Slashdot Mirror

... is reason enough to get this bundle :) It's an awesome game.

http://positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/2011/12/14/humble-indie-bundle-4/

http://positech.co.uk/gratuitousspacebattles/index.html

... is reason enough to get this bundle :) It's an awesome game.

http://positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/2011/12/14/humble-indie-bundle-4/

http://positech.co.uk/gratuitousspacebattles/index.html

There actually is games like that, and has been for quite a while. Oldie strategy games like VGA Planets, which did not have a realtime component at all, had autonomously fought, crudely simulated battles. More modern Play-By-E-Mail -strategy games like Dominions also do this, but include more simulation and a lot more complexity.

Gratuitous Space Battles, on the other hand, is a yet more recent game consisting of nothing but pre-programmed battles on custom-built space ships. Haven't played that, though.

http://www.shrapnelgames.com/Illwinter/DOM3/DOM3_page.html
http://www.positech.co.uk/gratuitousspacebattles/

He just PAYS FOR IT, because it really is faster, and easier. The pirate who wants to play Super Duper Mario Brothers Meet the Exterminator and Predator has to find a download, find a crack, apply the crack, etc ad nauseum. Then, he probably can't play the online version, which includes the "value added" appearance of Alien.

Kinda.

That's how it's supposed to work. If a company is smart, they go to lengths to ensure that the value of their product is higher than that of the pirated product.

Unfortunately, some companies (like EA and Ubisoft) don't quite get it right. Instead of ensuring that the legitimate copies are the best, they layer on obtrusive DRM (e.g. Spore) and stupid limitations (requiring a network connection to play a single-player game), thereby changing the value proposition in the wrong direction.

This is complicated by the fact that your description of piracy isn't really how it works anymore. Here's how it usually works:

1. User wants "Game X"
2. User goes to favorite torrent tracker and searches for "Game X"
3. User picks highest-ranked/highest-voted torrent.
4. User downloads "Game X" via BitTorrent.
5. As with all "quality" piracy releases, the copy of "Game X" that the user has downloaded is completely stripped of DRM and requires no additional software to play.

Now faced with the above scenario, you can see how the value comparison changes. In this scenario, the user can either 1) pay for the product and be subject to a number of limitations (DRM, etc.) or 2) get the product for free and deal with fewer restrictions on its usage.

And that's not even including the folks who "pirate" things that they already licensed. Case in point: I licensed NFS: Most Wanted a couple years ago. Unfortunately, the copy protection (SafeDisc IIRC) didn't function correctly, and the game refused to recognize that I had the CD in the drive with any degree of reliability. As a result, I downloaded a "pirated" release of the game, which work flawlessly.

Conversely, Positech Games (who make some kick-ass strategy/management games) sells all of their games DRM-free. I've purchased several of his games, primarily because the pirated product adds nothing other than a count of copyright infringement.

Actually, an indie game developer in the UK has said that this is not a huge deal (for him at least) because they lowered the business tax rate 1% instead, and this way he doesn't have to fill out any forms for his games business to get a boost.

Democracy 2 runs in Wine

http://www.positech.co.uk/forums/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2303&sid=7e6a0845a38b5d76ae7f2e18fffc7581

Not surprising as I played through Gratuitous Space Battles in Wine too.

Positech Games, the guy posts on Slashdot too.

http://positech.co.uk/

RTFA summary that you are quoting. Mr. Harris and his firm imply very clearly that they have dropped DRM. He presents the arguments that convinced him DRM is not a Good Thing(tm).

If the implication in TFA is not obvious please visit the Positech Games site and read Cliffski's blog on the matter at http://positech.co.uk/talkingtopirates.html.

Googles gotten:

Galcon
Gratuitous Space Battles
Mount & Blade
Plants vs. Zombies
Puzzle Quest

Tremulous
OpenArena

I'm a game developer, having worked at Elixir and Lionhead, and now running my own indie show --> http://www.positech.co.uk./ Parent poster is right, most people who now work as game designers started young and worked for years. i wrote my first code in 1981, aged 11, so that's about 28 years to get to where I am now (albeit with some major detours, you can do it much quicker).
Key points to be aware of are these:

1) The competition to be designer is harder than any other role, so the chances of getting work as a designer are way way lower than getting a job as an artist or coder or tester, so you need to be uber-good.
2) What most people consider to be game design is being 'lead designer' or even better 'concept designer'. These roles are even rarer. You need to run/own a studio or go solo to get this job.
3) 50% of the coders and artists at each game company also harbour design ambitions. They are also ahead of you in the queue.

