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Here's a neato graph of Eve Online subs

quoted from CCP CEO Hilmar Petursson on 17 Aug 07

"We began full-force in 2000," he continued, "by raising $3 million, which is about one-tenth of the current MMORPG." Its flagship product, EVE Online has been in development for three years, "the last year of which we had no money, but everyone turned up to work anyway despite us not being able to pay them," he admitted.

"This created a core of people who have gone through hell with us, and helps with the community especially," said Petursson.

"We had publishing problems with Simon & Schuster," he continued, "which resulted in no distribution or marketing, despite having 30,000 players. We ended up buying the rights back at 2002 and going into digital distribution. This has forced us to treat [EVE] more as a service than a product, and using viral marketing techniques to propagate the product out, long before others were doing this."

Petursson said CCP is planning a "massive graphical upgrade to the game," and also predicted that this year would see a total of 200,000 subscribers, after reaching 100,000 subscribers in February of last year.

"We have had different growth than most other games," said Petursson, "because the whole game takes place on a single shard, which allows escalation of power and social equity as the size of the community grows."

The rest of the article

EVE seems to have succeeded because the people who made it love it and won't give up.

No one really likes DRM however there is little effort on the Anti-DRM Camp to come up with a solution that fixes the companies problem, of illegal piracy, or sharing a copy with your friends.

Game companies already had a solution for the "problem" of people sharing a copy they own. Blizzard's "Spwaned Copies" were freaking amazing. Honestly though, how is sharing a copy of a game you own a problem? You lend people books don't you? Or movies? What about movie/video game rental stores like Blockbuster or Hollywood Video? In short, explain how its a problem or there isn't one.

Also, why do the people that are against DRM get saddled with finding a "solution" to piracy? Every single DRM scheme has been an failure and damaging to the consumer to the point that some people feel morally obliged not to buy the games anymore from those companies. Better still, these DRM schemes do nothing but encourage you to pirate the game since the pirated version doesn't have the DRM!

DRM is not working. This is very fucking obvious. Until they figure out something else to try, they should go back to only having the CD-KEY (which doesn't stop people from pirating in any way whatsoever, but makes it easier in multiplayer games to ban disruptive players. EA already is under a Class Action lawsuit due to the DRM in Spore before it moved to Steam. How many more game companies are going to have to be attacked legally by their own fans to get them to stop ripping us off?

Oh and before you bitch I have a link to Steam in with the failures, remember that the Steam DRM does get cracked on occasion. They just patch and ban accounts. Will not stop players from doing it for single player or LAN games (and it takes no real effort) but as a DRM system it still fails at its task. On the plus side at least its largely bearable.

Hey Microsoft, will you please stick with the business that you are good at?

Too late, they just shut that one down: http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=21981 Microsoft Flight Simulator is dead

The DRM in Spyro the Dragon kept the game from being pirated for literally months. There is an article at gamasutra about how they managed this. http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20011017/dodd_01.htm

Wow, what an attitude. I'll let Steve McConnell's essay, Orphans Preferred speak for me. Try it yourself, Mr. CEO. See how far it gets you.

MS will never require a piece of hardware that laptops can't have built in to be a "genuine" windows machine

Laptops can have at least a Wii-style sensor bar built in: just put a couple LEDs at the top corners of the LCD.

no game dev will spend their own money ( rather than a hardware manufacturers VC money ) on supporting a peripheral that is not required.

Activision and Konami spent money on including a plastic guitar with the Guitar Hero games. Or would you count video game publishers as venture-capital-supported hardware manufacturers?

Ah well, even given that, the only numbers I can readily find are NPD numbers, and they indicate something quite different. It looks quite more favorable if you look at October to October numbers, as the PS3 is barely lagging behind there... However if you look at September to September, the 360 comes out pretty far ahead.

September to September

October to October

Anyways, my point is I call bullshit on what they've stated. While in some territories at certain points it has outsold more, sales of the PS3 seem to be dwindling.

