"Actually, the way the patent system works is kind of perverse. No one ever looks for patents they might infringe on, because if you find one, then it becomes "willful infringement" and you could end up owing triple damages."
*Waits for someone to quote an American case an applies it to an Australian legal system*
"And patents are so badly written, that if you're doing anything interesting there's probably a dozen overbroad, ambiguous patents that you could be infringing, but can't tell without spending thousands of dollars in legal fees to find out, and which wouldn't hold up in court anyways."
*Waits for someone to compare the Australian patent system to an American one*
As I mentioned in another forum I can see home improvement and DIY sites using this technology. Not to mention educational and science sites. As for Google earth, it could simply be a different way to look at the web.
I actually envision a TV with an ethernet port and an option (selectable from a standard remote) to switch to a screen that allows you to select Netflix, Hulu, Youtube, etc.
Super easy and using flash as the standard will make things compatible across the board.
It was just a matter of setting the laptop next to them and plugging in cables to the only holes that would fit. It was really easy, most people just don't know that.
This is definitely NOT good advice for most people.
While Netflix is not yet giving out a lot of details on their costs associated with their streaming video service, they have given out enough data for us to have a pretty good idea of their costs when it comes to their streaming delivery costs for the XBOX 360 and other devices. Here's what we do and don't know and how it all breaks down.
Well, what a dramatic week it's been. The teams at Stardock and GPG have been burning the midnight oil this week.
As those of you who have the game can already see, the server issues are gone. We've recreated a duplicate of the server infrastructure we had but dedicated to users who have the most recent version of the game and a valid CD key (serial #).
Based on the logs, we are seeing lots of games being played on-line now. Yay. Average game has approximately 4.7 humans in it which is a good sign.
Some clarifications
I've seen a lot of news articles this week and a lot of confusion about what occurred this week. The issue isn't terribly complicated.
Ars Technica had a good article that describes what happened. But still, a lot of people seem to think warez users are able to play multiplayer games. No, they can't. Even the retail box has a serial # in it that users have to use and be validated to play online. What brought down servers was a lot more benign than that. It was the HTTPS requests to inform users if there was a new version along with checking the community features for info (friends lists, chat channels, etc.) and things like that. Things like that are pretty piddly. It's only when you get a ton of users doing that at the same time that it becomes a problem as we saw.
But here's the thing: While piracy is annoying, you can't blame piracy for this problem. Let's face it, there's plenty of data out there about how many pirated games are being played. We should have looked at that. We assumed since Sins of a Solar Empire and Galactic Civilizations, both of which sold extremely well and got great reviews, that the # of pirated copies of Demigod in use would probably be in the same ballpark, maybe twice as much. But had we looked at what other publishers have said, we would have known that it's not unusual for there to be hundreds of thousands of warez copies in use. And if we had, we could have simply had the retail version not have any HTTP calls in it and instead just had an update button on the main menu to check for updates and voila, problem solved.
The second misconception is the argument that because Demigod's retail version is heavily pirated that it costs massive sales. But that, again, puts the blame on the wrong parties. If you want to talk about the horrible multiplayer experience on launch day, well, that's our fault because of what I said above. If you want to say that the horrible day 1 multiplayer experience resulted in negative game reviews which will seriously damage the game's sales then I say again, that's our fault too because of what I said above OR we could have just sent out the review copies on release day (Tuesday) and reviewers wouldn't have had it until Thursday by which point the problem had largely been resolved and the review scores would have been fine. But in either case, it's still our fault.
So now what?
Now that the servers are working fine we're moving away from the "#$R@#@# Demigod sux!" posts and into the regular new game release issues.
So what issues are we seeing and working on? Here are a few at the top of our lists:
1. Players getting disconnected during games. Demigod's lag tolerance is fairly low resulting in disconnects if a player lags out a bit. This is fairly easy to fix. You get a player in Australia playing a user in Europe and there will be times when there's a hicup in their connection and POW, disconnect and it's extremely frustrating. I played all day today and it happened to me. This is a very high priority.
2. NAT negotiation. For users outside the United States in particular using DSL, this is a problem. This is a case where player A can't see player B and thus they can't play together. This is something we will be aggressively looking at next week. If we hadn't had the server overload, we likely would have this addressed already.
"Being a consistent USENET user since I discovered it, I find your idea fascinating. To this day I don't get what the big deal is with bittorrent as opposed to USENET, especially with yEnc on binaries so the encoding overhead is relatively low."
Well there's ONE difference between Usenet and BT. BT is relatively free while with the dropping of Usenet from ISPs selection, most have to purchase an account from an independent. Considering the download demographic I can see why free would take precedence.
And by that copyright has fulfilled it's part of the bargain. The breakdown is that economics can't give people what they want at zero cost. Maybe we're questioning the wrong thing?