Having said all this, you can do it, I certainly have. I've even designed games for Maxis (SimSocial) as well as my indie stuff. The key thing is, that I did it through the route of programming. I didn't have to persuade a coder to make my idea, I could code it myself, which is 90% of the battle. I have to employ an artist or three, but at the start, you can get away with coder art.

In short, if you are one of the game design wannabes who aims to never learn any code and is afraid of C++, you are very likely doomed, unless you get in through the route of game testing, and then work your balls off or show incredible ability. Even given that, you are looking at 5+ years minimum before you get to really design. Thats 5 years of checking that barbies new riding game doesn't crash with a French keyboard and other exciting tasks.
On the other hand if you are happy to learn some code, and willing to start out small, you can do everything yourself. With platforms such as wiiware, iphone, the web (flash and PC downloadable) there are many opportunities to get to be a game designer on a smaller scale.

Indie dev may not sound as exciting as working at epic, but today I spent my working day fine tuning the circumstances under which AI-controlled space cruisers retreat to engage auto-repair systems*. It beats working in a call center :D
Good Luck!

*that was for this -> http://www.gratuitousspacebattles.com/

You mean like you too? You, cliffski, have been caught with copyright infringement too, you hypocrite. You are no "better" than the "pirates" you hate.

I hear that it does, and there is a discussion of running the game under WINE here:
http://positech.co.uk/forums/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2303

It is not at all that simple.

My best selling game is this one:
http://www.positech.co.uk/democracy2
It's a very complex and in-depth political simulation game based around the idea of the interconnectedness of all aspects of government policy, and modelled using a custom-written neural network. It assumes a decent understanding of modern political issues and a willingness to not be put off by what appears (at first glance ) to be a VERY complex interface (it's actually not that complex).

In short, the game appeals to politics junkies, political science students, and people who enjoy chaos theory and complexity.

It doesn't matter HOW good it is, how polished it is, or how well I market it...if your idea of games is Halo, you will NOT enjoy it, and NOT buy it.

Many games exist in a very small, specific niche, a niche where the developer can make a living selling $22.95 games like that one. A lot of those niches are already on the borderline (mine is). Unless I can actually generate a worldwide greater interest in playing political strategy games, I can't expand my sales. So a drop in prices just means less overall revenue, and thus makes it less viable to make games like that.

If all you want is 'mainstream' games that appeal to everyone, why bother with indie games anyway? we make games for specific groups of players, not the whole market.

It started when I reformatted my drive and started using Linux exclusively and gave up TV about 10 years ago. Up until then, I used to buy games and had game consoles around. I last remember playing Metal Gear Solid like a man obsessed and getting a sound beating or two playing Starcraft online.

On Linux, there were plenty of games - GNU Chess, Same Gnome and so forth. There was no buying any games for Linux at that time, so I learned to like these games a lot. I imagine people must have had a similar experience with Microsoft's Solitaire.

When I got married, my wife needed a Windows machine to access work applications, so we had a Windows machine and I could purchase games again if I were inclined. But, it just didn't occur to me to buy games anymore. I found free games to be more interesting in some respects because they didn't have money for graphics, so they focused more on other things. This isn't knocking professionally created games. In my experience they're great, I just wasn't looking for them at this point.

I tried playing games that won The Interactive Fiction Competition because I remember playing Zork back when I was young. I couldn't get into text adventures anymore, but I think it is worth exploring.

I had played Civilization before too. So, I tried freeciv, which led to other free turn-based games like Battle for Wesnoth and even returning to older games like Nethack.

I then went on to try independent games that you had to pay a small amount for, like those made by Positech.

I also tried Second Life and similar and found them to be glorified IRC chat rooms.

I'm getting into this history because I think it raises an interesting question. Why would anyone buy Halo III when they have never played the the first one? Particularly, if someone can buy the earlier editions for a fraction of their original cost now, and they would likely enjoy them as much as most people did the first time they played them, why not start there?