I threw the Wii in there for fun, showing that even though it is a current gen console with last gen hardware, it can manage to crush what people perceive to be power houses.

Ah well, even given that, the only numbers I can readily find are NPD numbers, and they indicate something quite different. It looks quite more favorable if you look at October to October numbers, as the PS3 is barely lagging behind there... However if you look at September to September, the 360 comes out pretty far ahead.

September to September

October to October

Anyways, my point is I call bullshit on what they've stated. While in some territories at certain points it has outsold more, sales of the PS3 seem to be dwindling.

I threw the Wii in there for fun, showing that even though it is a current gen console with last gen hardware, it can manage to crush what people perceive to be power houses.

2D Boy already did a comparison between two of their games, one released with DRM and one without.

They concluded that "there seems to be no difference in the outcomes" in the level of piracy, which for both games sat near an estimated 90% at first blush. They do revisit the numbers and end up with 82% for the non-DRM'd game, but it's likely that the same method was used for both games, and that the changes in methodology would have the same impact to the DRM numbers.

There's also Reflexive who tracked sales growth when compared to changes in DRM, who conclude that "for every 1,000 pirated copies we eliminated, we created 1 additional sale". While this reduces the value of DRM to many publishers (those people aren't going to buy the game in the first place), it is also provides a business case for DRM to those companies that offer downloads of their games (and where bandwidth is a notable cost).

What were sales like for MGS4 again? I think if you added up half of the games you listed you'd make up Halo 3's sales.

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=21514

Sony is losing the game, they need to get back on track and stop fooling around with "no price cuts!" and Home.

And your comment about 1080i graphics is hilarious. The Xbox1 was able to do 1080i. The 360 runs rings around 1080p, unlike the PS3 with its limited graphics memory and non-unified limited shader units.

The PS3 is a tangled mess. They rushed it to market and are paying for it.

Believe it was a U.S. patent problem that the various patent owners have finally sorted out. http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=16014

Hopefully Activision will pay their bill from Harmonix before releasing anymore spin-offs of the Guitar Hero series.

Rockstar only delayed release on the consoles because it had to release the two concurrently.

And, while the game is plenty enjoyable on the PS3, the performance is still a bit behind the 360. You'll see lower framerates in big chases, and the whole thing's already running at a lower resolution than native 720p.

Seriously, so many developers and publishers have been complaining about the huge rate of PC title piracy (e.g. http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=20567 or http://www.videogamer.com/news/18-10-2008-9693.html) and how much more they love their locked-down consoles. Isn't this move the smartest thing Rockstar could have done?

I mean If I made 400$m with my latest game on the consoles alone and I feared I wouldn't sell as many PC copies as I could have I just make the PC version the shittiest experience you can have. Horrendously high hardware requirements, terrible online components, cluttered with spy/mal/adware. That will turn off as many PC customers as possible and make it less attractive for pirates.

I bet the console sales figures of GTA IV will go up again now that many PC gamers have realized that they'd rather buy this for their console than deal with all the crap. Watch for the spike!

Since you used an example from a role playing game , I'll respond with similar. Disclaimer: I'm totally hot for genetic algorithms, ever since I saw this article on pathfinding.

Oftentimes, a player character's "best" moves are limited by other factors rather than just needing to push the button - does he have enough combo points? does he have enough mana? is he in range? and so forth, before it's even a valid choice. Using a more complicated getInformation set than is outlined in the pathfinding program linked above, let's lay out what the mob can find out:

How many hostile enemies are there?
What kind of targets are the hostile enemies (ranged, melee, soft [rogue,mage,etc], hard [warrior,paladin])?
How hurt is each target?
How much damage has each available target done to me?
How much healing has each available target done to other hostiles?
How devastating have the non-damage abilities of available targets been to friendlies?
Which abilities are available to me?
Which status ailments do the available targets have currently?
Add up levels of opponents and levels of allies. Who is larger?
Which ability did I use last? .. And so on - I'm sure there are more checks you could give the AI access to - probably even depending on its intelligence.

