I was rooting for JoWooD to acquire the Might and Magic franchise, with UBI Soft being my least desirable choice (yes, even less desirable than Microsoft). In addition to absolutely terrible initial releases (Pool of Radiance re-formating hard drive upon uninstall, for example), UBI Soft is known for its complete disregard for the fans. As a publisher, they are known for selling budget-style releases (box with CD in paper sleeve and manual on CD) for the price of new games. In addition, they are the only company with whom I've had worse experience than with Westwood in regards to technical support.
This detachment from the fans of their games spells potential lawsuits coming. There are two fan-based Might and Magic games in being produced, and judging from the technical demo I've played, they look great. Fans were extremely active in other areas as well. They released a patch that fixed the otherwise disastrous Might and Magic IX, which 3DO toletrated even though it was a blatant violation of the EULA (no files modification clause). There is a whole host of fan fiction available. In fact, 3DO often embraced the fans' efforts, including the 20 best maps from a contest into the second Heroes of Might and Magic expansion. I'm afraid that UBI Soft won't be as lenient. I've seen them sending cease-and-desist letters for lesser offenses, and that makes me worried that they'll destroy one of the most devoted fan communities in no time.
My response to this article has been published two weeks before this article appeared. Time travel on my part, or did those guys reply to my accusations?
Because ever since 1995, I've been told that Microsoft knows better. That I don't have to worry about anything; all I have to do is to click away. I am well aware of the fact that I'm lazy. I don't want to scour the Internet for the latest patches, and after reading scary stories about how the autoupdate disables third party software, I refuse to have it turned on.
To make a long story short, after all those years I must admit that I'm the perfect example of a computer user that the big corporations like: oblivious to any change, paying for a new PC every three years, which comes with pre-installed software, and oblivious to any additional restrictions that the new software places on me. And as long as my computer works, I don't really care; I place the responsibility on the software publishers. Finally, when anything goes wrong, I pick up the phone and dial an 800-number. And believe it or not, there are millions of users, just like me. We are the ones who allow these worms to propagate; an unintended consequence of the brainwashing we received from large software publishers.
Unfortunately, it's not as simple as contacting a company and buying the rights. While this works in many cases, there are plenty of cases where it doesn't work.
First of all, companies have an incredible mess in their records. For example, as of last year, an Electronic Arts representative was trying to convince me that Dune 2000 was the first ever game inspired by the book series (for the record, EA doesn't hold the rights for Dune or Dune II, so it may be understandable). To make matters even worse, until abour 1985 the rights to the games lied with the developers and not the companies. Some publishers continued this trend into the 1990s, and figuring out who actually holds the rights is tough. Home of the Underdogs does a decent job at tracking the owners of the copyrights, but even at several thousand games they are only scratching the surface of gaming.
Second, many of the developers don't exist anymore, and the law has no provision for "abandoned" copyright. These works are simply locked in a hiatus until the copyright protection expires, no matter that the owner of the copyright doesn't exist anymore. (Lessing's proposal that the cipyright law be changed so that owners will need to pay a nominal fee to keep their copyrights would solve this problem.)
Third, many games are locked to still profitable franchises. For example, no matter that Atari dumped several million cartridges of unsold E.T. games. You won't ever be able to buy the rights to this otherwise disastrous game because of trademark issues. Same goes for classic adventures, games based on books, games with characters or items that may be copyrighted by someone else or games with franchises that still go on, at least on paper.
As a consequence, you'll face a huge problem in trying to hunt down the real copyright owner (it wouldn't do you any good to pay the company if it turns out they don't hold the rights at all), and the selection of games you'll be able to buy the rights for would be very limited.
(Just trying to condense both replies into one again.)
