Slashdot Mirror
An Xbox Live-like Service For Open/Indie Gaming?
Byrne Reese writes "Amidst all the crazy ideas in online video entertainment in the past year, there is a small company called Arena Unlimited that is taking an interesting approach to gaming economies. As near as I can tell, they're trying to open up a multitude of online gameplay services (e.g., opponent matching, free market item trading) to the masses (i.e., open source and independent PC game developers). (I shudder to think what would happen if one could actually introduce a legitimate and real free market economy into The Sims.) It's no Xbox Live, and their list of supported games is pretty small, but if they can do all that they say they may one day support, then sign me up."
If you have been following GNU Gaming Zone progress recently it is maturing rapidly, just give those dirty GNU hippies a few more years they'll be on par with Microsoft's services.
There's just no way those solutions will be competing with commercial online gaming platforms, like XBox Live, any time soon though. Mostly, for technical reasons: most console users don't want to have to deal with setting up a LAN or even basic routing functionality (as you have to do when using a tunneling tool), no matter how simple, they just want stuff to work out of the box. Exposure is another problem: XBox Live is a household name. Most people, on the other hand, don't even know that independently run online gaming services exist.
It will be interesting to see how the PC gaming crowd, which is generally more inclined to tweak their systems and try new stuff, will react when free, preferably open-source online services become widely available. With high-bandwidth Internet access becoming affordable, or even standard, in many areas this might just turn out to be a very interesting thing(tm).
He's mainly a PC online gamer, and it would be cool to have a friends list with him on it, saying what game and what server he's playing on, just like Xbox Live.
Um, All Seeing Eye anyone?
Good things about Live:
* Consistent interface
* Quick match in all games works the way it's supposed to: find a game and just play
* Voice chat, for all intents and purposes, is a success
Bad things about Live:
* Where are the dedicated servers?
* Even with everyone on broadband, there's still occasional lags
* 12 year olds who haven't hit puberty (although there are a lot of adults on the service)
Still, I think they've done a pretty good job, overall. Xbox is still my favorite system (for hacking and playing -- got about 20 games), and they can still improve, but it ain't bad.
Over at IBM's Alphaworks site they've got a project called Business Integration for Games that seems to be oriented along these lines.
my sig's at the bottom of the page.
This is true to a point, but Project Gotham 2 on the Xbox has already lasted since November, which in the gaming world is quite a while. I still find many, many players on there.
I'm sure that this has more to do with it being probably the single best racing sim on the console market (at least you can lock the brakes, you can't do that in Gran Turismo), but nonetheless, the excellent matching system it's got definitely helps the situation.
This is what Valve's Steam content distribution and gaming system is heading towards. I gives you a friends list (like icq), lets you voice chat in game and IM across games (Valve supported ones), and does automatic patching with anti-cheat updates.
A similar 3rd party system for non-Valve games would be cool and useful. Especially the extension to the real market for MMORPG's.
VIVA1023.com | Political Fashion.
i am the lead developer of an open source game,Fmorg and somehow these arena unlimited people got my emailaddress, and sent me THIS:
e velopers/5726ae9795213d5e2d10c8278e9d0c4ca0a62fa6
To whom it may concern:
You are invited to check out Arena Unlimited's new, free online service
for Open Source and independent game developers.
Our technology aims to allow developers to convert their virtual game
items into real commodities that can be bought, sold, and traded. Also,
we intend to enable developers and publishers to create, sell, and
manage dynamic advertising space, objects, sponsorships, and other content
within their games.
On Friday the 13th, we made available a preview release of our project
showing off some of our basic features. We want to give developers a
chance to check out what we're doing and evaluate the approach we're
taking to ensure usability in the upcoming production release.
Please visit the Developer's Corner
(http://arenaunlimited.com/site/dev/) to see what we offer. Comments,
questions, and suggestions are welcome and wanted.
Sincerely,
Dan Chow
CTO, Arena Unlimited, Inc.