Then there are the actions the MOB can take:

Choose target (can target self)
Attack target (melee)
Attack target (ranged)
Use ability on target (repeat for however many abilities are available to the MOB - limited by mana, and so forth)
Run away
Close distance
Run to ranged distance

It would take quite a bit of training (you could probably automatically cull the first several generations, but later on you might actually have to interact with it yourself), but this kind of technique could end up with some very "smart" AIs that are fun and challenging to play against. You don't get God AIs, because they have limited information. You don't get God AIs, because their abilities are limited - and not by simple randomness. You might actually get an AI that stuns you and runs if it realizes it's outmatched, instead of stupidly sitting there and whaling at you with its rusty sword of crumbling.

Granted, genetic algorithms have some HUGE drawbacks:

The decision tree can be quite large, and it can take quite a few cycles to evaluate. Of course, as your fitness check you could check how long it took to execute.

It can take quite a bit of training (hundreds of generations, with thousands of entities each) before you get something that resembles an intelligent algorithm.

Meanwhile, it might generate something that checks for contingencies you never thought to bake into the AI script.

No. You seem to be suffering from the widely held delusion (at least among "content creators") that a pirated copy is a lost sale.

I assume from the way you phrase that you aren't yourself a quote content creator unquote.

I used the quotes because I'm talking about publishers as well as developers and publishers don't actually create anything.

What evidence do you have that DRM can be made secure enough to make a difference? I've yet to see anything convincing from the industry on either of those points.

Alright. Here's an interview with a game developer who used an extremely weak form of DRM (serial numbers only). Obsoleting the first generation of keygens increased sales by 70% overnight.

Now that article is pretty balanced - breaking the keygens only closed one way to pirate the game (cracked copies with the protection code removed were still available), and a 70% increase in sales certainly doesn't equate to eliminating piracy. But it didn't have to.

They did get a 70% increase in sales after the first fix (though they make no mention of how long that increase lasted). They also said that the 2nd and 3rd fixes had no impact on downloads and left sales either flat or slightly down (i.e. strengthening DRM hurt in one case). The fourth fix had a slight impact: 13% increase in sales. The link says:

As we believe that we are decreasing the number of pirates downloading the game with our DRM fixes, combining the increased sales number together with the decreased downloads, we find 1 additional sale for every 1,000 less pirated downloads. Put another way, for every 1,000 pirated copies we eliminated, we created 1 additional sale.

I did say that some people will buy the game if the DRM is strengthened. But I said that generally pirates can't be forced to buy the game using DRM and your link supports me on that: 99.9% of the pirates did not buy the game when the DRM was strengthened. And that statistic also makes it clear that a download can't be equated to a lost sale: it's more like 1/1000 of a lost sale.

The question is whether strengthening DRM is an effective way to increase sales (well everyone says "increase sales", but what they really mean is "increase profit"). Let's look at the numbers from the article: 92% piracy rate means 11.5 downloads for every sold copy. They figured that their DRM fixes resulted in 1 extra sale per 1000 copies prevented. So, 87 sales results in 1000 downloads, and fixing the DRM results in one extra sale. How much money should be spend on strengthening DRM for a 1.15% increase in sales?

Of course this is only one data point. But it's not convincing me that strengthening DRM is the way to go.

Your position is one that only makes sense if you assume you are, somehow, much smarter than all the major PC game publishers out there, despite having worse or non-existant access to the statistics you'd need to make a decision. I find that a pretty arrogant position.

I don't think I'm smarter than all the major PC game publishers at all - your reasoning to arrive at that conclusion is faulty. However, I do think that if the industry had real statistics to back up the use of DRM they would publicise them and put this debate to rest. The lack of hard data from the industry and the ease with which people can find pirated material make it is clear that DRM is pretty ineffective. It's an arms race the industry obviously can't win (not on the PC platform at least) and yet they continue to pour millions of dollars into the fight while the pirates spend nothing.