Yeah, I work in investments, but that's not why she was so dedicated. We were running a dual ISDN line through two modems on our server at that time, and she considered it a matter of pride to get it up and running. I guess she was a typical Slashdot geek;)
As for Bloomberg, I tend to call them directly, never get put on hold for more than five minutes, and within five minutes I'm talking to the appropriate tech person. If we can't resolve the problem in twenty minutes or so, within two hours we have a techie with a new computer at the door (we are located in NJ suburbs, so it's not like it's 10 minutes walking from the Bloomberg HQ). Because we use a dedicated DSL line for Bloomberg, we have an additional network card installed (the other connects to our network), and none of the techies had ever a problem with taking it out and installing into the new machine and configuring everything, courtesy of Bloomberg tech support. Of course, you are right - we are paying them obscene amounts of money, but we'd pay them the same amount whether we used the tech support or not.
Funny; I never had a problem with tech support, even though I'm calling various companies at least once per week. My secret - I'm friendly and humble. People on the other side of the line are just that, people. They appreciate if you don't yell at them, but joke with them instead. They are also not the brightest employees of the said company. They follow a certain routine, and don't appreciate if you try to interrupt them. So what, if I know how to change my network settings? It's much easier to follow their advice step by step ("Click on start." "Okay, now click on Settings.") than to interrupt them and tell them that you are already ten steps ahead.
It yields real results. Back in the days when UUNet was still independent, I managed to keep a tech support person on-line from 4PM to 2AM, making her miss her wedding aniversary, just because I was friendly all the time (naturally, she wasn't one of the minimum-wage workers, but a tech support manager). Just yesterday, I spent 15 minutes on the phone with MCI, only to get a follow-up call ten minutes later. A coworker who tends to yell at them has never gotten a follow-up call. Same with Bloomberg tech support, Dell, HP, Earthlink and Verizon, all of whom I called in the past month.
My main problem is their total disregard for their fans. They are the first to drop support of their older titles. For games that they still officially support, getting technical help is even harder than when dealing with Westwood. They are also responsible for one of the worst games of all time (from a technical perspective) - Pool of Radiance. Worst of all, however, they sell game boxes that contain CDs in paper sleeves and manuals in electronic format for full price. For example, they handled the distribution of Morrowind and its expansions in a few overseas markets. They left out the map and put the manual on the CD, yet they still sold it for the rough equivalent of $50, and not as a budget release.
Many thanks for the information; the site you mentioned proved to be very helpful. I never thought a non-PC gaming publisher would be interested in the 3DO franchises, which is why I assumed Namco was some obscure PC publisher. I'm ashamed to show my complete lack of console-based knowledge once again:(.
I'm personally torn between Microsoft and JoWooD. The former is slowly getting known for very stable releases; unlike with other big publishers, it seems like you need much fewer patches with Microsoft gaming products. The problem here is the lack of interraction with the fan community. JoWooD is not as technically proficient, but their fan interraction is second to none in this group. And considering what they did with Arx Fatalis (even though they were only the publishers), I can see some future for Might and Magic here.
I'm not really sure what Namco does in this group at all, and I'm pretty much indifferent to them. Don't remember ever playing one of their games.Same with Crave. As for Turbine, their only claim to fame is Asheron's Call, and I don't want to see Might and Magic going MMORPG. I'm not very fond of Eidos, either. I can't see them publishing a turn-based strategy or a RPG game at all. The worst of the group is without any doubt UBI Soft. I wish they dies a slow, horrible death for all their crap they published.
And as my luck has it, UBI Soft has been designated as the lead bidder for the Might and Magic franchise with a $1.3 million bid.
...but only under one condition: the paid content that's provided is unique and hard to replicate. The only content I can think of is commentary or proprietary articles from journalists that are trusted (what an oxymoron!) enough for people to pay for what they have to say.
It won't work with news - blogs have become much faster and more accurate than any on-line news services. It won't work with any kind of photographs or reviews - there will always be oddballs who decide to provide comparable content for free or with only banner advertisment. And as long as people have the choice, I don't see them willingly switching to services they have to pay for.