"Shit, I was sort of pissed that they had a bunch of steel lying around to repair Galactica -- reminded me of Voyager where every episode a new shuttlecraft would appear."
It's not so outlandish when you consider just how resource rich space can be.
"The name Sci Fi has been associated with geeks and dysfunctional, antisocial boys in their basements with video games and stuff like that, as opposed to the general public and the female audience in particular.'"
Science Fiction has always been the limitless imaginative possibilities of science. e.g. "What might be". Fantasy is similar except freed of the limits of science (even speculative).
It cam be more than that when local frames of reference and their magnitudes along individual axis are considered. In other words X+,X- (same with other axis) with respect to point of local origin can represent different things. Add in other qualities like color, texture, transparency, and even sound (everyone neglects sound) along with positional relationship to other frames as well as time and the information density can be higher than 2D
The main question for 3D representations are the prevention of information overload, and focusing on the relevant to the task at hand.
I think we'll see a growth with this as 3D hardware matures.
"Ad revenue sponsored gaming has real potential. In the same way TV advertising works - so could in game. It just has to be VERY carefully done so as not to alienate the players. "
Those who suggest ads, really mean, "Someone else foots the bill". Problem is, what do you do when everyone wants everyone else to "foot the bill"?
"In fact, given the price of a couple of movie tickets and a family night out, I figure video games are still the best dollar per hour entertainment value out there."
World of Goo Mirror's Edge Fallout 3 F.E.A.R. 2 GTA IV Crysis/Crysis: Warhead.
Slashdot Mirror
And interesting blast from the past. But whatever became of Matrox's Headcasting technology and why don't we see more of it?
I'd read this thread in it's entirety before going with the prevalent "Us vs Them".
"It doesn't matter that others in their peer group give crap away for free. If you put some effort in to making a good product, people will buy it."
Yes but the question for a business isn't so much, "will they buy it" but "will enough people buy it"?
...paying for something that is already free seems like a good business model.
Well masturbation's free and yet people will frequent hookers.
"Actually, the way the patent system works is kind of perverse. No one ever looks for patents they might infringe on, because if you find one, then it becomes "willful infringement" and you could end up owing triple damages."
*Waits for someone to quote an American case an applies it to an Australian legal system*
"And patents are so badly written, that if you're doing anything interesting there's probably a dozen overbroad, ambiguous patents that you could be infringing, but can't tell without spending thousands of dollars in legal fees to find out, and which wouldn't hold up in court anyways."
*Waits for someone to compare the Australian patent system to an American one*
As I mentioned in another forum I can see home improvement and DIY sites using this technology. Not to mention educational and science sites. As for Google earth, it could simply be a different way to look at the web.
"Why not simply make the freaking interface in the TV 100% open and let people do what they want? "
Open Standards == Good Interface. Closed Standards ==! Bad Interface.
Nope don't see any problems with that logic.
I actually envision a TV with an ethernet port and an option (selectable from a standard remote) to switch to a screen that allows you to select Netflix, Hulu, Youtube, etc.
Super easy and using flash as the standard will make things compatible across the board.
Media extenders like the Xbox360.
This is definitely NOT good advice for most people.
It works for the propagation of the species.
http://blog.streamingmedia.com/the_business_of_online_vi/2009/03/estimates-on-what-it-costs-netflixs-to-stream-movies.html
While Netflix is not yet giving out a lot of details on their costs associated with their streaming video service, they have given out enough data for us to have a pretty good idea of their costs when it comes to their streaming delivery costs for the XBOX 360 and other devices. Here's what we do and don't know and how it all breaks down.
http://forums.demigodthegame.com/347467
Well, what a dramatic week it's been. The teams at Stardock and GPG have been burning the midnight oil this week.
As those of you who have the game can already see, the server issues are gone. We've recreated a duplicate of the server infrastructure we had but dedicated to users who have the most recent version of the game and a valid CD key (serial #).
Based on the logs, we are seeing lots of games being played on-line now. Yay. Average game has approximately 4.7 humans in it which is a good sign.
Some clarifications
I've seen a lot of news articles this week and a lot of confusion about what occurred this week. The issue isn't terribly complicated.
Ars Technica had a good article that describes what happened. But still, a lot of people seem to think warez users are able to play multiplayer games. No, they can't. Even the retail box has a serial # in it that users have to use and be validated to play online. What brought down servers was a lot more benign than that. It was the HTTPS requests to inform users if there was a new version along with checking the community features for info (friends lists, chat channels, etc.) and things like that. Things like that are pretty piddly. It's only when you get a ton of users doing that at the same time that it becomes a problem as we saw.