No. You seem to be suffering from the widely held delusion (at least among "content creators") that a pirated copy is a lost sale.

I assume from the way you phrase that you aren't yourself a quote content creator unquote.

Yes, it's common sense that a pirated copy is potentially a lost copy, because clearly that person wanted the game. Maybe they weren't willing to buy it at any price, and maybe they'd be willing to buy it if that were cheaper, but you have to pick some price point and there'll always be such folks. But amongst those pirates there'll definitely be some people who really want the game, and will pirate it if that's convenient and easy (and available quickly) but otherwise will just say, fuck it, and go buy the game.

The existance of these people is provable both through sales figures - various game publishers have revealed stats on piracy rates for PC vs Console and increase in sales when broken DRM was repaired. It's also provable through common sense: companies wouldn't repeatedly and consistently spend money on DRM if they didn't have evidence it made them money. Unless you believe that almost every game developer out there is run by idiots, which clearly isn't the case.

What evidence do you have that DRM can be made secure enough to make a difference? I've yet to see anything convincing from the industry on either of those points.

Alright. Here's an interview with a game developer who used an extremely weak form of DRM (serial numbers only). Obsoleting the first generation of keygens increased sales by 70% overnight.

Now that article is pretty balanced - breaking the keygens only closed one way to pirate the game (cracked copies with the protection code removed were still available), and a 70% increase in sales certainly doesn't equate to eliminating piracy. But it didn't have to.

Your position is one that only makes sense if you assume you are, somehow, much smarter than all the major PC game publishers out there, despite having worse or non-existant access to the statistics you'd need to make a decision. I find that a pretty arrogant position.

It appears that anything a Google employee does these days is considered revolutionary even if it's lame, unoriginal and uninspired.
That being said, here is some real 3D spreadsheet graphics: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3563/microsoft_excel_revolutionary_3d_.php

What killed it? Most player really don't want to interact - it 'slows' them down.

To be fair, most people play these games for diversion. So, they tend to want to get into the fun quickly. Being able to head to the auction house and then fly to my destination is easier than traveling for an hour or more to the accepted trading location and bartering with people. That is, assuming you got the memo about where the accepted location is if the game developers haven't set aside a location.

Richard Bartle, co-author of the first text MUD, wrote about this. He pointed out that design ideas can be good or bad in the long or short term. Many games tend to have a lot of features that are good in the short term, even if they are bad in the long term. It's also hard to introduce a feature that is bad in the short term but good in the long term. So, removing the auction house and putting in player trade stalls might be a good long term feature, but it'd hurt in the short term so there is no way that WoW would do that. And, now that WoW has set the standard, not including an auction house would be a short term negative for a possible long term benefit; in other words, it won't work because players will complain about the short term pain.

IMHO, the solution here is to start making smaller-scale MMOs. There are enough people that share your tastes that a game could be made to cater to you. There are two issues to overcome: first, you have to realize that you will be playing a niche game instead of a large one, and that means you're not going to get a game with a $50 million budget. Second, you have to accept that you'll probably have to pay a bit more for the game in order to make the game appealing in a financial sense. For now, it's mostly going to be small, independent developers (like me!) looking to service the niche, and we still have to eat and pay rent.

Some thoughts from a professional MMO developer.

My bad, you are correct, Nintendo is the #1 publisher with EA being #2 for 2007-2008.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3800/game_developer_magazines_top_20_.php

I agree that once a game (or music, or video) leaves it's initial purchasing channel there should not be a required tax or fee that goes back to the originating party.

I don't agree that extras companies invest in providing (e.g., downloadable content) should transfer as well. It seems a fair balance, and don't feel my "rights" are being violated. I have a choice:
      1. Buy new, pay retail, and get additional content
      2. Buy used, pay less, receive no frills.

The companies aren't taking away my choice, and based on the quality of the downloadable content is how I choose to exercise it.

