The company that made the series has since gone out of business. I am grateful that to install the games I simply install them. The old DOS games required some copy protection but I bought the Wizardry Archives that Interplay put out where they basically removed such things (having a CDROM requiring you to put the installation floppy in made no sense obviously).
Software sticks around. Fortran and COBOL are still needed for legacy machines where the original programmers thought, "Oh they'll replace it with something better, so I can take some shortcuts and not worry about documentation."
I imagine that if Valve goes under in the future, they will release something to allow customers to play HL2 and other things without worrying about Steam. Still, to have it require you to do so during install is more frustrating than it is worth. People will see that the server is down and might not think to Google for whatever last patch they might have put out.
Total Annihilation is a great game, and Cavedog went under. The Boneyards was their multiplayer server, similar to Blizzard's Battle.net, and it is no longer available. Luckily, you can play TA without needed to use the Boneyards, and in fact other third-party Boneyard-replacements are available. If authentication would be required, how easy would it be to patch the game to allow this?
I know you were trying to make a point. But the way you left it made it sound like copying was equal to mugging someone or committing fraud.
Of course, you can copy music (I won't call it 'theft' because I don't want to call down the semantics people). I can also rob people on the street, commit fraud, etc. Morality aside, all of these are breaking the 'rules' of society.
When the copyright holder gives permission, you can make copies. This is within the 'rules'.
Two different statements. One is wrong because it is a blanket statement that doesn't apply in all cases, and the other one is correct because it applies in all cases where a person gives you permission to copy.
That's my point when I said you were being intellectually lazy, to quote you when you refer to those who break the "rules" and then try to say they are the victims. I agree with you in that if it is illegal, it shouldn't be done. I haven't really downloaded music files by the RIAA ever since Napster was taken down. I legally do get music files from friends' bands or bands that understand that the Internet is an amazing new tool to advertise their music to fans.
I still think that the RIAA is crappy for not only bringing lawsuits to its own customers but also trying to make otherwise legitimate tools illegal simply because they can be used illegally.
While I see your point, that copyright exists and changing the law can be done without violating existing copyright, you made it while also painting copying as by default immoral, the likes of fraud and mugging people on the street. I was simply correcting you, and I apologize for doing so in a way that seemed flameworthy.
Actually the RIAA was the one who claimed it was ok to make copies of CDs to give away to your friends. To do so on a scale that Napster was able to make possible made them change their position. The RIAA was the one who changed the rules here.
In any case, no one wants to rip off musicians or the people who are employed by the RIAA. The Internet provides a chance for innovation and new ways to market products, and the RIAA is very slowly getting with the times.
I could copy music, and I can do so legally. Companies exist, such as audiolunchbox.com, that allow me to not only download songs but buy them. If the RIAA actually decided to make use of what its customers would already be willing to use, and didn't gouge them with high prices and lawsuits, perhaps they wouldn't be complaining about "theft".
You can't rob people on the street or commit fraud legally, so your analogy doesn't stand. Your statement makes it sound like copying is immoral by itself, which it is not.
To leave your post as it was is intellectually lazy.
While I agree on most points, it is hard to say that copying in itself hurts no one without someone freaking out that you basically said it is ok to copy things because no one gets hurt.
You didn't say that. You're simply saying that no one lost money directly from a copy, which is the truth. Now if someone making a copy decides not to pay for something, the copyright owner has lost a potential sale, but it would be fraudulent to claim it as an actual loss.
Here's something that the RIAA and others don't like to admit. When someone downloads an MP3, or even an album of MP3s, it doesn't prevent them from subsequently buying the album. I know plenty of someone who downloaded the Dave Mathews Band album when it was prematurely released, only to buy the CD afterwards anyway. So by the logic put forth by many like the RIAA, the RIAA broke even in terms of losses in that case. That's absurd.
"Even though the video game industry makes profits in the billions."
Well, that statement ignores the number of companies that don't make a profit.
"Yes. Standardize the tools. No more graphics engines for 10 years. Period. Half of all development budgets should be spent on games that haven't EVER been developed yet (no sequels, no clones, no remakes, no licensed characters). One fourth of development budgets should be used to hire independent developers. One tenth of all development budgets should fund games written by one developer."
So, basically you want people to create innovative titles that no one has ever heard of, but using existing engines? Innovation is a great word, but in game development, if people aren't buying new, you give them what they want. People complain about the lack of innovation, but then everyone is excited about Doom 3, UT2004, Half-Life 2, Warcraft 3, etc. You want innovation, pay for it.
"The adventure genre should be re-invented from the ground up. Interactive fiction should be marketed again. Prices for games should be cut by 30% across the board. Electronic distribution should be standard for all games, including consoles."