But here's the thing: While piracy is annoying, you can't blame piracy for this problem. Let's face it, there's plenty of data out there about how many pirated games are being played. We should have looked at that. We assumed since Sins of a Solar Empire and Galactic Civilizations, both of which sold extremely well and got great reviews, that the # of pirated copies of Demigod in use would probably be in the same ballpark, maybe twice as much. But had we looked at what other publishers have said, we would have known that it's not unusual for there to be hundreds of thousands of warez copies in use. And if we had, we could have simply had the retail version not have any HTTP calls in it and instead just had an update button on the main menu to check for updates and voila, problem solved.
The second misconception is the argument that because Demigod's retail version is heavily pirated that it costs massive sales. But that, again, puts the blame on the wrong parties. If you want to talk about the horrible multiplayer experience on launch day, well, that's our fault because of what I said above. If you want to say that the horrible day 1 multiplayer experience resulted in negative game reviews which will seriously damage the game's sales then I say again, that's our fault too because of what I said above OR we could have just sent out the review copies on release day (Tuesday) and reviewers wouldn't have had it until Thursday by which point the problem had largely been resolved and the review scores would have been fine. But in either case, it's still our fault.
So now what?
Now that the servers are working fine we're moving away from the "#$R@#@# Demigod sux!" posts and into the regular new game release issues.
So what issues are we seeing and working on? Here are a few at the top of our lists:
1. Players getting disconnected during games. Demigod's lag tolerance is fairly low resulting in disconnects if a player lags out a bit. This is fairly easy to fix. You get a player in Australia playing a user in Europe and there will be times when there's a hicup in their connection and POW, disconnect and it's extremely frustrating. I played all day today and it happened to me. This is a very high priority.
2. NAT negotiation. For users outside the United States in particular using DSL, this is a problem. This is a case where player A can't see player B and thus they can't play together. This is something we will be aggressively looking at next week. If we hadn't had the server overload, we likely would have this addressed already.
3. Panthe
"Being a consistent USENET user since I discovered it, I find your idea fascinating. To this day I don't get what the big deal is with bittorrent as opposed to USENET, especially with yEnc on binaries so the encoding overhead is relatively low."
Well there's ONE difference between Usenet and BT. BT is relatively free while with the dropping of Usenet from ISPs selection, most have to purchase an account from an independent. Considering the download demographic I can see why free would take precedence.
Splinter cell: Double Agent was like that.
"...and an article on O'Reilly discusses the importance of making this information easily accessible."
Like that saying at the end of some cartoons "Knowing is half the battle". Now let's work on making it more understandable.
And by that copyright has fulfilled it's part of the bargain. The breakdown is that economics can't give people what they want at zero cost. Maybe we're questioning the wrong thing?
"Shit, I was sort of pissed that they had a bunch of steel lying around to repair Galactica -- reminded me of Voyager where every episode a new shuttlecraft would appear."
It's not so outlandish when you consider just how resource rich space can be.
"Given that God is all powerful and all knowing, it is ALWAYS a cop out to write him into a script."
I'm sorry but is that the judo christian God, or the god that BSG actually used?
"The name Sci Fi has been associated with geeks and dysfunctional, antisocial boys in their basements with video games and stuff like that, as opposed to the general public and the female audience in particular.'"
Science Fiction has always been the limitless imaginative possibilities of science. e.g. "What might be". Fantasy is similar except freed of the limits of science (even speculative).
They are if the company's small, private, and doesn't have the concept of a "golden parachute" for anyone.
It cam be more than that when local frames of reference and their magnitudes along individual axis are considered. In other words X+,X- (same with other axis) with respect to point of local origin can represent different things. Add in other qualities like color, texture, transparency, and even sound (everyone neglects sound) along with positional relationship to other frames as well as time and the information density can be higher than 2D
The main question for 3D representations are the prevention of information overload, and focusing on the relevant to the task at hand.
I think we'll see a growth with this as 3D hardware matures.
that's what you get for abusing a free service. Happy now?
No. That's what you get for offering a service without a proper business model behind it.
Hmmm, yes let's all remember that the next time OSS is discussed.
You had it. Now you don't. Does the definition of abuse really matter since it will not change people's behavior to the point there isn't a repeat.
"Ad revenue sponsored gaming has real potential. In the same way TV advertising works - so could in game. It just has to be VERY carefully done so as not to alienate the players. "
Those who suggest ads, really mean, "Someone else foots the bill". Problem is, what do you do when everyone wants everyone else to "foot the bill"?
[Free] is the future of everything
Including sex.
"In fact, given the price of a couple of movie tickets and a family night out, I figure video games are still the best dollar per hour entertainment value out there."
World of Goo
Mirror's Edge
Fallout 3
F.E.A.R. 2
GTA IV
Crysis/Crysis: Warhead.