Publishers and studios are doing what they can to monetize their games. The games industry as a whole is pretty chaotic. EA is the juggernaut (ranked #1 again this year by Game Developer Magazine) but even EA has had to sack groups of employees and various studios:
e.g., http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=11289

The smaller studios, owned by publishers or independent, are also not as sustainable as many people believe. For every game that makes it out of the gate and is considered a "hit" there are multiple studios who must sack employees or completely close their doors:
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=21113
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=20929
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=17661
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=15486
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=13759

Making money by offering product value to those who buy a game new is devoid of encroaching on one's liberities. Without doing so more studios would fail.

I agree that once a game (or music, or video) leaves it's initial purchasing channel there should not be a required tax or fee that goes back to the originating party.

I don't agree that extras companies invest in providing (e.g., downloadable content) should transfer as well. It seems a fair balance, and don't feel my "rights" are being violated. I have a choice:
      1. Buy new, pay retail, and get additional content
      2. Buy used, pay less, receive no frills.

The companies aren't taking away my choice, and based on the quality of the downloadable content is how I choose to exercise it.

Publishers and studios are doing what they can to monetize their games. The games industry as a whole is pretty chaotic. EA is the juggernaut (ranked #1 again this year by Game Developer Magazine) but even EA has had to sack groups of employees and various studios:
e.g., http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=11289

The smaller studios, owned by publishers or independent, are also not as sustainable as many people believe. For every game that makes it out of the gate and is considered a "hit" there are multiple studios who must sack employees or completely close their doors:
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=21113
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=20929
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=17661
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=15486
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=13759

Making money by offering product value to those who buy a game new is devoid of encroaching on one's liberities. Without doing so more studios would fail.

I agree that once a game (or music, or video) leaves it's initial purchasing channel there should not be a required tax or fee that goes back to the originating party.

I don't agree that extras companies invest in providing (e.g., downloadable content) should transfer as well. It seems a fair balance, and don't feel my "rights" are being violated. I have a choice:
      1. Buy new, pay retail, and get additional content
      2. Buy used, pay less, receive no frills.

The companies aren't taking away my choice, and based on the quality of the downloadable content is how I choose to exercise it.

Publishers and studios are doing what they can to monetize their games. The games industry as a whole is pretty chaotic. EA is the juggernaut (ranked #1 again this year by Game Developer Magazine) but even EA has had to sack groups of employees and various studios:
e.g., http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=11289

The smaller studios, owned by publishers or independent, are also not as sustainable as many people believe. For every game that makes it out of the gate and is considered a "hit" there are multiple studios who must sack employees or completely close their doors:
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=21113
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=20929
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=17661
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=15486
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=13759

Making money by offering product value to those who buy a game new is devoid of encroaching on one's liberities. Without doing so more studios would fail.

I agree that once a game (or music, or video) leaves it's initial purchasing channel there should not be a required tax or fee that goes back to the originating party.

I don't agree that extras companies invest in providing (e.g., downloadable content) should transfer as well. It seems a fair balance, and don't feel my "rights" are being violated. I have a choice:
      1. Buy new, pay retail, and get additional content
      2. Buy used, pay less, receive no frills.

The companies aren't taking away my choice, and based on the quality of the downloadable content is how I choose to exercise it.

Publishers and studios are doing what they can to monetize their games. The games industry as a whole is pretty chaotic. EA is the juggernaut (ranked #1 again this year by Game Developer Magazine) but even EA has had to sack groups of employees and various studios:
e.g., http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=11289

The smaller studios, owned by publishers or independent, are also not as sustainable as many people believe. For every game that makes it out of the gate and is considered a "hit" there are multiple studios who must sack employees or completely close their doors:
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=21113
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=20929
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=17661
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=15486
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=13759

Making money by offering product value to those who buy a game new is devoid of encroaching on one's liberities. Without doing so more studios would fail.

I agree that once a game (or music, or video) leaves it's initial purchasing channel there should not be a required tax or fee that goes back to the originating party.

