People aren’t being forced to charge for their creations. They have a choice. If someone creates something good enough to make money out of it – then all the power to them. But if it sucks, or it's too expensive, no one is going to pay for it and they just wasted their time and effort for nothing. It's a double-edged sword. IMO, most people with a respect for games wouldn’t want to charge anyway since they would want as many people as possible to be able to play it. I don’t really think this is going to be an issue.

Great article and some fantastic comments. Another point I feel should be raised is just how much the quality of games (I despise that word too) can vary. Some “games” can be very deep, thought-provoking, breathtaking experiences that rival that of A-grade cinema. On the other hand you have games which are, well, broken. Now compare this to other art forms – you can’t really have a “broken” movie. A poor script and bad acting, sure. And when was the last time you looked at a painting and wanted to punch the nearest person to you in the face through frustration? It doesn’t happen.

The regular uninformed “non-gamer” could walk into a store and be faced with a choice: buy Call of Duty 4 or Conflict: Denied Ops. To him they are both war games; the decision doesn’t hold much weight. Little does he know that this very decision could be the difference between throwing his controller through the window or enjoying one of the best gaming experiences of ‘07. Likewise, some people may watch a movie and think “that was great; I might go and pick up the book." Fine. What if a person finished watching a movie and thought “hey, that was really good. I might go and pick up the game." No. Don’t do that. You might as well just kill yourself. The average gamer knows this. Movie spin-offs are epic fails that serve the one and only purpose of making money with as little effort as possible. This makes me very mad. The general public doesn’t know this, and when they buy these games they think “Games are sh!t. I can’t believe I spent $60 on this."

I think there should be some sort of quality control that limits the amount of “broken” games people are exposed to. Stuff like this causes a lot of wrong misconceptions about games.

Edit: Sorry about the rant. It’s an interesting topic. And it’s also nice to have an intelligent conversation about games for once.