Domain: blockstory.net
Stories and comments across the archive that link to blockstory.net.
Comments · 9
-
Support alternatives
I am a game developer. My game is available for ios, android, mac, and pc. So I am giving my perspective on DRM from the other side of the fence.
I do not add DRM to the game.
Piracy, especially in android, is rampant. I die a little inside every time I see someone stealing my work. Meanwhile DRM whispers to me "come and play".
Laws are useless. I could spend my day sending take down notices all over the web. 5 minutes after I take one down, 10 pirates post it in some other place. So I don't do this either.So what alternatives do we have? lets see...
In app purchase? Hated by a lot of people. Maybe even more than DRM.
Subscription?: Hated
Bundling (humble bundle)?: You can do that once or twice, not a long term solution
Advertising? No revenue.So yes, go on, oppose DRM if you like. As I said before I don't do it. But don't stop there, think which one of these other business models you do support.
Don't just say "I won't buy this game because of DRM", instead say "I will buy game X instead of Y because of DRM", as that speaks much more loudly. -
No good alternative
So it will not stop the pirates. But it will annoy the consumers.
I am an indie developer selling a game for ios, android, pc and mac.
I am not a fan of DRM myself, and I did not put it in the game. That said, ios sort of has one built in since the user cannot side load apps (unless the device is jailbroken which only a fraction of users do).The result is that I am making more money on ios than on android, and piracy of my game on android is rampant. Trying to shut down pirates is futile, even if I take 1 down, 10 more pop up in 10 minutes.
For us content creators, there really is no way to make everyone happy:
* If I do DRM, people like yourself hate me. Also, all DRM schemes can be broken, it is just a matter of time. However, the numbers are speaking for themselves.
* Ok, lets do in app purchase then. Nope, people hate me even more for that.
* Well subscription could work right?. Sure, if I want to die burning at the stake.
* How about ads? It annoys my customer base, plus: where is the money?Honestly the only way to make people happy seems to be making the app fully free, but then I would not make enough money to develop the game and it would die right there and then.
-
Re:You can do this in Java already?
I wish someone would do a C rewrite. People make excuses about the fully manipulable world and such but the reality is that there is nothing going on in minecraft that would make it tax a Pentium 3 without no gpu offloading had it been authored well in a decent language.
Don't get me wrong it's a great game and fun to play. The implementation just leaves a lot to be desired. Buggy as hell too but you can't blame that on the language!
It is not a rewrite, as I have added a lot of things like quests, skill points, colored light, infinite up and down, teleporting, torches you can carry and 88 mobs while avoiding many of minecraft features. I did take inspiration from minecraft just like Notch took inspiration from Infiniminer. My game runs very fast in older machines (about 10x the framerate) and it even works in android and iphone. I wrote it in C# using Unity, you are more than welcome to try the free demo for each platform and chat with the fans in the web site if you need help. Block Story
-
Re:You can do this in Java already?
I wish someone would do a C rewrite. People make excuses about the fully manipulable world and such but the reality is that there is nothing going on in minecraft that would make it tax a Pentium 3 without no gpu offloading had it been authored well in a decent language.
Don't get me wrong it's a great game and fun to play. The implementation just leaves a lot to be desired. Buggy as hell too but you can't blame that on the language!
It is not a rewrite, as I have added a lot of things like quests, skill points, colored light, infinite up and down, teleporting, torches you can carry and 88 mobs while avoiding many of minecraft features. I did take inspiration from minecraft just like Notch took inspiration from Infiniminer. My game runs very fast in older machines (about 10x the framerate) and it even works in android and iphone. I wrote it in C# using Unity, you are more than welcome to try the free demo for each platform and chat with the fans in the web site if you need help. Block Story
-
Re:But...
I am an indi developer. I worked for 1 1/2 years to create my game Block Story
I can see my game all over pirate sites, and their download count completely eclipse my sales. I could be working full time on my game by now if only 1/3 of those users legally purchased the game.
Every day I send takedown notices to multiple sites, which are a problem, because I have to disclose where I live in those notices. Not exactly something I enjoy doing, and I waste time doing this instead of developing more. Only to see the app being reposted in a few hours.
Moreover, my game competes to some extent to Minecraft PE, and I have a lot of reviews saying: don't by this, go get Minecraft PE for free instead at . So am having to compete with pirate copies of other games as well as my own game.
So before you say this is not a big deal, try living off of an android app. IT IS A BIG DEAL.
-
Depends on what you want to do
I developed a game using Unity3D.
I make heavy use of trigonometry, and a very small part of calculus.
Your question really depends on what you want to do:
- * For game development (what you seem to be particularly interested on), calculus is almost irrelevant. You need trigonometry.
- * If you work in operations research, then algebra and linear programming are a must.
- * If you work on average database backed web applications, just some basic algebra is enough.
- * If you work on AI related field, calculus is very important.
There are other fields that are not typically taught in math courses but in CS that are heavily math related. Like performance analysis. This I use a lot, but once again, it really depends on what you work on.
-
Unethical my ass
I have been working for the past 1 and 1/2 years on writing a game for mobile. It is closed source.
Over the years I have contributed to several open source projects.
We worked extremely hard to make this a reality. Our customers are extremely happy with it. When someone purchases the game, they do it because to them, the value they are getting is higher than the value of the money they spent, otherwise they would not do it. Likewise, the value of the money is higher to us, than a single copy of the game. So everyone gets higher value in a voluntary exchange, there is 2 winners, and no loser.
So who the hell is Richard Stallman to tell me or my customers that we are doing something wrong? How the hell are we harming our customers, if they were being harmed, they would not buy the game. Only our customers have the right to decide if they are being harmed or not.
You know what is wrong and unethical: to interfere in a voluntary exchange between two people. That is restricting on both mine and my customer's freedom. I am glad that this extremism has not made it into legislation. The only exception to this would be if the transaction involved harming another person or his property which is not the case by simply selling a game.
-
Re:Good for developers
Besides, most popular apps on mobile devices are fetching information from websites anyway
The top grossing apps are without question games
I have been working on making a game for mobile myself (yes, shameless plug) and I can tell you first hand that making anything beyond tic tac toe on html5 for mobile is crazy talk.
-
Money is on mobile
As someone who is making a game myself I can say that the money is on mobile now. There are millions of people with what are essentially portable game devices, looking for something to kill time while commuting or waiting in lines. $60 is unrealistic, but $5 have the potential to get you thousands of purchases per month if you have something decent. This is particularly good for indi developers like myself, since capital investment is small in comparison to consoles, and there is already a whole cheap infrastructure in place to sell your game.