You may not be as extreme an example as I am, but I bet there are older games, free games or low-priced independent games that you have never played and would like. So, why are you buying the newest WOW expansion set (and paying the subscription fees) or HALO 3 - as soon as it comes out? Is it that you are so involved in these games? I can understand that because the one game I have purchased was Sid Meyer's Pirates - again, partially because I had played it before and liked it a lot. But, I don't want to assume that is true of everyone.

What about a new game? It's one thing to get the new Grand Theft Auto. It's another to get a totally new game. How do you decide to go with something just released - rather than buy something older that you haven't played before? Is it about having the newest and greatest in graphical features? What's the appeal?

Maybe you are such a hard core gamer that you've played most new games. But given the amount of time they require - is this really so? Maybe it is playing with friends, a la Quake. Maybe it's checking the review on Gamespot or Slashdot. Since I don't play them, I don't know. So was wondering if someone can offer a clue.

I guess part of my question is that I am looking at new things to try. I know there are a lot of good games out there that I haven't played. So, why would I be interested in these new models of game production or even new games? What do you suggest? What games do you think everyone should know? Is there a great game out there that you think most gamers have missed?

For example, I remember reading about one game in Slashdot where you are a pencil or something and you role around and things stick to you - something from Japan. I've also heard someone that taught fo

yes there are turn based strategy game from indie devs:
http://www.positech.co.uk/
and RPG games like Aveyond and Cute Knight
Not all indie devs are casual devs. There is a big difference

wow the big MAC DEMO buttons must not be big enough then.

Must have been recently added, since the last time I went to your site you had prominent Mac and Windows links to buy, but the demo link went directly to a Windows .exe without letting me select the platform. Oh, wait, no, it's still exactly the same. On your Starship Tycoon page (the first one I tried clicking on), there is a prominent link to 'Free Demo' which links straight to a .exe.

I insult people who insult me. sorry f you expect people to roll over and take abuse on slashdot, but that's not how I do things.

No, you troll and then get defensive when people call you on it. You seem to think calling other people idiots is good marketing, and you whine like a small child when people disagree with you.

But you keep enjoying your open source games. Personally I enjoy games that are fun, rather than basing my enjoyment on the licensing model used...

Nice straw man. My original comment was that you 'don't make anything that's better than the open source games I enjoy regularly.' I.e. you charge $10 for games that don't look any more fun than ones that are free and afford many hours of entertainment. You are stuck competing with:

1. Big game development houses.
2. Browser-based games.
3. Open source games.

The big companies can outspend you, and produce much more complex titles, but you can probably undercut them on price (although, since you likely have a smaller circulation, you are charging more per person-hour of game development time than they are. Not a problem, if you're that much more productive than their drones, of course).

Browser games are ad-supported by and large (although a few companies are now charging for them). They range from small toys to rich, complex games, and are free to play.

Open source games are usually slower to market than the other kinds, since they tend to be developed by hobbyists or based on old game engines, but they are developed by people whose only motivation is to make a fun game, not by people who want to make money and see games as a way of doing it.

Both of the last two categories undercut you on price, and many of them undercut you in value too. When there are hundreds of free games that will entertain me for anything from an hour to a week, you need a pretty compelling reason to persuade me to pay $10 for one. Perhaps you could suggest which of your games is worth more than something like FreeCol, Vega Strike, Battle for Wesnoth, Warzone 2100, or Nexuiz?

couldnt' agree more. I tried an experiment by ditching DRM:

http://www.positech.co.uk/talkingtopirates.html

The net result in sales was zero. It basically doesn't matter to people whether there is DRM or not. Who knows why? Maybe people who rant about DRM will not buy stuff anyway? maybe its a tiny extremely vocal minority who are statistically insignificant in terms of actual sales.

People claim very loudly that DRM doesn't prevent piracy. It doesn't prevent sales either. I'm sure lots of slashdotters would claim that the reason they do not buy X or Y is due to DRM, but the stats suggest otherwise.

People in general will boycott on-line stroes over DRM about as much as people will boycott clothing stores that use child labour. ie: 99% of people don't care, and will not factor it into purchasing decisions.