Why should it? The adventure genre is a niche market now. Google for it, and you will find it.
Prices for games are supposedly justified. Whether they are or not is still up for debate, but charging a portion of the price to make up for "piracy" is shady in my eyes.
Electronic distribution of 3-7MB games is possible for dial-up users, and there is a large number of them still existing. 50MB is bad for them, and 650MB+ games are just not worth it. Why should electronic distribution be standard? It just doesn't make sense for some games, especially those with multiple CDs.
I don't quite get your arguments, since you want innovative titles, but you want standard art, engine, and other tools to be available to everyone. Won't that just flood the market with similar looking titles? Yeah, maybe they will differ by story or something, but I'm having trouble seeing how these goals you want to achieve will be achieved with your suggestions.
As for the theory and design documentation, I agree that would rock. Of course, I have books on the subject already. And tutorials are available online here among other places.
The thing is, the game industry is in it for profit. People buy certain kinds of games, so publishers publish them. People don't buy others, so publishers don't publish them. For certain games, they are in niche markets. You want to play them, you have to find them.
Want to find out what indie developers are making? Check out Game Tunnel and other review sites. Of course, last time it was on Slashdot people complained about the lack of innovation there too. I guess we can't win either way.
Nintendo was a major producer of all sorts of toys and games. They made playing cards and some of the first light gun games, as well as the Ultra Hand (not to be confused with the Power Glove).
And don't forget the "love hotels" and taxi services.
Nintendo's been around for much longer than 1962. It's over 100 years old.
Seriously, go read the book "Game Over" to brush up on your Nintendo history. B-)
I thought that the Mozilla people were the ones who realized that they had taken a name of another Free/Open Source project, and they decided to change it. I didn't know anything about Firebird's developers acting like asses about it. Where did this info come from?
Obviously you can't name a game that doesn't exist.
But what about Sega's lawsuit about its patent for Crazy Taxi's AI algorithms? Technically, I shouldn't be able to make a game in which people try to run out of the way of a vehicle.
And that's one example. This ranking thing is another. Indie game developers have to hope that their low profile will protect them from patents, but major companies have to build their own patent portfolios and hope for cross-licensing agreements as a settlement.
If everyone had to follow every patent, it would be difficult and costly to make any game or any piece of software for that matter. As it stands, you kind of have to make the game and hope it doesn't get popular enough to be caught in the mess, or you have to patent things yourself, things that you may consider obvious even, and use your own patents as a shield.
Would-be great games sometimes can't be made, and I for some time considered dropping my dreams of getting into indie game development. I don't want to make a game only to find that I now need to give up my profits to someone who "invented" something that I independently "invented" and that I am sure has been independently "invented" before.
Can I ask where you got that information? I went to the website for the US Patent office, and I found that filing a patent costs less than $1000. There are other things, sure, but I don't believe even adding it all up costs $10,000, unless lawyer fees really make the bulk of it.
Before a patent is accepted, it's put up for public display, for anyone to dispute. What we really need is a user-powered web site (Another
OSDN partner?) that watches patents as they are put up for review, and looks for prior art.
Not true. It is possible for a patent to be submitted without it becoming public knowledge. This allows the company to keep the possible patent under trade secret status, especially if it is the case where the patent is rejected.
It is only presented to the public after the patent is approved.
http://www.sco.com/products/authentication/ Used to have the awesome IT guy with the Red Hat, which was since photoshopped out, which has since been replaced with a photo of a woman. B-)
Everyone thinks this article is saying, "Oh no! Text messaging won't let us make crap! We'll have to do something about that text messaging."
All it is saying is that now the movie industry knows that it can't get away with the crap they do make anymore.
What is amazing is that they had an actual term for making money off of a bad movie before the word of mouth filtered out. That I can understand being upset about.
But perhaps this just says that they know they need to do more than hope against word of mouth. Perhaps this just says that the MPAA knows now that they cannot get away with a bad movie. People just find out about it sooner than they expected now. The movie industry will just have to make good movies if they want to make money from now on, and that is as it should be.
Slashdot Mirror
The company that made the series has since gone out of business. I am grateful that to install the games I simply install them. The old DOS games required some copy protection but I bought the Wizardry Archives that Interplay put out where they basically removed such things (having a CDROM requiring you to put the installation floppy in made no sense obviously).
Software sticks around. Fortran and COBOL are still needed for legacy machines where the original programmers thought, "Oh they'll replace it with something better, so I can take some shortcuts and not worry about documentation."
