The keypad (or something like it) is essential for certain types of games where you give input that must be unambiguous and instant, like for example DROD. If you have to fumble with a dpad, then you'll sometimes get up or right, when you meant up-right.
But there's always a case that can be made for any type of addition to a controller. Let's add a lasso rope to the controller so that some cowboy game will work.
Does anyone else feel like the controller interface has gotten out of hand? With all the buttons and pads and triggers and whatnots the things are hard to make sense of. And I imagine you folks are completely used to them after logging your thousands of hours of consoletime, but try watching somebody new figure it out. I guess the funky controller design we have stems from the idea that one controller should work for all types of games. It used to be that you'd plug in different controllers depending on the type of game you wanted to play, i.e. plug in the paddle controller (analog, left-to-right) for a game of Yar's Revenge. This sounds silly except that each controller had a specialized, uncompromised design. See that lovely black joystick in the top righthand corner of the webpage? It was a lot more satisfying to grip it with your fist than the weak thumb-twiddling we do with modern controllers.
You're not actually getting e-mail from Microsoft, unless you're an MSDN susbscriber or something like that. You're just seeing spoofed mail headers from somebody else that would like you to doubleclick on their attachment or forward the message to 10 other people.
The sad thing is that people are missing (or don't care about) the distinction between what Liberated Games and the abandonware sites do. Abandonware sites find games that are no longer published or sold (but probably still under copyright protection) and make them available. Some sites like Underdogs are cool about taking games down if the author or copyrightholder asks them too, but still, abandonware isn't legal in most countries. Liberated Games is giving us free games with the permission of the copyrightholders. Here is their statement:
We neither condone nor engage in distributing games which are commonly called "Abandonware". We strive to respect the rights of the developers and publishers who retain the distribution rights of their works. Do not ask us about including games on the site that have not been liberated by the copyright owners.
Of course, when you can just browse around for 10 minutes and locate any pirated software you like and grab it, it's hard to make people interested. Try actually creating some of your own work and trying to protect it--oh, then you will feel the rage. Well done, Matt and Marvin! (And I think Zonk is pretty cool, too.)
Sure be mad at power-grabbing, attention-whoring politicians and the hyper-prude kneejerks that support them. I'm with you there.
But what about a company that sets the stage for an onslaught of legislation with their cheap publicity stunts? The game industry dodged the bullet of government regulation once by forming ESRB and learning to play by self-made rules in a terrific hurry. That was a real accomplishment, and Rockstar is undermining it by showing everyone that self-regulation does not work, and we need to be policed by government agencies.
I for one, do not welcome our new overlords. I make small games for a living and don't have a budget to pay for an ESRB rating or whatever new regulation system comes around. Since my games are sold online, I currently don't have to shell out two grand so that the IEMA will let me carry titles on retail shelves. But get the government involved, and watch large publishers lobby for mandatory ratings that become barriers to entry for indie developers. And watch politicians holy-rolling whatever subjective whim of the masses is popular into rating criteria. Yeah, enjoy the show and be sure to give Rockstar their proper credit for making it happen.
"Yes, but, if they finally do have access to this great money making market, and most of them still only sell 5,000 copies, perhaps that sheds some light on the quality of the games."
The real problem with getting a new kind of game out there is finding money to make it and distribution channels that will give it exposure and sales. If Nintendo is really going to open their distribution channel to small game developers, (I'm skeptical because of the lack of details we've seen from Nintendo) then that is HUGE. If I can suddenly sell say, 10,000 copies of my game, then it is time to quit my day job, hire a few subcontractors, and concentrate fulltime on game development. (A luxury few indie game developers have.)
You cannot overstate the incredible gulf in budget/exposure between indie titles and AAA titles that make it to retail shelves with full marketing and promotion. It is not simply a meritocracy where deserving games get recognition. For an indie developer it's more like fighting your way out of a ghetto. If the vicious circle can be broken, you'll see the lost "medium-scale" production for games come back--where small teams and 100k budgets can actually create a financially viable game.
So I'm watching Revolution hopefully from down here in the indie ghetto, but with no expectations.