Don't shoot the messenger. I was just repeating what they said on Bloomberg radio this morning, at 9.02AM Eastern Time (I was just on my way to work). They actually mentioned the Roche case that's mentioned in the article as a perfect example of the EU trying to plug its budget holes by imposing anti-competitive fines on a company, and followed on by saying that this is partially the reason the EU is pursuing Microsoft now.
So far the best article on this issue I could find is here. What the article dowsn't say, but the Bloomberg radio commentary did mention, the EU seems to be financing its budget deficit by imposing fines, which makes the fairness of the whole process a little questionable.
The site I write for is very small, and still we get free stuff. We got some nasty responses from Lucasarts and Electronic Arts so far; in fact, EA almost managed to shut us down. Still, we do get free games, most notably from Dreamcatcher. As it so happens, I'm the one on the site who likes adventure games, so I get to review all of them. My ratings of these games range from 40% to 80%. Not a single one so far became a top pick, and there were quite a few we didn't even include a buy link to, because we felt nobody should play them.
Of course, you are right that a site that rates games objectivelly doesn't get too many free games. However, there are people who review games in order to get free copies, and then there are people who like to play games and happen to be willing to review them. The latter group will get the game no matter what, out of love for gaming. This attitude makes me to trust them a little more, as well.
You are right; there hasn't been a viable micropayments system in the US yet. However, I was working on one for a weekly magazine back in Slovakia where I'm originally from. The reason it worked there was because it was cheaper than buying the print version of the magazine.
Consider this: You have a very limited audience, about 5.5 million people. 4 million of them don't understand any foreign language. You have a single magazine that catters to the political right, and thus its subscription base is relatively high - almost 10,000 people. The magazine sells about 50,000 copies per week. The readers have absolutely no alternative, mainly due to the language barrier. So if you put it on-line and charge 5% of the price per article, people may select to read only 5 articles, thus it costs them only 25% of the original price, but the overhead cost of the magazine is near zero, which means more profit for the publisher. Why would people pay? Because there's only one alternative (the printed version), and the publisher makes sure it's more expensive.
Now consider the world of game reviews. For the sake of argument, let's say that one of the reviews on the site is for Elder Scrolls III: Bloodmoon. That game has been around for roughly 2 months, so chances are that all hardcore fans bought it and now only more indifferent people remain, exactly the kind of audience reviews are aimed at. I, as a potential buyer, go to Gamerankings and find that there are 31 reviews of the game. Will I ever pay for one of them when all others are free? Of course not!
Now you may argue that the micropayments could be voluntary. For that, there are already two established services - Amazon Honors System and PayPal donations system. The site could've used those instead, and if they are really good, they would have received some revenue.
I personally wish you were right and micropayments were an accepted part of on-line life. I'm running several sites, and would like to turn them to profit some day. For now, however, all I can do is to keep dreaming.
I'm sorry, but I think you are generalising too much. There are plenty of sites who post unbiased reviews, without demanding any payments. True, they are smaller and don't pay their reviewers, but they don't suck up to publishers, either. I write reviews for Netjak, and have yet to hear about a company successfully forcing us to improve a rating for a review. The same goes for plenty of other sites I know, such as The Adrenaline Vault (they made it all the way to the top of the Lucasarts black list), Four Fat Chicks, Zen Gamer, Quarter to Three and others. Your comment is unfair to those sites and not really addressing my main argument that Digiworld can't possibly hope to collect enough revenues to survive if the competition is free.
The site may show some "truly independent journalism", but that doesn't automatically translate into good journalism. Good journalism is not only good writing, but also getting the message across in a readable format. While some may enjoy the endless scrolling through monstrous letters and a very narrow review column, others would rather go to other independent review sites like Netjak, Quarter to Three or Four Fat Chicks, whose reviews are easier to decipher.
(Personally, I'd like to see a sample review or two before signing up. After all, if I pay it's because of the content and not the design.)
Having unbiased reviews is certainly a good intention, but in the current competitive environment, micropayments don't work. They are moderately successful in small, niche markets or foreign languages, but not in gaming review sites written in English. If you really want unbiased reviews, you head to sites like Gamerankings that lists all reviews, and you'll find something you need.