I imagine that if Valve goes under in the future, they will release something to allow customers to play HL2 and other things without worrying about Steam. Still, to have it require you to do so during install is more frustrating than it is worth. People will see that the server is down and might not think to Google for whatever last patch they might have put out.
Total Annihilation is a great game, and Cavedog went under. The Boneyards was their multiplayer server, similar to Blizzard's Battle.net, and it is no longer available. Luckily, you can play TA without needed to use the Boneyards, and in fact other third-party Boneyard-replacements are available. If authentication would be required, how easy would it be to patch the game to allow this?
Nevermind. B-)
I got first post probably because no one knows how to respond to this article.
You mean Gnu/Linux/Apache/Mysql/Perl/Python/PHP system, right?
I know you were trying to make a point. But the way you left it made it sound like copying was equal to mugging someone or committing fraud.
Of course, you can copy music (I won't call it 'theft' because I don't want to call down the semantics people). I can also rob people on the street, commit fraud, etc. Morality aside, all of these are breaking the 'rules' of society.
When the copyright holder gives permission, you can make copies. This is within the 'rules'.
Two different statements. One is wrong because it is a blanket statement that doesn't apply in all cases, and the other one is correct because it applies in all cases where a person gives you permission to copy.
That's my point when I said you were being intellectually lazy, to quote you when you refer to those who break the "rules" and then try to say they are the victims. I agree with you in that if it is illegal, it shouldn't be done. I haven't really downloaded music files by the RIAA ever since Napster was taken down. I legally do get music files from friends' bands or bands that understand that the Internet is an amazing new tool to advertise their music to fans.
I still think that the RIAA is crappy for not only bringing lawsuits to its own customers but also trying to make otherwise legitimate tools illegal simply because they can be used illegally.
While I see your point, that copyright exists and changing the law can be done without violating existing copyright, you made it while also painting copying as by default immoral, the likes of fraud and mugging people on the street. I was simply correcting you, and I apologize for doing so in a way that seemed flameworthy.
Actually the RIAA was the one who claimed it was ok to make copies of CDs to give away to your friends. To do so on a scale that Napster was able to make possible made them change their position. The RIAA was the one who changed the rules here.
In any case, no one wants to rip off musicians or the people who are employed by the RIAA. The Internet provides a chance for innovation and new ways to market products, and the RIAA is very slowly getting with the times.
I could copy music, and I can do so legally. Companies exist, such as audiolunchbox.com, that allow me to not only download songs but buy them. If the RIAA actually decided to make use of what its customers would already be willing to use, and didn't gouge them with high prices and lawsuits, perhaps they wouldn't be complaining about "theft".
You can't rob people on the street or commit fraud legally, so your analogy doesn't stand. Your statement makes it sound like copying is immoral by itself, which it is not.
To leave your post as it was is intellectually lazy.
While I agree on most points, it is hard to say that copying in itself hurts no one without someone freaking out that you basically said it is ok to copy things because no one gets hurt.
You didn't say that. You're simply saying that no one lost money directly from a copy, which is the truth. Now if someone making a copy decides not to pay for something, the copyright owner has lost a potential sale, but it would be fraudulent to claim it as an actual loss.
Here's something that the RIAA and others don't like to admit. When someone downloads an MP3, or even an album of MP3s, it doesn't prevent them from subsequently buying the album. I know plenty of someone who downloaded the Dave Mathews Band album when it was prematurely released, only to buy the CD afterwards anyway. So by the logic put forth by many like the RIAA, the RIAA broke even in terms of losses in that case. That's absurd.
The INDUCE Act would reverse that decision. Check out http://www.eff.org for more info.
The INDUCE Act is related and should be a concern as well. Check out http://www.eff.org for more info on this bill making its way through the Senate.
You're a little late for the funeral. It's been dead for some time now. B-)
How about we hold off on these stories until we see something more than just a press release
No.
"Even though the video game industry makes profits in the billions."
Well, that statement ignores the number of companies that don't make a profit.
"Yes. Standardize the tools. No more graphics engines for 10 years. Period. Half of all development budgets should be spent on games that haven't EVER been developed yet (no sequels, no clones, no remakes, no licensed characters). One fourth of development budgets should be used to hire independent developers. One tenth of all development budgets should fund games written by one developer."
So, basically you want people to create innovative titles that no one has ever heard of, but using existing engines? Innovation is a great word, but in game development, if people aren't buying new, you give them what they want. People complain about the lack of innovation, but then everyone is excited about Doom 3, UT2004, Half-Life 2, Warcraft 3, etc. You want innovation, pay for it.
"The adventure genre should be re-invented from the ground up. Interactive fiction should be marketed again. Prices for games should be cut by 30% across the board. Electronic distribution should be standard for all games, including consoles."
