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."
There will always be fanatics to a certain game that will devote the time necessary to create a place for followers of the game with all these services. PC gamers tend to have longer-attention spans than console gamers and stick to usually at most 4 online games at any give point. I just dont think that the market is there.
Why not test out such things as a real free trade economy on The Sims before we try it out in real life? Would it not make more sense to test these policies out in a virtual world of real people instead of just going straight from a phisophical theory to a real world reality?
There's a growing sense that even if The Future comes,
most of us won't be able to afford it.
-- Lemmy
not long i'd imagine, as new games come out with new features/graphics/bell/whistles to replace the old. evercrack and ultima online still are going, but given they're aging tech and the onslaught of newcomers, i don't imagine they'll be generating much revenue for long.
Microsoft cracked one out of the park with Xbox Live (apparently they save their innovative minds for their side projects). Let's move all online gaming in that direction.
From all my poking around and googling I can really find little/no actual information on it. Their FAQs are empty (except for "future releases") and I can't even tell what it is. Is it a console game/system? computer game?
In all appearances this looks more like a Phantom Then an actual "gaming news story".
Well, I love any company that can plan to be Slashdotted, complete with a google link to their home page at the ready.
"My girlfriend's got sodium laureth sulfate hair."
It's a safe bet the economic impact will be boring.
But does it run on linux so it'll work on my hacked Xbox?
So small, in fact, that you didn't need to pluralize the word "games" in that sentence.
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).
I've been playing online games since what - 1997?
How is an open games service any different from something like Gamespy, All Seeing Eye, or even just finding a server and logging onto it? yes, I know there are the issues with scoreboards and ranking and whatnot, but stuff like Raven Shield does that anyway.
So, to cut my rant short: what makes X-Box Live so great that it needs to be open-sourced?
Secondly, if X-Box Live is so groundbreaking, why the hell do I always hear about open source ripping off other people's models? I mean it's embarrassing! We bitch so much about Microsoft, but spend most of our time copying them: Media Center, Mono, Office, and now an online gaming community... way to go guys...
Can any of the current crop of online games either MMORPG or non RPG ones be worth playing for more than 2 or 3 months?
Secondly, what kind of guarantee will you have when you spend 250+ hours a year building a character, e.g., Ultima Online, that
1. you won't be forced to pay an extra $50 year to upgrade
2. that the online game will be supported for the near term and long term future? They don't close down the game and servers for 6+ months after you buy the game.
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.
The real money is in real world games..
I'd pay if someone could tell me where the nearest topless women's volleyball game was, or even drop in floor hockey on a tuesday night..
This whole 'internet' fad is bound to fade soon, I mean look at CB radio's, and we'll be back at home with no friendsters, and duke nukem forever still six months away!
I hate spyware and spies
...true capitalistic free market anyway.
It's called the "Black Martket".
Drugs, cigarettes, prostitution, software, satellite cards, anything that is regulated and/or taxed to opression or overpriced or has unserved demand due to a monopoly has a black market and as such also has a true free market.
All that participate, do so by choice. They take the risks for the rewards. They pay the costs for the product. All suppliers compete in a totally unregulated fashion and all buyers are free to choose based on price and product.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
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.
For one, there is an external force artificially deflating the number of available sellers and buyers. Sellers further reduce their own availability through rather underhanded behaviors. Buyers rarely have more than one supplier, and actual price competition is equally rare. Product has frequent impurities / misrepresentations. Information is horded by those who have it, lest external forces come down upon them.
True free market economics, where every party knows all of the prices available to them and the actual quality level and statistics of the products offered, is impossible without regulating bodies ensuring that all parties adhere to such high standards of information accuracy.
Just because a market is flying under the radar of the "evil, oppressive, taxing government" doesn't mean it is a free market. Try getting 5 quotes for verifiably 90% pure cocane on a Friday night.
The ______ Agenda
I shudder to think what would happen if one could actually introduce a legitimate and real free market economy into... life?
I am very sucseptible to "let's have another drink"
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.
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.
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