Despite that, I dislike DRM and still don't use it, but I can't in all honesty make a compelling claim to DRM using companies to ditch it on sales grounds.

before I'd ever read anything about computer science neural networks, I read steve grands book about making a robot chimp, with a very basic explanation of how neurons work. On that basis I wrote Democracy, a computer game based on a neural network.
Obviously you will learn a hell of a lot from good books, but there's something to be said for just jumping in and coding it 'your way', to see what happens. It will likely make the (somewhat dry) text books on the subject seem much more relevant when you have already tried to code a similar system without a pre-planned idea of how to go about it.
Just an idea.

If you really wanted t protest DRM, you would NOT play the game at all, whilst emailing them to say so.
When you pirate the game, you just get chalked up by the publisher as another pirate, not as some sort of anti-drm protest vote. ...

The people who pirated my games achieved fuck all in terms of removing DRM.

Really? Your blog post 'Talking to Pirates' implies something different happened. You asked the question "Why do people pirate my games?", received some answers, then removed DRM from your games. Don't get me wrong, you did the right thing by asking your potential customers what's going on, but you cannot deny that piracy had an affect on your decision to withdraw the DRM.

"I want this game, and I took it for free. If you can find a more secure drm, you will make more money from me"

Yep, that's how it's interpreted, and that's why you and other game companies are facing problems with your potential customers. That is a failure on your part, not on the part of your potential customers. You end up paying more attention to the people aiming to get it for free that you end up screwing the guy that's putting a roof over your head. The game industry has been told for years that it's obnoxious that a disc is required in the system to play. That's not a new thing. It is incredibly difficult to imagine there are many game devs out there that don't know what "NOCD" means. The funny thing is, they see these cracks flying around, then they use this wonderfully broken logic: "If we make it harder to copy the game, we'll reduce piracy!" Cute. Let's reduce piracy by increasing the value of cracked software. Derr.

The truth is, you won't listen until you can attach numbers to it. You've known all along that restricting the software makes it less valuable to your paying customers. You didn't listen until you started noticing 'pirated' software of yours out there. Sad thing is, that's the case everywhere. You twits think everybody's out to save a buck (completely ignoring the success of places like Starbucks...) and that you're precariously on the verge of getting 2 million playing customers and zero sales. In 25+ years of home gaming, this hasn't happened. What did happen? The customers revolted. Spore announces restrictions, Amazon gets pelted with bad reviews. Oops. EA changes things a bit, then gets Amazon to remove the reviews. It's a small win, but again, no reaction until actual numbers start changing. That is the problem you and every other game developer big and small have. You claim you'll listen to customer feedback, but you don't actually react until people communicate through your wallet.

I saw you posting on Slashdot. You had plenty of time before 'piracy' got a response out of you.

2D games are often cheaper to make, which means that you can make more niche games that wouldn't be justified with a big team of modellers and artists and a 3D engine.
republic: The revolution was a political strategy game (niche) that took about 50 people 5 years to make and cost millions (I worked at Elixir). On the other hand I made Democracy on my own in under a year, purely by doing away with the (largely irrelevant) 3D world and going back to a 2D style of gameplay.
This means that Democracy made a profit (and got a sequel) and Elixir went bankrupt.

If people are happier to accept that 2D games can be fun, you would see a lot more low budget, indie developed games for the PC, rather than just triple-A shoddy 3D console ports and yet another WW2 FPS.
This can only be a good thing.

I did the same thing a while ago when the author of Democracy 2 was featured on Slashdot when he asked the gaming community about why they pirate.

I had never heard of Positech or their games, but since this developer was being pretty cool with the piracy responses, I downloaded the demo of Democracy 2. Fun game. Bought it.

Steam has its good and bad points...I enjoy the features it offers

For most people, it is a matter of trust.