P.S. You are receiving this invitation because you are a developer for
Open Source or independent game content. We're sorry about the mass
mailing, however this is the first, last and only e-mail we'll send you on
the subject if you don't want to sign up for the mailing list. We
believe in opt-in, not opt-out.Your address "_my_sf_email!_@users.sourceforge.net" has been invited to join
the developers mailing list at mail.arenaunlimited.com by the developers mailing list owner. You may accept the invitation by simply
replying to this message, keeping the Subject: header intact.
You can also visit this web page:
http://lists.arenaunlimited.com/mailman/confirm/d
Or you should include the following line -- and only the following
line -- in a message to developers-request@mail.arenaunlimited.com:
confirm 5726ae9795213d5e2d10c8278e9d0c4ca0a62fa6
Note that simply sending a `reply' to this message should work from
most mail readers.
If you want to decline this invitation, please simply disregard this
message. If you have any questions, please send them to
developers-owner@mail.arenaunlimited.com.
as was reported on slashdot before, this virtual property thing is real big now, some kid sold his UO virtual property biz for like 10 million if i remember correctly. this sounds like a sort of scam to get us OO & indie game developers into some kinda contract on the off chance our game hits it big, and creates a demand for this crap. my personal recommendation, JUST SAY NO TO SUITS!! -Ted
sometimes, i wonder if i'm the only conservative on teh intarweb. ah well, back to mah hogs and warmongerin'....
You hit it on the head. If people would actually read through the site they would see that the company's goal is to add layers of real-world commercialization to online game worlds. They specifically mention out-of-game trading of virtual goods, in-game ad placement, and sponsorship of "high profile" gamers who would get paid to play to attract other players.
Jeez, would it be alright for people just to have fun, without getting pimped to every minute? I guess not.
This is true to a point, but Project Gotham 2 on the Xbox has already lasted since November, which in the gaming world is quite a while. I still find many, many players on there.
Maybe that's a long time for console games, but not for PC games. Quake3, RtCW, MOHAA, Diablo2 are all over 3 years old, and still have a large player base. Counterstrike is even older and has a larger number of players online than all of Live.
Actually, I didn't think we'd get SlashDotted so soon, if at all (our poor hosting provider is probably cursing us at this point).
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e nny-arcade|nytimes|wirei ', $referer))
... Oops, SlashDotted! ...
As far as I know, there's no Google cache of anything we've done so far (hence the generic, if not hopeful link), but the redirect trick is something we learned right here on SlashDot just in case something like this happened:
<?php
$referer = $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'];
if ($referer !== null
&& preg_match('%://[^/]*((cnn|msnbc\.msn|news\.com|p
d)\.com|slashdot\.org)/%
{
?>
<?php
}
else
{
header('Location: site/');
}
?>
moto411.com
i am the lead developer of an open source game,Fmorg and somehow these arena unlimited people got my emailaddress, and sent me THIS....
:-) So far the project has been entirely self-funded (all our cars are beaters and paid for if you don't count the repair bills -- by the way does anyone have a spare alternator for '92 MX-3?). Our biggest hurdle to date (aside from trying to find Other People's Money) is tearing ourselves away from BZFlag and Armagetron long enough to get some work done.
First, let me apologize if the e-mail was unwanted. Your e-mail address is listed on the Fmorg project page and we thought you might be interested in what we're doing.
this sounds like a sort of scam to get us OO & indie game developers into some kinda contract on the off chance our game hits it big, and creates a demand for this crap
Second, we're not a contract-based service. We don't charge or require anything from developers. Period.
Personally, I'm an advocate of and contributor to the Open Source community. As long as I have any input, games released under any approved license will never be required to pay licensing or developer fees to use our system.
We are constructing and offering a set of tools to be used at will by any developer who might benefit from the inclusion of such features. For example, if a developer wants to sell, say, cars to augment a racing game to help support development, etc., then we would like to help facilitate that in a convenient and secure manner. We don't have or want any say in setting the price. We're looking to support ourselves by collecting a small percentage of the sale (the majority of the revenue goes straight to the developer).
my personal recommendation, JUST SAY NO TO SUITS!! -Ted
We're really not suits, we promise! (If you don't believe us, then check out our pictures.)
But if you feel violated by our approach, I sincerely apologize. I hope you continue work on Fmorg with our without our help, as it looks very promising.
moto411.com