I don't agree that extras companies invest in providing (e.g., downloadable content) should transfer as well. It seems a fair balance, and don't feel my "rights" are being violated. I have a choice:
      1. Buy new, pay retail, and get additional content
      2. Buy used, pay less, receive no frills.

The companies aren't taking away my choice, and based on the quality of the downloadable content is how I choose to exercise it.

Publishers and studios are doing what they can to monetize their games. The games industry as a whole is pretty chaotic. EA is the juggernaut (ranked #1 again this year by Game Developer Magazine) but even EA has had to sack groups of employees and various studios:
e.g., http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=11289

The smaller studios, owned by publishers or independent, are also not as sustainable as many people believe. For every game that makes it out of the gate and is considered a "hit" there are multiple studios who must sack employees or completely close their doors:
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=21113
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=20929
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=17661
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=15486
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=13759

Making money by offering product value to those who buy a game new is devoid of encroaching on one's liberities. Without doing so more studios would fail.

I agree that once a game (or music, or video) leaves it's initial purchasing channel there should not be a required tax or fee that goes back to the originating party.

I don't agree that extras companies invest in providing (e.g., downloadable content) should transfer as well. It seems a fair balance, and don't feel my "rights" are being violated. I have a choice:
      1. Buy new, pay retail, and get additional content
      2. Buy used, pay less, receive no frills.

The companies aren't taking away my choice, and based on the quality of the downloadable content is how I choose to exercise it.

Publishers and studios are doing what they can to monetize their games. The games industry as a whole is pretty chaotic. EA is the juggernaut (ranked #1 again this year by Game Developer Magazine) but even EA has had to sack groups of employees and various studios:
e.g., http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=11289

The smaller studios, owned by publishers or independent, are also not as sustainable as many people believe. For every game that makes it out of the gate and is considered a "hit" there are multiple studios who must sack employees or completely close their doors:
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=21113
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=20929
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=17661
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=15486
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=13759

Making money by offering product value to those who buy a game new is devoid of encroaching on one's liberities. Without doing so more studios would fail.

Members include Microsoft and WildTangent.
  I think I'm gonna be sick.

November 3: Casual Dev WildTangent Closes Internal Studio, Cuts Staff

They'll still be doing publishing apparently, but no more in-house development.

I thought I'd test the accuracy of this method.

I put in Gollum and it gives the result - "McCain matching 53%".

I'm thinking that the software is just making numbers up.

You are, actually, wrong by making this comparison because, in your examples, the goods you're talking about are physical goods. If someone would take them from you, you wouldn't be able to use them anymore. On the other hand, digital goods are different. If somebody makes a copy of your content, both of you will be able to use that content afterwards.

Yes, indeed, you could argue that the content creator would loose a potential customer. Nevertheless, that isn't exactly true. What they actually lose is free publicity because the people that don't purchase the content legaly might either not purchase it at all or decide to purchase it ONLY after trying it for free. And trying the whole thing is not the same thing as trying the demo, so, plese, don't go to the demo line.

As further proof of what I just said, check out http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=17350, or, if you want the short version http://kotaku.com/tag/reflexive-arcade/. There are a lot of other examples but this would degenerate into an encyclopedia of game producers coming to terms with the real world and it would take to long.

Nice photos! I like how those old magazines used direct camera shots of televisions. There was no such thing as a "screen dump" back then. Here's me in 1989: http://www.qlinklives.org/qlink-old/me1989.jpg * And here's the 1985-Commodore 64 version of "Miis" - http://www.fudco.com/chip/habitat.gif - I don't know what this is but it looks cool - http://www.gamasutra.com/db_area/images/feature/1991/c64_11.jpg

Those were the good old days, when computing was an adventure into unknown territories & unrealized possibilities. Nowadays it's more like a boring appliance (IMHO).

*

* (just joking; I looked more like Weesley Crusher on TNG - just a teenager.)

I agree with you, but in the words of Min Kim, from Nexon in the last Austin GDC, it's not about winning because you have money, but to enhance the value of the experience you already have. You can read some of this here, but it's a little bit incomplete: Kim's keynote was way more insightful than that.