And so we go directly to the heart of the DRM problem. When consumers complain about DRM, they are complaining about three things:
Lack of trust in purchase - (A lack of trust that they will own what they have purchased, and that they will not lose access to it through negligence, malice, or a critical existence failure on the part of the seller)
Lack of trust in software - (The belief that the DRM software itself will behave in a manner that is annoying, impact game or system performance, block legitimate access for dubious reasons, or worse, install something like a rootkit, causing more permanent damage to the OS or even the hardware, whether or not such a thing is *actually* possible)
Lack of comparable advantage - (The failure of the legitimately purchased software to be comparable to the pirated software. This is a *huge* problem for some software. If it has annoying intro videos, or the DRM adds several seconds of load time, or the pirated versions offer better performance, or the legitimate version has annoying crap bundled into it all over the place, or the pirated version is necessary to run mods, or you just plain need to break the DRM to back it up, or play without the CD)

Steam addresses enough of these problems for many people. Some other developers are working in similar areas, Stardock's Impulse for example, some developers are simply abandoning the whole DRM idea. Positech, GOG, and more.
Valve's Steam is also trying to capitalize on the 3rd point in particular, by offering an easy way to integrate updating, and even mods. Some people don't like it, which I certainly understand, since forced updates can and often do break third party content, but I can't deny that it's also way easier than trying to find a patch that's often not even hosted by the company that made the game, and is instead only available from some annoying third party hosting company that requires registration, or having to worry about applying three different patches in the right order to get from the retail version to the current version.

Try some DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac that make you think: http://www.positech.co.uk/

And, once again, you fail. I went to the site, I saw a game that looked interesting, I clicked on the demo link, and it started downloading a Windows .exe file (irritating, since it didn't say 'Windows demo' on the link, so I assumed it would take me to a page to select the platform, since there was a Mac icon at the top of the screen). I know you've said before that there are Mac demos available... somewhere... but I got bored trying to find them on your site.

End result: I didn't find the demo, didn't try the game, didn't buy the game. Maybe I'd have enjoyed it if I had, maybe not. Oh well, FreeOrion had a full game download link in an easy to find location, so I think I'll play that instead.

how dare companies try to make money!
its not the mortgage sellers that were greedy, nosiree, those bastards who made games are the worst excesses of modern evil surely!!!!111
--
Try some DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac that make you think: http://www.positech.co.uk/

I find it mildly amusing that you're fighting the 'greed' term with your sig advertising your DRM-free games appearing right below it. As if it'd be a selling point otherwise. ;)

not knowing how to spell words makes you look really, really stupid.

Agreed. I just visited the FAQ for that game Kudos (after reading about the developer's response to pirates) and found myself wondering if the guy was really smart enough to make a game of this complexity, even though he clearly is, and whether the game would be littered with spelling and grammar errors. And that was mainly because he wrote "... for some reason, setting a video game in slough amuses me. Almost all video game heroes start out in New York or Tokyo. Sloughs time has come" (ie two mistakes involving Slough). If there had been spelling mistakes on there too I might not even have downloaded the demo. It may be just me, but I think you will find this attitude quite prevalent in the real world.

not knowing how to spell words makes you look really, really stupid.

Agreed. I just visited the FAQ for that game Kudos (after reading about the developer's response to pirates) and found myself wondering if the guy was really smart enough to make a game of this complexity, even though he clearly is, and whether the game would be littered with spelling and grammar errors. And that was mainly because he wrote "... for some reason, setting a video game in slough amuses me. Almost all video game heroes start out in New York or Tokyo. Sloughs time has come" (ie two mistakes involving Slough). If there had been spelling mistakes on there too I might not even have downloaded the demo. It may be just me, but I think you will find this attitude quite prevalent in the real world.

If your read TFA you see that it's not about why people pirate games in general but about people who pirate Cliff Harris' games.

Since all games on his site have a demo lack of demos is not a legitimate argument.

No, but there was some concern about the demos being too short so Cliff promised to make the demo longer for his next game.

Disclaimer: I have never bought, pirated, or played any of Positech's games. Possibly because they don't get enough exposure for me to notice (or even hear), or I just don't game enough these days, so when I actually get the chance I only get the more popular titles or games I know will be good.

Today was the first time I heard about the game Kudos. And when I saw its website, I feel it's a website I'm unwilling to purchase stuff off. To be blunt, the site looks quite shoddy and untrustworthy to purchase online from.

I understand that it is an independent game company. If Positech tries to market its games only to other developers or programmers, it may be a good enough website. But when Positech tries to market it to the general public, it does not look very presentable.

Perhaps I'm a more visual person than most programmers; however, I do strongly think that presentation is very important. Especially for a business. If you open a real store, say a small convenient store, wouldn't you want to make it look nice, clean, and organized? Wouldn't that attract more customers than a dirty and unorganized store? Of course the quality of goods and services are also important, but that's another story.