Why should it? The adventure genre is a niche market now. Google for it, and you will find it.
Prices for games are supposedly justified. Whether they are or not is still up for debate, but charging a portion of the price to make up for "piracy" is shady in my eyes.
Electronic distribution of 3-7MB games is possible for dial-up users, and there is a large number of them still existing. 50MB is bad for them, and 650MB+ games are just not worth it. Why should electronic distribution be standard? It just doesn't make sense for some games, especially those with multiple CDs.
I don't quite get your arguments, since you want innovative titles, but you want standard art, engine, and other tools to be available to everyone. Won't that just flood the market with similar looking titles? Yeah, maybe they will differ by story or something, but I'm having trouble seeing how these goals you want to achieve will be achieved with your suggestions.
As for the theory and design documentation, I agree that would rock. Of course, I have books on the subject already. And tutorials are available online here among other places.
The thing is, the game industry is in it for profit. People buy certain kinds of games, so publishers publish them. People don't buy others, so publishers don't publish them. For certain games, they are in niche markets. You want to play them, you have to find them.
Want to find out what indie developers are making? Check out Game Tunnel and other review sites. Of course, last time it was on Slashdot people complained about the lack of innovation there too. I guess we can't win either way.
How dare you insinuate that I am easily...distract....ed......hmm...LEDs....
This is Gianfranco from GBGames. I haven't actually updated my website in a long time, but I reviewed Lianne at one point.
If you check out http://www.hulla-balloo.com/vplanet and http://www.qbasicnews.com you can see that there is still plenty of active development in QB.
Ah, the good ol' days...
Nintendo was a major producer of all sorts of toys and games. They made playing cards and some of the first light gun games, as well as the Ultra Hand (not to be confused with the Power Glove).
And don't forget the "love hotels" and taxi services.
Nintendo's been around for much longer than 1962. It's over 100 years old.
Seriously, go read the book "Game Over" to brush up on your Nintendo history. B-)
yeah, that's really dumb of them.
I thought that the Mozilla people were the ones who realized that they had taken a name of another Free/Open Source project, and they decided to change it. I didn't know anything about Firebird's developers acting like asses about it. Where did this info come from?
Obviously you can't name a game that doesn't exist.
But what about Sega's lawsuit about its patent for Crazy Taxi's AI algorithms? Technically, I shouldn't be able to make a game in which people try to run out of the way of a vehicle.
And that's one example. This ranking thing is another. Indie game developers have to hope that their low profile will protect them from patents, but major companies have to build their own patent portfolios and hope for cross-licensing agreements as a settlement.
If everyone had to follow every patent, it would be difficult and costly to make any game or any piece of software for that matter. As it stands, you kind of have to make the game and hope it doesn't get popular enough to be caught in the mess, or you have to patent things yourself, things that you may consider obvious even, and use your own patents as a shield.
Would-be great games sometimes can't be made, and I for some time considered dropping my dreams of getting into indie game development. I don't want to make a game only to find that I now need to give up my profits to someone who "invented" something that I independently "invented" and that I am sure has been independently "invented" before.
Can I ask where you got that information? I went to the website for the US Patent office, and I found that filing a patent costs less than $1000. There are other things, sure, but I don't believe even adding it all up costs $10,000, unless lawyer fees really make the bulk of it.
Before a patent is accepted, it's put up for public display, for anyone to dispute. What we really need is a user-powered web site (Another
OSDN partner?) that watches patents as they are put up for review, and looks for prior art.
Not true. It is possible for a patent to be submitted without it becoming public knowledge. This allows the company to keep the possible patent under trade secret status, especially if it is the case where the patent is rejected.
It is only presented to the public after the patent is approved.
Uh, then how do consultants and companies who provide "services" like adding features and customization make money?
Answer: They DO believe in money for services.
You are right. I shall change my profile immediately.
http://www.sco.com/products/authentication/
Used to have the awesome IT guy with the Red Hat, which was since photoshopped out, which has since been replaced with a photo of a woman. B-)
Yeah. If he sells now, he is still a few thousand away from the $15,000 per song cost.
Everyone thinks this article is saying, "Oh no! Text messaging won't let us make crap! We'll have to do something about that text messaging."
All it is saying is that now the movie industry knows that it can't get away with the crap they do make anymore.
What is amazing is that they had an actual term for making money off of a bad movie before the word of mouth filtered out. That I can understand being upset about.
But perhaps this just says that they know they need to do more than hope against word of mouth. Perhaps this just says that the MPAA knows now that they cannot get away with a bad movie. People just find out about it sooner than they expected now. The movie industry will just have to make good movies if they want to make money from now on, and that is as it should be.