The only time micropayments work is if everybody else in a niche uses some sort of payment. This niche can be either topic-oriented or language-oriented. The important thing is that it has a limited audience that is unable to reach quality free content.
I agree that great games need more than artwork, but in the case of RPGs, the atmosphere is still the king. I've been playing games ever since I remember, and I must admit that with rare exceptions, DOS games have had the best atmosphere. Games like DUngeon Master, the Wizardry series, Might and Magic series, Ultima Underworld, Lands of Lore, the Ishar series and the Eye of the Beholder series never leave my harddrive. All these games have one thing in common: they take place in a fantasy world that's more familiar to me, mimicking medeival Europe. As such, I expect the characters to look vaguelly human, and if they don't they are just out of place and I can't make myself to care enough to actually play the role of my character. Of course, others may prefer their fantasy worlds to be inhabited by anime characters, and the sales figures just prove that many are. I guess I'm just too old and set in my ways to change and enjoy that kind of graphics.
How about art? There are some people who are no fond of running around with spiked hair, a six-foot sword and the eyes of the size of coasters. While we don't try to wipe such games of the face of earth, we choose to ignore them on the store shelves and rather opt for games where your character actually looks vaguelly human (or reptilian or feline, for that matter). As it so happens, people like would pick a western RPG over a Japanese RPG 99.9% of the time. But as they say - there's no coounting for taste. You pick a game you like better, and as long as there are western RPGs around, I'll pick what I like.
Did they decide which operating system to use? And, more importantly, how to make it secure? I'd hate to get a shiny new metalic body, only to have some 14-years old punk hack into it and make me stand on my head while peeing.
The chances of winning the jackpot in Mega Millions are 135,145,920 to 1. With $5 spent per drawing and 104 drawings per year, it will take me 259,896 years to win the jackpot.
In a sense, RIAA is betting on the right horse. They'll win their big jackpot 118.58 times faster than I'll do.
According to their FAQ, you need to be connected to the Internet when you try to activate the product, and you can get the activation code only from within the game. I guess it works on a similar principle as the new Microsoft activation codes.
That said, I'd like to point out that selling games on-line is nothing new. Wargames, my favorite genre, are now sold almost exclusivelly on-line, and there's lots of other independent games as well.
However, what most of the other games have in common is a well-designed Web site. Here, I can see about two thirds of the main frame, and there's no scroll bars for me to see the rest. If the development team is unable to do such a simple task as designing a user-friendly Web site, I'm a little sceptical about the quality of their game.
I may have not been too clear in my previous post. I still remember a post where the writer asked whether it would be legal do download a digitized version of a product (song, book), if you own the physical copy of that book. While I understand that it's illegal to offer such downloads, this concerns only people who download.
As for EULAs, I'm aware that they are different from copyright law. However, the copyright law implicitly lists certain actions under fair use, while some EULAs disallow them. I was always curious which takes precedens in this case, and so did another writer who asked this question in the original discussion.
Very interesting read; kudos to the lawyers who had the courage to face the angrycrowd here. However, they seem to have ignored one of the most common questions in the original debate: that of fair use.
While they touched on fair use briefly, I remember others asking more direct questions concerning faire use, such as the rights to convert a copyrighted material into a different format or the discreptancy between fair use and many modern EULAs. I'm wondering whether ignoring these questions was deliberate or not...
Slashdot Mirror
This detachment from the fans of their games spells potential lawsuits coming. There are two fan-based Might and Magic games in being produced, and judging from the technical demo I've played, they look great. Fans were extremely active in other areas as well. They released a patch that fixed the otherwise disastrous Might and Magic IX, which 3DO toletrated even though it was a blatant violation of the EULA (no files modification clause). There is a whole host of fan fiction available. In fact, 3DO often embraced the fans' efforts, including the 20 best maps from a contest into the second Heroes of Might and Magic expansion. I'm afraid that UBI Soft won't be as lenient. I've seen them sending cease-and-desist letters for lesser offenses, and that makes me worried that they'll destroy one of the most devoted fan communities in no time.