1. Lose the damn copy protection.
2. Use Steam or develop a system where people aren't chained to a CD or Jewel case with a cryptic serial number on it.
3. Release honest demos.
4. Don't get bought by EA, they have no honor.

The article addresses all of these issues.

My only complaint is that most of the games released by this developer are very derivative. Games list.

I tried the end of the world demo on Steam and it is just Katamari and the rest look to be clones of other games.

Oh. I see. Well I can tell by looking at the screenshots that none of them are worth paying for, and the only one I'd consider playing is The Wonderful End of the World.

Those look like "demo" games intended to help Cliff land a job at a real game company. People do not pay for crappy demos. End of story.

It turns out that the article summary presents a very different question than what the actual article author asked. I responded to the SlashDot version first, and the real version second. I also primarily posted this on my blog so that trackbacks would go appropriately to his blog. Still, since there are more people here, I'm leaving the response where I found it, so that I'll get responses.

Assuming that developers are missing out on potential sales from disgruntled pirates

... is a flawed assumption. Mister Harris appears to fail to understand the mindset of the pirate, who is a person who has confused what they want with what is ethical.

I've been running and co-running a number of small communities about game development for more than a decade now. Several of them have a real problem with pirates who show up looking for help with piracy. It's sometimes hard to tell the difference between a pirate and a kid using the wrong terms for things ("how do I build my ROM", etc); as such there's sort of an ongoing competition among the people who run these groups to see who can get these goons to uncover themselves the fastest, usually by feigning sympathy.

As a result, I've seen about three times as many warezers as the human population of Earth. Every single one tries to tell me, after they're removed, how it's not their fault they stole - the game is too expensive, or they don't want to feed EA, or they'll pay for it if they like it. Many of them have already forgotten that during the sympathy phase, they gave us lists of the games they had. Particularly galling are the people who brag that they have ROMs of every single DS game, or what have you, then turn around and pretend that it's just due to cost.

With respect, Mr. Harris, you're asking the wrong question. You could be selling your game for a quarter with a change accepting machine in their rooms; they wouldn't buy your game. They're out there getting every game they can find, often just for the bragging rights of having stolen more than their peers. Many of the people stealing your game haven't even heard of it and will never play it. These people cannot be converted into customers; they are too used to theft to recognize it as such, invariably vomiting up the same tripe about a false and meaningless distinction between copyright violation and theft, because they don't think of themselves as thieves and cannot face the honest nature of what they're doing. These people will never voluntarily give up money for your hard work, and you cannot get them to stop taking your work.

There are two somewhat more legitimate questions you might ask, however.

The first is "how can I profit from these people." That's not the same thing as turning them into customers. For example, though I do pay for my games, I play a lot of free games on the web which I wouldn't pay for (I'd just play more Civ instead.) DesktopTD is a great example: when it was news to me I would not have bought it because it looks poor, and by now I've played it so much that I don't even play it for free anymore. During my addiction I might have paid a couple of bucks for it, but probably not, and the market doesn't offer a sales mechanism that hits that phase.

However, DesktopTD has probably made about $3.50 from me by now. I'm not pulling that number out of thin air; I made an honest estimate of plays based on my best guess about when I found the game and how often I play, and ran it through the numbers for MochiAds. Admittedly, I'm not a warezer, so my example applicability is limited, and indeed I do know a few people who brag that they're running ad blockers so they're not inconvenienced with ten seconds of advertisement to put money in the developer's hands, even though the developer is giving their game away. Most of these people, unsurprisingly, are warezers.

The other questi

If your read TFA you see that it's not about why people pirate games in general but about people who pirate Cliff Harris' games.
Since all games on his site have a demo lack of demos is not a legitimate argument.