As above reply points out, you playing the track would be a performance, uploading the track to Activision for other players would be distribution.

You can't distribute it, due to copyright. You also can't perform it, at least according to Gibson.

Gibson owns a patent on technology that simulates a musical performance, and Activision and Gibson are semi-battling over it and how it applies to Guitar Hero et. al. http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=17844

Even stranger, is that GH I, II, Rt80s come out. Then Harmonix & RedOctane split up. Gibson licenses the likeness of the Les Paul to Activision for GH III, Fender the strat for RB. So Activision and Gibson are already sort of partners in fall 2007.

Gibson waits until spring 2008 to try to get Activision to license their performance simulation patent or stop selling Guitar Hero. I doubt that they stop accepting Les Paul royalties while the courts decide though.

Read it on Gamasutra this morning. Apparently, the websites of Japanese newspapers Nikkei Sangyo Shimbun and Yomiuri Shimbun both reported this.

We'll probably find out for certain on Thursday, October 2nd, when Nintendo holds it's major press conference: http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=20284

Read it on Gamasutra this morning. Apparently, the websites of Japanese newspapers Nikkei Sangyo Shimbun and Yomiuri Shimbun both reported this.

We'll probably find out for certain on Thursday, October 2nd, when Nintendo holds it's major press conference: http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=20284

Since at least the dot-com era and maybe before, there's been a demand for entry-level software developers. It's the subject of Steve McConnell's essay Orphans Preferred. Companies like pulling cheap labor from colleges and grinding the people down until they either burn out or get wise and fight back at the bullshit, at which point the company replaces the burnouts and malcontents with the next wave of suckers.

Basically any site that includes a forum can get blocked if someone in the forum links to something considered malware. I actually have no idea how places like Slashdot haven't gotten blocked for that (maybe they special-case high-profile sites?), but a bunch of smaller sites with forums like ratebeer and Gamasutra have gotten blocked repeatedly.

Ad free, single page...

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3786/jonathan_blow_the_path_to_braid.php?print=1

Yeah, I know, I know... how is the web going to survive without ads, my servers are down, karma whore... who cares, I just don't want to click Next six times.

How did Indigo Prophecy fail? It of course didn't do every detail perfectly, but it was hardly a failure. In fact I would call it the best thing that happened to the adventure genre since Maniac Mansion, because its gameplay simply was radically different from pretty much every other game.

Also David Cage has written a fantastic post mortem on Indigo Prophecy, analysing pretty much all the small mistakes the game had, but again nothing even close to 'failure'.

Speaking as a PC gamer: that's fairly ironic.

Now now, let's not assume that the project lead must be a "he" . . . Meet Alyssa Finley

Excerpt from Brandon Sheffield article on Gamasutra :

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=18510

It was Blueside who first introduced the idea to me, cynically stating that consoles won't succeed in Korea until players start just playing games for fun, instead of treating them as work. I laughed then, but subsequent meetings only served to confirm the theory.

Companies from Gravity to Ntreev to Nexon agreed that a very large number - varying from 30 to 50 percent, depending on who you ask - of players in South Korea are playing games as a job. Generally, people didn't feel too good about it either, which at least indicates that people aren't designing them with that as a goal. But it's still disconcerting.

And as any player of Lineage2 can attest, some Korean MMOs really ARE designed to be grindfests and farming prone.

From L2 official boards :

PushyCat on official boards:
So, Koreans play and sell in their own servers and it covers the cost of their PC Room and meals. This is a normal aspect of Korean games. Listen to me while I say this. Ebaying is NOT CONSIDERED CHEATING in KORea. It is an important element of mmporgs. With game money, not only can you sell it to make cash, you can also order pizza, buy computers and accessories (like auto mouses, keyboards, macroprograms), and pay for your monthly fee (for those who play at home). In Korea, game money is an accepted tender for Real Life. Noone posts on message boards about cheaters, ebayers, and bots because EVERYONE does it. In Korea, the game is played much differently than in North America, and asians have different cultural backgrounds that make gameplay different as well.