I think if game publishers were smart they would be doing some simple things to cut down on piracy at LAN parties.
When you buy a game, you could get an extra "LAN party" CD that can be passed around and copied however you want. It could install game clients that will function as long as one licensed installation is on the network. I'm sure the publisher would rather be selling a unique copy of the game to each player, but let's look at the reality of the situation:
You go to the party and somebody says "Hey let's play Super Machoman Elite Team Force 3000!"
You don't necessarily want to buy this game, but you need to install something to play with your buddies.
Somebody hands you a disc and you install it. You maybe tell yourself that you'll uninstall it or buy the game later.
But do you?
The point of having a "LAN party" installer is not to make extra copy protection, which can obviously be circumvented. Just make it easier to make temporary installations that work only at the party. It will be more convenient for people to avoid pirating games that way. And as the licensed owner of game you can pass around a disc without fear of it getting pirated.
There was a point not long ago when retailers were seriously talking about taking PC games off store shelves because they weren't making enough money for the space they took up. Selling console games is a much more lucrative business. The IEMA came up with the smaller box size that publishers adopted, and basically saved PC games' retail existence.
The situation hasn't changed terribly--console games still outsell PC software easily. I don't think we will see the disappearance of a PC market anytime soon, but don't be surprised if PC games leave major retail shelves. PC games were already too close to getting the "gong".
If PC games get dropped from the Walmarts and Electronic Boutiques of the world, they are still going to be sold online and at PC-specific stores, but that's the beginning of a vicious cycle:
1. Less revenue for PC games, which leads to...
2. Smaller budgets for PC games (particularly for developing games that are published solely for PCs and not ports from console) Which leads to...
3. Less-compelling PC games, and most of them you could just get on a console anyhow. Which leads to...
1. Less revenue for PC games and etcetera...
I find the "indie" label appropriate. A lot of indie movies are crap, and you have to watch some bad ones to find a "Primer" or "Run Lola Run". Same thing with the indie games. Did you actually download and try anything there? Or did you just dismiss them by looking at the screenshots? If you compare low-budget indie games at a very shallow level to the frontline retail shelf fare, yeah, they will come up lacking. But occasionally you find the smaller games doing something risky and different because they don't have so much to lose. It requires a little time investment to find these games.
They don't make a big deal out of it, but the new DROD is open source. You actually can grab all the source from the game (http://www.caravelgames.com/sourcecode.html), but it is a little difficult to build with the eleventy-three dependencies and the media isn't open licensed. So yeah, you can build your own DROD, but if you wanted to distribute it, you'd need to replace the graphics and sound with something else. Hmmm.
There is some variety in there, and I'll be downloading at least 4 of 'em to try out. I'm glad to see not so much pattern-matching stuff which seems to be the fatal fetish of indie developers. I am tempted to download Horror Squad because maybe it is funny-bad like a B movie instead of boring-bad.
Similiar scenario--I have an old game that I am trying to breath new life into. I think it's working. It's not a glamorous project, but I had to take down my SourceForge job posting, after getting fifteen "sign-me-up" responses in two days. Right now there are five active coders besides me working on it. So it is possible, contrary to other posts here, to drum up some interest for an outdated game. It helps a lot to show people that you are organized and committed to getting things done. If you don't have the time and energy to play this role for a little while, you are probably in a Catch-22 situation. People will be more attracted to your project, the more committed you are to it.
I don't plan to get a new project leader any time soon, but I think I could without much trouble. The key is getting some active development going on the project, before asking someone to take it over. Consider managing the project for just one more release with a few new features, and soliciting for help. The new development activity will hopefully attract some contributors. From these, you should have one or two candidates for a new project leader.
I agree. These days it seems like the first thing I do after running any productivity app for the first time, is hide 90% of the toolbars and docking widgets. Then I can have something larger than a postage stamp in which to view my main document.
I think the real trick is designing UIs to put choices on the screen only when they are useful in a given context. And that just takes consideration of the application tasks involved in a given context--no real innovation required. Having fifty million available dockables is like throwing the whole UI design to the user and making them handle it.
