Blizzard is very good at making games that are rock-solid, highly balanced, and immensely fun to play... alone. And the Beta is going to be a blast, at least at first, because everybody on it is overjoyed to be playing this lovely game with everyone else. Once the general public gets their hands on it, things may not be so pretty.
How does Blizzard plan to handle griefing? Has anyone in the Beta tested the degree to which they can make other players miserable? This is where Old Man Murray's review of Asheron's Call was so helpful - it pointed out, with dramatic effectiveness, that it was quite possible to follow the rules of the game, not attack anyone, and still bug the hell out of other players. Until the general public - including the hackers, griefers, scammers, spammers, trolls, and general scum of the Internet - get in on this game, it won't be possible to truly evaluate the gameplay experience.
I Had This Idea Darn It / OSS to Desktop
on
The Open Code Market
·
· Score: 0, Redundant
Not only did I have this idea, I even wrote it up in a paper for a college class a year ago. It's the same not only in spirit (a commission system for building programs and adding features, the result being open to all), but in the particulars as well (regulation of the market by a for-profit "third party" entity and so on). Not that I'm complaining; rather, I'm glad to see that somebody has the guts to try it.
As for the challenge of getting Linux and OSS on desktops, the standard approach appears to be to try and sell Linux and OSS as a bundle, and to get people to shift over all at once. I personally don't think this is the right approach. The easiest OSS programs to convince people to use are the ones that have Windows as well as Linux versions.
Right now I use Mozilla for browsing, the GIMP for image editing, and free (though perhaps not Free) programs for AVI reencoding and archive compression and retrieval - and I'm a Windows user. If I were able to use Free software for everything I normally do in Windows, and all of those programs also had Linux versions, I'd switch.
However, I'm stuck in Windows because I'm a gamer, and a lot of games don't have Linux versions (or Mac ones for that matter). If the zealots (you know who you are) went after the game designers to port their code, you'd get me on Linux no problem.
Most of these names are from Japanese games or from localizations thereof. I'm not particularly surprised by either of these: I suspect the Japanese construct "English" names based solely on whether they have an interesting sound, without any real consideration of meaning. I personally find this somewhat chauvinistic, as I'm sure the Japanese would be rather upset if we Americans mangled Japanese words in similar fashion (as we occasionally do).
As for localization, a lot of it is done by people who are considerably less clever than they think they are.
The issue with the PA strip is not satire fair use as many have pointed out. Strawberry Shortcake is not being parodied, and therefore the use of the character is illegal. But then why did the PA artists use the character at all? They're clearly not ignorant of copyright law.
I believe that Gabe and Tycho thought that Strawberry Shortcake was now in the public domain; and if copyrights had reasonable terms she would be. However, copyrights now last for at least 20 years, and more if you have enough sway in Congress (see Disney).
If American Greetings were still using the Strawberry Shortcake character (the way Disney is still using Mickey) I could see their justification for protecting their copyright. As an artist, I wouldn't want my body of work being coopted even as I was creating and promoting it, and I think the Penny Arcade guys would agree. But Strawberry Shortcake is a dead concept, to such a degree that I would bet nearly nobody even knew she was owned by American Greetings.
American Greetings has an opportunity to demonstrate good corporate citizenship, improve their public image, and set an example for other media companies by dropping their copyright on Strawberry Shortcake and any other properties they aren't using and don't plan to use again. There's no sense in wasting money and time to protect things you won't use.
Slashdot Mirror
Blizzard is very good at making games that are rock-solid, highly balanced, and immensely fun to play... alone. And the Beta is going to be a blast, at least at first, because everybody on it is overjoyed to be playing this lovely game with everyone else. Once the general public gets their hands on it, things may not be so pretty.
How does Blizzard plan to handle griefing? Has anyone in the Beta tested the degree to which they can make other players miserable? This is where Old Man Murray's review of Asheron's Call was so helpful - it pointed out, with dramatic effectiveness, that it was quite possible to follow the rules of the game, not attack anyone, and still bug the hell out of other players. Until the general public - including the hackers, griefers, scammers, spammers, trolls, and general scum of the Internet - get in on this game, it won't be possible to truly evaluate the gameplay experience.
Not only did I have this idea, I even wrote it up in a paper for a college class a year ago. It's the same not only in spirit (a commission system for building programs and adding features, the result being open to all), but in the particulars as well (regulation of the market by a for-profit "third party" entity and so on). Not that I'm complaining; rather, I'm glad to see that somebody has the guts to try it.
As for the challenge of getting Linux and OSS on desktops, the standard approach appears to be to try and sell Linux and OSS as a bundle, and to get people to shift over all at once. I personally don't think this is the right approach. The easiest OSS programs to convince people to use are the ones that have Windows as well as Linux versions.
Right now I use Mozilla for browsing, the GIMP for image editing, and free (though perhaps not Free) programs for AVI reencoding and archive compression and retrieval - and I'm a Windows user. If I were able to use Free software for everything I normally do in Windows, and all of those programs also had Linux versions, I'd switch.
However, I'm stuck in Windows because I'm a gamer, and a lot of games don't have Linux versions (or Mac ones for that matter). If the zealots (you know who you are) went after the game designers to port their code, you'd get me on Linux no problem.
As for localization, a lot of it is done by people who are considerably less clever than they think they are.
The issue with the PA strip is not satire fair use as many have pointed out. Strawberry Shortcake is not being parodied, and therefore the use of the character is illegal. But then why did the PA artists use the character at all? They're clearly not ignorant of copyright law.
I believe that Gabe and Tycho thought that Strawberry Shortcake was now in the public domain; and if copyrights had reasonable terms she would be. However, copyrights now last for at least 20 years, and more if you have enough sway in Congress (see Disney).
If American Greetings were still using the Strawberry Shortcake character (the way Disney is still using Mickey) I could see their justification for protecting their copyright. As an artist, I wouldn't want my body of work being coopted even as I was creating and promoting it, and I think the Penny Arcade guys would agree. But Strawberry Shortcake is a dead concept, to such a degree that I would bet nearly nobody even knew she was owned by American Greetings.
American Greetings has an opportunity to demonstrate good corporate citizenship, improve their public image, and set an example for other media companies by dropping their copyright on Strawberry Shortcake and any other properties they aren't using and don't plan to use again. There's no sense in wasting money and time to protect things you won't use.