My response to this article has been published two weeks before this article appeared. Time travel on my part, or did those guys reply to my accusations?
Because ever since 1995, I've been told that Microsoft knows better. That I don't have to worry about anything; all I have to do is to click away. I am well aware of the fact that I'm lazy. I don't want to scour the Internet for the latest patches, and after reading scary stories about how the autoupdate disables third party software, I refuse to have it turned on.
To make a long story short, after all those years I must admit that I'm the perfect example of a computer user that the big corporations like: oblivious to any change, paying for a new PC every three years, which comes with pre-installed software, and oblivious to any additional restrictions that the new software places on me. And as long as my computer works, I don't really care; I place the responsibility on the software publishers. Finally, when anything goes wrong, I pick up the phone and dial an 800-number. And believe it or not, there are millions of users, just like me. We are the ones who allow these worms to propagate; an unintended consequence of the brainwashing we received from large software publishers.
First of all, companies have an incredible mess in their records. For example, as of last year, an Electronic Arts representative was trying to convince me that Dune 2000 was the first ever game inspired by the book series (for the record, EA doesn't hold the rights for Dune or Dune II, so it may be understandable). To make matters even worse, until abour 1985 the rights to the games lied with the developers and not the companies. Some publishers continued this trend into the 1990s, and figuring out who actually holds the rights is tough. Home of the Underdogs does a decent job at tracking the owners of the copyrights, but even at several thousand games they are only scratching the surface of gaming.
Second, many of the developers don't exist anymore, and the law has no provision for "abandoned" copyright. These works are simply locked in a hiatus until the copyright protection expires, no matter that the owner of the copyright doesn't exist anymore. (Lessing's proposal that the cipyright law be changed so that owners will need to pay a nominal fee to keep their copyrights would solve this problem.)
Third, many games are locked to still profitable franchises. For example, no matter that Atari dumped several million cartridges of unsold E.T. games. You won't ever be able to buy the rights to this otherwise disastrous game because of trademark issues. Same goes for classic adventures, games based on books, games with characters or items that may be copyrighted by someone else or games with franchises that still go on, at least on paper.
As a consequence, you'll face a huge problem in trying to hunt down the real copyright owner (it wouldn't do you any good to pay the company if it turns out they don't hold the rights at all), and the selection of games you'll be able to buy the rights for would be very limited.
Yeah, I work in investments, but that's not why she was so dedicated. We were running a dual ISDN line through two modems on our server at that time, and she considered it a matter of pride to get it up and running. I guess she was a typical Slashdot geek ;)
As for Bloomberg, I tend to call them directly, never get put on hold for more than five minutes, and within five minutes I'm talking to the appropriate tech person. If we can't resolve the problem in twenty minutes or so, within two hours we have a techie with a new computer at the door (we are located in NJ suburbs, so it's not like it's 10 minutes walking from the Bloomberg HQ). Because we use a dedicated DSL line for Bloomberg, we have an additional network card installed (the other connects to our network), and none of the techies had ever a problem with taking it out and installing into the new machine and configuring everything, courtesy of Bloomberg tech support. Of course, you are right - we are paying them obscene amounts of money, but we'd pay them the same amount whether we used the tech support or not.
Funny; I never had a problem with tech support, even though I'm calling various companies at least once per week. My secret - I'm friendly and humble. People on the other side of the line are just that, people. They appreciate if you don't yell at them, but joke with them instead. They are also not the brightest employees of the said company. They follow a certain routine, and don't appreciate if you try to interrupt them. So what, if I know how to change my network settings? It's much easier to follow their advice step by step ("Click on start." "Okay, now click on Settings.") than to interrupt them and tell them that you are already ten steps ahead. It yields real results. Back in the days when UUNet was still independent, I managed to keep a tech support person on-line from 4PM to 2AM, making her miss her wedding aniversary, just because I was friendly all the time (naturally, she wasn't one of the minimum-wage workers, but a tech support manager). Just yesterday, I spent 15 minutes on the phone with MCI, only to get a follow-up call ten minutes later. A coworker who tends to yell at them has never gotten a follow-up call. Same with Bloomberg tech support, Dell, HP, Earthlink and Verizon, all of whom I called in the past month.
