|
|
January 2000 - Will Money still make the world go round?While I was figuring out what I was going to put in the second article "Cyberspace and the Twelve Monkeys" in my series "Cyberspace in the 21st Century" for Gamasutra, I realised that the systems underlying future multiplayer games were going to be primarily concerned with highly efficient, real-time distribution of digital content. If Napster was a problem, then the solution wasn't going to be putting the genie back in the bottle, especially given that the genie of rapid replication was going to play a larger part in the future. Evidently, there needed to be a proper solution. I saw the problem as being that the moment you sell the first copy, you can no longer sell a second if the first is rapidly duplicated a million-fold. The logical conclusion seemed to be that obviously, you must therefore make all your money when you sell the first copy, or in other words, the original. But you still need to get this money by collecting individual contributions from the purchasers. So a mechanism is needed for selling the art before it's released. It sounded to me like an auction, but I always bore in mind that it needed to replicate the equitability of retail, i.e. that everyone pays the same price. It has to be fair to both seller and bidder, and either should be able to withdraw or adjust their bid at any time.The section of the article is reproduced here. August 2000 - The 'Digital Auction'When I wrote the section in the Cyberspace article I thought it was an impertinently cute idea, but that's about as far as it went. For a while anyway. Gradually I got to like the idea more and more. I decided to explore how such an idea could be developed practically. I wrote a sketch of the 'Digital Auction' here. OCtober 2000 - Finding Potential BackersI did make an approach to the investors behind QXL (the european auction house in dire straits) suggesting that adoption of my idea was an escape route for QXL to re-invent itself as a digital content auction house, leaving eBay to focus on the tangibles side. Unfortunately, the response was simply that it might be a good idea for funding Open Source software (a much smaller market than music+movies if you ask me... ;-) ). Ah well, maybe I'll convince QXL another time... November 2000 - Peer to Peer Working GroupI sent a post or two about the idea to Intel's Peer-to-peer Working Group mailing list. November 2000 - Chatting to Clay ShirkyClay Shirky has a good ability to get to the bones of various bleeding edge issues, so I wondered what views he'd have about my idea for artists doing a direct deal with the audience and thus avoid the illicit copy problem (as well as achieving disintermediation). We had a brief e-mail exchange which he's kindly given permission for me to include here. December 2000 - Bouncing it off FairtunesI thought I'd see if it was just me being deluded, or whether others might see some sense in the idea. So I posted some material to Fairtunes. January 2001 - Writing the EssayI started off with this draft. I completed the final essay in March 2001. I submitted it Gamasutra for publication, but it wasn't really their cup of tea. January 2002 - Suggesting it to the Games IndustryLater on I submitted it to Develop magazine who kindly first published a small precis of the idea. April 2002 - Introducing it at a ConferenceI chaired this Pricing, Partnerships and Payment for Entertainment Content conference on the 26th April. Here is an exposition of the points I was to mention in my introduction. A more concise list of points here. March 2003 - It's use in a novel games development business modelI came up with an idea as to how Open Source games could be developed and yet still obtain income (with the digital art auction of course). I submitted it to Develop magazine, who like it, and it was entitled 'Plan B: The Bedroom Coder's Business Model'. An early draft of it is here. |
|
Send mail to info@digitalartauction.com with questions or comments about this web site. Last modified: March 08, 2004 |
