Innovation r.i.p.

We need to tell you about some upcoming changes regarding the Majestic PC-CD you recently purchased. While the game was a huge critical success, it was not as popular with players. Consequently, EA has decided to discontinue the Majestic service in order to focus resources on new, more popular content.

After April 30, 2002, Majestic will no longer be in service. I got that in my email today. I was part of the Majestic beta and it was a really cool game. The only thing that stopped me from plunking down $10/month is that it was PC only. The coolest thing about the game was you never really knew for sure when you were playing the game. It periodically invaded your life. You interacted with it through email, instant messenger, web browsers, fax machines and cell phones. I still remember the first time I checked my voicemail and I had a threatening message. I was so excited. I saved the message and played it for my friends. Granted you could wuss out and turn the realism settings down. The story of the game was very X-Filesish.

There has got to be some way to support innovation like this. The economics behind movies, books, music, games, comics and so forth does not support innovative ideas. Their prices are set so they can draw the mass of people. Well the mass of people don’t care about innovation in their entertainment (not that I blame them). So in order for innovative ideas to make money since they can only draw a smaller market they would have to charge more money, which prices them out of the very markets they are competing in. When capitalists talk about innovation they mean innovations in production, not innovations in what you output. How do you create separate markets for innovative new entertainment where higher prices won’t be so punishing?