My main problem is their total disregard for their fans. They are the first to drop support of their older titles. For games that they still officially support, getting technical help is even harder than when dealing with Westwood. They are also responsible for one of the worst games of all time (from a technical perspective) - Pool of Radiance. Worst of all, however, they sell game boxes that contain CDs in paper sleeves and manuals in electronic format for full price. For example, they handled the distribution of Morrowind and its expansions in a few overseas markets. They left out the map and put the manual on the CD, yet they still sold it for the rough equivalent of $50, and not as a budget release.
Many thanks for the information; the site you mentioned proved to be very helpful. I never thought a non-PC gaming publisher would be interested in the 3DO franchises, which is why I assumed Namco was some obscure PC publisher. I'm ashamed to show my complete lack of console-based knowledge once again :(.
I'm personally torn between Microsoft and JoWooD. The former is slowly getting known for very stable releases; unlike with other big publishers, it seems like you need much fewer patches with Microsoft gaming products. The problem here is the lack of interraction with the fan community. JoWooD is not as technically proficient, but their fan interraction is second to none in this group. And considering what they did with Arx Fatalis (even though they were only the publishers), I can see some future for Might and Magic here.
I'm not really sure what Namco does in this group at all, and I'm pretty much indifferent to them. Don't remember ever playing one of their games.Same with Crave. As for Turbine, their only claim to fame is Asheron's Call, and I don't want to see Might and Magic going MMORPG. I'm not very fond of Eidos, either. I can't see them publishing a turn-based strategy or a RPG game at all. The worst of the group is without any doubt UBI Soft. I wish they dies a slow, horrible death for all their crap they published.
And as my luck has it, UBI Soft has been designated as the lead bidder for the Might and Magic franchise with a $1.3 million bid.
It won't work with news - blogs have become much faster and more accurate than any on-line news services. It won't work with any kind of photographs or reviews - there will always be oddballs who decide to provide comparable content for free or with only banner advertisment. And as long as people have the choice, I don't see them willingly switching to services they have to pay for.
Don't shoot the messenger. I was just repeating what they said on Bloomberg radio this morning, at 9.02AM Eastern Time (I was just on my way to work). They actually mentioned the Roche case that's mentioned in the article as a perfect example of the EU trying to plug its budget holes by imposing anti-competitive fines on a company, and followed on by saying that this is partially the reason the EU is pursuing Microsoft now.
So far the best article on this issue I could find is here. What the article dowsn't say, but the Bloomberg radio commentary did mention, the EU seems to be financing its budget deficit by imposing fines, which makes the fairness of the whole process a little questionable.
Of course, you are right that a site that rates games objectivelly doesn't get too many free games. However, there are people who review games in order to get free copies, and then there are people who like to play games and happen to be willing to review them. The latter group will get the game no matter what, out of love for gaming. This attitude makes me to trust them a little more, as well.
Consider this: You have a very limited audience, about 5.5 million people. 4 million of them don't understand any foreign language. You have a single magazine that catters to the political right, and thus its subscription base is relatively high - almost 10,000 people. The magazine sells about 50,000 copies per week. The readers have absolutely no alternative, mainly due to the language barrier. So if you put it on-line and charge 5% of the price per article, people may select to read only 5 articles, thus it costs them only 25% of the original price, but the overhead cost of the magazine is near zero, which means more profit for the publisher. Why would people pay? Because there's only one alternative (the printed version), and the publisher makes sure it's more expensive.