If monitors get really cheap and huge, I still don't want to see that braindead clutter surrounding every document.
It doesn't say anyplace in either article that "The U.S. Department of Justice announced that it had been instructed by the Bush Administration to cease its drive to break up Microsoft" (from Slashdot description). That provocative statement screams violation of checks and balances, so I went and read the two articles with interest. The Slashdot description may be the Real Truth, but there are no supporting references provided with it. So the reporter screwed up here, and ought to try a little harder (or maybe a little less hard) next time.
Slashdot Mirror
But there's always a case that can be made for any type of addition to a controller. Let's add a lasso rope to the controller so that some cowboy game will work.
Does anyone else feel like the controller interface has gotten out of hand? With all the buttons and pads and triggers and whatnots the things are hard to make sense of. And I imagine you folks are completely used to them after logging your thousands of hours of consoletime, but try watching somebody new figure it out. I guess the funky controller design we have stems from the idea that one controller should work for all types of games. It used to be that you'd plug in different controllers depending on the type of game you wanted to play, i.e. plug in the paddle controller (analog, left-to-right) for a game of Yar's Revenge. This sounds silly except that each controller had a specialized, uncompromised design. See that lovely black joystick in the top righthand corner of the webpage? It was a lot more satisfying to grip it with your fist than the weak thumb-twiddling we do with modern controllers.
But you probably knew that.
The sad thing is that people are missing (or don't care about) the distinction between what Liberated Games and the abandonware sites do. Abandonware sites find games that are no longer published or sold (but probably still under copyright protection) and make them available. Some sites like Underdogs are cool about taking games down if the author or copyrightholder asks them too, but still, abandonware isn't legal in most countries. Liberated Games is giving us free games with the permission of the copyrightholders. Here is their statement:
We neither condone nor engage in distributing games which are commonly called "Abandonware". We strive to respect the rights of the developers and publishers who retain the distribution rights of their works. Do not ask us about including games on the site that have not been liberated by the copyright owners.
Of course, when you can just browse around for 10 minutes and locate any pirated software you like and grab it, it's hard to make people interested. Try actually creating some of your own work and trying to protect it--oh, then you will feel the rage. Well done, Matt and Marvin! (And I think Zonk is pretty cool, too.)
But what about a company that sets the stage for an onslaught of legislation with their cheap publicity stunts? The game industry dodged the bullet of government regulation once by forming ESRB and learning to play by self-made rules in a terrific hurry. That was a real accomplishment, and Rockstar is undermining it by showing everyone that self-regulation does not work, and we need to be policed by government agencies.
I for one, do not welcome our new overlords. I make small games for a living and don't have a budget to pay for an ESRB rating or whatever new regulation system comes around. Since my games are sold online, I currently don't have to shell out two grand so that the IEMA will let me carry titles on retail shelves. But get the government involved, and watch large publishers lobby for mandatory ratings that become barriers to entry for indie developers. And watch politicians holy-rolling whatever subjective whim of the masses is popular into rating criteria. Yeah, enjoy the show and be sure to give Rockstar their proper credit for making it happen.
"Yes, but, if they finally do have access to this great money making market, and most of them still only sell 5,000 copies, perhaps that sheds some light on the quality of the games."
The real problem with getting a new kind of game out there is finding money to make it and distribution channels that will give it exposure and sales. If Nintendo is really going to open their distribution channel to small game developers, (I'm skeptical because of the lack of details we've seen from Nintendo) then that is HUGE. If I can suddenly sell say, 10,000 copies of my game, then it is time to quit my day job, hire a few subcontractors, and concentrate fulltime on game development. (A luxury few indie game developers have.)
You cannot overstate the incredible gulf in budget/exposure between indie titles and AAA titles that make it to retail shelves with full marketing and promotion. It is not simply a meritocracy where deserving games get recognition. For an indie developer it's more like fighting your way out of a ghetto. If the vicious circle can be broken, you'll see the lost "medium-scale" production for games come back--where small teams and 100k budgets can actually create a financially viable game.
So I'm watching Revolution hopefully from down here in the indie ghetto, but with no expectations.