It's a staff retention issue. I blogged in some depth about it here:

http://positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/?p=16

basically people run games companies on the system of getting cheap graduates, treating them badly, and then replenishing them the minute they wise up and leave. This isn't a new thing at all.
Of my msn contacts from when I was in retail AAA dev, 70% of my ex colleagues now work in other industries or for themselves. That's the problem.

have you ever BEEN there?
I have, about 2 years ago. And it's fantastic. You might thinkt hats long as someone took a few photos of it, we can bulldoze it and build luxury flats there. But i disagree.
I normally HATE guided tours of places, but the tour of bletchley is fantastic, given by genuine experts, some of whom worked there, and who have a very deep understanding of technically how the cods were broken. the museum there is awesome, and the re-created machines that you can go and look at are truly astounding. This is literally the birthplace of computing. And you would happily let it disappear?
Here is some pics I took of some of the rebuilt machines, with the guy who did the rebuilding pictured:

http://www.positech.co.uk/blog/enigma1.jpg
http://www.positech.co.uk/blog/enigma2.jpg
http://www.positech.co.uk/blog/enigma3.jpg

BP is well worth saving. Much more so than just ANOTHER stately home, of which we preserve hundreds.

have you ever BEEN there?
I have, about 2 years ago. And it's fantastic. You might thinkt hats long as someone took a few photos of it, we can bulldoze it and build luxury flats there. But i disagree.
I normally HATE guided tours of places, but the tour of bletchley is fantastic, given by genuine experts, some of whom worked there, and who have a very deep understanding of technically how the cods were broken. the museum there is awesome, and the re-created machines that you can go and look at are truly astounding. This is literally the birthplace of computing. And you would happily let it disappear?
Here is some pics I took of some of the rebuilt machines, with the guy who did the rebuilding pictured:

http://www.positech.co.uk/blog/enigma1.jpg
http://www.positech.co.uk/blog/enigma2.jpg
http://www.positech.co.uk/blog/enigma3.jpg

BP is well worth saving. Much more so than just ANOTHER stately home, of which we preserve hundreds.

have you ever BEEN there?
I have, about 2 years ago. And it's fantastic. You might thinkt hats long as someone took a few photos of it, we can bulldoze it and build luxury flats there. But i disagree.
I normally HATE guided tours of places, but the tour of bletchley is fantastic, given by genuine experts, some of whom worked there, and who have a very deep understanding of technically how the cods were broken. the museum there is awesome, and the re-created machines that you can go and look at are truly astounding. This is literally the birthplace of computing. And you would happily let it disappear?
Here is some pics I took of some of the rebuilt machines, with the guy who did the rebuilding pictured:

http://www.positech.co.uk/blog/enigma1.jpg
http://www.positech.co.uk/blog/enigma2.jpg
http://www.positech.co.uk/blog/enigma3.jpg

BP is well worth saving. Much more so than just ANOTHER stately home, of which we preserve hundreds.

I just wanted to say I liked Kudos. It's a nice little diversion - although it's not for everyone. I meant to check out Democracy when I first heard of your games, but never got to it. I'll have to make a note to check it out when I have some down time. Anyway, just wanted to say I liked your stuff, and I hope you are making a living from your games.

In so much as I try to encourage political debate on the forums for my politics game here:
http://www.positech.co.uk/forums
I think I've been ok so far, even though the discussion is fairly sparse. One reason for this is that the nature of the game is entirely about politicl policies and actual implementation, rather than rhetoric or 'principles', so possibly that skews the discussion away from the more flamebait related areas.
One thing I suspect helps si that if I start a poll or topic, I always try to rpesent both sides to the question within the question itself, in order to get the principle of balanced debate there at the very start.

http://www.positech.co.uk/democracy/postmortem.htm l There is the postmortem of what they did and how they did it.

From all the pictures on their main site this game looks like it would have a tendency to favor the socialists amoug us. Let me give you these points about the pictures I saw:

The first picture shows the canidate as a socialist.
The second picture unemployement is high and car usage is low.
The third picture Socialist is topping out at the top of the chart.
The fouth picture is about gay marriage and gives a week argument about the church wouldn't like it and a good strong argument for it. In addition the mouse is hovering over the "allow it" button.
The fifth picture is the best out of all five where they show you raising the taxes, like all good socialists do.

I guess some would argue that it fits well with Linux, because Linux is Communism. Of course I am kidding guys. :)

From all the pictures on their main site this game looks like it would have a tendency to favor the socialists amoug us. Let me give you these points about the pictures I saw:

The first picture shows the canidate as a socialist.
The second picture unemployement is high and car usage is low.
The third picture Socialist is topping out at the top of the chart.
The fouth picture is about gay marriage and gives a week argument about the church wouldn't like it and a good strong argument for it. In addition the mouse is hovering over the "allow it" button.
The fifth picture is the best out of all five where they show you raising the taxes, like all good socialists do.

