For all intents and purposes, you may as well take all the VR tech you remember from the 90s and pretend like it never existed. That was a completely different business model where they were trying to market the tech like arcade machines where you pay by the minute to use it in malls and whatnot. That little…

Are you old enough to remember early ugly gray brick cell phones like the one in this picture?

Yeah, my lame man's definition of high risk investment is, "I put a modest sum of money in this company when it's a small startup. If the company happens to become the next big thing (MS, Google, Netflix, etc), I get rich. If the company flops, I lose it all."

Oh, I realize that's an extreme outlier case, but isn't that the dream? I mean, if you invested $1000 in Microsoft in 1980 you'd probably be a multi-millionaire today. Same for people who invested in Google early on, etc. Isn't that the kind of scenario that investors dream about?

Ok fair enough. I will say that with stocks they usually aren't timed, so if I bought $15 worth of stock in Tim's new company and his company took off and became gigantic and then I sold my stock it might be worth thousands. I'm investing that money hoping that I will personally profit substantially from the…

I agree, and you've basically agreed with me in a roundabout way. Kickstarter exploits fanboyism. Using the term investment loosely, the only return you get on your "investment", should the game succeed, is your fanboy wishes fulfilled by the particular game designer that you backed. That's it. We are in absolute…

I agreed that your perspective makes sense in the situation where the game couldn't have been made any other way. You haven't proven that your perspective also makes sense in the other situation. You've simply asserted that you haven't run across such a situation and you therefore don't think it exists. I'm not…

You see Kickstarters as a form of VC, so I used to the phrase "traditional VC" so you would know precisely what I was referring to. I'm so glad you spent so much time focusing on the trees that you ignored the forest, though.

I can see where you're coming from, but that perspective only works for projects that would never be able to get funded any other way. I think some high profile projects could have gotten funding elsewhere, but chose to run a Kickstarter campaign for the benefits it has over traditional venture capitalism. For one…

Promise is the wrong word. If things were promised then you would have legal recourse to get your money back if the project failed. You have no such recourse with Kickstarter, therefore, legally, nothing is promised. You put your money down because you support a project, and hopefully the project succeeds and the…

That's a faulty comparison. Venture capitalists invest in things based on the idea that if the product is successful they will get the profits (they usually take all the profits until their investment is recouped, and then they take a big percentage after that as pure profit).

Investment implies that you are investing in something in hopes of getting a return on your investment (ie: you are hoping to get out more than what you put in). This would be like buying stock in the company. Backing a Kickstarter project is not the same as buying stock in the company. Think of it like this,…

How old are you? That man was screaming because he seriously thought he was about to die.

Yeah, and I think part of the problem is that some people have never had that particular type of friendship with anyone before and so they simply can't understand it and they just assume that anyone who would do something like this must be a horrible person. Context is everything.

It's fine that you've explained how this would make you feel, and what you consider good friends to be, but I think you are making a lot of assumptions about these people. For all you know, these people may have a relationship where they deliberately try to outdo each other's pranks all the time, and they all enjoy…

Well, if a game had enough players, then they could put real advertisements in the radio station broadcasts and generate money that way, just like a real radio station would. Hell, a company as big as EA probably has the clout to partner up with Pandora or whatever and make a special Pandora channel that they stream…

I could see how it could be cool for a game like GTA for the car radio music. Imagine if it was streamed from a server and they constantly updated the playlist and news reports like a real radio station, so everytime you play it's a new experience.

Actually, there is one more thing I'd like to say before I go, and this is pertinent to the article and not a tangent like our last few posts:

So, it seems impossible for you to engage in a conversation with someone who has a different worldview without resorting to condescension. Perhaps one day you'll grow up and realize that's not necessary as well.

You say that in the UK he'd be arrested. What crime would he be charged with exactly? Being a creepy weirdo? As far as I know it's not illegal to ask your friend what his friend's name is. It's also not illegal to search for that person on Facebook. It's also not illegal to send people private messages on…