When you buy a game, you could get an extra "LAN party" CD that can be passed around and copied however you want. It could install game clients that will function as long as one licensed installation is on the network. I'm sure the publisher would rather be selling a unique copy of the game to each player, but let's look at the reality of the situation:
- You go to the party and somebody says "Hey let's play Super Machoman Elite Team Force 3000!"
- You don't necessarily want to buy this game, but you need to install something to play with your buddies.
- Somebody hands you a disc and you install it. You maybe tell yourself that you'll uninstall it or buy the game later.
- But do you?
The point of having a "LAN party" installer is not to make extra copy protection, which can obviously be circumvented. Just make it easier to make temporary installations that work only at the party. It will be more convenient for people to avoid pirating games that way. And as the licensed owner of game you can pass around a disc without fear of it getting pirated.There was a point not long ago when retailers were seriously talking about taking PC games off store shelves because they weren't making enough money for the space they took up. Selling console games is a much more lucrative business. The IEMA came up with the smaller box size that publishers adopted, and basically saved PC games' retail existence.
The situation hasn't changed terribly--console games still outsell PC software easily. I don't think we will see the disappearance of a PC market anytime soon, but don't be surprised if PC games leave major retail shelves. PC games were already too close to getting the "gong".
If PC games get dropped from the Walmarts and Electronic Boutiques of the world, they are still going to be sold online and at PC-specific stores, but that's the beginning of a vicious cycle:
1. Less revenue for PC games, which leads to...
2. Smaller budgets for PC games (particularly for developing games that are published solely for PCs and not ports from console) Which leads to...
3. Less-compelling PC games, and most of them you could just get on a console anyhow. Which leads to...
1. Less revenue for PC games and etcetera...
I find the "indie" label appropriate. A lot of indie movies are crap, and you have to watch some bad ones to find a "Primer" or "Run Lola Run". Same thing with the indie games. Did you actually download and try anything there? Or did you just dismiss them by looking at the screenshots? If you compare low-budget indie games at a very shallow level to the frontline retail shelf fare, yeah, they will come up lacking. But occasionally you find the smaller games doing something risky and different because they don't have so much to lose. It requires a little time investment to find these games.
They don't make a big deal out of it, but the new DROD is open source. You actually can grab all the source from the game (http://www.caravelgames.com/sourcecode.html), but it is a little difficult to build with the eleventy-three dependencies and the media isn't open licensed. So yeah, you can build your own DROD, but if you wanted to distribute it, you'd need to replace the graphics and sound with something else. Hmmm.
There is some variety in there, and I'll be downloading at least 4 of 'em to try out. I'm glad to see not so much pattern-matching stuff which seems to be the fatal fetish of indie developers. I am tempted to download Horror Squad because maybe it is funny-bad like a B movie instead of boring-bad.
I don't plan to get a new project leader any time soon, but I think I could without much trouble. The key is getting some active development going on the project, before asking someone to take it over. Consider managing the project for just one more release with a few new features, and soliciting for help. The new development activity will hopefully attract some contributors. From these, you should have one or two candidates for a new project leader.
-Erik
I agree. These days it seems like the first thing I do after running any productivity app for the first time, is hide 90% of the toolbars and docking widgets. Then I can have something larger than a postage stamp in which to view my main document.
I think the real trick is designing UIs to put choices on the screen only when they are useful in a given context. And that just takes consideration of the application tasks involved in a given context--no real innovation required. Having fifty million available dockables is like throwing the whole UI design to the user and making them handle it.
If monitors get really cheap and huge, I still don't want to see that braindead clutter surrounding every document.
I always think of a desktop-sized monitor like the one that the evil corporate honcho in TRON had as an ideal. -Erik
It doesn't say anyplace in either article that "The U.S. Department of Justice announced that it had been instructed by the Bush Administration to cease its drive to break up Microsoft" (from Slashdot description). That provocative statement screams violation of checks and balances, so I went and read the two articles with interest. The Slashdot description may be the Real Truth, but there are no supporting references provided with it. So the reporter screwed up here, and ought to try a little harder (or maybe a little less hard) next time.