"i agree with you except i think you mean "write something new about something old""

Innovate kind of like you did last year, none of this new stuff.

I don't know, fly casual.

In case you are stuck on the first page, here's a link to page 2: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3766/atari_the_golden_years__a_.php?page=2

Also, in case you don't know what Atari is, here's the Google search, and an explanation of what Google is.

Seriously, why do people do this? You know that we all have web browsers and mice, and can just click the same links ourselves, right?

in case you don't feel like clicking through 20 pages of ads, you can view the article as one page here: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3766/atari_the_golden_years__a_.php?print=1

I agree this is a common problem in modern games; see http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/1942/programming_responsiveness.php

Don't confuse control latency with reaction time. Reaction time will be at least 150ms for even the best players, but humans can notice time delays much smaller than best reaction time. A good rhythm game player can hit frame exact timing at 60fps -- a 17ms time window. With low enough latency the game character feels like a part of your own body, rather than something you are indirectly influencing.

The same thing applies to GUIs, and only a very short delay will destroy that feeling of transparency of action. I never actually used BeOS myself, but I read that it was designed with low interface latency as a priority, which was why it got such good reviews for user experience.

Tell you what - you hang on to the pony, while the OP and I play Far Cry 2 and Spore.

Moving beyond the linear storyline in games might be an ambitious goal, but some game developers are giving it a go. The links above, especially the first, show just how they're trying to achieve it. They might not pull it off quite yet, but at least they're giving it a try.

Please drop the whole "scripted storyline" concept and make a super fancy algorithm so that the story derives from whatever the player does and whatever happens as a consequence

Here you go. Some assembly required. Dwarf Fortress is in many respects built to allow stories to emerge from gameplay; indeed, it's a significant part of what people find attractive about it.

It's kind of a mixture of Dungeon Keeper 2, Sim City, Nethack, The Sims, The Incredible Machine, and experimental brain surgery.

1. Do your research. Your question is a good one, but is asked and answered constantly in the games industry. Check the industry sites for relevant info.
http://www.gamasutra.com/
http://www.gamecareerguide.com/
etc etc

Yeah, the games industry doesn't buy ideas. I'd recommend befriending a programmer in the industry and just making the game together, then enter it in a couple of competitions (e.g. the Indie Games Festival one), and start selling it. If it's genuinely a great game it'll rise to the top and publishers will take notice.

Easier to find a programmer who's keen to work on an indie game if you're already in the industry, but there are also "matchmaking" sites for this sort of thing, everyone needs artists too!

Gamasutra reckon that it's still not legal to sell NES clones in the US

http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20051111/boyd_01.shtml

Nintendo also has copyright registrations associated with the NES. Copyright is not immortal, but it is cheaper to register and can last more than a lifetime, literally. The length of copyright protection for works created after 1978 is 95 years after publication or 120 years after creation. This means the copyright registrations for the NES system are valid until about 2090. Copyright also has some substantial legal "teeth." Under certain circumstances, it is possible for executives of corporations to have personal liability for copyright infringement. Statutory damages can be as much as $150,000 per instance of infringement plus attorneys fees for egregious cases. Actual damages can be even higher. Prison time is also possible for criminal copyright infringement. All that power for a thirty dollar registration.

Nintendo has actually tested the power of one of its copyrights on the NES in the case, Atari Games Corp. v. Nintendo of America1. This case was in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in 1992. The case involved Nintendo suing Atari for copyright and patent infringement of its "10NES" cartridge authentication system. This system is used by the NES to discern the difference between licensed and unlicensed cartridges. The Federal Circuit upheld a judgment in favor of Nintendo based on the copyright analysis alone. This copyright is still valid and will be for about eighty more years. This is also true for other Nintendo copyright registrations associated with the NES.

Potentially, but would programming responsiveness not be an issue in a system just designed to digest data, the IPS might be there but there could be more to it then that.