I guess some would argue that it fits well with Linux, because Linux is Communism. Of course I am kidding guys. :)

From all the pictures on their main site this game looks like it would have a tendency to favor the socialists amoug us. Let me give you these points about the pictures I saw:

The first picture shows the canidate as a socialist.
The second picture unemployement is high and car usage is low.
The third picture Socialist is topping out at the top of the chart.
The fouth picture is about gay marriage and gives a week argument about the church wouldn't like it and a good strong argument for it. In addition the mouse is hovering over the "allow it" button.
The fifth picture is the best out of all five where they show you raising the taxes, like all good socialists do.

I guess some would argue that it fits well with Linux, because Linux is Communism. Of course I am kidding guys. :)

From all the pictures on their main site this game looks like it would have a tendency to favor the socialists amoug us. Let me give you these points about the pictures I saw:

The first picture shows the canidate as a socialist.
The second picture unemployement is high and car usage is low.
The third picture Socialist is topping out at the top of the chart.
The fouth picture is about gay marriage and gives a week argument about the church wouldn't like it and a good strong argument for it. In addition the mouse is hovering over the "allow it" button.
The fifth picture is the best out of all five where they show you raising the taxes, like all good socialists do.

I guess some would argue that it fits well with Linux, because Linux is Communism. Of course I am kidding guys. :)

From all the pictures on their main site this game looks like it would have a tendency to favor the socialists amoug us. Let me give you these points about the pictures I saw:

The first picture shows the canidate as a socialist.
The second picture unemployement is high and car usage is low.
The third picture Socialist is topping out at the top of the chart.
The fouth picture is about gay marriage and gives a week argument about the church wouldn't like it and a good strong argument for it. In addition the mouse is hovering over the "allow it" button.
The fifth picture is the best out of all five where they show you raising the taxes, like all good socialists do.

I guess some would argue that it fits well with Linux, because Linux is Communism. Of course I am kidding guys. :)

He pretty clearly is attempting to make money off it though, so OSS is out of the question (or, at least, with the current business model, and I don't think that games are quite the same as utilities in terms of being paid to work on them...).

theres tons more than that, firstly you missed out the rather excellent
game tunnel and then there is the daily updates on tigsource and more small developers sites than you can shake a stick at, including mine:
Positech Games
The problem is that sites like this just dont get the traffic that gamespy and gamspot do, because none of us have the multimillion dollar advertising budgets. A clique of big name companies have decided that independent games == casual color matching games for soccer moms, and thats definitely not true. My most succesfull game was targeted at people who like complex political strategy games (nationstates / republic / civilisation), you try and persuade the likes of Real or Yahoo to publish that game?
There are plenty of original and interesting titles out there, you just need to google for them a bit, instead of just walking into CompUSA.

Maybe if we all spent a few hours DOING THIS Then things would turn out ok?

Im so bored with people telling me garage days are over. I also work for a big game developer, and as a hobby i have my own shareware games selling quite nicely that I did years ago. Starship Tycoon For example, earned me about $900 this month. Thats not gonna rival Everquest, but don't tell me that indie games don't sell, because last month I bought a brand new car out of my shareware money.
Positech Games

Check out positech.co.uk. They do games like StarLines INC (and Starship Tycoon) which certainly aren't run of the mill shooters.
Or if you really like shooters, and remember missile command, you could check out planetary defense on their website also.

Like most 'mainstream' press, the article missed out on a lot of the better shareware/indie games being made at the moment. Some worthwhile links to check out might include:
Positech Games

Mistaril

Smugglers

Andf also check out diygames.com,gametunnel.com etc...
Even though Im lucky enough to be on broadband,m I increasingly find myself turning to small games like this purely for their lack of hype and their originality. Also you can download them in 2 minutes and you get to try before you buy in the true sense of the word.
If a demo is more than 100 meg its high;ly unlikely Ill bother downloading it, knowing I'll probbaly spend less time playing it than demoing it...