I read a very interesting article on Cracked.com this morning that presented an idea I've been toying with for some time now.

The concept is FARTS - an amusing acronym if I ever saw one - that stands for Forced ARTifical Scarcity.  We see this active in every day life; digitial goods.  Essentially, a product in unlimited supply has no value, and digitial products have an unlimited supply.  The problem is that the work put into those digitial goods deserves to be rewarded, such as an Author or Game Developer, however the "old system" developed around physical products doesn't quite work in the digitial realm.  How much do we charge?  How do we handle the "Digital Rights" of the end user?  These are the kinds of questions that the industry is trying to answer.

Companies like Activision Blizzard and EA Games are trying to simply transition the models and prices, with added protection for themselves while removing the rights of their customers, of the current physical model into cyber-space.  Why does a Digitial Download of Starcraft II cost the same as the physical copy when there is no 'limited supply' to justify the cost?
Part of this is because they've become aware of their own irrelevance; in a strictly digitial world, a Publisher's role is minimal in comparison to the physical world, and their duties could foreseeably be incorporated into a Developer's role instead of requiring an entirely third party company.  By getting in early, so to speak, they'll have set the precedent for the future - less rights for customers, same cost as the physical product, significantly more profit for the Publisher.

My idea was that Advertisers - the bane of the civilised world - play a part in the correction of this; it's their job to sell us crap we don't need, so what if they were used to sell us stuff we actually want, like Video Games?  Instead of Big Breasted women on posters for no apparent reason trying to convince us that the out-of-focus pair of jeans in the background are worth a 4000% retail mark-up, the Advertising Campaign could simply promote the idea of a handmade, polished experience that is simply worth the money.
The Article explains the basic concept better than I can, the example used in the Article is Bottled Water and eBooks, I believe.  With the rise of Piracy - and make no mistake, Digital Piracy is a big issue - Advertisers can actually be used to drive home the concept of value and worth for a product that, by currently market dynamics, doens't have any.  It's something weird that, in today's world, I had to sit and think about how many ad campaigns I've seen that simply say "Hey, this is a good game, it's great value, you'll enjoy it".  Most advertising campaigns use Screen Shots, rock music and shots of brutual death scenes or "fake party fun" to sell their game.
I think Torchlight was the last game I saw where the point of the advertisements was simply saying "Hey, it's great value and a fun game for people who like this" and it worked a treat because the game was $15.00 and worth at least twice that in my opinion.  This, to me, is the way the digitial space should work, where a product's quality and craftsmenship has to be emphasised in order to justify the price because there is no "market forces" to determine the AU$120.00 retail price of the lastest Call of Duty Title.

Am I simply dreaming a dream, or is there some shred of hope in all of this?