides, many of the fans on this forum were planning to purchase the game long before this announcement. On another note, I personally disagree romanticized notions of Communism, because while on the one hand people are generally greedy, on the other hand, they are generally ambitious. While some dream of equality, I believe that equality is not a good thing, because there are some who wish to make more for themselves and improve not only themselves but also humanity as a whole. If all were equal, then there would not be great humanitarians, there would not be success stories, and society as a whole would not progress. I would rather have some be at the bottom and others at the top than everybody on an equal playing field. The only way I could honestly see people living in complete harmony and peace is in a fiction reminiscent of either the 'Lotus-Eaters' section of the Odyssey or the distopic world of the Eloi in HG Welles' The Time Machine. Neither of those worlds are ones in which I would want to live...

 

[VikingMaekel]

I will not buy it, but if i would i would be upset that they've taken an option away from me.

Which option? Having an option implicates choice. Civ 4 Retail box offered the paper manual, period. Not much of a choice to me.

I'm not whining about the donation.
I'm whining about that they take something away from what i wanted to have, and instead they decide for me, that they will donate something.
Maybe i would have wanted to donate myself? Maybe to a group which they will not donate to?

I don't like, that they are trying to force things upon us.
Not, that we have to use steam, not that they decide, to whom i can donate.

Technically, once you buy the game it is no longer your money. So they can very well do what they want with it. They could give it to charity or invest in the research of giant sharks with attached head lasers. What I mean is that they could have decided to not give anything to charity and keep it to themselves, it's their choice since you all ready spent that money and received a game in exchange. You do not donate, they donate.

 

[Szpilman]

Which option? Having an option implicates choice. Civ 4 Retail box offered the paper manual, period. Not much of a choice to me.



Technically, once you buy the game it is no longer your money. So they can very well do what they want with it. They could give it to charity or invest in the research of giant sharks with attached head lasers. What I mean is that they could have decided to not give anything to charity and keep it to themselves, it's their choice since you all ready spent that money and received a game in exchange. You do not donate, they donate.

Giant sharks with attached head lasers would easily make'em billionaires! -- no, MILLIONAIRES!!1

 

[Scramble]

Good descision. Support from me in every way.

 

[DalekDavros]

A point to meditate on: Trucks in China (those blue things you see) are made so that they can be repaired by their users. All cars in the West, on the other hand, are made so that you have to visit a repair shop so they can make more money off you. Explain, if you can, how this result of the free market system is better for the customer.

Planned obsolescence is a problem with capitalism (government policy designed to privilege the owners of capital resources), not a problem with free markets (no government intervention). In a freed market, there would be no government-granted patents to prevent competitors from modifying the products so that they are user-serviceable and the original company would be driven out of business because no one would buy their inferior product. (And as always, saying something is a "result of the free market system" is suspect, because no such system exists. The "free markets=capitalism" trick is a lie perpetuated by the capitalists.)

 

[DalekDavros]

Why would kids need Civ V (or Steam) at school?

I learned more playing Civ than I did from the social studies program at my school...

 

[Viatrix]

Paper doesn't kill trees anymore. Paper comes from specialized tree farms that are dedicated to raising fast growing trees then harvesting then. It's a complete misconception that paper kills trees. If anything - buying paper encourages tree farms to add more trees.

I don't know much about this subject but I can guarantee that the amount of wood that tree farms of the world produce is a really, really minor one (you can prove me wrong with statistics!). Most wood-trading nations simply cut their original forests as they got plenty of it (such as Finland and Russia). Jungle-harvesters justify their job by the need of wood. For some reason, no one has ever introduced this american "tree farm" -system to them in order to protect jungles.

Also, you can't claim that tree farms are more ecological choice (I'm not saying you do!) than cutting natural forests. Tree farms' rapid growth is not magic, there's a price people will have to pay for it. And that is a far bigger amount of carbon dioxide that tree farms produce compared to their natural rivals. And carbon dioxide, of course, is a leading greenhouse gas.

In practice paper still kills trees. We can get the amount of wood we need for our purposes, but we still have to cut more and more trees for it. Tree farms are only short-sighted solutions that encourage a bigger problem, and that is, a global warming.

About the rest of the topic: Companies aren't there to be virtuous, their main purpose is to make money. Their charity might be motivated by controversial reasons, but they are still doing a good thing. I don't think you can expect more than that from a corporation, and I'm glad they are doing charity to improve their sales instead of other things.

 

[Caeserportugal]

Interactive manual. Now that is something I have never saw in a videogame good job 2K and Firaxis