Now consider the world of game reviews. For the sake of argument, let's say that one of the reviews on the site is for Elder Scrolls III: Bloodmoon. That game has been around for roughly 2 months, so chances are that all hardcore fans bought it and now only more indifferent people remain, exactly the kind of audience reviews are aimed at. I, as a potential buyer, go to Gamerankings and find that there are 31 reviews of the game. Will I ever pay for one of them when all others are free? Of course not!
Now you may argue that the micropayments could be voluntary. For that, there are already two established services - Amazon Honors System and PayPal donations system. The site could've used those instead, and if they are really good, they would have received some revenue.
I personally wish you were right and micropayments were an accepted part of on-line life. I'm running several sites, and would like to turn them to profit some day. For now, however, all I can do is to keep dreaming.
I'm sorry, but I think you are generalising too much. There are plenty of sites who post unbiased reviews, without demanding any payments. True, they are smaller and don't pay their reviewers, but they don't suck up to publishers, either. I write reviews for Netjak, and have yet to hear about a company successfully forcing us to improve a rating for a review. The same goes for plenty of other sites I know, such as The Adrenaline Vault (they made it all the way to the top of the Lucasarts black list), Four Fat Chicks, Zen Gamer, Quarter to Three and others. Your comment is unfair to those sites and not really addressing my main argument that Digiworld can't possibly hope to collect enough revenues to survive if the competition is free.
(Personally, I'd like to see a sample review or two before signing up. After all, if I pay it's because of the content and not the design.)
The only time micropayments work is if everybody else in a niche uses some sort of payment. This niche can be either topic-oriented or language-oriented. The important thing is that it has a limited audience that is unable to reach quality free content.
I agree that great games need more than artwork, but in the case of RPGs, the atmosphere is still the king. I've been playing games ever since I remember, and I must admit that with rare exceptions, DOS games have had the best atmosphere. Games like DUngeon Master, the Wizardry series, Might and Magic series, Ultima Underworld, Lands of Lore, the Ishar series and the Eye of the Beholder series never leave my harddrive. All these games have one thing in common: they take place in a fantasy world that's more familiar to me, mimicking medeival Europe. As such, I expect the characters to look vaguelly human, and if they don't they are just out of place and I can't make myself to care enough to actually play the role of my character. Of course, others may prefer their fantasy worlds to be inhabited by anime characters, and the sales figures just prove that many are. I guess I'm just too old and set in my ways to change and enjoy that kind of graphics.
How about art? There are some people who are no fond of running around with spiked hair, a six-foot sword and the eyes of the size of coasters. While we don't try to wipe such games of the face of earth, we choose to ignore them on the store shelves and rather opt for games where your character actually looks vaguelly human (or reptilian or feline, for that matter). As it so happens, people like would pick a western RPG over a Japanese RPG 99.9% of the time. But as they say - there's no coounting for taste. You pick a game you like better, and as long as there are western RPGs around, I'll pick what I like.
Did they decide which operating system to use? And, more importantly, how to make it secure? I'd hate to get a shiny new metalic body, only to have some 14-years old punk hack into it and make me stand on my head while peeing.
In a sense, RIAA is betting on the right horse. They'll win their big jackpot 118.58 times faster than I'll do.
I did catch the sarcasm, and I still see no reason to reply ;)
That said, I'd like to point out that selling games on-line is nothing new. Wargames, my favorite genre, are now sold almost exclusivelly on-line, and there's lots of other independent games as well.
However, what most of the other games have in common is a well-designed Web site. Here, I can see about two thirds of the main frame, and there's no scroll bars for me to see the rest. If the development team is unable to do such a simple task as designing a user-friendly Web site, I'm a little sceptical about the quality of their game.
As for EULAs, I'm aware that they are different from copyright law. However, the copyright law implicitly lists certain actions under fair use, while some EULAs disallow them. I was always curious which takes precedens in this case, and so did another writer who asked this question in the original discussion.
While they touched on fair use briefly, I remember others asking more direct questions concerning faire use, such as the rights to convert a copyrighted material into a different format or the discreptancy between fair use and many modern EULAs. I'm wondering whether ignoring these questions was deliberate or not...